In the Battle of Mogadishu, we lost eighteen amazingly brave people; our government declared the operation a success, but then pulled our forces out of Somalia immediately afterwards to minimize political fallout that followed media publicity of the event. That day--and others like it--the people who desire power over the United States confirmed an important theory:

As examples of alleged American cowardice, bin Laden frequently cites the case of the withdrawal from Lebanon after the 1983 truck bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut and the withdrawal from Somalia after the 1993 killings of U.S. servicemen in Mogadishu. (Washington Post)

To put it simply, our nation doesn't have the heart for any conflict. And these were small examples compared to the Iraq war. Regardless of our intentions for going there, what message would withdrawing from Iraq send?

Whoever you vote for, or whatever political party you align yourself with, let's think in a very results-oriented fashion. Imagine that you just became The President of the United States. What would you do to make sure we remain safe from all aggressors in the foreseeable future? Here's the guidelines for this exercise:

• You can't go back and change anything in the past.
  
• You can't blame someone else (well you can, but that won't actually achieve anything.)

Just two rules. Now, think of a constructive policy regarding our current situation that will definitely make your grandkids safer.

This line of thought is natural and obvious. So, why do we hear the constant drumbeat of "Bring the troops home!" on the news and from politicians, but we rarely hear any constructive alternatives that will hold water in the long term?

Many would offer an isolationist stance--or at least one of non-intervention--as a solution to preventing future conflict. I do not discount that viewpoint. Those who profess this as an alternative should vocalize their feelings and pair them with a concrete strategy for securing us domestically. Ron Paul professes a strong non-intervention policy, and an equally vocal stance on domestic security. I find this appealing when compared to the other opposition candidates, but I worry that he wouldn't handle the current situation very well. That precedent would amplify the difficulty of securing us domestically. In short, this policy does not adequately address what to do in the short term.

Well all have the right (and duty!) to disagree with our government. However, as citizens we also have an obligation to support constructive alternatives in addition to our dissension.

Would you like a Electrical Engineering and Computer Science education from MIT? Well, you have no excuse for not getting it! The whole curriculum is available for free :)

The free availability of MIT's curriculum--open sourcing their content, so to speak--isn't new. It was officially announced about six years ago. Something reminded me of it today, however, and it's interesting to see how much the initiative has progressed in recent years.

Why don't our public schools do the same thing? Imagine if you could browse the entire local high-school curriculum in an open source environment (even audit it for accuracy!) and use that advantage to prepare your kids for their education, way ahead of the "normal" schedule. This seems like an obvious step in the right direction. So tell your senators! (And tell them to stop using Cold Fusion for their web site while you're at it.)

Of course I want one. I know that it's going to be the catalyst for letting digital rights management gain serious traction, and that it will ignore open source efforts, and that it will advance the "necessity" of provider lock-in. But so what...it's shiny!

I know, I know. This is my second Apple bashing in recent memory. Seriously, I think it's a great company with some fantastic ideas. I'm just getting a little nervous about what they'll do with their market share. The DRM thing seriously bothers me. I've already given up on the Ogg Vorbis thing (I even re-ripped all my CDs into mp3. Sigh. I love Ogg Vorbis.) I know that eventually, after two years or so, we'll be able to buy one with a non-Cingular contract. I think? Anyway, all of these things should be considered, especially with the RDF in full effect.

But yeah, I still want one.

If you type redneck swimsuit into Google and click I'm Feeling Lucky, you'll see the following picture:

That's my pal Nathan with some random chick he saw on the Appalachian Trail. He gets a kick out of its unique ranking on Google...so I'm linking it from here to help keep it there :)