A REPORT ON THE MOBILE ZOMBIE COOKIE WARS. “When some iPhone and iPad users recently tried to delete cookies from their browsers, they discovered they could not stop a third party from watching their mobile web browsing habits. Ever. Such cookies can be zombie-like: ridding a device of these tags is not unlike slaying the undead. . . . The Center for Investigative Reporting recently highlighted two studies showing how much information apps can lift. Half of the 30 popular Android apps investigated secretly transmit the geographic location of users. (Hey, you could advertize your coffee shop around the corner before the smart-phone user gets there!) The same study showed that seven of the 30 apps investigated send ‘information uniquely identifying the phone and occasionally include actual phone numbers as well as serial numbers assigned to SIM cards.'”
Archive for 2010
October 15, 2010
FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE CARTOONISTS. “Once upon a time, members of the media could be counted upon to champion free expression even when nobody else would. Where the First Amendment was implicated, newspapers were willing to go to bat for everyone from neo-Nazis to Hustler magazine, and to take on powerful institutions from the Vatican to the Pentagon, often while patting themselves on the back for ‘speaking truth to power.’ Yet when it comes to the Islamic question, many in the media will not even stick up for themselves. That is, to say the least, a very ominous development.”
They’re cowards who can be easily manipulated by threats. This, of course, encourages more of the same. Don’t think that others haven’t noticed.
JEREMY LOTT ON the importance of the Dino Rossi / Patty Murray race.
THE COMING MIDDLE-CLASS ANARCHY: ““We follow the rules, and look where that’s gotten us?”
KARMA, OR SOMETHING: Celebrities Particularly Susceptible to Bedbugs, Experts Say.
A BIG BANG? OR A “BIG BOUNCE?”
Inflation is an episode of exponential expansion thought to have occurred fractions of a second after the big bang. It is needed to explain, among other things, why the universe today has the geometry it does, but explaining what triggered inflation is tricky. . . . Enter loop quantum gravity, devised by Abhay Ashtekar of Pennsylvannia State University (PSU) in University Park and colleagues to reconcile general relativity with quantum mechanics. When Ashtekar’s team created cosmological models inspired by LQG in 2006, these suggested the universe emerged from the remnants of an earlier universe that was crunched down to a tiny volume by gravity, not from the big bang.
Interesting.
JOHN HAWKINS interviews Pamela Geller on her new book, The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America.
WELL, THIS IS AN EMBARRASSMENT FOR SOMEBODY: BREAKING: Prosecutors of Dutch MP Geert Wilders Ask Court To Acquit on All Charges.
MY HIGHER-EDUCATION BUBBLE TALK AT CLEMSON is now available on video online.
INFOGRAPHIC AND VIDEO: The Real Unemployment Rate.
THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Treasury’s handling of TARP: Sloppy and secret.
BLOG-COMMENT thread of the day. Clamato? Really?
MICKEY KAUS ON THE CHEVY VOLT: “What’s clear is that GM’s skilled auto engineers have been undercut by the company’s incompetent PR engineers, who seem to feel the public doesn’t have the patience for real world progress and has to be spoonfed a fantasy comeback story.”
JIM TREACHER: Whoopi Goldberg just published a book on civility. No, seriously! In calling Whoopi a “screeching harpy,” Treacher signals that he’s just as qualified to write a book on civility as she is.
CLARENCE PAGE: WHAT’S SO BAD ABOUT ELITES? The problem we have is that our “elites” — a reader keeps telling me that “gentry” is a better term, and he’s right — aren’t really elite. That is, they’re not actually especially smart or well-educated or competent. They’re just credentialed. That’s not the sort of elitism that commands respect, which is why it’s not getting so much anymore, as people catch on.
A ONE-DAY-ONLY SALE: Stargate SG-1.
TUNKU VARADARAJAN: What should libertarians want from the 2010 elections?
THE BARNEY FRANK PRIVATE JET STORY ISN’T FADING AWAY.
U.S. Rep. Barney Frank’s GOP challenger is calling on the congressman to release an ethics opinion that Frank says cleared his trip to the Virgin Islands aboard a $25 million private jet owned by a billionaire hedge fund manager.
“Frank should release the opinion from the Ethics Committee so we know exactly what Frank was claiming,” said Sean Bielat, the Newton Democrat’s Republican opponent. “If he did not disclose all the gifts or undervalued them, he could be in violation of House ethics laws.”
The Herald reported this week that Frank and his partner, Jim Ready, made the tropical getaway just before Christmas 2009 on a jet owned by financier S. Donald Sussman, fiance of U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine). In addition to flying from Maine to the Virgin Islands with Sussman and Pingree, Frank and Ready stayed in Sussman’s mansion on the island, an aide told the Herald.
Frank reported the jet ride as a gift in required House financial disclosures – claiming the cost of the flight was $1,500 – but reported no other expenses related to the vacation. Aviation experts say the cost of flying a private jet between Maine and the Virgin Islands would cost as much as $30,000 each way.
House Ethics rules aren’t exactly stringent — but I don’t want to hear one goddamned word about my freaking carbon footprint from Barney Frank, or his cronies.
Including his crony Nancy Pelosi: New documents uncovered by Judicial Watch show Pelosi took 85 trips on military aircraft.
HIGHER EDUCATION: “As for the difference between the Harvard undergraduate pool and those at Evergreen or Ole Miss, we’re not so sure. We’ve met students at all three, and once one gets underneath the polish, they’re much the same. Harvard kids have a nice suburban veneer, burnished by professional parents. By age 35, in a blind test, don’t be so sure you can identify who is who. In our book, as you know, we looked at a Princeton class as they entered middle-age. Nice enough; but really very ordinary.”
THE GRAYING OF THE TAXMAN: 33% of IRS’s 106,000 Employees Are Eligible for Retirement. “Many of these employees possess unique skills and institutional knowledge that will be difficult to replace.” On the upside, if we abolished the income tax, this would be a convenient time to do it. . . .
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Kyoto Fraud Revealed. “The left leaning Guardian newspaper in Britain let the cat out of the bag yesterday, reporting that while the EU’s emission of CO2 declined by 17% between 1990 and 2010, this apparent progress was bogus. If you add up the CO2 released by the goods and services Europeans consumed, as opposed to the CO2 thrown off by the goods and services they produced, the EU was responsible for 40% more CO2 in 2010 than in 1990. The EU, as the Guardian puts it, has been outsourcing pollution — and jobs — rather than cutting back on greenhouse gasses.”