SHUT UP, THEY EXPLAINED: Occupy Students Shout Down Brewer. “In their latest bold stand for free speech, unruly Occupy students at American University in Washington, D.C., shouted down Republican governor Jan Brewer of Arizona on Friday, forcing her to flee the room with aid from security guards.”
Archive for 2012
February 27, 2012
GETTING TO KNOW the patient of the future. “Internet pioneer Larry Smarr’s quest to quantify everything about his health led him to a startling discovery, an unusual partnership with his doctor, and more control over his life.”
THE B-52 GETS A 21ST CENTURY UPGRADE. Amazing that we’re still relying on planes that are older than me.
SHOCKER: Christianity gets less sensitive treatment than other religions admits BBC chief. A few beheadings and that would probably change.
PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH: Crony Capitalist Epic Systems Gets Rich by Manipulating Stimulus Timeline.
JUST TWO DAYS UNTIL Blogger Appreciation Day!
GREETINGS FROM TENNESSEE: America’s Third Most Popular State!
BUT REMEMBER, ZBIG USED TO WORK FOR JIMMY CARTER: Brzezinski: Obama ‘Understands the World Better Than Any Other Politician.’
UPDATE: A reader emails: “Zbig might be a little biased …considering Obama gave Zbig’s son a plum post as US ambassador to Sweden.”
JACOB SULLUM: How Dahrun Ravi Could Get 10 Years for Expressing Unapproved Views.
Following up on George Korda’s warning . . . .
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Media Matters boss paid former partner $850G ‘blackmail’ settlement. “Media Matters chief David Brock paid a former domestic partner $850,000 after being threatened with damaging information involving the organization’s donors and the IRS – a deal that Brock later characterized as a blackmail payment, according to legal documents obtained by FoxNews.com.”
Related: Dershowitz to campaign against Media Matters. “’Not only will [the Media Matters controversy] be an election matter, I will personally make it an election matter,’ Dershowitz, a professor at Harvard Law School, told WABC’s Aaron Klein today.”
FASTER, PLEASE: Africa’s Amazing Rise And What It Can Teach The World. “Probably the most astonishing development success since 2000 in Africa has been the communications revolution.” I’m seeing signs of this in the Nigerian branch of my own family.
MAX FISHER: Stratfor Is a Joke and So Is Wikileaks for Taking It Seriously.
For comparison’s sake, The Atlantic often sends our agents into such dangerous locales as Iran or Syria. We call these men and women “reporters.” Much like Statfor’s agents, they collect intelligence, some of it secret, and then relay it back to us so that we may pass it on to our clients, whom we call “subscribers.” Also like Stratfor, The Atlantic sometimes issues “secret cash bribes” to on-the-ground sources, whom we call “freelance writers.” We also prefer to keep their cash bribes (“writer’s fees”) secret, and sometimes these sources are even anonymous.
So why do Wikileaks and their hacker source Anonymous seem to consider Stratfor, which appears to do little more than combine banal corporate research with media-style freelance researcher arrangements, to be a cross between CIA and Illuminati? The answer is probably a combination of naivete and desperation.
I’ve never been especially impressed with them, though some InstaPundit readers are fans.
REDUCTION IN CRIME CAUSED BY lead-free gasoline?
Wait, I thought it was because of Roe v. Wade.
THIS WEEK in the future.
AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Men’s Clothing.
GAS PRICES: Reader James Holloway sends this picture from Brooklyn, with the heading “Thanks, Barack!” Wow. I just paid $3.76/gallon (up from $3.72 the day before), but this is much worse.
HOSTAGE CRISIS UPDATE: Egypt opens trial at heart of rift with US. “Egypt pushed ahead Sunday with the trial of 43 employees of pro-democracy groups, including 16 Americans, even as Egyptian and U.S. officials tried behind the scenes to resolve the case that has caused the deepest rift in their alliance in 30 years.”
Related: Absolutely no spin at all: how the AP reports Obama’s hostage crisis in Egypt.
THE PROBLEM IS THAT WHILE SPAMBOTS ARE GETTING SMARTER, HUMANS REALLY AREN’T: CAPTCHAs need to get harder again. “It’s been getting harder to prove you’re a human online in recent years. The squiggly letters known as CAPTCHAs that protect websites against spam software have got more distorted, as the software has got better at reading them. That was why I thought it worth noting when NuCaptcha launched its video CAPTCHAs, which are easier for humans but still secure and have been adopted by sites including Groupon. Now researchers at Stanford suggest they, too will have to become more cryptic.”
HOW ACT OF VALOR filmed using real special forces. I haven’t seen it, but email from InstaPundit readers is uniformly positive.
NEIL ARMSTRONG SPEAKS.
AT LEAST THERE’S NO PRISON RAPE: A Lockyer Sex-Tape Stunner. “There’s a shocking twist in the saga of Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer and the incident at a Newark hotel that landed her in the hospital and a male acquaintance under police scrutiny. We’re told that a sex tape of Nadia Lockyer and the man was given to her husband, state Treasurer Bill Lockyer, about six weeks before the Newark incident. The treasurer believed that the man, who has a history of arrests for alleged methamphetamine use, might make the tape public if forced to break off a romantic relationship with the supervisor. . . . Efforts to reach Nadia Lockyer were unsuccessful, and her acquaintance isn’t talking. She has checked into a center for treatment of an unspecified chemical dependency, and he was released from the Santa Clara County Jail late Thursday after being arrested last weekend for alleged drug possession and driving under the influence.”
LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: Law Deans May Go to Jail for Submitting False Data to U.S. News.
FOUR HOURS OF EXERCISE A WEEK protects against work burnout and depression.
MISS ME YET? Video: Obama, Pelosi, Clinton Attacked Bush — For $3 A Gallon Gas. Now Obama would be bragging if he could get it back down to that price.