If you're new to the blogosphere, or just haven't checked out Den Beste's work before for whatever reason, you owe it to yourself to try a couple of sessions. If you used to visit his site, revisiting the regeneration module couldn't hurt. While we can't promise Jeri Ryan in a body stocking, we can promise a present you'll enjoy.

You have 2 options this Christmas. If you have a really, really big stocking, you can download the entire Krell Mind Machine as an 18MB ZIP file. Steven notes:

"My upstream bandwidth is 768 kilobits per second, which means each copy of this file will consume about 4 minutes of bandwidth, Please try to practice restraint and avoid bringing my server to its knees."

Or, you can opt for the incremental meld approach. Peruse his Essential Library, with its mirror copies of the media articles he deemed most important to understanding America, the world, and the war. Or tiptoe through the USS Clueless Best Log Archives page, which includes these entries:

• Diplomacy has nothing to do with "justice" or "fairness".
• The perpetual American revolution.
• A discussion of the prospects for development of a super-human intelligence.
• In response to a letter received from Tehran, my description of why non-extremist Muslims should be actively fighting against terrorism.
• A top-level briefing on the cause of the war, how we got involved, what our strategy is to win it, and how well that is going.
• On the advantages of cultural cross-pollination. (And why it's politically significant that Americans are especially good at it, especially compared to continental Europe.)
• I believe in atheism, but I know it can't be proved (because I used induction).
• I'm a "Conservative" because I'm a liberal.
• The guiding philosophy behind the founding of the European Union.
• Carrots and sticks and war: three articles about negotiations from a systems analysis standpoint.
• Everything that is truly important is worth fighting to defend.
• Why it's OK to make mistakes.
• How I write, which is to say, how it writes me.
• The horrors of war, and why we have to fight this one anyway
• Who our enemy really is, and what we'll have to do to achieve victory over them.
• The reason they hate us.
• On the significance of the American Citizen-Soldier
• Jacksonian foreign policy and world government.
• How I became an atheist
• Comments on the International Criminal Court:
  • as it relates to the US Constitution
  • the laws it will enforce
  • how its judges will be selected
• The most critical question in life
• The fossils of the Burgess Shale and World War III
• Knots in the web
• Two sides to terrorism
• The problems of (minor) fame
• Friends and enemies (And a reconsideration from a year later)
• How far will we have to go to win this war?
• It isn't my fault the world sucks!
• Are we alone?
• Ground war in Iraq
• American Holy Writ
• Apple: the big view
• Apple's Dilemma
• Compassionate racism
• Land mines
• Why are Americans suspicious of the motives of Europeans during treaty negotiations?
• Endgame: Why was the US experience in Afghanistan so much different than that the USSR?
• Press freedom in war
• Why we lost the Vietnam war
• Postmodern Literary Theory and Politics
• Isomorphism, the most important concept in Mathematics
• Amway, blogging and you
• The problems of building a habitat in space
• More on the US and NATO
• The marketplace of ideas and the triumph of the West
• I'm afraid, but I'm not uncertain
• Cultural relativism is chauvinistic
• There are no reasonable battlefield non-lethal weapons
• How I got interested in military history and military science
• The US and NATO
• The advantages of not being even-handed
• Ethical cynicism and war
• The difference between law enforcement and war

Merry Christmas to all, and to all some good bytes!