8 February 20048 February 2004 Last night I spent a couple hours reading the livejournal of a guy who runs an ISP in Baghdad. Pretty fascinating, I'm jealous of his adventures. 12 February 200412 February 2004 I have a lot of friends who are unemployed, and honestly I do not understand why they are missing the opportunity, when asked what they do for a living, to say that they are "between projects." And then wearily light a cigarette.

Not a bad winter.

There are, apparently, some advantages. Like you can leave crackers out on the table and they don't get stale overnight. Wow.

Joe Shaw, sexy man.

That mail is replete with missing words and two-item lists prefaced with statements like "The behavior that we want is divided into three parts."

I blame that on my malaria or dengue fever or whatever the hell it was I caught in Rio six weeks ago that still won't go away.

Rio.

The parallels between Rome at its height and Western (but mainly US) culture today are striking, as you've been told to think since you were eight: Pax Romana v. Pax Americana especially. The weirdest part to read about -- and I'm still figuring this out -- is how Rome's high taxes seemed to eventually erode the middle class, and created immense stratification of wealth and power.

The middle class today is a huge force in the US, and creating a healthy, purchasing middle class seems to be the ultimate end of neoconservatism and the great democratization of the world: to get everyone so worked up about buying a new cuisanart that they abhor war, or, at worst, experience some kind of unplaceable malaise that translates to getting tear-gassed in a protest but not to genuine revolt.

Anyway, I also like the scenes where they describe the battles, and especially the ones where the valor and quick-wittedness of one man somehow saves the day.