One year ago I was feeling proud as Baghdad fell.  "I know the war's not over yet.  There is much work to do, in some ways the hard part has just begun.  Winning the peace may be harder than winning the war."  Boy, didn't that turn out to be true...

Here we have - the national budget simulation!  Think the national debt is too high?  Now you, too, can try your hand at balancing the budget.

It is probably a good thing I'm not in charge of this - I'd pay for extra space projects and other science activities by reducing child care and other family support.  And probably cause a revolt.

From the BBC: File-sharing to bypass censorship.  "By the year 2010, file-sharers could be swapping news rather than music, eliminating censorship of any kind."  I kind of don't get this, it feels a bit clueless.  In the year 2004, people are swapping news rather than music, only they're using blogs.  The time-lag inherent in file-sharing is too high for news, but realtime posting to blogs is perfect.  And it is happening now.  [ via Dave Winer, who would probably point out that it has been happening for a while already; his blog Scripting News just turned seven. ]

In the past I've noted some of the problems with a two-party political system.  razib suggests Mixed-member Proportional Voting, in which individuals and parties gather votes.  Interesting.

Are you prepared?  These billboard are up around L.A. - posted by the Los Angeles Bioterrorism Unit.  Am I prepared for bioterrorism?  No.  What can one do?  Buy ducttape?  [ via Cybele ]

Adam Curry linked this "priceless" takeoff on the Mastercard ads.  Excellent :)  He also discusses his ideas for Personal TV Networks (a session he is hosting at BloggerCon).  I actually think the phrase "personal TV network" doesn't quite have the flavor of how this will evolve; I wouldn't necessarily describe all the MP3 files on my computer as a "personal radio station".  Although I guess it is...