There is going to be a demonstration in Washington DC against the administration's war. It is not in the best interest of my country to be pursuing this course. The country we are becoming, guided by vengence & in service to oil cartels and drug cartels is not the country that I think is the best country in the whole world. The United States will rot from the inside out if we continue this policy. The country's biggest exposed flank is not airport security. It is oil. The countries biggest exposed flank is not some vital piece of infrastructure or the world's tallest building or even the gruesome death of several thousand citizens. It is oil.

The ads are right. They are hyperbole and simplistic like other advertising but they are right on point. The dependence the United States, and all industrialized countries, have on the oil age will be our undoing. Good job Arianna!

As oil becomes more expensive to produce the oil cartel becomes more powerful. In some small part this war in Iraq will reintegrate Iraq into the world market. Particularly the oil market. Noone knows exactly "when" we have to transition beyond our dependence on oil but I think its fair and reasonable to say we have to at some point. Voluntary compliance or forced compliance it's all the same. The job of the President is to lead. I don't want my President to carry wars to other countries.

I think the majority of the country feels, in some manner, given the events of September 11th, that attacking the Taliban & Al-queda was just. But it strikes my gut, and almost everyone I know personally, that attacking Iraq is unjust. Many agree it was just to free Kuwuit, to maintain the structural integrity of Kuwiat and not allow Iraq to seize Kuwaiti oilfields. I am sure oil prices would have been greatly effected by Iraq taking the oilfields of Kuwait. It was certainly just when Saddam gassed the Kurds.

1/9/03:10:19:12 PM PST    

Jason Kottke has some very nice theoretical suggestions how the app can be further improved.

I also have a few suggestions. Mine however are of a more pragmatic nature:

1. Link underlines - I just cannot stand to have every single link on a page underlined. I am unable to find any preference which turns this off. I assume based on the ability to call style sheets from your preference file that you can create a stylesheet which turns this underlining behavior off but I am not so sure how such a style sheet would interact with the style sheet of other sites. If the web site author specifically wants to have them turned on I don't mind so much but given no positive decision in that direction from a web sites author I would prefer to have them turned off.

   Update - I have created a small stylesheet in order to test out my theory. Sure enough it does work. Now I wonder again if this will have unforeseen circumstances in interacting with the style sheets of external sites. Here's a test to see if I can (should be a no brainer) turn them back on locally: click here. - It worked!

   Update - It turns out I am not the only one who doesn't tolerate underlined links well. This seems to be a no brainer. I hope this is fixed in the release version though. Or at least I hope there is a style sheet included in the install as the average user certainly doesn't know what a style sheet is much less how to build one.

1/9/03:9:48:08 AM PST