iMatt :: The Blog of Matt Clare

The National Post has an article about why Paul Wolfowitz is such a poor choice for head of the World Bank. Off hand I can’t tell if it’s being passed off as an op/ed article, or if it’s categorized as general news — but does it matter with the National Post? I’m glad to read that the paper that wanted to see Canada in Iraq is questioning the the invasions’ chief architect’s analytical abilities, though the article is attributed to Fred Kaplan, of the former M$ property, www.slate.com.

The rational reasons why Paul Wolfowitz judgment cannot be trusted on anything:

• He claimed: “It’s hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces and his army.”
• He also thought a post-war Iraq could fund it’s own recovery
• He claimed that America’s troops would be welcomed to Iraq with flowers! (my favourite)
• Lastly, as a senior member of the Pentagon (under secretary? – I don’t know the US positions that well) Where’s Osama?

The irrational reasons why Paul Wolfowitz should be head of the World Bank:

• He talked to Bono twice yesterday. Twice! (He called him and Bono refuses to comment on it)
• George Bush said that Wolfowitz qualifications are he’s a senior member of the Pentagon and the World Bank is an organization of a similar size

Not only is that like saying you should hire a lawyer as a surgeon because they’re both professionals with a lot of training, but it’s like saying you should hire a personnel injury lawyer as a surgeon. It’s the marriage of an irrational thought with an bad choice.

I’ve always said that I have trouble understanding the decisions George Bush makes, but perhaps it was better when he didn’t give his reasons.

I used my membership in U2’s fan club to pick-up tickets to U2’s concert at the Air Canada Centre, Monday September 12!

I promissed Lindsay tickets for Xmas so joined the fan club to ensure it wasn’t an empty promise. I’m sure my investment will be vinidacted this weekend after the public sale for the two concerts sells out in two minutes or so.

The 329 people who died in the Air-India bombing have not been done justice.

Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik are clearly responsible, but I cannot blame the judge for not convicting them given the evidence provided. New evidence has to be found to launch an appeal, though it is not likely that after 20 years new evidence will be found in the 30 day limit to file.

This is clearly a failure of the RCMP and CSIS. Their actions in the 80s were bumbling at best. That said, these agencies have greatly improved since then. A fully public inquiry is not needed, but I believe a full report is warranted. All that is going to come out about this tragedy has come out. Someone should chronicle all that has gone wrong – hearings and panels won’t help – but we can’t allow anything like this to happen again.

Like Google? Like the look of OSX?

Try this VERY cool Google start page: labs.google.com/googlex

I would use it as my homepage if I didn’t already have a customized Google News page as my hompage. That said, I’m trying to find as use for this.

UPDATE: Did you notice this link is dead? I followed it around 9:00PM last night after I noticed it was in the Google blog. But when I followed the link it was gone. There’s now a slashdot story on it. Could this be Apple Legal at work again?

Apparently a bunch of bloggers are trying to Google Bomb the word Online Poker to make the Wikipedia entry number one on Google’s results for the term. Sounded like an interesting experiment, though WikiPedia has been up and down all day.

The interesting thing is someone vandalized the page by redirecting the page to another entry they made of a man giving himself a blow-job (If you want to confirm that, it’s in the WikiPedia history of Online Poker). A few examples of some interesting online actions and online politics.

I read it all first on /. – here it is.