Various things

Tonight I am leaving to go on vacation for all of next week. So, this is the last blog post for a week and a half.

Various things:

Who'd have expected Newt Gingrich to show up at a conservative function and declare:

"Republican political doctrine has been a failure."

"None of you should believe we are winning [the War on Terror]... We are in a phony war ... we have not been taking this seriously."

Well then. I suppose he isn't running for the Republican nomination in 2008.

Also TED has released some videos from its conference in Africa last June. I'll post two of them

In the first, a clearly very nervous William Kamkwamba (I mentioned him earlier here) explains how he build a power-generating windmill out of a bicycle, wooden boards, a pulley and some plastic tubing. In the second, Nigeria's former finance minister continues the trade vs. aid debate.