I enjoyed reading through the slashdot thread on XML, its strengths and weaknesses that arose from Tim Bray's recent weblog entry, "XML is too hard for programmers"  I learn so much everytime I read a slashdot thread -- there are so many knowledgeable folks contributing.  And it's nice to read of all the problems that people see with XML.  Of course, XML has weaknesses, and there is certainly a need for better tools.  And maybe it could have been implemented better.  And hopefully there are things that can be done to correct it.  But IMHO, XML for all its problems, has been a huge step forward -- much like the Web is a huge step forward even though it is arguably a relatively primitive form of hypertext.

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Although I usually don't agree with the writers of The National Review, I make it a point to read it because I often respect the writers and their work as intelligent expressions of American conservatives.  I'm trying hard to understand how people to the right of me politically think.  At times, however, I find the rhetoric rather frustrating. The following paragraph from Victor Davis Hanson's "War Has Come" caught my eye today:

Now the battlefield, Thucydides's harsh schoolmaster, will adjudicate what talk cannot. The only question remaining is not the ultimate verdict, but to what degree the past failure of allies to support the United States emboldened Saddam Hussein, cost the American military tactical surprise, complicated logistics, and needlessly raised casualties.

Hmmm. Before a war starts, unexpectedly large numbers of casualities are already being pre-blamed on the  "failure of allies to support the United States".  "Failure to support" is a rather telling phrase; why not "opposition to the United States"?  Things go bad for the U.S. -- it's all the allies' fault.  Things go well -- no thanks to the allies.   The U.S. can do no wrong, right?  No room to ask other questions, after all, say about the cavalier way in which the U.S. treats its allies.  (Of course, other countries are hardly free of blame -- no country, including the U.S. -- is innocent here.)