:: Event Horizon ::

:: Friday, October 11, 2002 ::

Congress Backs Bush, U.S. Plans for New Iraq
Well, it's official, it's war. It is official... but perhaps not Constitutional. The Congress has abdicated responsibility for declaring war and left it to the discretion of the President to decide this important question. I don't object to regime change, and have said before that the Gulf War needs to be formally resolved, but I feel that the Congress has undermined the status of the legislative branch by proving itself unequal to the challenge of this historical moment. Congress, in my opinion, should have waited until after the UN Security Council acted, or failed to act, on the matter in order to properly assess the situation. If a war with Iraq was to be prosecuted without a Security Council mandate, and thus outside the bounds of the unresolved Gulf War, then new legal sanction from the Congress would be required for unilateral action. If the Security Council acted and called for military enforcement of existing resolutions, no new Congressional authority would be needed, as the U.S. is already committed to enforcing Security Council resolutions. But, as things stand, the Congress has allowed itself to be used as a carrot, and inducement, to get the Security Council to act. I find that demeaning to the Congress. I'm shocked that Congressional leaders were willing parties to this institutional debasement, and eager participants in drafting the joint resolution that lacks the legitimacy of a formal declaration of war. At this rate, we will never again be at war, at least formally, officially and legally at war. At long last we now see that the answer to the problem of war that has plagued mankind since the dawn of history is actually very simple...never declare war.

:: Joel 4:01 PM [+] ::
...

Google Commits Suicide
It is being widely reported that Google has tampered with the algorithm that made it the most useful search engine in the history of the galaxy. I can confirm from my most recent ego surfing that I am no longer even mentioned in the first page of results. Clearly, something has changed in page rank land. Of course, this is not at all about me, it's just that for so many people, me included, Google is the gateway to the Internet. Anything I want to find out, I Google it, and 99% of the time, what I'm looking for is the first search return. If this has changed, it changes the utility of the Internet. Maybe it is time to look for another search engine?

:: Joel 3:17 PM [+] ::
...

I took a walk on the wild side this weekend, a walk that took me to the seamy underbelly of town, a dark and secretive place where people gather to trade contraband. I went to a used bookstore. There they were, consumers huddled between aisles of books, CDs and videos stacked in neat rows, almost as if it was a real store selling officially licensed merchandise, browsing to their hearts content while furtively glancing over their shoulders, wondering if the person next to them was an undercover agent for the Napster police. Music is traded there, and books, and movies, and I'm not talking about direct peer-to-peer trades, money changes hands and no royalties are paid to artists, writers or directors. It is the kind of black market that has the potential to topple industries, bankrupt studios, and wipe out geezer bands. Fortunately, this was one of only a handful of these rogue operations, I hear they pack up and move to a new location every weekend, but if this sort of thing catches on, well who knows, it could be the end of the world as we know it.

:: Joel 3:20 PM [+] ::
...