Friday July 30
George Will and WMDs
Conservative pundit George Will remarkably writes today that President Bush:
At least Will is rather consistent on this point. In June 2003, just a few months after the fall of Saddam Hussein, we wrote a piece saying that the "doctrine of preemption -- the core of the president's foreign policy -- is in jeopardy" because of the "failure to find or explain the absence of weapons of mass destruction that were the necessary and sufficient justification for preemptive war."
The problem with this analysis, as I have pointed out before (in fact, around the same time that Will first took his stand), is that Bush is in fact arguing that human rights justified the war. Without WMDs and the al Qaeda threat in Iraq, all that is left to justify taking out Saddam is that he was a bad guy. Bush can't utter the words "human rights" because that would concede that his boys ginned up the intelligence to make a fake case for war, that today rests on the leftiest of all liberal justifications.
Posted by glenn at Homeland Security, DC-Style
"Why don't you go and take care of some real crime?" This was the quizzical response by a middle-aged woman who was arrested this week for eating in the Washington, DC metro. She was searched, handcuffed and locked up for chewing the last bite of her candy bar after passing through the fare gates -- and released several hours later after paying a $10 fine, pending a hearing.
Silly me. Here I thought that the security and police forces of the nation's capitol were all geared up to protect us from bio-chem and other terrorist attacks. But no crime is too small for ever-vigilant law enforcement, now protecting subway riders from the hateful scourge of smacking lips and jihadist saliva.
Thursday July 29
Saving Himself From the NFL
The announcement by Ricky Williams, 27 year-old running back for the Miami Dolphins, that he is retiring after just five years in the National Football League took a lot of observers by surprise. It used to be that players only retired early if, like the legendary Gayle Sayers of the 1960s Bears, their careers were cut short by devastating injuries.
But today's players make so much money and work so hard, year-round, on the game, that I suspect they're suffering from burn-out. They don't need to play. And as Skip Bayless writes
Frankly, who can legitimately complain about a young man, already a multi-millionaire, who walks away from a game that leaves even Hall of Fame running backs basically crippled for life? "Selfish," yes, but also brave and smart, because in the long run Williams himself is the only friend he's going to have when the going gets tough. So if Ricky doesn't watch his own back (or hips or knees, as the case may be), no one else will.
Web Attacks Growing
Yesterday's news was about how the MyDoom virus took down many of Google's servers. Today it's that DoubleClick was crippled from a similar distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack launched against its ad-serving system. Denial of Service Attack Downs DoubleClick [PC World].
If ever there was solid evidence that the interconnectedness of the modern Internet is fostering increasing cybersecurity vulnerabilities, this is it. The government has called for a "public-private partnership," but otherwise done little to mandate security disclosures or jump-start private sector investment in cybersecurity. There's a big price we are all going to pay, in the long run, if this trend of avoiding major problems continues.
Wednesday July 28
Apple and Interoperability
Well, here we go again. Two decades after losing out on the Macintosh due to proprietary technologies that Steve Jobs refused to license, Apple Computer now has a dominant share of the digital music market -- both for downloaded songs (iTunes Music Store) and players (iPod). Many are claiming that if it refuses again to license, Apple will lose this advantage to "open standards." Meanwhile, competitors like Real Networks are already trying to crack or hack the Apple code in order to sell protected music files that play on iPods.
But I prefer to think of this like Peter Burrows of BusinessWeek, who writes that "the market for legal digital music may be an exception" to conventional wisdom that open standards are better economically. To my mind, if a company wants to keep its technology proprietary because it thinks it has built a better mousetrap, it is entitled to a marketplace test of that proposition. Recall Beta v. VHS. No one says Sony will die just because it keeps the formats for its MediaStick proprietary, instead of using open-standard digital storage devices.
More importantly, open standards really only work in markets with "network effects," where the more people on a platform -- whether a telephone network or a computer operating system -- the more valuable it is for any individual user. (It's actually more complex than that, because network effects markets will only "tip" to a single standard or provider if there are scale economies, but leave that economic theory aside.) There's nothing in digital music that makes it seem like a network effects market -- and most digital files use the open MP3 format anyway -- so Apple may become the "Windows" of AAC, its DRM-encoded product that finally convinced the major record labels to make their libraries available for online sales.
Oh, and Microsoft has done pretty well with Windows, which for sure is not an open standard. And it's nowhere with the WMA format (also prorietary), like Real itself, which pioneered streaming Internet audio and still maintains a proprietary standard. We can and should ignore the hypocrisy of Apple's rivals. But perhaps the analysts are right that Apple is poised to become the "Microsoft of music."
Tuesday July 27
The Great Farce
There's a superb op-ed piece by Richard Cohen in today's Washington Post. It addresses the sad fact that despite the biggest intelligence failures of our generation -- 9/11 and the total absence of the weapons of mass destruction used to justify the invasion of Iraq -- the Bush Administration has changed little except its rhetoric.
Cohen observes that Pres. Bush said recently he wants to move "quickly" to implement the 9/11 Commission's recommendations (even though he opposed it's creation), while he could have done all of this stuff already. So "it takes a New York kind of chutzpah for Bush to suddenly announce he will do what he has put off doing for lo these past three years. In that time the president steadfastly stood by his team of jolly incompetents," like George Tenet at CIA, who was kept on "even after he had assured Bush that it was a 'slam-dunk' that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction."
The best part is his conclusion. Cohen writes, from the Democratic National Convention in Boston:
Touche!
Throws Like a Girl
It's just hard to understand what John Kerry is thinking sometimes. He detours his plane to watch the Red Sox play the Yankees at Fenway Park on Sunday night, and then volunteers to throw the ceremonial first pitch. But instead of doing so from the box seats, he takes to the pitcher's mound and bounces the ball off the ground, never making it all the way.
Most people don't know Kerry had shoulder surgery (rotator cuff) on his right arm a few months back, so they will conclude -- as did the folks at ESPN's Pardon The Interruption -- that Kerry just "throws like a girl." That's a terrible way for a politician to introduce himself to the American public. (Of course, the vast right-wing conspiracy has long believed that Kerry throws like a girl, witness this excerpt from a GMA interview about his throwing war medals 30 years ago.)
Is Kerry really like the "girlie men" the Governator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is in trouble for mocking in California? Probably not, but the photo op makes him look like one. Just plain stupid.
Sweet Revenge
Acts of personal vengeance reflect a biologically rooted sense of justice, geneticists say, that functions in the brain something like appetite. Payback Time: Why Revenge Tastes So Sweet [NYTimes.com]
This sounds more like sociology than science to me. But the truth is the same; revenge is an endorphin and, like all emotions, both serves a social function and can get carried away, beyond its usefulness. So F.U.R.B.
Monday July 26
Games for Girls
A New Player at The Video Screen [TechNews.com]. Another in a long series of pesudo-exposes about why there are so few video and computer games oriented towards girls. Well, since 61% of all gamers are boys and young men, like Willie Sutton, that's "where the money is." No different than network TV advertisers going after the 18-34 male demographic. They may not like it, but chicks don't count very much in the computer gaming market. That's capitlailsm. Get over it.
Bad Sign for Dems
No one has ever accused Right Thinking from the Left Coast of being liberal. So when this staunchly pro-conservative blog observes that Bush really should be losing the election, it's an illuminating development.
Now, I happen to agree with Right Thinking about Kerry, although I might use the slightly less obnoxious phrase "stuffed shirt" to describe him.
Bourne Again
It's a fast-moving drama with lots of car chases. Very entertaining. The Bourne Supremacy topped worldwide box offices this weekend, twice as big an opening as its 2002 original. Like all movies drawn from spy novels, of course, it cannot hold a candle to the book. But who cares. This one was even better than the first!
Sunday July 25
A Failure of Nerve
The 9/11 Commission declared that the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States by Al Qaeda resulted from a "failure of imagination," in that no one in the intelligence community could imagine that terrorists would use aircraft as weapons. With today's news reports -- based on careful reading of the Commission's final report -- that senior officials of the CIA in 1998 scrapped a plan to kidnap Osama bin Laden as "too risky," that conclusion appears suspect, homogenized for domestic political consumption. What we had was a failure of nerve. The CIA's leadership was risk-averse, but the head of the agency's bin Laden unit thought it was "the perfect plan."
You don't get anywhere in this world without trying. It wasn't that these bozos couldn't think outside the box. Rather, they were saddled with decades of covert action failure, so were afraid to do anything. Paralysis by analysis. The cinema glorifies the intelligence community as bold risk-takers. Well they're not; just a bunch of scared old ladies frightened of failure.
Saturday July 24
Cockroaches Going Extinct?
As a former Manhattan resident, who suffered through the ignominy of roaches following me to three other cities to which I later moved -- and infecting my brother's apartment after he took possession of a teak credenza that had lived in New York City with me -- this story warms my heart. The Roach That Failed [New York Times]. It appears that the development of hydramethylnon bait (commercially sold as Combat) in the mid-1980s has been so successful that there have been "90 to 95 percent reductions in cockroach populations, across the country."
So the insects that have lived with mankind since the ancient Egyptians and can survive a nuclear bomb are finally on their way out. Now if only we can do the same thing with the other major scourge of human beings -- mosquitos.
Thursday July 22
Gay Marriage and Judicial Jurisdiction
The question of federal court jurisdiction to decide the constitutionality of acts of Congress has always been a thorny legal and political question. One of my law professors, the famed (and late) Herbert Wechsler, pondered long over whether Congress can legitimately withdraw jurisdiction for the federal judiciary to determine constitutional questions in specific classes of cases. (He also represented the New York Times in the famous Sullivan case about First Amendment limits on libel prosecutions, participated in the Nuremberg war crimes trials after World War II, and developed the influential "neutral principles" branch of constitutional jurisprudence, to which many African-Americans and others object vehemently because Wechsler concluded that the landmark Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decision was invalid.)
The rather esoteric legal argument is whether, having created the federal courts -- since the Constitution only commands one Supreme Court -- and vesting them with jurisdiction, there are any constitutional constraints on Congress acting the other way. Some say the equal protection clause prevents withdrawing jurisdiction over specific kinds of cases involving what the Supreme Court way back in 1938 called "discrete and insular minorities." Others take the position that Congress has plenary (total) power to decide what, if any, cases the federal courts can decide.
Now the issue of gay marriage may take this question from the realm of hypothesis to reality. Today the House of Representatives voted to remove federal court jurisdiction to decide challenges to the "Defense of Marriage Act." That legislation (28 U.S.C. 1738c) provides:
The bill passed today would disallow any federal court from deciding whether Section 1738c is constitutional. This frames the question quite clearly. Of course, it's just a cynical election-year ploy, as the Senate has rejected a consitutional amendment outlawing same-sex mariages and the House failed to pass legislation on the merits. So the House majority assumes -- probably rightly -- that withdrawing judicial jurisdiction is easier than winning on substance.
This is a lingering, but fundamental, issue about separation of powers in the U.S. that has been dormant for decades. It was also the question Prof. Wechsler posed in the final exam for his 1981 "Federal Courts and the Federal System" class at Columbia Law School. Perhaps Wechsler will finally get his "day in court." Too bad he hasn't lived to see it.
The New Cannibal
If you have not watched the Tour de France this year, featuring Lance Armstrong riding for his sixth consecutive win, you are missing a special moment in sports history. I Am Not the New Cannibal, Says Armstrong [Reuters.com]. The scene of Lance, starting last, snaking up the massively crowded, narrow, people-lined switchbacks of l'Alpe d'Huez yesterday was absolutely amazing. And his life story (cancer survivor, dating Sheryl Crow, etc.) is equally inspiring.
"We Have Some Planes"
It's the title of the first chapter of the 9/11 Commission Report, released today, as well as a quote from the terrorists who hijacked American Airlines flight 11 and, after struggling with some brave passengers, crashed into a field in Pennsylvania instead of the White House:
The Commission says it is not attempting to assess blame and is "looking backwards to look forward." I sure wish someone would try and assess blame. The reality that a bunch of two-bit, box-cutter armed idealogs could bring this country to its knees, without a real defense -- and without the scrambled jet fighter pilots even receiving the President's orders to shoot down hostile civilian aircraft used as weapons -- is absurd.
Yes, al Qaeda was ingenious, and as the Commission concluded there was a "failure of imagination," but the dots were there and had been connected by the analysts. The lack of responsibility, and revulsion, about this horrific failure of the country's vital national defense system is just shocking.
CoorsMolson
They are two of the best breweries in North America. Will the combined entity be known by one word, like DaimlerChrysler? Coors, Molson Sign Merger Deal [MSNBC]. The difference here, of course, is that in the car industry, Mercedes is a leader and Chrysler is a dog. Both Coors and Molson are way cool.
Wednesday July 21
Gray Holes
This is way too complex for laymen like me to comprehend fully, but renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking announced today that he had proven that information can indeed escape from black holes. The conventional wisdom the wheelchair-bound genius -- author of A Brief History of Time -- had advocated since the early 1970s was that black holes have such gigantic mass that nothing, even light, can escape. Hawking now says he was wrong, meaning that black holes cannot be "worm holes" to venture through to parallel universes.
And here I thought that, with private space travel coming soon, we could all engage in our own personal quantum leaps. Oh well. Stuck on this earth forever. But it remains true that time is relative, because while you may think you're reading this now, the present is already the past. Ponder that one!!
Tuesday July 20
iPod Nation
I haven't had a chance to read the article yet, but this week's Newsweek cover story about Apple's iPod MP3 player has a simply wonderful title -- "iPod, Therefore iAm." Go Steve!
You're No Good
Reacting to news stories that Linda Ronstadt was roundly booed off-stage and then fired by the Alladin Casino for making nice comments about Michael Moore during her show, morons.org observes ironically "we all know that True American Patriots go completely batshit insane and start angry mobs whenever somebody says something they don't like." Ah, tolerance is something special, but just something some Americans forget about from time to time.
Monday July 19
ICANN Is a Eunuch
ICANN Moves Toward Self-Rule [InternetNews.com]. If you know anything about domain name competition or Internet governance, you will quickly realize that this story is pure fantasy.
In 1998 the Clinton Administration proposed to move Internet administration and governance to the private sector. The result was the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which still operates under a contract with the Commerce Department. In short, it's been nearly a decade and the U.S. government has shown no signs of being willing to cede control of the Internet to anyone else.
Sort of like "it's our ball, and if you won't play along we'll take it home." Childish, but oh so very effective.
Sunday July 18
Swatting Flies
Now the ultra-paranoiod medical establishment says that folks shouldn't squash mosquitos because one elderly woman developed an infection by doing so. Flick Mosquitoes Away Say Doctors [BBC.co.uk]. Don't these morons have something more important to worry about, like curing cancer or AIDS? What a bunch of crap.
Thursday July 15
iPod Mastery
As an iPod owner since the first version came out three years ago -- and before then a denizen of Nomad Jukebox MP3 players -- I am thrilled to see that Apple's music devices and online iTunes music store have lifted the company's profitability. As Cythnia Webb writes, "Apple has been transforming itself into an entertainment company from a pure computer maker." Apple Thanks Its Lucky iPods [TechNews.com]. This is a shift that has been years in the making, and is a great development. The "digital hub" is becoming reality.
Tuesday July 13
Phishing For Bandaids
Last year the U.S. Congress outlawed spam. Of course, the actual legislation was so weak, and covered only American firms, that it was doomed from the start and has done nothing to stop the torrent of unsolicited commercial email.
Now legislators want to make it a crime to engage in "phishing." This is the use of chameleon-like emails, typically made to look as if they originate from a bank, PayPal, eBay or some other financial-related institution, to entice folks to part with sensitive personally identifiable information, like passwords and account numbers. Senate Bill Targets "Phishers" [TechNews.com].
The new bill is a charade. Pfishing is fraud, which is already a civil tort and a crime under both federal and state law. Adding a specific statute ciminalizing this behavior will do nothing to stop it and will not protect consumers who are too stupid to protect themselves. It's grandstanding of the worst sort, because it won't stop the abuses one iota. And don't even get me started on the United Nations' recent declaration of a two-year "war against spam." Worse than empty words.
Monday July 12
Ferrari Rolls On
Michael Schumacher may be the only man left in Formula One who is still amazed when he wins. Sunday's British Grand Prix win was the German's 10th in 11 races this year, the 80th of his career and fifth in a row. Schumacher Makes It 10 Wins Out of 11 [theage.com.au]. Like last week's win in France, Schumacher used some blistering lap times -- setting fastest lap four tours in succession -- to pull out enough time to pit and remain in the lead. But at Silverstone on Sunday he was closely chased for much of the race by Kimi Raikkonen in a newly revised McLaren-Mercedes. No difference; the Schumacher machine rolled on anyway.
Friday July 9
Saturn's Rings
Cassini Returns Dazzling Images of Saturn's Rings [New Scientist]. They've been a source of wonderment since Gallileo, and now they're here -- close-up -- in living color. Amazing.
Wednesday July 7
Grandparents and Evolution
Old people may hold the key to human civilization, say US researchers who claim to have found evidence that, about 30,000 years ago, many more people started living into old age. Human Race's Survival Could be Chalked Up to Experience. Apparently, as ancient homo sapiens began living longer, the development of grandparents allowed more food gathering, parenting expertise and overall experience to be passed on to later generations.
So the white hairs have value after all. Cool.
Tuesday July 6
Coach K's Principles
Mike Krzyzewski shocked the pundits, or at least some of them, by turning down the L.A. Lakers' offer of a head coaching position to stay at Duke University in North Carolina, a program he has taken to the Final Four more than any other college over the past two decades. Better The Devils You Know [washingtonpost.com]. It's a rare man today who foresakes money to in favor of principles and love. Coach K is a real gem!!
Sunday July 4
Blood, Sweat and Gears
The Tour de France has started once again. It's a spectacle, an epic sports event and a social happening in France, and if you follow just a few days on cable's Outdoor Life Network you'll become hooked. So hop on, peddle like mad and enjoy these tremendously strong fellows biking around at an amazing 30+ miles per hour. Then have your domestique (support rider) send up a little musette (snack in a cloth bag) and you'll be able to settle in for all 23 days and 2,000 km [ESPN Glossary].
