A lot is going on, but there is little time to talk about it.
The "whole war thing" is proceeding on interesting paths. Sometimes we hear Rumsfeld spinning lines that seem meant to rival the old Iraqi Information Minister. Weapons of Mass Destruction? They were such a terrible and opposing threat, yet we can't even find any. I'm not saying that they're not there - they very well may exist. But if they were such a threat, where are they? And why is the US putting its own inspection team back in that has very little credibility? And in the meantime, what is happening on the homefront? Oh yeah - if the FBI wants to know what you're reading, the library has to tell them. And the library can NOT tell you that the FBI knows. While at times, I may just give up and say "everyone knows what I'm buying, what I'm reading, etc." (it's all an artifact of these times of immense data mines as we become ever more electric and enslaved to the convenience of credit/library/gas/access cards), I'm not comfortable with the concept that I can't be told WHO has taken an interest in my reading list. (A former roommate once checked out books on airport design after reading some article about AI used in airports in Wired. A day or two after the checkout, the FAA called. It could be coincidence, but that's the only time they've ever shown up on the caller ID, and in the springtime following the terror attacks of September 2001, it's not a coincidence that sits well in MY stomach).
What else? There's more from the programming camp, coming up...