There Are More Blogs On Heaven and Earth, Horatio, Than Are Dreamt Of In Your Philosophy

Lots and lots of diverse stuff in BlogPulse today, from the battered remains of the Gulf Coast to the battered remains of an iPod nano, from Bill Gates to Ellen Degeneres. Let's stroll through it forthwith, shall we?

Awww... Anything But Nukes!
We thought we were done having to worry about a nuclear holocaust — after all, this is the era of killer hurricanes and terrorism — but, nope, sure enough, it's still out there: Our top link today is a WaPo story about the Pentagon's recent revisions of the procedures for deploying nuclear weapons. If Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld approves it, the new protocol would enable American commanders to request presidential authorization to use nukes to pre-emptively stop terrorist attacks, or destroy weapon stockpiles found in enemy hands. Bloggers are remembering — or getting a taste of — what it was like when the world hunkered precariously under the nuclear sword of Damocles. Shakespeare's Sister sez: "Could there be a more wrong-headed idea that developing a doctrine of nuclear preemption, no less while we are still in the midst of a war that was launched on the 'unassailable certainty' that Iraq had WMDs, which turned out, of course, to be entirely incorrect?" Well, we know what we think.

The Hot Air Keeps Blowing, Long After The Storm Has Passed
For bloggers, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina seems to have settled into being just another perpetual idea war, like the Air America scandal, with liberals and conservatives squaring off over what President Bush should, shouldn't, did and didn't do. For examples see the citations from our no. 17 link, "How Bush Blew It;" or what bloggers said about link no. 33, " Reaction To Katrina Split Along Racial Lines." And speaking of blog idea wars, whatever happened to Cindy Sheehan?

Assorted Tech Updates
Also in BlogPulse today are bloggers' thoughts — which seem to be wary — on eBay's acquisition of Skype: "I want to make sure Skype works just as well (or better) for me in the future. eBay doesn't exactly have a stellar record of taking over companies and giving good service." Other links include Bill Gates' webcast; GoogleMaps' hole-through-the-Earth-emergence-generator; and the Ars Technica geeks, taking out all their years of being bullied by jocks on a defenseless little iPod nano. You guys are sick, doing that to that poor thing.