My writing fizzled out a bit at the end of the year, so my last report of 241,915 words stands as the total for 2003. That's quite a bit short of my original goal of 300,000 words, but still a pretty respectable number.

For 2004, the goal is again 300,000 words for the year, and 1500 words per day. So far, I have 3600 words since January 1.

Of the many after the fact justifications for the Iraq war, the removal of Saddam Hussein is perhaps the most compelling. He really was a brutal dictator who tortured and gassed his own people. Iraq is certainly better off without him.

The problem is that there are lots of brutal dictators out there. If Hussein had to go, what are we going to do about, say, Robert Mugabe, the dictator of Zimbabwe, who killed or tortured 70,000 of his own people last year?

Oh yeah. Zimbabwe hasn't got any oil. How silly of me.

And speaking of space images, this is what a comet looks like up close, courtesy of NASA's Stardust mission.

I'd put this in the much-neglected photolog except I'm not sure about permissions. It's the Spirit rover's first color image of Mars. It's also the highest resolution image ever taken on another planet (as far as we know).

It also gives new meaning to the word "desolate."

I've always been skeptical about social networking software. To me, relationships are analog, and not amenable to digital yes/no mediation. David Weinberger's critique takes a slightly different tack, arguing that social networks simply don't follow the kind of formal logic that computers understand.

Oh joy. I just got my first bit of comment spam. I disinfected the site, but thought I'd take this opportunity to repost my comment policy.

Comments are the sole responsibility of the author. I will not edit the content or attribution of any comment, but I reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason. Obscenities, personal attacks, and irrelevance to the topic at hand are the most likely reasons, but I may add others without notice as circumstances or personal whims dictate.

I'd also like to remind anyone who objects to this policy, or to the editorial policies of any other site, that the Internet is a big place. In my corner of it, I make the rules. If you don't like them, you can very easily set up shop in your own corner and make whatever rules you like there.