links for 2009-06-11

Does It Take Two to Engage?

Jennifer Rubin, in Commentary:

[I]t suggests that Obama is in his own make-believe world in which dialogue, “respect,” and smart diplomacy are met with goodwill, reciprocal gestures and acts of loving kindness. It suggests that the president has constructed an approach to foreign policy that is divorced from reality. Well, what to do about this?

[…]

Perhaps we should try something else. […] Maybe it’s time to reverse decisions to curtail missile defense programs. In other words, respond to the world as we are experiencing it rather than pursuing a fruitless policy of talk, talk, talk with people who don’t want to listen.

links for 2009-06-08

links for 2009-06-07

  • "We are a professional expediting company officially recognized and registered with the U.S. Passport Agency, allowing us to assist you in obtaining your passport in as fast as 24 hours or less!"

    This would have come in handy last decade when my parents thought about going to Iceland when my sister had to have an emergency gall bladder removal (she was studying abroad at the time).

  • "Barack Obama went to Normandy for a reason this weekend — and it was a good one. The president had something he wanted to convey to the world. That message, to paraphrase a point Ronald Reagan used to make, is a simple one, even if it's not an easy one: It is that freedom is not free, and that democracy is worth fighting for — that sometimes human rights are worth dying for."

links for 2009-06-04

  • "[L]isten to your iTunes library but only use a part of the resources. This player was designed with one purpose in mind: don't distract or use resources that you need for more important things. Features: playback of audio files from your iTunes Library; playback of playlists from your iTunes Library; shuffle; sticky window"

    For Mac OS X Leopard only. Oh, and it's free.

links for 2009-06-02

  • Remember when Microsoft knew what it was doing?

  • "Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

    "Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.

    "And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete."