STATE OF OUR UNIONS: Obama Should Have Talked About Marriage.
I had some somewhat-related thoughts here.
Archive for 2014
January 28, 2014
RON FOURNIER ON THE STATE OF THE UNION: “Is that all there is?” There’s never been much there, Ron. And Clint’s empty-chair monologue continues to resonate.
JUNK FOOD: E ‘quello che c’è per cena! “As childhood obesity has risen all over the world in the last few years, and as Italy’s rate of childhood obesity has now reached one in three, I can see that what has changed is the introduction of processed and fast foods.”
FOR ONCE, HE AND I ARE ON THE SAME PAGE: Reid’s biggest SOTU fear? Falling asleep.
To stay awake, I recommend following Stephen Green’s drunkblogging. But Harry might not enjoy that as much.
EUGENE KONTOROVICH: How to judge the constitutionality of President Obama’s State of the Union ideas. “The president, on these matters, cannot bypass Congress. Nor is legislative inaction due to different views in the House and Senate a bug – it is a feature designed to promote deliberation and limit government action.”
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ANOTHER EDUCATION BUBBLE: Schooling has exploded in the Third World, but literacy and numeracy remain wretched. “The average Haitian and Bangladeshi today have more schooling than the average Frenchman or Italian in 1960.” But, like many of our own elites, they’re more credentialed than educated. And there’s evidence that the same factors are involved.
JIM GERAGHTY: The State of the Union: The Self-Congratulatory Blowout of the Governing Class.
Related: Kevin Williamson: Great Caesar’s Ghost. “It’s the most nauseating display in American public life — and I write that as someone who has just returned from a pornographers’ convention.”
UPDATE: From the comments: “A naked emperor addressing a parliament of whores.”
SO THE “SECURE” PART WAS KIND OF A MISNOMER: If You Used This Secure Webmail Site, the FBI Has Your Inbox.
While investigating a hosting company known for sheltering child porn last year the FBI incidentally seized the entire e-mail database of a popular anonymous webmail service called TorMail.
Now the FBI is tapping that vast trove of e-mail in unrelated investigations.
The bureau’s data windfall, seized from a company called Freedom Hosting, surfaced in court papers last week when prosecutors indicted a Florida man for allegedly selling counterfeit credit cards online. The filings show the FBI built its case in part by executing a search warrant on a Gmail account used by the counterfeiters, where they found that orders for forged cards were being sent to a TorMail e-mail account: “.”
Acting on that lead in September, the FBI obtained a search warrant for the TorMail account, and then accessed it from the bureau’s own copy of “data and information from the TorMail e-mail server, including the content of TorMail e-mail accounts,” according to the complaint (.pdf) sworn out by U.S. Postal Inspector Eric Malecki.
The tactic suggests the FBI is adapting to the age of big-data with an NSA-style collect-everything approach, gathering information into a virtual lock box, and leaving it there until it can obtain specific authority to tap it later. There’s no indication that the FBI searched the trove for incriminating evidence before getting a warrant. But now that it has a copy of TorMail’s servers, the bureau can execute endless search warrants on a mail service that once boasted of being immune to spying.
“We have no information to give you or to respond to any subpoenas or court orders,” read TorMail’s homepage. “Do not bother contacting us for information on, or to view the contents of a TorMail user inbox, you will be ignored.”
In another e-mail case, the FBI last year won a court order compelling secure e-mail provider Lavabit to turn over the master encryption keys for its website, which would have given agents the technical ability to spy on all of Lavabit’s 400,000 users – though the government said it was interested only in one. (Rather than comply, Lavabit shut down and is appealing the surveillance order).
I knew it was a mistake electing Dick Cheney to be Bush’s third and fourth terms. Oh, wait. . . .
NEW FRONTIERS IN FILM RESTORATION: Smut, Refreshed for a New Generation. I’ll bet there are a lot more mustaches than in the modern stuff. Plus, this evergreen caution: “Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s classic.”
DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: Andrea Mitchell: Iran ‘More or Less an American Ally’ before Bush Put Them in ‘Axis of Evil.’
I’M SURPRISED HE HASN’T RUN FOR OFFICE: Life As A Nonviolent Psychopath.
A FALL OF MOONDUST: China’s Jade Rabbit Rover In Trouble. “As for what caused the malfunction, abrasive lunar dust is a top suspect. Moon soil gets ground up by micrometeoroid impacts into a glassy dust that can then become charged as it is bombarded by solar particles. During the Apollo program the sharp-edged dust grains wore through astronaut space suits, scratched up mirrors used for laser ranging experiments and caused moon buggies to overheat.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Law’s Long Bitter Descent and its Tragic Human Toll.
The legal profession isn’t dying; it’s just shrinking. However, the business model isn’t what it was in the golden age — but, then, the “golden age” was an aberration and really didn’t last all that long.
I DUNNO, BUZZ ALDRIN’S STILL LOOKING PRETTY SPRY: Beings Not Made for Space. “The human body did not evolve to live in space. And how that alien environment changes the body is not a simple problem, nor is it easily solved.”
But Buzz has something he believes in.
JUSTINE BATEMAN BLOGS ABOUT her life as a 47-year-old college sophomore. She’s studying computer science.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Forbes: Welcome To “Girlington”: Helen Smith On How College Is Becoming A Hostile Working Environment For Men.
THE CARNIVAL OF SPACE IS UP!
WASHINGTON POST: Democrats enter the economic doghouse ahead of Obama’s State of the Union. “Americans trust Republicans more than Democrats to do a better job handling the economy 44 percent to 37 percent, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. It’s the first time since 2002 that Republicans have sported a meaningful advantage, and larger than any edge congressional Republicans have held over Obama during his administration. . . . The findings come as Obama and Democrats are looking to shift attention away from the the troubled rollout of the health-care law and toward the emerging debate over economic inequality, which Obama will highlight in his speech Tuesday night. He will hit the road to visit four states beginning Wednesday to tout his administration’s economic efforts.” Note particularly the GOP’s gains among nonwhites and young voters.
ONE BULLETPROOF SUIT, SIZE 46L PLEASE: New 3D Printer by MarkForged Can Print With Carbon Fiber. Okay, not yet. But soon.
RICHARD EPSTEIN: The Fragile State Of The Union. “Nor is it possible to rail at the Republicans for their heartless cuts in the safety net, in light of the pattern of transfer payments and unemployment benefits. The OECD account on this point concludes tersely: ‘In the United States too, the increase in social spending generally outpaced GDP-growth in recent years and by 2013 public social spending has been estimated to have increased to 20% of GDP, up from 17% in 2008,’ which amounts to about a 17.6% increase. At the same time, the attacks on the cuts to food stamps must come to grips with the major expansion in that program over the past five years.”
I think he’ll find it possible to rail at the Republicans nonetheless.