DennisDeery.com

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation has a great summary of the technology policies of the two major-party presidential campaigns posted on their web site.

From Ireland’s prolific Pat Phelan comes word of a new web site that can allow you to hedge your gas prices against the rising tide. Check out Pat’s blog for details.

The UW-Stout community was saddened last week by a tragic house fire that resulted in the deaths of three students. The opportunistic nut-jobs at Westboro Baptist Church, known for showing up at military funerals to tout their belief that God is punishing the U.S. for its acceptance of gays, decided this was another golden opportunity to show the world the depths of their hatred. Their four protesters showed up on the Menomonie campus last Thursday bearing placards with statements such as “God Hates Fags” and other well-known bible verses. They were greeted by a crowd of students, faculty and townspeople estimated to number 1,000. While the counter protest wasn’t entirely peaceful (one student was arrested for stealing signs from the Westboro protesters), the locals did manage to make the fine point that the Westboro message wasn’t welcome in Menomonie. After less than 1/2 hour doing God’s work, the Westboro folks tucked tail between their legs and scooted out of town, presumably to crawl back down their little hole in the ground. A representative from the church commented to the newspaper:

“I have to tell you the brutish children of Wisconsin are a cut above the rest in their rebellion and disobedience and filthy behavior.”

Ahhh, makes a person proud to be child of Wisconsin!

Badger Herald - Four Westboro Baptists meet 1,000 protesters at UW-Stout

Bernard Goldbach has a good post up on his blog about one of the dangers in traveling with a laptop. As someone who regularly travels internationally with my laptop, this has been a big, and growing, concern to me. The United States’ Transportation Security Administration can be truly draconian in their approach to travelers. Those who run afoul of a screener, for whatever reason, can be subject to pretty unbelievable treatment. Confiscation of laptops and searches of personal data are becoming more common. And the latest moves from the Bush administration are going to make international travel even more difficult, especially for those of us with U.S. passports.

My George W. Bush Out-of-Office countdown calendar tells me that there are 330 days left until the next administration takes office. Unfortunately, cleaning up the current mess is not going to be a few days’ job for the new office holder.

This video, based on a Barack Obama speech, has been making the rounds lately. I’m a fan of Obama, I’m excited by the possibility that he’s going to be the nominee. I’m proud of the fact that America seems to be getting excited by an intelligent, eloquent speaker, a thinker. I think good changes are coming. And after watching this video, I would say not only “Yes we can!”, but “Yes, we must!” It’s time for change.

And it would appear that John McCain will be the Republican nominee. There’s a similar video for him.

If you can’t view the videos above, here are the links:

• Obama Video
• McCain Video

An Associated Press article from this past weekend describes a new breed of remotely-piloted vehicle, called the Reaper, that the U.S. Air Force is preparing to deploy to Iraq. This plane is similar to the Predator aircraft which has been used throughout the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, mostly for surveillance activities. The Reaper, as the name hints, has a different mission. Armed with bombs and missiles, the Reaper is an attack aircraft. Its pilots will sit in safe, remote locations as far away from the battlefield as Nevada, while they rain down death and destruction by remote control.

Welcome to the age of asymmetric warfare. Asymmetric warfare is the nice, clean way of describing war between two parties of unequal power or ability. Of course, most war could be described that way, but in this case it’s meant to describe a situation where one party has wildly different power or ability than the other. I think we’re unlikely to see, in my lifetime, an old-style war of two equally-matched powers standing face-to-face and slugging it out. Instead, we’ll see terrorist attacks, where 20 people can kill 3,000 in a single attack. Or worse, superpowers such as the U.S. dropping millions of dollars of munitions on large swathes of territory containing a few combatants and many innocent civilians.

And the Reaper is the next step in our progression. Putting people near the battlefield is to risk their lives. Even when the opponent is wildly underpowered or under-resourced, they are still able to lash out and kill. Solution? Keep your own combatants far away from the battlefield. Makes perfect sense, yes? But stop and think about the net result - war becomes even cleaner and tidier. The United States is a nation that has yet to even deal with the simple, gripping site of caskets returning from a war zone, and yet we strive to make war even cleaner for ourselves. A sane person has to ask, if a war costs us no casualties then what possible downside is there to us engaging in  one? Basic morality is clearly not enough, because currently war does cost us some casualties, and yet we chose to start one. When we can finally engage in a war that generates no casualties for us, what’s to stop power-mad people from launching them? It’s really kind of pathetic that in the 21st century we need to be asking a question like that, but I think it’s critically important that we figure out how to answer it, because future technology is only going to make war more bloody for some and less painful for others.

Robot air attack squadron bound for Iraq

A couple of weeks ago Senator Hillary Clinton addressed the National Rural Assembly via a video link-up. This gathering of 400-people, part of the Kellogg Foundation’s Rural People, Rural Policy initiative, was an effort to highlight the issues facing rural areas, and to broaden the discussion beyond agriculture policy, which has generally been the focus of rural policy efforts. To that end, during the Q&A session following her talk, Senator Clinton was asked by one participant if she, as President, would consider changing the name and mission of the Department of Agriculture to the Department of Rural Affairs. To her credit, she said yes, she believed that would be a terrific idea.

Now, I’m a little amazed at her reaction, and I hope it wasn’t just a throwaway line to feed the crowd. And I have to say I’m a little amazed that, from what I’ve seen, there’s been little or no reaction to this in the U.S. rural press (let me know if I’m missing it). Historically agriculture interests, and specifically commodity producers, have ruled the debate on rural policy issues. Looking at the current farm bill debate, I think we can say that hasn’t changed much, yet. Most people would tell you that it’s not going to change anytime soon. I wonder if the fact that Ms. Clinton’s remarks haven’t drawn much fire indicates that the status of ag in rural policy is beginning to change? The reality is that rural doesn’t mean ag in the way it used to in the United States. Rural issues cover a much broader swipe now than they used to, and our policy structures need to change to reflect that. I think a change as basic as renaming the Department of Agriculture would be a great place to start - the names we put on things define how we think about those things.

Following his July 4th celebration, author Scott Berkun posted an interesting question on his blog (for my American readers) - when was the last time you read the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution? I’ll confess to being a bit of a geek, so honestly it hasn’t been that long for me, just a few months. If it’s been a while, you should click the links below and go read them, if for no other reason than they’re beautiful pieces of writing. As Berkun says “Can you rally a nation in 1300 words, or define a government in 8000? Now that’s writing.” I’d dearly love to see a reporter ask President Bush or Vice-President Cheney when was the last time they read these documents. Clearly the meaning has been lost on them, if either of them has ever read the documents.

Declaration of Independence

U.S. Constitution