Email is just for old folks these days...

At least in Korea. Now, young people use SMS text messaging or IM to communicate.

From the article in the Digital Chosunilbo:

The email era is coming to an end because replacement communication means such as Internet messengers, mini-homepages (dubbed "one-man media"), and SMS are wielding their power. As a consequence, the stronghold of email, once the favorite of the Internet, is being shaken from its roots.

The ebbing of email is a phenomenon peculiar to Korea, an IT power. Leading the big change, unprecedented in the world, are our teens and those in their 20's. The perception that "email is an old and formal communication means" is rapidly spreading among them. "I use email when I send messages to elders," said a college student by the name of Park.

Read the rest of the article

David Sessions and fashion

Check out a friend's tips for avoiding ugly dressing. Homeschoolers, especially, can always use these reminders.

David's seven fashion nevers for girls

David's seven fashion nevers for guys

I'd point out my personal pet peeve with girls' fashion: unnecessary makeup - which is to say, most makeup. First, I quote David (or his female sources):

On makeup

“Nothing is evil in moderation. Let's do our part and make ourselves at least bearable to male eyes; after all, do you really want all those husband prospects wandering off in desperation to search for more attractive spouse material? BAG YOUR HUSBANDS BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!”

(In other words, you should wear AT LEAST SOME makeup. Otherwise, your chances of marrying go at least slightly down. Maybe you don’t want to get married…in that case, well, it’s nice of you wear it anyway.)

“When putting on foundation, let’s try to avoid the ‘somebody baked a cake on my face’ look.”

(So…you see that you have to wear some, but, it’s important, don’t wear TOO MUCH or you just look ridiculous.)

Kenneth and I think that girls look good without makeup, and that makeup is generally unnecessary, and even counterproductive. To quote our comments to David's post:

Kenneth:
why do girls alway pull out that "well we at least need to look like normal human beings! (or "bearable in male eyes as your example says)"? it makes absolutely no sense to me. isn't that some kind of fallacy? "ok, i need to make myself look normal by putting stuff on my face that isn't normally there." and why do they think they look somehow abnormal of unbearable to begin with? and another thing: the whole husband argument isn't such a good one. a guy with any brains at all is going to know that he's going to have to see you every morning when you wake up without makeup. so, if you want a smart guy, you better make sure you look good without makeup on. you're only shooting yourself in the proverbial foot if you always wear makeup.

Derby:
I agree, Kenneth. Makeup -can- be good in moderation, but in my opinion is usually unnecessary and often even unhelpful. And too much makeup (ugh), which is dreadfully common here, is far worse than no makeup at all.

Republicans raise debt limit

Congress raised the debt limit by $ .8 trillion today. Though the bill passed because the government was about to shut down, the vote nearly followed party lines, with Republicans calling to cut spending and Democrats arguing against allowing the government to shut down. Investor's Business Daily gives us some of the debate (edited a bit):

But Republicans opposed the measure, arguing it should have been accompanied by new rules that would require future tax cuts and new spending to be offset and rendered budget-neutral.

Amen! Let's hear it for a balanced budget!

"The most irresponsible thing to do is to borrow the money knowing that you will never pay it back and that the interest cost will fall on your children and not you," said Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, the senior Republican on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said as the House debated the measure Thursday.

And on the other side of the aisle:

"We can demagogue it. We can keep putting on all sorts of messages to feel good or draw political lines. ... But the reality is, we keep screwing around with this thing, we're going to shut the government down," said Rep. Thomas Reynolds, D-N.Y.

STOP. Hold on. This sounds like typical party warfare, right? Except there is a twist in this battle that I covered over. I changed all the party affiliations in the quotes. It was the Democrats arguing for fiscal responsibility and the Republicans saying "we have to do this."

I know, most of the Democrats don't really believe in fiscal responsibility, at least not enough to remember the concept when it's time to fund the latest vote-buying pork project. But Republicans, traditionally the champions of small government, appear to be no better.

DC United wins MLS cup!

