April 29, 2004
5:38 PM
Winding down another week here (taking tomorrow off to hit a museum and a show with an in-town guest).Nice to see that the Unity site's traffic picked up (and, more importantly, stayed up) after I sent out those endorsement notifications last week. The Matthew Effect being what it is, once you've got your pages climbing the search engines, searchers will start to see them.
Will we reach the top of the mountain? Remains to be seen, but I've got another idea for this site once I finish putting together a decent list (I'll be calling it "Bill's List"). And, with the right links, some traffic from this site will spill over into Unity's. Stay tuned!
April 26, 2004
1:03 PM
Posted those results from the Brooklyn Half on the running page. Maybe this new Runner's World 5K training program I'm starting tonight for the Corporate Challenge will get me out of my multi-year rut.April 16, 2004
12:13 PM
What another crummy week for America in Iraq. It's nice that further large-scale bloodshed in Falluja, and a similar (if not worse) massacre in Najaf have both been postponed with negotiations, but this blogger fears that, ultimately, worse violence can't be avoided.In Iraq, for one thing, time is on entropy's side. Already considerable physical damage has been done to the Coalition's infrastructure reconstruction efforts in Najaf and elsewhere, and the efforts to rebuild the country have no doubt been paralyzed by the new trend of kidnapping foreigners. Whatever tenuous security there was in the country, whether real or imagined, is now gone, and Iraq cannot be rebuilt in a state of chaos. And the longer Iraq continues on as an economic wasteland, the greater the pressure will be for fundamental change.
That fundamental change now can only be the withdrawal of America from Iraq. In both Falluja and Najaf, negotiations are going nowhere and will continue to go nowhere. American forces cannot take the offensive, particularly in Najaf, without turning the entire nation against them. But they cannot simply allow Sadr and the Fallujah assailants to walk free. The result is a stand-off that will last until American forces are given a means of saving face and pulling back from the brink at the same time.
It's not much of a means, but the United Nations has entered the situation at a most opportune time. Power should be handed over to whatever government the U.N. recommends come June 30th, and that government should be allowed to make the only choices it will have: to demand that American forces pull back from Iraqi cities, but to also ask American forces to remain in Iraq to prevent full-scale civil war between the Sunnis, Kurds, and Shiites.
Elections would thus most likely be held in Iraq by next January, and the resulting new government will most likely be dominated by the Shiite majority and be stridently anti-American. Such a new government will no doubt ask American forces to leave Iraq, and to leave the Sunnis, Kurds, and Shias to work their differences out by themselves.
If moderate Shiites take power in the new, independent Iraq, there just might be hope for future peace: the Kurds, at least, could be persuaded to remain Iraqis with pledges of continued autonomy and perhaps some "encouragement" from Turkey. The Sunnis will be more difficult for the Shias to deal with however, and could be a source of friction in the new Iraq for many years to come if they don't succeed in breaking away and perhaps joining Syria.
The creation of a rump Shiite state is no doubt not what the Bush administration had in mind when it launched the invasion of Iraq. But Iraq was the artificial creation of a colonial power anyway, long held together only by a totalitarian regime that America rightly toppled. Now the only thing for America to do is let the cards fall where they may, and move away from the table before they do.
April 9, 2004
5:00 PM
Winding down another week here. Very nice to see my brother-in-law join our Yahoo! discussion group-- it's ironic that our group has headed for the center double-time as some of our more liberal charter members have left after realizing that we're willing to support Republicans as well as Democrats. It's very unfortunate that they didn't stay put and speak up, or, better yet, invite their friends...April 6, 2004
5:00 PM
Hmph. Seems the whole Yahoo system is on the fritz: notepad and groups are both out.I suppose I'll have to wait til tomorrow (assuming there is a tomorrow) to pitch another pair of Congressional candidates to the group for an endorsement vote. That's unfortunate, since I'm eager to pick up the endorsements pace after watching the Unity website's traffic boom over the last week or so. I don't know if the increased traffic is due to the posting of endorsements, that new link we received, the belated opening of some of those e-mails I sent out a few weeks ago, or, most likely, a combination of those three factors, but the posting of proper names being constantly searched by political operatives certainly won't hurt our rankings in the search engines.
Our endorsements will also, more importantly, show that we're a centrist, pragmatic organization dedicated to working within the system to effect positive change. So, come on Yahoo, fix the bugs!
April 5, 2004
1:33 PM
Well, even my marathon failures are getting better.When I checked the weather the morning of the Big-D Marathon, I realized that there wouldn't be a PR for yours truly that day. But I did improve my relative standing compared to my last not-so-great marathon performance (in the Ocean Drive Marathon 52 weeks before). Came in between a one Sundar Dorai-Raj and a one Philip De Young. Slowly I'm learning to treat the first half as a 13-mile jog and to drink sports drinks only every 30 minutes or more. I would say there's always next year, but I think I'll be looking for some other spring marathon next year (not that being cheered on by family members wasn't terrific!).
And I think I'm looking at New York for my fall marathon this year. I've got
guaranteed entry til May 1st, and the Marine Corps Marathon doesn't even start
its lottery drawings until after that date. Looking forward to another hometown
effort, and maybe even a Boston qualifier!