Greetings. Today we begin a regular (or at least semi-regular) feature of this blog -- the Thought(s) For the Day (TFTD). These will be extremely short musings related to current events that I feel are especially worth mentioning in brief.

You may or may not agree with what amounts to my free advice, but as John Belushi's "Bluto" so eloquently noted in Animal House, "Don't cost nothin' ". Of course, Allan Sherman sang that "Good advice costs nothing, and it's worth the price" -- but we'll call that a minority viewpoint for now.

TFTD:

In an interview aired this morning, G.W. Bush, reversing his previous categorical statements on the topic, suggested that the "War on Terror" cannot be won. Not only does this fit in nicely with VP Cheney's "war without end" philosophy, but probably is even true -- so long as an administration remains in power that has done more to induce terrorist recruitment around the world than Osama ever could.

Update: 8/31/04: Bush reversed himself again today (the technical term is "flip-flopped") and apparently now believes that "we will win" the war on terror. Now, which should we believe -- his statement that we will win in a prepared speech today, or his unscripted remarks that we can't win from yesterday? This isn't a game of horseshoes -- make up your mind, George!

TFTD:

XM Satellite Radio is all in a tizzy over a software package that enables people to easily capture analog output copies of songs from the service and convert them to MP3s. Lawyers are apparently madly scanning through LexisNexis trying to find laws that this package is violating -- and given the state of copyright laws they may find them too. But it would be wise to ponder the ramifications of these events as the content giants try ever harder to plug what they so indelicately call the "a-hole" (that's "analog hole" -- get your minds out of the gutter). It seems that every day in every way, we get closer to the Betamax decision really going away. Make a recording -- go to jail. It's comforting to know that the Department of Justice has time to spare for these urgent security matters.

Be seeing you.

--Lauren--