links for 2009-01-17

"I have a bit of a conundrum going on. I know that there is an audience that would buy some of my prints, but I'm at a loss as to how best go about it. I know I need a dedicated website and I already have two great printing services that I use, but the how is the hard part. A good friend does hosting, and he'll get that business, but the storefront is kind of the question." Anyone got any ideas for Will?

"JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel announced late Saturday night that the Israeli military would begin a unilateral cease-fire in Gaza within hours while negotiations continued on how to stop the resupply of Hamas through smuggling from Egypt." Gaza:Obama::Tehran:Reagan

"President-elect Barack Obama is riding a powerful wave of optimism into the White House, with Americans confident he can turn the economy around but prepared to give him years to deal with the crush of problems he faces starting Tuesday, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

"While hopes for the new president are extraordinarily high, the poll found, expectations for what Mr. Obama will actually be able to accomplish appear to have been tempered by the scale of the nation’s problems at home and abroad."

Whatever the military and political results of Israel’s 21-day war against Hamas in Gaza, Israel is again facing serious accusations and anguished questioning over the legality of its military conduct. As in Israel’s 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, the popular perception abroad of how Israel fights, and hence of Israelis, may prove to be more lasting than any strategic gains or losses.

"S: Do you think that in our society we delude ourselves into thinking we have more privacy than we really do?

"M: Oh, absolutely. If you think about it, when I use a credit card, the security model is the same as that of handing you my wallet and saying, “Take out whatever money you think you want, and then give it back.”

"S: …and yet it seems to be working.

"M: Most things don’t have to be perfect. In particular, things involving human interactions don’t have to be perfect, because groups of humans have all these self-regulations built in. If you and I have an agreement and you screwed me over badly, you’ve always got in the back of your mind the nagging worry that I’m going to show up on your doorstep with a club and kill you. Because of that, people don’t tend to screw each other too much, right? At least, they try not to. One danger, perhaps, of moving towards an algorithmically driven society is that the algorithms aren’t scared of us showing up and beating them up."

Hooray for NPR.

"Israel’s security cabinet is expected to meet Saturday night to declare a cease-fire in Gaza and will keep its forces there in the short term while the next stage of an agreement with Egypt is worked out." Obama : Gaza :: Reagan : Iran hostage crisis

"Few people would have predicted this litany of disasters when Mr Bush ran for the presidency in 2000. True, the 2000 election was likely to be divisive because of the peculiar arithmetic of the outcome (Mr Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore by 500,000 votes, then won a disputed recount in Florida by a few hundred). But for most people Mr Bush was a pretty acceptable choice, and certainly not a crusader-in-waiting." /The Economist/ eviscerates Bush. For his sake, I hope Bush is right that history will judge him better, but … I don't see it.

"If Obama manages to leverage this crisis toward entitlement reform, he would become an historic president. It really would be Buchanan-Lincoln. I've spent too long in DC to believe it, but I can still hope can't I? And the key thing this time around is whether we can build a grass-roots movement to support Obama in this, just as we did in the campaign. Raise the retirement age, means-test social security, raise Medicare premiums for the affluent. After what has amounted to a generational war on the under-40s under Bush, re-balancing is actually a moral cause." I am up for it, Andrew!