recovery sucks

So, yesterday was almost as bad as the percocet and valium days of post surgical recovery, at least in terms of my ability to pay attention in class. I had a big headache, was still a little unhappy in the stomach, very tired, and felt feverish. I’m not sure if I was actually sick or just very dehydrated and sleep deprived. Yet still I went out to get my new laptop. And immediately afterwards, I went home and crashed out on the couch for a 10 hour nap. I feel much better today.

Some things change

First, this weekend, I had some Thai, and I was willing and able to eat it in quantities more than a few bites. I may have to revise my intense aversion to Thai food to a more tentative distaste. I’ll experiment and see if my tastes have changed. Finding that I now enjoy Thai would be a most welcome discovery. Here’s hoping.

This weekend I also observed (bragged? It’s so hard to tell with me sometimes) that I hadn’t puked in over 10 years (indeed, I’m pretty sure it was closer to 20). Which was true… up until about 30-45 minutes ago

stability in iraq?

A reply to a one url entry:

Yeah, I had read a misleading account that suggested it was more scripted than it was (ie, the answers weren’t practiced). The transcripts of the “damning evidence” did more to convince me than the blog in question. The calls I had with my dad while he was in Bagdad leave me further aware that trying to have a conversation with 10 people in Bagdad in real time requires scripting due to delay. At least if you want to make it coherent. So, yeah, I do believe the guy is genuine, but it still leads to a “so what” for me.

It was a publicity stunt like an ugly guy who posts a picture of himself with his handsome buddy in his personals ad. They picked people, including a public relations officer, for him to talk with. Undoubtedly they selected people with the right views. Again, no shocks here. I suspect it wasn’t hard to find supportive troops (finding unqualifiedly positive troops might have been trickier, I dunno). I don’t have the backing for Scott McClellan billing it as “just typical troops.” It’s obvious to me that this does not mean “pull names out of a hat and let them say whatever they want to,” though it’s equally obvious that that is what they are trying to imply.

I’m not one of the people your post is primarily targeted at. My response to the whole situation was an eyeroll, not outrage.

You have seen some part of Iraq, and probably have access to more reports (and I’d imagine they’re higher priority reads for you) than I do about what’s going on in the rest. I think the success hinges on building local support and knitting it together into a greater whole. I’m skeptical of the top down approach going anywhere good. Though it could work out to be a stable, repressive democracy. Still much of what the author wrote was clearly rhetoric without (even counter to) factual support. Given that he was picked for the pr event, his views are unsurprising.

We’ve chosen to advance the agenda of the largest subset of the population. That is good politics and good strategy. It’s also democracy in action. But this democracy seems likely to be a tyranny of the majority. Our constitution is designed to prevent that. I don’t personally subscribe to the notion that whatever someone wants is what’s best for them. My philosophy here is similar to my philosphy when it comes to giving money to the homeless. I don’t give money to the homeless, but I will give it to charities for the homeless, because I don’t spend money on the homeless to make them happy, I spend it to improve the situation for everyone. I support care not cash. I support human rights before voting rights, see also my recent post on voting.

It just doesn’t seem worth the human lives, massive financial investment, the opportunity cost in disaster response capacity at home, the unrest, or the social displacement of the troops to replace a secular dictatorship with a theocracy. Still, if Allah wills it who are we to gainsay it…

Give me your thoughts: How much does voting matter?

It’s a piece of accepted wisdom that every vote counts, and that voting is important, and perhaps the citizen’s most important contribution to their governance. I claim that if voting is the way you express your political will, then you aren’t expressing much political will.

Voting is only as significant as the options being voted on. Whether it’s a student org electing the only person who would volunteer for the position, a national political party voting on the presidential nominee, or a referendum on constitutional approval, the most important decisions were made long before that point. More important than the vote is what options are being voted on.

This is not to encourage despair. This is to encourage strategy, leverage and thought. Don’t invest great significance into checking a box. Something should signal that change doesn’t come so easy, because change doesn’t come so easy.

Live from ‘s couch…

So, I made it, I’m in SF. I did more reading on the plane than I typically do all weekend, which is good because I probably won’t be doing much more for the rest of the trip before I fly back. =)

I still need to get my assignment for noon on monday done and turned in. My instructor (WAA) will have a heart attack, because she’s noticed that I turn stuff in at 5 minutes before the deadline all the time.

I’m also resisting the temptation to download an emulator that would let me play dragon warrior iii or wizardry or the like, so that I can shut myself in with my laptop away from a net connection and actually get work done. There are only so many times I can take the computer decimating me in chess before I give up. =)

Back to question-writing. =)

… Forgot to post this…

My weekend thus far has been great (barring a guy on the plane who was watching his kid play college football on ESPN and couldn’t quite shut the fuck up).