It's the surprisingly inaccurate Gender Genie! Paste some text and they'll tell you if a male or a female wrote it. Useful for online dating!

I'm looking for web host recommendations. I need to move two domains soon and would prefer having them on the same host, so a multi-domain package is preferred. (Both hosts screwed me over in different ways, so I'm dumping both as soon as my contracts run out). Java is a plus but not required.

New space weapons, including Pournelle's legendary Thor!

Su Presidente will speak esta noche on the situación en Iraq. And as everybody insiste on asking me what I will say to the Gente americana, on this the aniversario week of the very objectionable attacks el 11 de septiembre, I consent to proporcione this preview:

Mi Americanos Del Compañero, tonight I arrive with heavy countenance. The liberación de Iraq has proven more difícil than I had anticipado. For the first time I am not optimista regarding its condición y resultado. We have liberado the Gente iraquí, given them esto y ése and so forth, but they no lo want it. Our assumptions have proven falso in regard to their armas de la destrucción total, their activities en conexión con terrorismo, and their desire para la Democracia. All they seem to want is religión y looting y explosiones del suicidio. And it has coste too mucho both in lives and dólares. It is therefore necesario for nosotros to decir adios to Iraq. If those bufones en los Naciones Unidas want to asuma el control of that place, muy bien, but los Estados Unidos is done there. The real purpose was the demostración of our grandes militares anyway. So ahora I have decidido that it is preferible to leave too soon than to stay too long. Iraq? Donde está that? Gracias and buenas noches!

Translation: Why are there Mexican Independence Day parades today in several United States cities?

I'm kind of starting to kind of like this guy Dean (despite the hyperbolic and childish "this administration"-ing that all the Dem. candidates are engaging in). Dean has a clear-headed attitude toward gun control and, by inference, state's legislative rights -- he proposes that if cities with high crime rates want to pass gun laws that's fine, but don't force states like Montana or Vermont to adopt the same laws. In other words: no more Federal gun laws. Not a perfect stance but much better than any of the other Dem. candidates. Furthermore, while Dean was / is loudly against the war in Iraq, he did / does not oppose the larger War on Terrorism, which is also a much more supportable and logical position than that taken by his Dem. peers. What's more, Dean is (was) a physician and not a lawyer. That means I could potentially actually allow myself to vote for him.

On the proverbial other hand:

He wants to reverse "President Bush's irresponsible tax cuts" (read: raise taxes) and concoct that pipe-dream called Universal Health Care (read: raise taxes). And he somehow thinks that by doing the former he can do the latter. Well not exactly universal, see: "to cover those between the ages of 23 and 65, we should use the present employer-based system with refundable tax credits and federal subsidies to cover low- and moderate-income Americans who lack insurance." Leaving out one key (for me) demographic (twice over in fact -- hey dude, some of us don't work for employers, okay?).

Putting the stewardship of health care into the eminently incapable hands of Federal bureaucracies makes little sense to me. Dean also criticizes the additional bureaucracies created by the Homeland Security Dept. while complaining it hasn't been allocated sufficient resources (read: money) (read: raise taxes). Seems a bit contradictory. But see for yourself.

William T. Vollmann's seven volume treatise on violence -- Rising Up and Rising Down is now available for preorder from McSweeney's. There are only 3,500 copies for this (possibly the only) print run, and $100.00 seems a pretty reasonable price, so... action....

What really annoys me about the current Dem. candidates is their loud (loud), often shrill attacks on the current President. Why don't they tell me why they're great instead of why the other guy sucks? Do they really expect to affect my opinion of GWB through ad hominem and strawman arguments that should be transparent to anybody with a tenth grade education?

I mentioned Dean, now about some other candidates (you have to check out these photos Fox has of them):

John Kerry: a pompous pansy lawyer who doesn't know how to eat a cheese steak. No way in hell could I vote for this clown.

Dick Gephardt: probably the most shrill in attacking the President, repeatedly calling him "a miserable failure." Hey Dick: who's President? And who ain't gonna be? Also another one of these martians who thinks that by repealing Bush's tax cuts he can pay for Universal Health Care. Where did these people learn math?

John Edwards: who's that?

Dennis Kucinich: a socialist nerd with really bad hair dye, beloved by terrorists everywhere.

Al Sharpton: I love Rev. Al, I think he's hilarious. Don't want him as president.

Joe Lieberman: One of the more promising candidates, mostly clear headed, strong foreign policy, but another lawyer (and from Yale this time -- eeeegh).

Oh, and another phrase I'm sick of hearing: "tax cuts for the wealthy." I should add that one to my Death of Meaning list.

Frederic Jameson has a piece on William Gibson's new novel (which I have not yet read). I can't say I agree with everything (or sometimes even anything) that Jameson says, but it's nice to see an SF writer given critical attention rather than the typical knee-jerk genre brush-of.

Oh and yesterday was 091103, an anniversary commemorated by not only the major US networks but by Usama bin Laden as well (his came out early -- I guess he wanted to ensure it would be timely). It strikes me now that bin Laden has become akin to that weird perennial communist candidate who always shows up on the ballot around election time, then promptly disappears again. If he insists upon remaining alive despite all contrary efforts, we shall probably hear from him again next year. After two years of Islamist loud-mouthing and quiet-moneying, Americans in general seem less concerned about those grimy freaks in caves, and whether that's good or bad, it shouldn't be an excuse to stop trying to kill them. For the time being, Sept 11 will remain the "Why is he not dead yet?" day.

One of my favorite novelists -- who is (coincidentally) actually qualified to comment on the political dimensions undermining our sputtering War on Terror -- Mark Helprin has this to say. A speech writer in a former life, one suspects Helprin wrote parts of this essay as a sort of wish fulfillment, as Thomas L. Friedman is fond of doing, for the speech he longs to hear from the President yet knows will never issue. That this essay runs so contrary to what is typically presented as the predominant wisdom of those in charge is worthy of the proverbial double ellipses.......

I recently had a conversation about the USS Wasp, a carrier my grandfather served on in WWII. I said I thought the Wasp was a destroyer now, but it turns out it's an "amphibious assault ship" mainly used for moving around Marines. This is the 10th Wasp in service, a name dating back to 1775 and the first Good Fight (Wasp and Hornet were the first two ships the Continental Navy put to sea). Anyway, today happens to be an anniversary for Wasp VIII (CV-7): On September 15, 1942 the USS Wasp was sunk by the Japanese submarine I-19 while escorting transport ships carrying the 7th Marine Regiment as reinforcements to Guadalcanal. It took 40 minutes to evacuate the ship, with Capt. Forrest P. Sherman the last to leave, and over five hours for the Wasp to sink (even with several torpedoes from the destroyer Lansdowne). She had already survived the attack on Pearl Harbor and several transport missions to "the unsinkable aircraft carrier," the isle of Malta, and had returned to the Pacific in order to augment the battered fleet there after the loss of the Lexington at Coral Sea and the Yorktown at Midway. Joined by Saratoga and Enterprise, Wasp had provided air support for the US invasion of Guadalcanal, and was lost shortly thereafter. She was awarded two battle stars for her service.

Reference
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Commemorative

War has broken out among the cats. A brigade-sized gang of them camps near my porch, apparently intending some sort of maneuver by autumn. The lawn is strewn with feline refuse, mostly yarn and dead rodents, and the noise of their training makes my important work difficult. Their opposition, another gang indistinguishable in appearance from the first, is camped over by the swimming pool and playground; they attempt occasional forays that are quickly stamped out by alert sentries and an elaborate signal intelligence system involving tin cans and local children who don't seem to notice they're being used. I suspect the reason for the delayed offensive has something to do with cartography. Meanwhile I've been having some difficulties with local escape artists, the jaded type one finds on street corners and atop bridges with ropes tied to their necks, the type who has attempted every means to leave this place or, failing that, this world, and failing again always; who, having heard the rumors of a map and a map-maker, have begun seeking it and me out. I must devise some means of defense or early warning. Perhaps the cats may be put to use. Or the Medusa.

