carried away

What is Labor Day anyway?

According to the U.S. Department of Labor:

Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.

The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation's strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker.

How Long Will America Be Occupying Iraq?

Now would be a good time to re-read James Fallows' "The Fifty-first State?". Written almost a year ago, Fallows goes into detail about the accountability America would have to a post-war Iraq. The November 2002 article, and the magazine The Atlantic that published it, was awarded top prize in Public Interest by the National Magazine Awards.

Going to war with Iraq would mean shouldering all the responsibilities of an occupying power the moment victory was achieved. These would include running the economy, keeping domestic peace, and protecting Iraq's borders—and doing it all for years, or perhaps decades. Are we ready for this long-term relationship?

Why is Everybody Searching for This Quote?

Everyday I get at least 4 hits searching for an Arnold Schwarzenegger quote I used in the title of a post once. Carried Away is currently ranked number 1 on Google and Yahoo when searching for this quote. For some reason the post also comes up number 1 here too when searching for "run away".

Why is anyone looking for this? Are you really looking for this?

Update 9/16: I am now also the number 1 result found here when you do a search for "You go away". Fuck you, I was here first.

What Are the Politics of Sidebar Linking?

I'm not sure what has become the point of the TypePad People's List in my sidebar. It started out as a bunch of weblogs I found interesting, but now the list of interesting blogs in my bookmarks list is about 3 times as long as the People's List. No way is all that going to fit in there. Seems pointless to list every interesting blog I come across.

Some of the links are to weblogs I read several times a week because of an ongoing conversation I'm having with the writer or just because I like the writing style. I access these blogs off my site so if the writer checks their referrers list they'll know when I last read their blog. Of course this poses a problem when someone else links to their blog off my list, so really its pointless.

I've been thinking of creating another kind of list. One that would: a) keep a record of posts that I really liked for some reason, and b) let the links help to indirectly describe who I am by virtue of what I choose to read. I was reading unbillable hours a while ago and in a post he alluded to the same need for a different type of list:

I'm thinking that there is no way to fairly say what blogs I like without offending people who linked here in good faith and who I like equally well. So... I'm thinking that I am going to change the format of my sidebar links. I'm happy to link to anyone in the "Shepard's Citation" portion of the sidebar. However, I think I'm going to change the format of the "Regularly Cited Precedence" to link not to sites, in general, but to specific posts that I like.

I think its a good idea [and not because he linked to me ;-) that's only how I found him.] You Are Here also does a nice job of this, and I'm sure there are others. I'm going to call mine "He Said, She Said".

Now of course there may be a tendency to think the combination of writers in the new list have something to do with each other. So far this would only be true if one had college age kids, was working in an ad agency, once got mangled by a bull, got fired AND is now trying to become a weblog-journalist. In other words these writers have nothing to do with each other except I read their post once and thought it was interesting, I — keeper of the blogging cannon — Carried Away.

One more FYI: the list is set to display 15 links. This means on the entry of the 16th link, the 1st link will rotate off the weblog but not off the TypeList itself.