Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry was born August 23, 1785. He was not a commodore at the time. After he defeated the British at the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813, he wrote in his dispatch to General William Henry Harrison “We have met the enemy and they are ours!”

Glenn Reynolds offers us a news item from a parallel universe. Read the whole thing. It very nearly brings tears to my eyes. There’s a candidate I could really get behind.

UPDATE: Glenn cited the comment I emailed to him in an update to the above post.

Recently we had a little plumbing work done in our first floor powder room (the outflow pipe from the sink had a small leak). To reach the pipes the plumber knocked out a couple of square foot section of the plaster and lathe wall under the sink. Packed around the pipes were shredded and wadded up old newspapers. They were the Minneapolis Journal from April 20, 1936.

We’ve long believed that our house was built around 1939. Its style and fixtures are consistent with that date or possibly a little earlier. Earlier work we’ve done in the walls have brought out 1939 newspapers. These 1936 newspapers suggest that the house may be slightly older.
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As you may or may not already be aware, members of the Watcher’s Council hold a vote every week on what they consider to be the most link-worthy pieces of writing around… per the Watcher’s instructions, I am submitting one of my own posts for consideration in the upcoming nominations process.
Here is the most recent winning council post, here is the most recent winning non-council post, here is the list of results for the latest vote, and here is the initial posting of all the nominees that were voted on.

Is the talking at cross-purposes that’s going on both in the current presidential campaign and in the blogosphere a result of disagreement on the objectives in the present conflict or simple confusion on what specific terms mean? In a recent post Daniel Drezner (who apparently does understand what the terms mean) stirred up a furor of comments that clearly suggested the the commenters did not. In his post Mr. Drezner contrasts a good grand strategy with a poor policy process and a bad (or no) grand strategy with a good policy process. The ensuing comments on Mr. Drezner’s post nearly completely reflect a misunderstanding of the terms objectives, strategy, and tactics.

Clausewitzian war consists of several components: objectives, strategy, tactics, and logistics. Jeff Medcalf of Caerdroia correctly points out that an important distinction among these components is the level at which the activity takes place i.e. who does the work. Let’s examine a simple example. You live in Chicago. You’re going to visit your wife’s mother in St. Louis. The objective—going to St. Louis—is identified by the chief civilian authority (your mother-in-law). The strategy—leaving at 9:00am Friday, taking the Kennedy to the Stevenson Expressway and Interstate 55 to St. Louis—is determined by the general staff (your wife). The tactics—get into the car, put the key in the ignition, pull out of your parking space, etc.—are executed by the field officer (you). Logistics includes making sure your auto insurance is paid up, getting the car lubed and checked out for the trip, putting gas in the car, etc.
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This post contains my opinions about the upcoming Chicago Lyric Opera season. If you have absolutely no interest in opera stop reading now!

I’ve had an orchestra section seats on the aisle season ticket to the Chicago Lyric Opera for more than 25 years. And my wife and I have attended the opera since we were first married. Our seats are visually and acoustically perfect. The first season we saw together was the 1985-1986 season. Over that period we must have seen Tosca, Madama Butterfly, La Traviata, and La Boheme ten times each. I’ll look it up and get the exact tally sometime. Each and every time any one of these works is performed I look forward to it. The music is glorious, the stagings are at least adequate, and these are all operas that it’s actually pretty difficult for a major opera company to mount a really awful production of.
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I was unaware that yoga required a spotter.

At least partially under the instigation of her colleague and our friend Seema, my wife has recently taken up yoga. A couple of times a week she’ll pop in the videotape, position herself in the middle of our livingroom rug, and go through the positions, movements, and breathing exercises explained by the drowsiness-inducing voice accompanies by vaguely East Indian sounding music. She says it’s very relaxing.

Our three older dogs are completely unphased by this and ignore it completely. Our 16-month junior, Mira, is completely fascinated by the process. She stations herself right next to my wife, watches her doing this obviously bizarre and possibly dangerous thing, follows my wife’s hands as they move, bats at her occasionally with her right paw, and—if required—washes her face.

Mira obviously considers herself to be my wife’s yoga spotter.

When I saw this whole operation this morning I dashed for my digital camera. My wife absolutely forbade picture taking. But blogging was okay I was told. Consider it blogged.

Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice provides excellent commentary and an even better rundown of opinion from across the blogosphere on the rambling wreck that is the Alan Keyes campaign for the Senate in Illinois:

Let’s just come out and say it: Alan Keyes is turning into a human political car crash.

Check out some of the links that Joe gives. One link worth checking out that’s not in his list is Spoons’s post on the subject.

You simply can’t manage to divert your eyes as he uses his mouth to cause another huge political wreck that’s going to hurt his party the long run — unless the party’s goal is to turn issues into outlandish sound bites that will scare off anyone in the center who doesn’t have excess ear wax. And you feel so guilty, as you watch his candidacy careen off a political cliff.

I had hopes for the Keyes campaign not because I thought he would win (he won’t) or because I hope he would win (I don’t) but because I’d hoped that his presence in the campaign could turn it into a debate on the issues which would be good for Obama, the inevitable victor, and Illinois. As Keyes wanders off into kookdom it looks less and less like that will happen.

I also don’t give a fig for the Illinois Republican Party except insofar as I believe that a viable two-party system promotes honesty in government. It’s on life support now and I think I hear the Code Blue buzzer going off. So the Keyes campaign appears to be turning into just another step on that Party’s inexorable march to irrelevancy.

Kevin Aylward of Wizbang points us to a column of John Dvorak’s enumerating the top ten software disasters of all time:

10. Microsoft Bob (1995)
9. Combined category [programing languages]
8. MicroPro Easy, the word processor (1985)
7. Windows 1.0
6. Microsoft Access (circa 1985) [not the database software]
5. TopView (1984)
4. Lotus Symphony (PC) and Lotus Jazz (Macintosh)
3. Framework
2. Microsoft OS/2
1. VisiOn

I’ve supported every one of these dogs at one time or another except VisiOn and Bob. And that includes both Forth and Pascal. Has Dvorak produced a list of brilliant software failures? I’ve worked with a bunch of those, too:

Actor (a programming language)
Layout (a visual programming system)
Objectvision (a workflow system)

Does anyone out there have more to add?