May 2005 – Page 3 – Gavinsblog.com

Back…

After my weekend hiatus – god the weather is weird in Ireland.

Abuse in Afghanistan

With all the latest reports from Bagram I have just one question – are the prisoners being forced to watch a live feed of Celebrity Love Island? I can think of no greater torture.

You know you are addicted to blogging when

…you have bookmarked your favourite blogs on your phone, read them at work, and then blog about that fact from your phone. More words thrown into the digital abyss…

Another Irish blog get-together?

Is it that time again? It was suggested back in January that we make Irish blog-bashes a quarterly event – and its almost June now. I am putting it out there for discussion, since in that time the Irish blog community has increased in size dramatically, and aggregators like POTB and Irishblogs.ie have been formed, perhaps now is a good time to suggest meeting some of the people behind the blogs.

The first event was quite a success, last July in the Market Bar in Dublin – at least a dozen people turned up which was quite good considering how geographically dispersed some of us are. January’s was a lot smaller, with many people cancelling at the last minute.

So let’s put it out there…

Late June? Weekend? Dublin? Market Bar? Get pissed?

Anyone interested?

PS its www.planetoftheblogs.com, www.POTB.com is not exactly about blogs.

Sick..

I have been struck down with a cold – but I did manage to listen to all the coverage of the ‘kebabs’ incident. I thought the Turkish man on Joe Duffy laughing about the whole thing was quite funny. But I tend to fall in line with Dick and Richard on the substantive issue.

On a side note, I completely missed that 2FM presenter Rick O’Shea started a blog in March. (Is it really him?) I am losing my touch of finding new blogs –

Oh and Spin 103.8 started one Tuesday (where I featured last Sunday to talk about blogging). Welcome everybody!

PC for sale

I have a reasonably high spec Dell Dimension here for sale, P4 3Ghz, 1024Mb DDR2, 160GB SATA hard drive, 256Mb nVidia GeForce 6800 GTO, 16x DVDRW, 48x CDRW, 17′ Flat Panel, XP Home.

Reasonable offers considered.

Aircraft Carriers and Robert Kaplan

Kaplan’s Atlantic cover story has stirred quite a hornet’s nest of discussion. It stems from a rather heated response by Thomas Barnett. This led to it being reproduced by praktike over at Liberals Against Terrorism. Matthew Yglesias then got involved in the ‘aircraft carrier’ debate, if you can call it that. He also points to a piece in TAP by Ted Carpenter and Justin Logan. Instapundit later picked up the Yglesias remarks.

While I do take some of the points made in criticism of Kaplan, I would not agree with some of the rather ill-considered arguments of Barnett. One of the main bones of contention is this passage from Kaplan’s piece, which is debated at length over on Yglesias’ blog.

To adapt, the Chinese are putting their fiber-optic systems underground and moving defense capabilities deep into western China, out of naval missile range—all the while developing an offensive strategy based on missiles designed to be capable of striking that supreme icon of American wealth and power, the aircraft carrier. The effect of a single Chinese cruise missile’s hitting a U.S. carrier, even if it did not sink the ship, would be politically and psychologically catastrophic, akin to al-Qaeda’s attacks on the Twin Towers. China is focusing on missiles and submarines as a way to humiliate us in specific encounters. Their long-range-missile program should deeply concern U.S. policymakers.

Month: May 2005