I'm accumulating too much stuff I'm reading or am planning to read, so I'm dumping it all in this post:
Ah, my brain is clearer now.
I just wrote a long comment about what I guess is my editorial policy, and I figured I'd highlight it on my front page.
I finally know how Matt does his neat graph of when he posts. MTBlogTimes does it for Movable Type, and there's a version for WordPress.
Belmont Club: The Last Taboo.
The principal damage inflicted by the War on Terror has not been to material objects or to human lives, although there have been enough of those. Compared to the tens of millions killed during World War 2 or the millions killed during the Cold War (more than 100,000 Americans in Korea and Vietnam; over a million NVA alone), the current losses have barely nudged the Satanic scale. But the damage inflicted against the fabric of civilization has been immense.
So the most terrifying effect of the War so far has been in the slow destruction of taboos and imperatives which collectively allowed civilization to function... The concept of assymetric warfare was supposed to exploit the "fact" that transnational terrorist organizations operating in areas of chaos could strike at a civilization hamstrung by constraints.... But the logical flaw in this conception was that civilization could put aside these constraints in a moment.
Monday, August 16, 2004
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The Elegant Universe
Well I have finally found the crazyguy that preaches useless nonsencein A...
Joseph Baxter: Jan 7, 11:07pm