My hometown* pro soccer team rocks! BTW, the game was played Sunday, so I've known about this for awhile, but only just decided to post this.

Get the full story here (dcunited.mls site) and here (Washington Times).

Why are the two best sports in the universe (ultimate frisbee and soccer) not widely televised?

Anyway, for another good game, watch #7-ranked Michigan football take on Ohio State (away game for my team, the Wolverines) in their annual game, continuing one of the top college sports rivalries of all time. The game is this Saturday at 1 PM.

*My true hometown is Swartz Creek/Flint, Michigan; Detroit for most sports purposes. But since Detroit has no soccer team, I use my new/current hometown, DC/Northern Virginia.

Starbucks: a brief response

In response to the aesthetic realist:

I don't think of Starbucks as a representative of the American Dream. If my dream was to be the next Howard Schultz, multi-millionaire and owner of a chain of stores across the U.S., I'd be depressed.

Thanks a lot, Adam Smith. Conservatives are as obsessed over economics as Marxists were, just in a different way. Quality of life is so much more than raw economics. Don't get me wrong, the state government should stay out of market regulation. But responsible business owners need to focus on more than the bottom line, tempting as it may be to do otherwise. I admit that many big business owners are very conscious of doing good. But is the damage that big businesses do to the closeness local communities any better than the dehumanizing aspects of big government? Lets not worship the bottom line. I know that businesses need a profit to survive. But could we say that profit is not the primary purpose of a business? I know my grandpa's blueberry farm isn't. When I start a small one-man teaching business some day I hope it will provide for my family, but otherwise profit is not a significant part of my reason for it.

Life is so much more than money. Although Dewey had a lot of things wrong, all Americans (and most of the world) desperately need to acquire the value he placed on community.

Admit it: we didn't find any

Andrew Sullivan takes on Colin Powell for not apologizing for the lack of WMDs he promised the UN. Now, I believe that the war was justified without WMDs, and that most nations really thought Iraq had WMDs, but that's no excuse for not at least admitting we were wrong. Why doesn't Bush admit it? Apparently, face-saving trumps honesty.

A call for patent reform

Finally The Economist is echoing the call for patent reform. The patent process seems to be getting more absurd each year, with patents such as Amazon's one-click internet shopping patent, the hyperlink, and others.

Patents are supposed to be for innovative ideas, not narrow new uses for old or obvious ideas.

"Vote: It's the only way to make the ads stop."

My Way News: Officials predicted a turnout of 117.5 million to 121 million people, the most ever and rivaling the 1960 election in the percentage of eligible voters going to the polls. Voters welcomed an end to the longest, most expensive election on record.

"It's the only way to make the ads stop," Amanda Karel, 25, said as she waited to vote at a banquet hall in Columbus, Ohio.

Andrew Sullivan endorses...

Well, before I mention that, let me point out that, as Sullivan says, our (stupid, black&white, blindered) definitions of liberal and conservative don't work.

Why is this election so hard for so many people? Here's one theory. It's not so easy to tell who's the liberal and who's the conservative anymore. You want a candidate who pumps unprecedented amounts of money into agricultural subsidies, uses tariffs to protect some American industries and adds a whole new entitlement to Medicare? That would be the, er, Republican, George W. Bush.

You want a future President who will be hard nosed about committing U.S. troops abroad, wants to balance every new spending item with a tax hike or a spending cut elsewhere and backs states' rights on social issues? Then go ahead and vote for the, er, Democrat, John Kerry.

You think there's too little federal control over education? Vote Bush. Want to expand health-care coverage primarily through the private sector? Vote Kerry.

And the Votemaster shows us a page linking to more evidence that the two don't follow traditional left-wing/right-wing views. Of course, I don't trust Kerry farther than I can throw him. I trust Bush more, though not totally; he is largely unswayed by political expediency, while Kerry seems to choose his position on each issue based on its popularity.

