technology of Polar Express

(The movie, you goofs, not the train.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/24/movies/24kehr.html

Paging Neal Stephenson...

article on military tribunals

[and once again, iTunes comes through with a really nice bit of music for the posting.]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/24/international/worldspecial2/24gitmo.html

I haven't read the whole thing yet. But so far, I've noticed two particularly disturbing things:

(1) Condoleeza Rice was supposedly kept out of the loop. Powell I can understand--he seems to have been conflicted over a number of aspects of this administration's foreign policy. But Rice?

(2) The extent to which these policies seem to have been driven by medium-high-level bureaucrats. Not that this reduces the Bush administration's culpability, but I'd feel better if I thought that the motivation was all top-down. (No, I'm not surprised by this...just depressed, really.)