My observations are from the same standpoint that a million talking heads
make them Jonah--and the best talking head you can listen to now if you get
the chance is Ron Susskind (Wall Street Journal Economics Reporter) "One
Percent Doctrine" author. He is for me as good as it gets now with foreign
policy, terrorist threats, and how they are being handled.
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/10/20/ron_suskind/index.html
As to Big Brother, Microsoft --heard of them--met for two full days in
Washington D.C. with the Department of Justice who pushed them to turn over
all customer information and save searches for two years. Microsoft has not
been vocal about the outcome of that meeting while spending a ton of time
reassuring you about your privacy. I mention this because in Vista, much is
being made of how UAC protects you. UAC may protect you but when ISPs,
MSFT, Google and the rest are being pushed or compelled to give up your
private information that makes UAC rather ironic.
On my phone calls, I try to preface every other sentence with "Jonah our
Cell Leader"
London tragicallyscrewed the pooch very badly killing an innocent person
over the subway bombings but these are very tough circumstances, and of
course calls without a lot of black and white clarity, and I'm in a country
with a government so quintissentially incomepentent I'm not about to cast
stones. I'll look at the map later and try to see which bridges. My friend
is great with these analyses, and has an encyclopoedic grasp of geography I
only wish I had. His economic analysis went far beyond the bridges though.
He made the point that the shipment of grain of all things is very
important. I think this came out of a group of us talking about ports and
6% inspection ect one night.
Your facility with US Geography is very admirable. It might be my own
weakness, but I love maps and geography and think one of the weakest parts
of my education growing up was to learn geography. I don't think we teach
it well here compared to the UK, Europe, and Asia. I'm drawing this from
the people I know from those areas. I have a very good time with maps of
London and the UK in general and have several great coffee table picture
books.
It's interesting to watch Google Earth and Windows Live Local evolve:
http://local.live.com/
CH