Anyway, the reasons Sullivan endorses Kerry are merely given as reasons to vote against Bush, not to vote for Kerry. They are: not having a rock-solid case for WMDs, since that was given as the main reason for the Iraq war. Ok, I'll grant him this one, it was certainly harmful for international opinion, but it isn't by itself enough of a reason to not vote for him. Miscalculations in Iraq: the initial war went great, and the "nation-building" really hasn't been going badly. Of course it's slow! The nation had been trashed by Sadaam. Abu Ghraib: not Bush's fault.

"He has spent like a drunken liberal Democrat." This is my main problem with Bush - the single worst piece of spending legislation since perhaps the creation of the Department of Education was the No Child Left Behind act, which vastly increased federal control over education in the name of "standards." Let the communities choose their own standards, not have them imposed from the federal government! Funding and regulating public schools is the community's job!

"His proposal to amend the constitution to deny an entire minority equal rights under the law is one of the most extreme, unnecessary and divisive measures ever proposed in this country. " I believe that homosexual couples should not be guaranteed treatment equal with heterosexual couples. However, this should be dealt with at state level. If the president and Congress don't like it, appoint judges that won't impose their whims on the states.

I'm voting for Bush. I'd vote third-party if Peroutka were more practical and at tried to market himself to non-Christians and non-fundamentalist Christians, or if Badnarik didn't hold the very un-libertarian position that we should be allowed to kill babies because it's a personal choice (libertarians believe that behavior should only be outlawed if it directly, adversely affects another - which abortion certainly does), and if his party platform didn't oppose parents teaching their children their religion.

Maybe someday there will be a candidate I can truly endorse.

Cannone made an interesting comment, and made me realize: baptism isn't like a wedding ring. It's like a wedding, because it's a one-time thing. You're just as married without the ceremony, I've believed for a long time. The difference is, God's word commands us to be baptized. It doesn't command us to have a wedding ceremony to be married.

Or, it could be seen as being like an engagement ring, since the true marriage ceremony will be in heaven (Matthew 22:1-14, Matt 25:1-13, Revelation 19:7-9):

"Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready."
It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.
Then he said to me, "Write, 'Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb '" And he said to me, "These are true words of God."

Keeping up with the (meaningless) polls

Get your electoral-college poll and voting updates from electoral-vote.com

electionprojection.com has similar information, though the maps usually look different due to the many-faced world of polling. I prefer the first site because it doesn't strongly favor one candidate (the author has an admittedly strong Kerry bias, but his main page is usually objective.)

In the latest news, Zogby polled previously unpolled cellphone users and found that 55% favor Kerry. This could be bad news for Bush, but then we have to look for other uncounted demographic groups, such as large families (my family has 6 registered voters, but only one phone if you don't count cells).

If the electoral-vote.com site is slow (as it has been, and will be through Wednesday morning), try www.electoral-vote2.com, www.electoral-vote3.com, or www.electoral-vote4.com

(update: it's up to electoral-vote9.com)

Of course, the only poll that matters is the official one held Tuesday...

A must-read for government majors

How to Survive a Power Surge in Post-Election Washington

Washington Post staff writer Sally Quinn tells you how to stay in the power circles and return to a position of influence when you, or those whose coattails you are hanging onto, lose. If you have the chance, read the full article, but here are the basic rules:

1. Never, never, never count anyone out, unless you have seen the body with a stake through the heart. Because they always come back.

2. If you decide to stay here once you've lost power or lost access to it, make sure you're staying for the right reasons.

3. It's actually more comfortable being on the outside than on the inside

4. Only invite the people you really like, whether they are in or out of power.

5. Once you have made a commitment, stick with your candidate through ups and downs.

6. The people who last, who remain socially and politically viable in Washington, are those who have confidence in their own social standing despite the prevailing political winds.

She sums up:

In the end, the only people who ultimately survive in Washington are those who have made friends and kept and cherished them over the years. There is nobody here who has not been down and out sometime, and it's then that the values of those friends are tested.

Oh, and don't forget . . . those here whose friends either desert them or stick with them have very long memories.