THE RULE OF LAW IS REAFFIRMED! Prosecutors are actually going to file charges against Winona Ryder! Looks like the root causes of her "misunderstanding" with Saks Fifth Avenue continue to be ignored.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Will Wilkinson has a great explaination of why the antiglobalization postmodernist left continues to promote socialism ten years after the spectacular collapse of the Soviet Union.
HERE'S AN INTERESTING HEADLINE in the Washington Post: Groups Find Way to Get Names of INS Detainees. The groups are the ACLU and the American Friends Service Committee. The way that they've found to get the names of the detainees, which General Ashcroft has famously refused to divulge, is to ask the detainees themselves. These groups regularly hold workshops in INS detention centers for those held, as all the detainees are, on immigration charges. These classes are called "Know Your Rights," and the article quotes unnamed authorities as saying they are "powerless" to prevent civil liberties groups from holding legal presentations in INS facilities to any detainee who would like to come.
BEFORE I GO WRITE ABOUT MARKET-BASED ALTERNATIVES TO THIRD PARTY REIMBURSEMENT STRUCTURES: Let me mention the excellent novel Loose Lips by Claire Berlinski. I liked the first chapter so much, I bought the rest! Very funny and smart writing. Yet another thing to keep me from writing the thesis. Damn that clever Berlinski woman! I may not blog much for the next day or so, so go read her novel instead.
UPDATE: Looks like Claire has had some success with her web publishing strategy, so much so that it is now only available in a future dead-tree version. Look for it soon at your local book seller soon!
TESTING BLOGGER PRO.... Seems to be just what I wanted, as if Ev somehow searched my heart for its deepest Blogger desires. This has been a week of updates and downgrades. This weekend I upgraded to Palm OS 4, needlessly, I now realize, as it did not contain the mail conduit I had thought it would. I console myself with the $40 new memo pad alarm thingy, which I can now use to bombard myself with handwritten reminders: Write thesis! Drink a liter of water! Blog, dammit!
I also finally removed the Palm Desktop OS X Beta from my Mac as it is vile crap. Forget about the "Megahertz Myth" myth, I want Steve Jobs drawn and quartered for letting Palm claim at MacWorld that they have a beta product that will Hotsync under OS X! Oh, villainous lie! So I'm back to 2.6.3, but at least the serial-to-USB converter works again. Maybe someday the planets will align and I'll figure out the voodoo required to be able to reliably Hotsync through IrDA. I'm not going to try any more OS X betas, though, I'll tell you what.
That said, the gorgeous new Office suite for OS X is fully out and, thanks to a dark pact UT made with Microsoft, I was able to get a disc in my grubby little paw this afternoon for $5. Now, sadly, I have exactly zero reasons not to finish my thesis. My exceedingly lame final excuse, "But I have to go into the Classic environment to use Word..." has now been punctured by the "stunning" Word X. Oh, well, it probably won't kill me to go write a bit of it.
HEAR, HERE! The National Post is dead-on with this editorial about the dangers of applying the Geneva Convention to those who do not obey the rules of war:
Parcelling out Geneva Convention rights to unlawful combatants is nothing akin to sending food and medical aid to the Afghan populace. It is reward for gross wrongdoing. If covert operators, terrorists, are given Geneva protections, the Convention will be eroded; its core purpose is to persuade combatants to fight by the rules. If the privileges come irrespective of wholesale and flagrant rule-breaking, what incentive is there for combatants to behave in prescribed ways? If you reward criminal mass murder, that is what you are likely to get.Mr. Powell suggests that U.S. soldiers captured in some future conflict might, in revenge, be denied their rights under the Geneva Convention as well. That may be true -- indeed it would be absurdly naive to expect Geneva Convention standards from al-Qaeda jailers -- but it is beside the point. Pre-emptively capitulating on principle for fear of what the enemy might do is appeasement and the road to weakness, equivocation and defeat.
Since the Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners enjoy decent food, clothing and medical treatment, the only practical implication of providing them with Geneva rights would be to circumscribe their interrogation. Intelligence is the single most important commodity in the fight against terrorism, and it would be culpable folly to relinquish the right to get it. We do not need to know the terrorists' names, ranks, ages and serial numbers -- they probably have several of the first and are uncertain of the rest -- but we do need to know what they know about further attacks on the West. The prisoners likely know of plots and organizational detail, yet Mr. Powell's suggestion would prevent U.S. officials from even asking about them.
I don't think Powell can really be serious about calling them POWs. Maybe he's just playing "good cop." He certainly knows that American prisoners of war are never given their rights under the Geneva Convention by anyone.