Andrew Sullivan supports Hillary Clinton! Hillary Clinton insults the left! The sky is falling! Observe:

For too long, supporters of abortion rights have foolishly and callously trivialized the moral dimensions of the act of ending human life in the womb. They have insisted that no profound moral cost is involved. They remain seemingly impassive in the face of the horrors of partial-birth abortion. They talk in the abstract language of “reproductive rights” and of a “war against women.” To acknowledge that human life is valuable from conception to death has been, at times, beyond their capacity. They have seemed blind to the fact that, as Naomi Wolf once alluded in this magazine, mothers and children have souls and that, in every abortion, one soul is destroyed and another wounded. And they seem far too dismissive of the fact that the concerns of many pro-life Americans are not rooted in intolerance but in the oldest liberal traditions of the protection of the weak.

All this has undermined the pro-choice movement.

While I think abortion should be legal on the coasts (where I live), I think Roe vs. Wade is a stain on our way of governance. Still, if Hillary is able to drag people on the socially-okay, economically wrong (ie left) kicking and screaming toward acknowledging that there is more to abortion than just snipping off a couple of cells, she just might make something of herself and something better out of this fractured country.

Does that title make any sense? Neither does anything else in Japan. (then why are you still here?)

Because the Thunder God won’t let me leave! Good lord how the thunder booms in Kanazawa. The whole sky lights up like you were just warped into the middle of the sun. Great arcs of lightning stretch out wider than your field of view. Then the thunder hits. Half a second later the windows start shaking and you hear and feel–feel–a boom worthy of any theater DTS subwoofer demo.

Then it rains.

Apparently, SolarSeek 0.3 was released the end of last July! How much I have slipped since then! It is almost February! That is like 6 months!

Did I already post this?

How many sides does a circle have?
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So, on December 25th, 2004, 1095 people visited my website and/or (probably or) used SolarSeek. Yet on December 24th: 1325. The 23rd: 1670. The same pattern happens the other way: December 26th: 1179. The 27th: 1484. Is this some strange Christmas anomaly? Is it Chris Shleifer?

Well, let’s look at New Years: 30: 1540. 31: 1202. 1: 1371. 2: 1728. What does Google Images dredge up? Jenny, a terrible picture of the AMA president, more stupid alien photos, and Richard Baker (who speaks in a true award-winning fashion).

So you must make the call. Who is more likely to alter the visitation patterns of my website? Chris Shleifer (badass mofo is out with beta 3 of soulseeX and lives in Japan too. Excellent!) or … Richard Baker?

In other news, 4 people have viewed my site using WebTV! Congratulations! I didn’t even know WebTV still existed.

You know you are sick when you mistake a box of Honorable Mister Fever Sheets for a box of Macaroni and Cheese.

Speaking of which, it is my birthday February 12th. I expect all of you readers to snail mail me some Kraft Mac and Cheeze.

Alright! UTF-8 seems to work well for Japanese characters! View this entry correctly! Or not Jeez. MT sucks.

Don’t you hate it when you get those freaky flus that leave you dizzy when your eyes are open, and more dizzy when your eyes are closed? Oh perhaps that is just my problem.

I deal with the problem by hallucinating.
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Jack Shafer of Slate is worried that no one believes him when he says bloggers won’t replace journalists because the good bloggers already are journalists. He even puts tons of links, quotes other blogs and includes a $1 prize for the first blogger to say he doesn’t get it (nice blog design btw!).

Slate is reporting on a CIA report concluding that the balance of power will be more even spread between China, India, Brazil and the EU than just the USA as it is today. Actually, the words they use make it sound much scarier!

Papa, I guess I better start planning that trip to China right away!

My real hope though is that the US dollar will temporarily plummet like it did a few years back to like 70yen per dollar so I can go home rich.

Ciezadlo complains that democracy isn’t working so well in Kurdistan.

As a result, instead of making Kurdistan more democratic, the upcoming national elections are cementing the rule of the dominant parties here–a trend being repeated across Iraq. “Kurds, when they go to vote on January 30, are not going to vote for whoever protects their interests,” says Hiwa Osman, a Kurdish political analyst. “They’re going to vote for whoever is powerful enough to protect them from Arabs. Shiites are not going to vote for whoever has good governance–they are going to vote for whoever can protect them from the Sunnis.” 

Hasn’t she considered that the most important interest for Kurds is protection from the Arabs, and for Shiites protection from the Sunnis? Does anyone think anyone voted for Kerry because he best protected their interest? Last I checked, everyone voted for him solely because he had the best chance of ousting President Bush. Hasn’t Ms. Ciezadlo studied single-issue voters who vote for someone solely because he is anti-/pro- abortion/slavery/vietnam-war/abolition?

UPDATE: TNR gives evidence for what I thought after reading this: liberal democracies rely on the underlying institutions and not just the “idea”.
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