Brand New Bag

You read a blog every day for years, and after a while you come to realize that you're still reading only out of habit or personal loyalty—weeks go by without a single item that you care about or even fully understand, as the tech-talk grows ever thicker and more alienating: and then there's a moment of crystalline perfection that makes you remember what you came here for...

...Niels Bohr [once said] "Anyone who is not shocked by quantum mechanics hasn't understood it". I'm not going to be talking about the war much for the foreseeable future, but ... my only piece of advice to people on both sides of this issue is an analogue to Bohr's comments—anyone who is 100% sure of the morality of their position with regard to the war in Iraq probably hasn't understood the issues involved.

Thank you, Tom, for encapsulating what seems to me to be the only sensible position in a world tipped off-axis.

Like Tom, I realize I'm not cut out to be a warblogger, really. I haven't got the necessary certainty, and frankly I'm afraid to acquire it. I cannot allow myself any sureties in this—nothing must be generalized, everything must be examined. God save me from my righteousness.

I really don't want to be a warblogger. But in a sense, maybe I always have been. Because this is a war. It's all a war, in one way or another: this just brings it to the surface. And for a while, I'll be breaking that surface now and then myself.