CDG2

I am wearing my ailing Comme des Garçons 2 today. I don't know why. I don't really like the way it smells on me. CDG2 is a complicated scent and it evolves wildly thru out the day.

When I spray it on, I reminds me of the stale cherries they put on top of sundaes at Ponderosa. On my drive to work, it reminds me of overstuffed makeup rooms. It disappears briefly as a step out of my car and into the building. But, it comes back again --- lord, it comes back again, as an over-riped cantelope. By lunchtime, it is the artificial watermelon lipbalm on 13yrs old girls. And, as I get ready to leave work, as I throw my leather jacket over my shoulders, a whirlwind of it spins into my nostril: pink and greasy lavatory soap.

CDG2 and I always had such drama and history.

I have had this body for a little less than a decade. It just kind of lie there on the nightstand by my bed. (it can't really sit; the designers made the bottle all flat and rounded, so you have to rest it on its side, label facing up.) I guess I always feel bad neglecting it like that. The little aluminum paint chips pealing off the glass bottle like elementry school craft glitter. I like the bottle. I try really hard to like the olfactory revolution that is CDG2.... I just don't.

Oh CDG2, Oh CDG2, why can't I like you like Eau Sauvage?

Ford F-150

It always suprised me to learn that a pickup is canada's most popular
car.

I mean, who drives a pickup? have they seen the gas prices lately?
But then, everybody drives a pickup. All along the Trans-Canada, in all
the little villages, people need these kind of vehicles.

But in city, they are almost a tourist attraction on account of their
rarity.

Lord Fisher, Xerox, and modern computing

Laser printing, Ethernet, GUI, the mouse, WYSIWYG word processors, multi-user domains, object-oriented programming, personal computer, TCP/IP, laptop – or, all the things that made modern computing what it is today. These were all things that Xerox PARC either created or refined. Dominance in anyone of these fields would have made any company richer than Croesus. Xerox once dominated in ALL of these things, yet it let it lie and stuck with photocopying. (Actually, they are doing information management, but most of its business still comes from the sale, leasing, and service of photocopiers and printers. I cannot find mention of data management services in their last 10-K.)

I remember reading Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the coming of the Great War by Robert K. Massie. One of the great criticisms against Lord Fisher, the Admiral of the Fleet prior to WWI, was his introduction of the Dreadnought class ships. Lord Fisher was a great innovator; he oversaw the conversion of the British Navy from coal to oil. He scrapped obsolete ships to lower costs and devoted British industries to build the fastest and most powerful ships then in existence.

The problem that everybody had with Fisher was that his Dreadnoughts and Battlecruisers made every ship in the world obsolete – including the whole British Navy. British naval supremacy was threatened, because now, every Great Power can just start making Dreadnoughts and ignore all of Britain's pre-Dreadnought hardware. And many Great Powers, Germany, US, Russia did try. In essence, Lord Fisher also innovated the first, modern technological arms race.

Xerox critics often points to the managements failure to market all the products that their dream-team of research created. Management were often more concern with how the new technology will interfere with their existing business model. Maybe the management-types were right. Maybe Lord Fisher was right. Who knows?

That's fucking rich. "No military solution to Iraq" sez the General

From Times Online
March 08, 2007
No military solution to Iraq, warns new US commander

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article1487615.ece

What the fuck.

So the top US military commander in Iraq just pronounced "There needs to be a political aspect."

So what the fuck has these guys been doing for the last several years?

Now, I understand that this guy (and all of his predecessors) has a hard job. They are trying to set up Democracy™ after all.

To quote The Prince:

[T]here is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.
Thus it happens that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly, in such wise that the prince is endangered along with them.

Machiavelli advocates that a lot of arm-forcing is neccessary:

... the nature of the people is variable, and whilst it is easy to persuade them, it is difficult to fix them in that persuasion. And thus it is necessary to take such measures that, when they believe no longer, it may be possible to make them believe by force.

But co-opting the existing elements should always be a top priority. After all:

[t]here are three courses for those who wish to hold them: the first is to ruin them, the next is to reside there in person, the third is to permit them to live under their own laws, drawing a tribute, and establishing within it an oligarchy which will keep it friendly to you. Because such a government, being created by the prince, knows that it cannot stand without his friendship and interest, and does its utmost to support him; and therefore he who would keep a city accustomed to freedom will hold it more easily by the means of its own citizens than in any other way.

Now US wants to get out ASAP and Iraqi oilfields are too important to destroy.
So they let the Iraqis "rule" themselves. When some kind of economic stability returns to Iraq, they will "decide" rationally, like every country in the world, to buy T-bills and help fund US supremacy all around the world. It works for China, Japan, Russia, and Germany.

Where the fuck is the CIA?
These guys have been installing puppet dictators around the world for years. They have the experience to pacify promoting democracy and stability in around the world and to ensure that natural resources are dirt-cheap for the US and her allies economic prosperity for the free world.

Given the multi-polar dynamics in Iraq, a round table of Iraq oligarchy should've been gathered years ago, and each one bought off. American "friendship and interest" should have been extended to Sadr and SCIRI.

If these guys wanted to occupy a country, why can't they do it right?