As a person who researches a lot of the crap I talk about (it may sounds like BS, but sometimes it isn't!), I am often flummoxed by those who take the position that the truth lies half way between the extremes:

I think that often where I am is just in the middle. The middle is often the commonsensical place to be. The notion that one side is right and one side is wrong is generally, as one finds in life, not the case.

Fortunately, Jonathan Chait offered a terrific response to this inane comment, starting with:

Roberts has a great point. The sensible position usually does lie halfway between two extremes. Just look at history. In the 1960s, the country was split between extremists who wanted to deny civil rights to African Americans, and extremists who insisted on completely equal rights everywhere. The dispute caused so much strife and anger because no sensible moderates could be found to stake out the middle ground between these equally radical positions--say, desegregating some institutions but not others, or letting black people vote in every other election.

The article makes good points, explaining why compromising for the sake of compromising is doomed to failure. Some situations require a 100% solution, not a 50% solution. Beyond that, we can often have sides where one side represents their position honestly and the flip side is totally full of shit - as often happens. What happens when a situation has more than 2 sides?

The idea that the truth is "in the middle" may work when it comes to subjective memories recalling some events when people are exaggerating but has little application elsewhere, and those that cling to it to avoid actually thinking about how to solve a problem are lazy.

Would Jesus spend $3 million on a thirty second spot to preach to millions? Well, I'm no expert but I don't think it jives with the Gospel of Matthew at least.

Nonetheless, Tim Tebow is putting on the ad, and if you are a facebook friend of mine, you know that I have noted several interesting takes on it (it is just too easy to paste on Twitter/Facebook, so I do it more often than I post here). But I think this article from NPR's "Only a Game" show nails the subject.

I'm looking forward to my Mom posting in the comments on this issue - she is apparently now a fan of Mike and Mike on ESPN so I'm sure she has been thinking about it!

Update:Slate has a great take on this by Will Saletan:

Being dead is just the first problem with dying in pregnancy. Another problem is that the fetus you were trying to save dies with you. A third problem is that your existing kids lose their mother. A fourth problem is that if you had aborted the pregnancy, you might have gotten pregnant again and brought a new baby into the world, but now you can't. And now the Tebows have exposed a fifth problem: You can't make a TV ad.

I just wrote to my Congressional Representative Betty McCollum to encourage her to sponsor a bill on Network Neutrality. You can learn more about the issue here as well as how your representatives have acted. If you recognize the benefits of freedom on the Internet (as compared to commercial-dominated FM radio and TV) to be a part of the conversation, you should take a few minutes to act.

The text of my letter is below:

I see the Representative McCollum is not a co-sponsor of the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009 (HR 3458) and I find that a disappointment.

In a time when the Supreme Court has just greatly increased the power of major corporations to shape our government and country, I think we need to preserve freedom from corporate control on the only mass communications medium they do not currently dominate (compare to TV, radio).

Network Neutrality is, at best, a flawed approach to preserving freedom on the Internet but it is the best option Congress has today. Network Neutrality is necessary to prevent major companies from becoming gatekeepers to content.

Comcast is already the only real option for Internet in your district (Qwest is pathetically slow by comparison) - if they are able to exert even more control over how people use the Internet, nothing good will result.

Thank you for your time.

The last time I read a science fiction book, I was climbing up Kilimanjaro and had few opportunities. It was The Wreck of the River of Stars, with a strong focus on slow-moving character development, that I probably would have put down if I were not scaling a mountain with frequent rests at high altitude. I was glad I read it, but it really lacked the excitement that I enjoyed in books by Heinlein, for instance.

Following several recommendations from technology geeks I find insightful (including Jerry Pournelle, one of the authors), I picked up The Mote in God's Eye and then quickly read its sequel, The Gripping Hand, by Larry Niven and Pournelle. Fascinating reading.

These are older sci-fi books, ones that expected the U.S. versus U.S.S.R. standoff would continue long into the future, when man left the Earth. The books are set long in the future, when interstellar travel is practical but humans have not yet discovered alien life. And boom, they do. The twist is that the aliens are much older, and better at just about everything, than humans but had not developed interstellar travel (the human invention of the interstellar drive was an accident - something I have no trouble believing).

