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Ajax
Two things: Microsoft recently came out with an update to their Ajax Toolkit, and I was told today that my Digital Tool Factory application is the sort of thing that Microsoft likes to spotlight as a case study. Happy day.
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The weirdest thing I read last week
From Jim Thompson’s novel, Pop. 1280 after the protagonist almost get hanged by an angry mob for rape
I figure sometimes that maybe that’s why we don’t make as much progress as other parts of the nation. People lose so much time from their jobs in lynching other people, and they spend so much money on rope and kerosene and getting likkered up in advance, and other essentials, that there ain’t an awful lot of money or man-hours left for practical purposes.
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The high score that will last one thousand years!
From Zen Pundit -
The good side of ethanol
It would seem that the viability of ethanol is finally being questioned in the environmental movement. About time too.
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Too insulated
While lately I’ve become a follower of next-generation warfare theory (there’s lots of them) the tenor lately has become similar to discussions Ayn Rand followers have.
No larger point here, just a minor observation as I think over my Brave New War review.
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The food chain takes surprising turns
Watch the whole thing, there’s several twists and turns in this.
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A second Israel
I’ve been in favor of moving American troops to Kuwait and Kurdistan and letting the various Iraqi factions settle itself, with American troops playing Spoiler for our own interests. Upon further thought I’m not so sure.
Kuwait isn’t really a factor, but Kurdistan is. Assuming that the Kurds do secede (which seems likely) we would be the guarantor of last resort for an ethnically homogeneous enclave, much like we are with Israel. While supporting the Israelis is perhaps the right thing to do, it’s doubtful that the relationship is worthwhile on a cost benefit basis. That raises the question, do we really need another exposed ally with little to offer surrounded by hostile countries? Supporting the Kurds would alienate the surrounding countries and be a considerable financial and troop expense.
Then again, it does put another outpost of democracy and freedom (for the region) in the area and the second Israel isn’t the same as the first.
Decisions, decisions.
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SQL Server Errata
As everyone should learn from my 3 hours of Sql server frustration… Sql Server returns different values when you run a CheckSum on the same text for varchar and nvarchar data types.
The above probably isn’t interesting to any of my readers, but should I forget it later I can find it again.
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A good post on immigration
From Kerry Howley in Reason
The greatest distortion for Chadian farmers is not American cotton subsidies, writes Pritchett, but that “farmers from Chad have to farm in Chad—and not farm in France, Poland, or Canada.”
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Wellput from Julian Sanchez
In this post about full brains
Efficient brains need to know what they can afford to forget—probably quite a bit, now that it’s so easy to outsource our recollections to rapidly-searched digital media. The interesting question for me is: When almost anything you might need to recall can be offloaded in this way, what’s worth keeping in wetware memory? My first instinct is that you need to remember exactly enough to (1) make interesting connections, and (2) actually find the full information from the signpost you’ve remembered.