Freyburg

The NYT seems to think so, anyway. I’d question their basic premise…Japan is a pretty stratified society, where you suck it up and do what you gotta do, though the politeness factor means there’s not a lot of “screw you, I’m rich and you’re not” like you get in the States. Maybe that’s more that the article is aiming for, though I’m not sure it gets the point across. Resident Japan expert Cam can probably give a much better assessment than myself.

Things have taken a turn for the strange when America’s military is the voice of moderation, and the civilians in charge are the war-happy nutbags. But in a surprising move, American ex-generals are calling for Donald Rumsefeld’s resignation, because of what they see as complete failure in Iraq. So uh….go Army?

This may fall under the “let’s drum up opinion early for some good old-fashioned shock and awe” flavor of article, but it’s still a good retrospective on how the West had eyes firmly locked on Communism when it probably should have been minding goings-on in Persia.

A lot of you probably won’t care, but for those news/politics/conflict junkies out there, I present FP‘s new blog, aptly named Passport. Mmmmm, bloggy wonk goodness.

Metaphorically, anyway. First the Democrats lost the election in 1980 thanks to Iran, and now the Republicans may suffer the same fate.

AT&T has recently been bitching up a storm that Google isn’t paying tribute money to the telco monolith for the pleasure of using their wires. Google, Amazon and Ebay are all rumored to be mustering a response that goes something along the lines of “screw you, we’ll build our own network.” I’m all for that, if it means I get wireless anywhere. Which, giving recent Google experiments in San Francisco, it just might.

Slate’s Paul Boutin expostulates on Apple’s recent move to allow Windows to run on the Mac. He’s more jazzed by the idea of running OS X on commodity PCs. If Apple were to uncouple OS X from their hardware, I’m not sure what I’d do….Mac boxes are pretty slick, but it’s the operating system I love, so I’d probably go for a cheapo Dell.

That’s according to Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker. You’d think being bogged down in Viet-raq would quell the bloodlust of the Bush administration, but apparently not.

From the hand-waving madness that is Robert X. Cringely, here’s a column on how Apple will soon release OS X to regular old PCs, given that they’ve already released Boot Camp, which lets you install Windows XP on your Mac. I have my doubts, though of course there’s no technical reason why it isn’t possible. It’s all up to Uncle Steve, and he’s a fickle fella when it comes to the hardware.

And even less beleivable is the contention that Microsoft will buy Sony. That just makes you go “WTF?”, though of course stranger things have happened in video game land, like Sega giving up on hardware and working with arch-rival Nintendo.

CBC is supposedly updating its podcast offerings. That’s not difficult, since all they offer now is a weekly Radio 3 podcast (quite good, me digs the tunes), Quirks and Quarks (also good) and Metro Morning, which is a bit of a puzzler as its the Toronto morning show. Why CBC would think I”d have any interest in day-old news from a city i don’t live in and actively despise is anyone’s guess, but there we are.

Anyway, sign up for their newsletter and let them know you want more podcasts, more often. I want to hear The House, As it Happens, Cross Country Checkup, Ideas, and the Sunday Edition, to name but a few. CBC has a pile of great programming, DNTO not withstanding, and it’s sort of ridiculous that I can listen to any number of NPR and BBC podcasts and not my own national broadcaster’s programs.