Odds & Ends

17 Feb, 2003 by John Hawkins

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Odds & Ends: Just a few odds and ends that were significant enough to comment on, but perhaps not worth an entire post on their own…

— It’s been said that the purpose of NATO is to Keep America in (from becoming isolationist), The Soviets out (of Europe), and Germany down (from starting another war). Well, none of those things are currently a concern. Moreover, since most of our NATO allies have let their militaries atrophy and can’t even easily agree on the basics (like protecting Turkey), NATO in its current form is essentially obsolete. Things are going to have to change if NATO is going to survive.

— Jane Galt seems to be a bit upset because of some vicious criticism she received. Hey kiddo, don’t sweat it. If you have an opinion about anything, eventually you’re going to get attacked for it. I even once had someone say he’d like to slit my throat and kill my family because he was angry about the changes I suggested in an online game =D. That’s just the price you pay for having the guts to slug it out in the arena of ideas. Furthermore, you have to remember that there is a significant segment of the left that thinks words like Fascist, Nazi, racist, sexist, bigot, warmonger, etc., are just synonyms for Republican &/or Conservative. Who cares what people like that think about anything? I certainly don’t. Personally, if I think the hate mail is entertaining enough, I’ll post about it, but otherwise I don’t even bother to waste time replying to them. As far as I’m concerned, the more hate mail I get, the better. It just means my message is getting out to a bigger audience.

— Tony Blair has taken a beating at the polls for supporting the US in the war against terrorism. But doing the right thing isn’t always rewarded at the polls. The greatest leader Britain has ever known, Winston Churchill, could tell Blair all about that since Churchill was voted out of office by an unappreciative British public in 1945…

— Just a thought for all you Conservatives out there — just because left-wingers do something, doesn’t always mean we need to try to match it. A prime example of that is anti-war poetry. Poetry is for high school students, not people who are trying to get points across to other adults. So make fun of them, goof on them, laugh at their ineptitude, after all, they deserve it. But, don’t try to match them by writing your own serious pro-war poetry. I’m telling you this because friends don’t let friends write poetry and post it on the web…

— Here’s an idea I’ve been toying with — the blogosphere swimsuit calender. It could feature Moxie, Dawn Olsen, Virginia Postrel, Rachel Lucas, Michele Catalano of A Small Victory, the Samizdata Girls, Sasha Castel, Kimberly Swygert of Number 2 Pencil & I’m sure there are some girls who deserve to make the list. Now, if I can just get them all together in bathing suits, we could shoot this thing and sell a copies to every guy in the blogosphere. Ah, it sounds good, but the last time I tried something sort of like this I couldn’t pull it off =D