"Imagine a world in which the United States was stricken by a successful series of nuclear, biological, and chemical attacks. Putting aside the appalling loss of American lives this would involve, the global consequences would be horrifying. The world would be plunged into the deepest depression in its history. There would be no power-of-last-resort to uphold international order. Wolf and jackal states would quickly emerge to prey on their neighbors. It would be a world as described by Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan (1651), in which, deprived of a giant authority figure 'to keep them all in awe,' civilization would break down, and life, for most of mankind, would be 'nasty, brutish and short.'

Hence, we do well to look at the crisis not as solely or even primarily an American problem, but as a global one. We need a Leviathan figure now much more than in the 17th century, when the range of a cannon was a maximum of two miles and its throw-weight was measured in pounds. America is the only constitutional Leviathan we have, which is precisely why the terrorists are striving to do him mortal injury, and the opponents of order throughout the world — in the media, on the campus, and among the flat-earthers — are so noisily opposed to Leviathan's protecting himself." —Paul Johnson

"Of all tyrannies a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth.

"This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be 'cured' against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

"But to be punished, however severely, because we have deserved it, because we 'ought to have known better,' is to be treated as a human person made in God's image." —C.S. Lewis

As I stated to my wife and friends, what a flipping moron: "You're so lucky in Ireland, England and Spain. Everyone there already knows what it's like to have inexplicable terrorist violence." —Susan Sarandon

THEN: "Comrades, we must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all." —Nikita Khrushchev

NOW: "We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society." —Hillary Rodham Clinton

Responding to Bill O'Reilly on whether she would ban abortion, [Patricia] Heaton [from "Everybody Loves Raymond"] explained, "Yes. ... [And] I've thought about ....[ostracism in Hollywood]. On a personal level, as a Christian, it will not be Barbra Streisand I'm standing in front of when I have to make an accounting of my life."

TidBITS has a great article on the power of Mailsmith's email filters. Mailsmith is, in my not so humble opinion, the best email client for the best operating system on the best hardware.

Since you won't hear about The Most Ethical Administration and its political party getting fined from anyone else, you can read about one of the largest fines ever handed out by the Federal Election Commission. Gee, and to think that all those charges of malfeasance by Clinton and Gore regarding illegal campaign contributions was just made up by the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy™.

"After tiring themselves out all summer yapping about how Bush can't invade Iraq without first consulting Congress, now the Democrats are huffy that they might actually have to vote. On 'Meet the Press' a few weeks ago, Sen. Hillary Clinton objected to having to vote on a war resolution before the November elections, saying, 'I don't know that we want to put it in a political context.'

"Yes, it would be outrageous for politicians to have to inform the voters how they stand on important national security issues before an election." —Ann Coulter, 26 Sep 2002

Presidential-wannabe Al Gore recently came out against the Bush administration's first-strike policy, especially with regard to Iraq, by saying it was a "a "go-it-alone, cowboy-type approach to international affairs." Well excuse me, Al, but I didn't see any other nation attacked by Iraqi-backed terrorists on September 11, 2001, did you? Gore feels that Bush has presented the case against Iraq "in a manner calculated to please the portion of its base that occupies the far right, at the expense of the solidarity among all of us as Americans, and solidarity between our country and our allies."

Yet, on 28 June 2000 [NOTE: when running for the Presidency], Gore proclaimed, "There can be no peace for the Middle East so long as Saddam is in a position to brutalize his people and threaten his neighbors."

As recent as 12 February 2002, Gore stated: "President Bush deserves tremendous credit for the way he has led the nation in a highly successful opening counterattack in the war against terror. ... There has been much discussion of whether Iraq, Iran and North Korea truly constitute an 'Axis of Evil.' As far as I'm concerned, there really is something to be said for occasionally putting diplomacy aside and laying one's cards on the table. ... As far as I am concerned, a final reckoning with [...Iraq] should be on the table. To my way of thinking, the real question is not the principle of the thing, but of making sure that this time we will finish the matter on our terms."

I would ask the real Al Gore to please stand up, but the politically-expedient version appears to be the real deal.

The alpha geeks just keep warming up to Mac OS X. Moshe Bar has decided to switch to a PowerBook G4/800 running OS X, since it allows him to do everything he does under Linux, in addition to using modern devices, like DVD, wireless, and FireWire, with relative ease.