I was captivated by the books but hard core science-focused science fiction readers should beware because these are not Stephen Baxter or Greg Bear books. The focus is more on sociology and a good story line. I'm not actually sure that Pournelle has any science credentials, though he clearly has a strong mind for technology. In listening to him speak, his understanding of how science works is quite weak.

I thought both books were well worth reading but I seem to remember daddYman being ho-hum about them, so take it for what it is worth. I had never considered such a plot line and it hooked me from the start (well, after 40-50 pages anyway... I always struggle to follow characters in the beginning of a book).

If you believe Fox News or the Tea Baggers (to the extent one can differentiate), then we are on the verge of a massive socialist takeover. I just read this great comment to a news story about the public power company in Virginia ... it was attributed to Bill Meyer, but I don't know who that is.

I have inserted some additions in bold for funsies.

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by socialist electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy. I then took a shower in the socialist clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the socialist radio to one of the FCC regulated channels to hear what the socialist National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like using socialist satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of socialist US Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking the socialist drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as kept accurate by the socialist National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory, I get into my socialist National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the socialist roads build by the socialist local, state, and federal departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the socialist Environmental Protection Agency, using socialist legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door, I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the socialist US Postal Service and drop the kids off at the socialist public school. I avoid numerous collisions due to socialist stop signs, signals, and other conventions established by the local government. If I get lost, I can use my socialist GPS navigation technology developed by the United States Department of Defense and made available to the public in 1996 by President Bill Clinton who issued a policy directive declaring socialist GPS to be a dual use military civilian system to be managed as a national socialist asset.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the socialist workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor (which also mandates an eight hour day, no children working) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the socialist USDA, I drive my socialist NHTSA car back home on the socialist DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the socialist state and local building codes and socialist fire marshal’s inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the socialist local police department. I take a deep breath of fresh air, thanks to the socialist Environmental Protection Agency that prevents the noble private companies from discharging all their pollutants in to the air.

I then get on my computer and use the socialist Internet which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration and browse the socialist World Wide Web using my graphical web browser, both made possible by Al Gore’s socialist High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991. Briefly, I consider how lucky I am that the socialist programs Medicare and Social Security have dramatically reduced elderly poverty, allowing me the freedom of not sharing the house with my parents.

I then post on freerepublic.com and fox news forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can’t do anything right.

After spending September, October, and November shooting sports constantly and frequently editing, I was left with a massive backlog of magazines to read. So in December, I made it a priority to catch up so I could get back to reading books. Success! By the beginning of 2010, I reduced the backlog to 5 magazines! I took a photo of all the magazines, though a few in there where from Michelle.

I have lots of ideas for posts, but trying to get used to working after a well-needed week off.*

In the meantime, I just got published in Ars Technica - which is a pretty big deal. I think of Ars as the NY Times of the tech world. My column about broadband is here but if you want to help it get more exposure, you can digg it up here.

* I'll discuss just how relaxing that week "off" was in an upcoming post

Foreign Policy magazine has a special end of year issue chronicling the top 2009 global thinkers - someof whom did not necessarily have "good" ideas (says me). Nonetheless, I was intrigued by a short feature on Sayyid Imam al-Sharif:

How the prison writings of Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, one of al Qaeda's founders now labeled a turn coat, are doing more to expose the terrorist group's hypocrisy than anyone else.

This dude is now in prison in Egypt - after first writing books justifying al-Qaeda's butcherous activities, he suddenly decided it might not be in the best interests of God to kill everyone with which they disagree:

He claims he came to realize that the haphazard use of violence by Islamist groups causes more harm than good with respect to Islamic law, an idea he had been pondering since he left terrorism in the early 1990s.

So long as al-Qaeda keeps killing other Muslims, I think we can expect support for them to continue plummeting amongst those who used to support them as a check against the power of the West.

Fascinating video showing how beautiful Norway is and how they prevent unexpected rockfall, I guess...

Thanks to daddYman for pointing this one out.