A QUESTION: Do you encrypt your email? If not, why not?
Archive for 2011
December 20, 2011
THE GIRL WITH the father tattoo.
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DIY CHRISTMAS: Build The Ultimate Stocking. “By folding up a couple of FedEx envelopes, you can create a stocking tough enough for anything Santa wants to put in there.”
THE BIOTERRORIST NEXT DOOR. “If these scientists have indeed used the techniques that they have verbally described (but not yet published) to produce a highly contagious and virulent form of the so-called “bird flu,” the feat can at least theoretically be performed by lesser-skilled individuals with nefarious intentions. Perhaps more significantly, the evolutionary leaps might be made naturally, via flu-infected birds, pigs, even humans. In other words, the research has implications for both terrorism and a catastrophic pandemic. Moreover, several experimental antecedents involving smallpox-like viruses and polio lend credence to the idea that concocting or radically altering viruses to create more lethal or transmissible germs is becoming an easier feat and an accidental byproduct of legitimate research.”
HOWARD LOVY: DNA: It’s Not Just For The Living Anymore. “To people who say that true nanomachines — those that assemble themselves from the bottom up — are impossible, the best answer true believers can give is simply to present their own existence as proof of concept. We are self-assembled out of simple building blocks.”
ED MORRISSEY IN THE WEEK: It’s Time For Eric Holder To Resign. “If all Holder has in defense of his performance and that of his Department of Justice is playing the race card in an attempt to bully his critics into silence, then he truly has no defense at all.”
INEXPLICABLE: Why Would Consumers Object to a Policy That Forces Them to Buy Expensive Products They Do Not Want? “Meanwhile, Politico notes that light bulb manufacturers ‘spent big bucks preparing for the standards,’ which they need to guarantee a market for high-margin products consumers otherwise would reject, and are ‘fuming over the GOP bid to undercut them.’ Aren’t Republicans supposed to be pro-business? Sometimes they are actually pro-market instead, and this is one of those cases.”
Hey, if you’re a pessimist, there’s still time to stock up.
PROF. JACOBSON: “Why do Republican politicians go on Letterman? I know it’s good exposure, but it’s exposure that always comes with a price. Letterman always makes the Republican look bad and weak.”
I GUESS THAT’S WHY THE WHITE HOUSE ISN’T CRAZY ABOUT IT: Keystone XL pipeline would boost prosperity, not government.
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Bad News Gets Worse For China. “Europe and China have this much in common: the bad economic news just keeps getting worse. The latest headaches for Beijing: Growing numbers of analysts fear that a combination of slumping exports and overexposed loans could spell real trouble for the increasingly vulnerable Chinese economy. . . . It is unlikely that anybody in China has any idea just how much of a mess they have on their hands. Local governments have every incentive to hide the full scope of their borrowing from central authorities — and local banks and businesses often have excellent reasons for helping the local authorities to hide their tracks and borrow and spend still more.”
THE LAST REFUGE OF A SCOUNDREL: “So who, exactly, is criticizing Holder because of his race? The Justice Department won’t say. Is he talking about Darrell Issa? Or the 60 congressmen, two senators, Republican presidential candidates and two governors who have called on him to resign? Or the seventy-five congressmen have signed a House resolution for a vote of ‘no confidence’ in Holder as attorney general? Or is Holder referring to people on the internet who have written about Fast and Furious, and criticized the Justice Department’s role in that scandal–like, say, me? Does he mean to include the 43% of voters who have an unfavorable opinion of him, compared to 19% whose impression is favorable?” Yeah, pretty much all of those. It’s amazing how racist America has become since Obama took office.
THE HILL: Senators urge regulator to take a hard look at Google’s search tactics. “Kohl and Lee said Google may be using its dominant position in online searches to give it an unfair advantage in other markets by ranking its own services — such as Google Maps, Google Travel or YouTube — higher in search results. . . . A Google spokesman noted that the senators did not take a position on whether the company has run afoul of antitrust law.”
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, WE’D SEE . . . OH, HELL, YOU KNOW THE REST: Secrecy Defines Obama’s Drone War.
AND AGAIN, AND AGAIN: Hayek Vindicated Again. “Way back on the Federal Page of today’s Washington Post is an article that ought to be on the front page above the fold, and its deep placement on the boutique page of the bureaucracy shows how the Post, like most everyone else, doesn’t understand what a big story it is. And it is clinical study of Hayek’s ‘knowledge problem’—the impossibility of centralizing fundamentally dispersed knowledge in a timely and accurate way—that we’ve discussed at various times here over the past few months.”
MICHAEL TOTTEN: Totalitarian Grief.
Looks like what we’re seeing is a case of preference falsification. More on that here.
UPDATE: Related: In Kim’s Death, An Extensive Intelligence Failure. We’ve had a lot of those.
POLL: 60% Favor Building Keystone XL Pipeline.
Well, as this graphic illustrates, it’s not like it’s anything unprecedented.
SALE, TODAY ONLY: Bosch 18-Volt Combo Kit with Instant $20 Off at Checkout.
AT THE LAWFARE BLOG: NDAA FAQ: A Guide for the Perplexed. “The volume of sheer, unadulterated nonsense zipping around the internet about the NDAA boggles the mind. There was a time–only a few months ago–when the NDAA detention provisions were the obscure province of a small group of national security law nerds. Now, however, this bill has rocketed to international notoriety. The added attention to it is a good thing. . . . Does the NDAA expand the government’s detention authority? Nope.”
IF WHAT’S IN THE LIBRARY ACCORDS WITH THE KORAN, IT IS UNNECESSARY. IF IT CONFLICTS WITH THE KORAN, IT IS DANGEROUS. Egyptian Activists Hurt Defending Library. Oh, wait, that was a different library. “The Institut d’Egypte, a collection of 192,000 documents first opened in Egypt in the 18th century, burned for 12 hours this weekend. Tragically, protestors alleged that they were attacked by soldiers as they tried to rescue 200 year old manuscripts from the burning library.”
BYRON YORK: GOP unhappiness with field fuels buzz for Jeb Bush. Hey, the “Bush brand” is looking a lot better in 2011 than it did in 2008. . . .
UPDATE: Reader Hugh North writes: “I’m a lifelong Republican, and I don’t like Obama’s policies at all… But I will vote Obama if it is a choice between Bush and Obama. Nothing against Governor Bush, but I refuse to support a dynasty. We live in a Republic, not a kingdom where power is passed by bloodline.” I agree, though I’d still vote for him over Obama. It’s the Syphilitic Camel Rule.
ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails: “So Obama’s family history should not handicap his chances of becoming president but Jeb Bush’s family history should? Strange world we live in.” Hell, we’re not even supposed to take account of Obama’s personal history.
RICK PERRY ON beer, guns & Iowa.