Go Josh!

Josh Thorpe — one of my very best friends from high school (and a bit after) — is on tonight's "Jeopardy". Go get 'em, Josh!

Update: Josh played a good game, but ran into the buzzsaw otherwise known as Ken, who's been champion for 11 days and has won over $376,000 so far.

Good Questions

Eric Alterman has some good questions for those people who still think the Iraqi war was a good idea carried out by competent people:

It's hard to say which is the best representation of what this war is doing to and has done to this country. Is it the lies that were told to get us into it? Is the fact that we are picking up innocent people off the street and torturing them? Is it that we have suspended the most basic civil liberties in our own country? Is it that the work of professional intelligence agencies has been corrupted? Is it that we have drawn resources away from the fight against Al Qaida which has completely regrouped? Is it that we are creating more terrorists? Is it that more than seven hundred Americans have been killed and thousands have been seriously injured? Is it that thousands of Iraqis have been killed but nobody is keeping an account of the numbers of their deaths? Is it that we are now more hated around the world than we have ever been? Is it that we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars while actually decreasing our security? Is it that we are doing all this while starving the most crucial homeland security programs? Is it that everyone who told the truth about what was being planned has been dismissed and seen their characters attacked?

I'm waiting as fast as I can for some good answers from the President.

New Laptop

The DVD drive on my old laptop died, so I just had to go out and buy myself a new one. After a lot of hand-wringing, I got a Toshiba M35-S320. Unlike my previous Toshiba, this one was a lot easier to set up properly. If you have a need to create a Windows XP/Fedora Core 2 dual boot system on this particular model, instructions are here.