I used to have a blog on WordPress.com called Slantwise. I finally moved all the posts from there over to this blog. Here’s my favorite post from Slantwise: On The Web, You Can’t Escape Your Past.

Jim Rogers is a partner of George Soros, and a famous commodities investor. Here’s an interview with him from Bloomberg a year ago:

Both New Gingrich and Paul Krugman are against this ridiculous bailout. That should be enough to demonstrate that it is a bad idea, but I still think it’s going to pass. The congressional leadership of both parties are too deeply entwined with the financial industry to prevent it. The only amusing part of this crisis is reading the naive commentary from the left who apparently believe that the Democrats are less involved than the Republicans in this corruption. At this point, the differences between the Republicans and Democrats are as irrelevant to the main issues of the day as the differences between the Aristocrats and the Populares were during the late years of the Roman Republic. And we all know how that story ended.

UPDATE: Obama saying he may keep Paulson on, has apparently woken up at least one of his supporters to the kind of change he is offering. see here.

Check out Jeff Jarvis’s post Google: Monopoly or Marketplace where Jeff claims that Google is not a monopoly, while describing it in a way that clearly indicates it is. The collapse of Yahoo has left Google in total control of the search advertising market. If you run a commercial website of any kind, you have to get up every morning and worry about what Google is doing to you, and you have no recourse. Google raises rates on adwords: you have no recourse. Google cuts your share of revenue on text ads on your site: you have no recourse. You have no recourse, because Google has no viable competitors. No viable competitors means they have a monopoly. And, no amount of dancing around the issues by bloggers like Jeff Jarvis will change that fact.

As I have previously written on this blog, I am a big fan of the burritos from Como Esta in Palo Alto. I usually get their super burrito, but they also make a mini burrito which has no sour cream or guacamole. I bought one the other day for a family member. Here’s a picture:

As usual, the burrito was great.

The other day I was in need of some quick food, so I grabbed a $1 frozen, carnitas chimichanga at the drugstore, and microwaved it when I got home. Here’s a picture:

I added the salsa myself, obviously. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the chimichanga. Although not outstanding, it was a hell of a lot better than the frozen burritos I ate all through college.

I’m not a fan of John Derbyshire, but his column entitled The Election From Hell pretty much sums up how I feel.

One of the big advantages to living in the city/valley, and working at SOMA is that you get to mingle with all the other people who are working on new web stuff, or are writing about it. Almost every night there’s a different party or event. On Thursday, I attended two: an AOL launch of their new fantasy football site, and the monthly Mashable event. Here’s my name tag from the Mashable party:

The Mashable party was far better attended, and it even had better bouncers.

I bought a 2005 Honda S2000 last night. Here’s some pictures:

It’s sickeningly fast and low to the ground, and a blast to drive.

So, Glenn Greenwald, having apparently been in a stupor all his life, has just noticed that U.S. government policies don’t reflect the opinions of the majority of the U.S. people. As an example, he cites U.S policy towards Israel. However, he could have chosen immigration, taxation, or pretty much any other issue. Why he is surprised, I don’t know. First, in a republic, the government will never accurately reflect the direct will of the people. That’s inherent in the design of the system of representation. Secondly, he misses the fact that what is important is not opinion, but commitment. Commitment means that you give money, organize and vote around an opinion. And it is commitment that moves policy, not opinion. Most people have opinions on many issues, but they have commitment towards far fewer.

If Greenwald would bother to do some reading, he would find that his startling new discovery about the power of small, committed groups of people to mold policy was first made about 3,000 years ago. More recently, about 200 years ago, this power was a major concern of the founding fathers of the U.S. when they designed our government. Indeed, James Madison wrote an entire essay on the problem of these “factions,’ which he defined as:

“a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

I’d suggest Greenwald read this essay, but he’s probably too busy blogging about his startling new discovery of how the checks and balances of the U.S. governmental system makes real change hard.

UPDATE: Major mess-up, I wrote Reynolds instead of Greenwald when I originally wrote this piece. Thanks Dag for pointing out my mistake.