* China

The NYTimes has been running interesting articles about China for some time now. It's a fascinating subject. Things that are happening in China are having a profound effect on the world right now (e.g. oil prices) but in the future I believe that China will regularly be dominating the news.

Did you know that China has 166 cities that have a population of over 1 million people, as compared with nine in the US?

And they are just getting started.
- posted by David @ 2:10 PM

 
* Politics

I'm very happy about the Democratic convention so far. Very professional. Very optimistic. And the key speeches each of the last two nights (Clinton, Obama) were both masterpieces. I fully expect Edwards to deliver as well.

Now if Kerry can just do a good enough of a job on Thursday, we might just pull off this election.
- posted by David @ 9:48 AM

 
* War on Terror

White people: don't get caught by the government reading the Koran. There's new scrutiny of converts to Islam because two or three converts in Europe became terrorist sympathizers.

- posted by David @ 9:46 AM

 
** Email

I've been doing a lot of thinking about email productivity lately, mainly because I've got 3419 emails in my inbox and new emails are arriving at the rate of about 100 per day. How do I cope with this flow of information? This Salon article comes at the perfect time. Apparently I'm not the only person in this boat. Worth a read, although it raises more questions than it provides answers.




- posted by David @ 1:09 PM

 
** Drugs

How much should you tell your kids about your drug use? This Salon article exlpores this issue in a thoughtful way. The same author has also written a fascinating article about Ecstasy which is worth a read (it's linked to early on in this article).
- posted by David @ 3:06 PM

 
** Politics

There's been a huge amount of talk on the lefty blogs about the Newsweek article that floated the possibility of postponing elections in the event of a terrorist attack. E.g. Kos.

I don't think there's any likelihood that elections would actually be postponed, no matter what, since the Pubs would be the likely beneficiaries of any late attack. However, the existence of this story perhaps reveals the administration's true strategy for how to pull out this election. Here's what I see happening:

1) Every time the Kerry campaign starts to get some coverage, the Homeland Security department will bring up the election threat.

2) Sometime around October they will raise the security level from yellow to red, and more details about the attacks will slowly leak out.

3) By the time the actual elections come around, the fear level will have been ratcheted up so severely, that it would seem like folly to replace our commander and lord when an attack is so imminent.

If no attack takes place, then it was right to leave Bush in power since he protects us. If an attack does take place, well then at least we were warned.
- posted by David @ 9:54 AM

 
* Politics

Check out this Kos article and photo of Georgie pout off stage after being asked by the press about Kenny Boy's indictment.
- posted by David @ 5:21 PM