It turns out only Lesbian A lives next door oblique. Lesbian B lives somewhere in town. Lesbian A (Lesa) heard rumors of my magnetism, and stopped by the porch to ask if they were true. I told her she probably couldn't afford my map, but if she decided someday to move out, we could maybe come to an arrangement. "I just want to see it," Lesa said. "To know for sure that it's really real." I pointed her in the direction of the Medusa. Yes it's true -- the apartment complex is now strewn with person-shaped salt pillars like that Old Testament table condiment Lot's wife, most of them in a posture of turning to flee the sight of she who would immortalize them, the rest in the mode of surprise, too stunned or too slow to react before succumbing to the Medusa's vermiculate horror. I saw her once in the rear-view mirror of my elaborately decorated SUV. She looked a lot like Lesbian B (Lesb).

More evidence that France is pirouetting toward totalitarianism, their government has ordered a private airline to renege on an agreement to transport British troops to Iraq. Doesn't this seem to be drifting toward outright hostility? Henry V invaded France for less cause than this.

And now the Germans are hosting Nazi aliens.

if (JohnDee && EdwardKelley == JackParsons && LRonHubbard) {

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Apparently this guy had a better view of Mars than I did. Not that I was completely disappointed, but I was told it would be about the size of a Buick up there, when really it was more like a pimple. Which is still kinda big I guess.
Oh, and here is a map of the arctic circle, in case you were planning a trip.

I've posted about the first half of my Pale Fire notes. The rest should appear over the next several months (assuming other projects don't take over completely).

Why do we still have troops in and around Bosnia? We had no reason to go there other than that the Europeans needed us to help defend their national interests. Since so many Europeans saw fit to deny aid to the defense of our national interests in Iraq, why do we persist in the folly that is Bosnia? Or any other place that doesn't directly concern us? Surely the wise French and Germans can now deploy diplomacy to keep the peace there. Anybody ever wonder why Bosnia has been the center of so much bloody history in Europe?

Speaking of Bosnia, we now have the genius of that campaign running for Supreme Emperor of These United States. Wesley Clark was once Supreme NATO Commander, but despite the similarity in former titles, that doesn't make him Dwight D. Eisenhower. On the other hand, I have to believe that a guy doesn't get four stars on his shoulder for nothing.

Speaking of NATO, why is there still a NATO?

Everybody should read this if they wish to stop annoying me.

Because the world keeps getting stranger, Thomas Pynchon will appear on The Simpsons this season. So will Tom Clancy -- in the same episode as a matter of fact, forming some kind of alpha and omega of American letters? Pynchon will appear with a bag over his head but it will in fact be his voice (which voice has not previously been publicly heard as far as I know).

I've begun reading Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, which you should go buy (it's better than most of the crap on your bookshelves). He's managed to keep some of the flavor of the period's vernacular without going as far as Pynchon does in M&D, which is sort of a relief on two sides. And through the graces of Serendipity, it concerns itself with a great deal of the material I've been working with in recent months, both in regard to Pale Fire and my own bloated WIP (the first word is actually Enoch, which character is later assigned the cognomen "The Red," although I've seen no other reference to Dr. Dee or Mr. Kelley so far), and so my sense of texture for this work is unusually strong. A-and it's Autumn too! Where the hell are my dancing shoes?

Two disagreeable men have died: Edward Said and Robert Palmer. This is confusing! What's the appropriate emotion for the death of someone you disliked?

I read on Slashdot that Doctor Who is returning to television. But wait, he's gay now? Well, I did always wonder about that second Doctor....

Stephen King has been awarded the National Book Foundation's annual award for "distinguished contribution." (!) Harold Bloom has this to say about that (and about JK Rowling too). One notable quote: "When you read 'Harry Potter' you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King." Unfortunately, as much as I like Stephen King as a person, I have to agree with the ever-cantankerous Bloom.

Among the greatest sins for a politician is that of hyperbole, for it betrays the purely political nature of his rhetoric, and thus proves him political; which is to say, that the hyperbolic politician, while by definition a liar, is too honest.

This site is transitioning to importantwork.com. The Other Country has become too much associated with alternative country music, and so it must be destroyed. By the end of this month it will vanish.