Friday Roundup

The Democratic field for the 2008 presidential candidate just narrowed, with my preferred candidate dropping out.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1545871,00.html

Hillary is now trading at 50%. She's looking more and more certain.

The US election season is heating up. The house is favoured to go Democrat, while the Senate is favoured to remain Republican.

I still believe the Senate comes down to 4 races. If the Democrats can pick up 3 of them they can take control.

Missouri: Dead heat
Tennessee: Dead heat
Virginia: Leaning Republican
New Jersey: Leaning Democrat

Of course Dick Cheney is personally hoping that the Republicans can hold 3 of these 4 seats. Otherwise he's going to find himself spending a lot more time in the Senate.

I feel his pain. Nothing worse than spending time in meetings. We didn't have any scheduled for today and boy it was great. I spent the day writing lectures for next week. I enjoy getting a decent chunk of solid time to focus on a topic and research it deeply. Plus I listened to Dvorak (all three CD's) multiple times. My IPod's battery is down to 80%, I can keep writing all night...

All things new

I've upgraded to a Tecra S3 laptop today which weighs about half as much as my old laptop. Much faster, has a Geeforce video card, 80 gig HD, 1 gig Ram. Sweet notebook. The old one was beginning to feel a bit dated as I patiently waited each morning for it to boot.

I upgraded from a 17" to a Philips 19" LCD screen. My wife asked me last night, "When does a screen become to big? You've gone from a 15 to a 17 and now to a 19 inch screen." The answer is obvious. When you begin to get a cramp in your neck, and not before.

Also upgraded to a 1 gig USB 2.0 flash storage device. My old one wasn't USB 2.0 so that will be the biggest difference I'll notice here.

My $50 dot to dot books arrived this morning, as did Mark Steyn's latest book, and Dvorak's 7th, 8th and 9th symphonies. Can't wait to put these onto the IPod. I've really fallen for the IPod, especially when you can plug it straight into any speaker system and play any CD uploaded to it using the intuitive interface. Plus best of all playing it through my car's stereo system.

Last night I put a collection of Mussorgsky, Verdi, Wagner and Greig onto the IPod. Ready to go at a moments notice.

New gadgets, new reading, new music. All in all a good day and the only thing missing is my complete collection of the Lord of the Rings soundtrack. Companies don't compete so much on costs these days - they compete on distribution systems. The small company sending me those 3 CD's isn't fairing too well right now.

Day 3 Hawk

Well it's clear that NK doesn't fear the west. They do however fear China. After all China is propping them up, and China can always turn off the tap.

What should we do.

Step 1:
Naval Blockade
Nothing gets in and out by sea.

Yes I know it's futile. They have land borders, smuggling plutonium is easy and the quantity that you need is miniscule. But at least it is a strong step, and it sends a message to Iran. That's the real battle. You can't wimp out on this. If Iran watches the world shrug their collective shoulders and ignore NK they will be emboldened.

Step 2:
Pressure on China. China is the only country who can actually apply any leverage on NK. I can't imagine China particularly wants NK to spark a regional arms race. That's not in their interest. Keep the pressure on them. China gets more economic benefit out of Wal-mart than they would out of NK. Pressure pressure pressure.

Yes I know it's easy to be hawkish from where I'm sitting. I'm not sitting in Seoul with 13,000 artillery pieces pointing right at me from just the other side of the DMZ. This is serious stuff, but we have to do something. Iran is watching.

Day 2 Hawk

Dom's simple summary of world politics:

Iraq - Good idea, handled badly. Result: Cockup.

Labor Party: I actually think there are plenty of clever and fully sane people in Australia's Labor party. Mark Latham just wasn't one of them. As I've posted before I'm no fan of Howard, but it's amazing how many people let their Howard hatred overcome common sense last election. Fortunately Australia wasn't dumb enough to elect Latham. Now we move to today.

I've always liked Beazley (not just because I'm from WA), but after hearing him acting as a popularist yesterday I lost all respect for him. Sadly I have to move him to the insane camp and hope they get a new leader before the next election. Australia needs a real opposition. It's time for them to act.

Iran - Calling them a part of the axis of evil killed off the country's reformers. Result: A country which showed signs of progress is now going nuclear. A country which is a natural enemy of Sunni extremism is forced into a corner and left with very few options. Not a good idea Neo-cons.

Result: We stuffed it up. We backed them into a corner and allowed the old guard to crack down on the reformers. Now we have to stop them. They're going nuclear and that will be a disaster. An even bigger disaster than North Korea getting nukes. However because Iraq is so screwed up we can't deal with Iran, which is a far bigger threat.

North Korea - NK wants cash, and they want to survive. We know they sell narcotics, they sell weapons, they counterfeit money. Whatever it takes.

Of course they'll sell nukes for cash, but there isn't really much we can do about it. North Korea going nuclear has absolutely nothing to do with the Axis of Evil speech. They were already going Nuclear long before that. They signed deals in the early 90s to give up nukes while continually working on them in secret. They were never going to stop.

Options: Bad and Worse. I don't know which to choose.

Sad day for the world. Even sadder if we do nothing about Iran.

Hawkish

One thing I can't stand reading is intellectual bankruptcy.

Comments like: "North Korea doesn't have any oil so the US leaves them alone"

Yes sherlock that's it. Nothing to do with the fact they have enough artillery poised to wipe a major western capital of 10million people off the map in the first hours of the war. Nothing to do with the fact they've been presumed to have had nuclear weapons for some time, and they have a proven delivery system capable of reaching Japan.

North Korea is too dangerous a nut to crack. Friendly casualties would be enormous. Gee I wonder why the US chose to deal with them last? Let's go for the low hanging fruit.

The real problem with the war in Iraq is that it proved to Iran that if you have nukes (like North Kora was presumed to) then you're safe from the US. The US will try to use the UN multilateral system in that case - as they did with NK, and it's a failed system to begin with.

Iran, for all it's talk, is of course persuing nuclear weapons of their own. It's already too late for NK. Perhaps its not too late for Iran. The mismanagement of Iraq is a disaster. A disaster because we're now unable to do what needs to be done while there is still time. This is why our leaders stand condemned.

iPod Nano

I bought myself an iPod Nano on Friday. I also bought the in car-charger / FM transmitter.

http://www.apple.com/ipodnano/

Love it.

I've subscribed to 27 podcasts already.

A mix of Science, History, Left-leaning current affairs, Right-leaning current affairs, The Economist, BBC In Business, Parliamentary Question Time, Philosophy and of course Battlestar Galactica.

Now I just have to find time to listen to them all.