I don’t think it’s all that surprising that Hillary Clinton is working out well in State. I think that she’s enjoying having a real job, where she is responsible for getting certain things done, she works within an organization, etc. For a smart, hard-working, mature person, that might be quite a bit more enjoyable than being Mrs. Clinton or Madam Candidate. Even being a US Senator would be kind of a weird existence — a lot of lonely advocacy, not a whole lot of getting things done in a structured way.
Back last fall, when Barack Obama sprang his surprise about naming former rival Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state, many people assumed she would be the Cabinet’s brightest star — a celebrity at large on the world stage, the face of American foreign policy while the president was consumed back home by domestic issues and a troubled economy.
Few commentators predicted the reality: an era of grindstone leadership at the State Department.
But that’s exactly what Clinton has fashioned at Foggy Bottom. She has become a disciplined loyalist who jostles for White House influence just like any Cabinet secretary and who has advanced her cause by striking some key internal alliances.
via Hillary Clinton toils in the shadows – Ben Smith – POLITICO.com.
This page is where I keep track of achievements in continuous improvement of carrying out key publishing tasks.
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W. Frederick Zimmerman reviewed:
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 100 stars: the Geek Atlas, June 17, 2009
Received a review copy of this fascinating book from O’Reilly. Top notch stuff.
One might argue for the inclusion or exclusion of certain sites: for example, is it really fair to leave out the Lego Museum in Copenhagen?
I also wish the title had included a nod to binary … why not 100000 Places instead of 128?
Well worth a place on the shelf for anyone interested in science, mathematics, history, or travel.
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W. Frederick Zimmerman reviewed:
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 Rethinking Poul Anderson: better than Heinlein?, June 17, 2009
I have been re-reading the three volumes (so far) in Baen’s reissue of the Van Rijn, Falkayn, and Flandry stories, and the headline has been rediscovering just how good a science fiction writer Poul Anderson was. One of the back cover blurbs says something to the effect that “Poul Anderson … probably does more different things well than anyone else in the field”, and I think that is a very fair assessment. The science is great, the politics is very good, the characterization is very good, and the maturity level of the author is far higher than, say, Heinlein. Anderson’s very best is not as good as Heinlein’s very best, but almost everything of Anderson’s is far better than Heinlein’s weak stuff–and none of it is marred by the self-indulgence and wish fulfillment that marked later Heinlein.
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memeorandum is toplining a completely trivial story about philandering Republican senator John Ensign.
Sixty million people are fighting for their future in Iran, the President is trying to make a dent in a $2.5 trillion dollar health care budget, the federal government has just legitimized health coverage for potentially millions of homosexual partners of federal employees, and we are supposed to believe that the primary concern of the “chattering classes” is the dog bites man story of a philandering politician and hypocritical advocate of family values.
Memeorandum acknowledged a while ago that there is human input into their story display, so they can’t (or at least shouldn’t) hide behind the algorithm as an excuse for horrible news judgment. Once the camel’s nose is under the tent ….
 USS KInsman -battle scene HiRes.jpg "(46) USS KInsman -battle scene HiRes.jpg")
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