Category: News

Drudge links to a story in USA Today headlined Report: Feds lacks bioterror experts. The lead goes something like this:

The government will have an increasingly hard time hiring and retaining biologists and others needed to prepare for bioterror threats, a report concludes.

The report, according to the story, shines its light on the usual suspects: government pay contrasted with private pay, the decline of science graduates, and retirements.

On the other hand, it doesn’t seem to mention the interest the government lavishes upon persons that it hires in this capacity.

Maybe they need a new hiring campaign slogan, such as, “Work on Bioterrorism for us, and we’ll take care of you.”

CNN reports: Last ship in Mars-bound armada begins risky trip.

Couldn’t that warmonger keep his ambitions planetary? No! Instead, he and the martial NASA send an armada, literally a fleet of warships, to Mars to conquer another undefended desert!

For certainly, the CNN headline writer was conscious of the ramifications of the word he, she, or it chose, right?

The Federal Trade Commission, an appointed and not elected body, has determined that individual states do not have the right to pass laws regulating commerce within their borders when it comes to the Internet.

In a move my newly-Federalist friend El Guapo might approve, the FTC would lift bans on Internet wine purchases. Some states think it’s too easy for minors to get liquor off the Internet, so they want to prohibit Internet vendors from selling wine to consumers in those states via the Internet.

The FTC, however, has found another way to abuse the powers granted under the ill-conceived interstate commerce clause of the United States Constitution. Instead of letting the individual states handle moral issues (alcohol consumption) and logistical issues (keeping wine out of minors), Uncle Sam must be listening to the last lobbying dollars from vino dot coms.

“By allowing interstate direct shipping, states would give consumers the opportunity to save money on their wine purchases, and would let consumers choose from a much greater variety of wines,” the FTC said in its report.

It’s all for the betterment of the consumer, and it’s at the expense of the states, who lose more power appropriately left ot them and, ooops, lose all that sales and excise tax money which they cannot charge on Internet sales.

It’s oh so wrong in oh so many ways, I will leave it at that before I start foaming Les Bourheois Jeunette Rouge at the mouth and stain the keyboard.

Professor Reynolds links to this story by Erica Jong wherein Ms. Jong dispenses some advice for married people and their sex lives. Unlike her books, this article seems to present the idea of preserving a marriage.

I guess I shouldn’t be so quick to generalize. I’ve only read How to Save Your Own Life (the sequel to Fear of Flying), and since I was not a neurotic, repressed adultress-waiting-to-happen, I didn’t feel empowered by it.

The New York Post proves once again about how Stephen King is a good guy. Apparently, he bought out a show of 28 Days Later and gave the tickets to other people who wanted to see it.

Lileks mentions the story in a Bleat.

I think Democrat House Representative Jerry Kleczka, of Milwaukee, was trying to lash out against those tax-cutting Republicans in Congress when he kleczkavetched to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

“There’s a conscious decision here to just destroy the revenue base of this country,” said Kleczka, a Milwaukee Democrat. “They’re starving the Treasury.”

Starving the Treasury? Not spending money that the government does not have? Is this a problem or good governance?

Editorial in today’s Washington Post shows exactly how bad things have gotten in Pakistan:

Over the past few years, extremist Islamic groups in Pakistan have mounted a unilateral terror campaign. But Americans and Christians have not been the only victims. Women, secular advocates and even Muslims — Ahmadis, dissenting Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims — have also come under attack. [Emphasis mine.]

Oh, my. So it’s not just Americans and Christians dying, which is okay; now it’s other minority groups, which is somehow worse than just Americans and Christians.

Now that protected groups are getting it, perhaps we should start protecting them. Am I reading this op-ed piece right?

A survivor of the Bali terrorist bombing recently expressed the sentiments we all share when the admitted terrorist shouted “Allah Ackbar!” in the courtroom.

Jake Ryan, a survivor of the bombing who had bone shrapnel of other victims removed from his body, arose and loudly explained:

“You’re a f . . king dog, mate, you are going to die, you f . . k.”

Tim Blair has started a fund to buy Mr. Ryan some beer to toast his eloquence. I have contributed. You should, too.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is reprinting a Knight Ridder Newspapers syndication about how to enter the IT world by learning a little geek speak.

Words like PEBKAC? Nagware? OS? LAN? Intranet? Firewall?

Drop those in your job interview, you little punk, and we’ll know your certs were vaporware. Get back to AOL where it’s safe. Before you do, please confirm your credit card number below.

Fred Kaplan, of Slate, elucidates on the MDA’s recent missile test. He says it’s laughable that the interceptor could have missed and the test succeeded. His ignorance shows, but professional writers, and by professional writers I mean “all other professional writers except me,” don’t have to know much about the real world to pund.

I’ve gone on about this missile test before, and I am too bored to go over it again. I’ll let John J. Miller handle Kaplan.

Another suburb of Milwaukee is suffering from a shortage of Paxil. Residents in Cerdarburg have created a petition complaining that the colors of playground equipment are too colorful.

If it’s not the color of a duck blind, suburban Milwaukee communities don’t want it. Heaven forbid their property values not rise as quickly as the next drab suburb over.

In Florida, a group of kids were swimming in a river even though they could see alligators nearby all day. Of course, when they saw the alligators, they got out of the water. Except for the toughest of the bunch, who might have been trying to prove his bravery. It didn’t work out for him.

Do you think we’ll get a summer of Alligator Attack! hype from this?

Headline on CNN: Missile misses target, officials call it a success. Implication seems to be that the officials (military-techno-industrial complex!) are, um, Mooring the truth a little, too say the least.

After all, the lead intones:

The Missile Defense Agency conducted a missile defense test over Hawaii Wednesday, and while the warhead did not strike the target, officials said they still considered the exercise a success.

“I wouldn’t call it a failed test, because the intercept was not the primary objective,” said Chris Taylor, a spokesman for the MDA. “It’s still considered a success in that we gained great engineering data. We just don’t know why it didn’t hit.”

Well, the missile test also did not:

• Fix the economy.
• Prevent the Oracle hostile takeover of PeopleSoft.
• Repair France’s image problem with American tourist money.
• Vote for my slogan at IMAO.

However, none of these was the objective of the test, and hence none represents criteria for success. The engineers, who are working on the project, probably have a reasonable idea of where they are in the development cycle. As a matter of fact, the officials indicate (but are not quoted in their own words) as saying:

Three previous flight tests were successful, Taylor said, but they used an earlier version of a system to control the warhead’s aim and maneuvering. Information from the earlier tests was used for a new design of the system, which was used in Wednesday’s test, the Defense Department said. [Emphasis mine]

So the MDA or its engineers redesigned a part of the system and are testing it out for the first time? Note how CNN uses a “but” conjunction in the quote above. I wonder if the second clause, or whatever source from which it came, opposed the first clause. I doubt it. I suspect criteria for the test might have included things like the operations of the independent systems within the interceptor.

No matter the criteria in this individual test, I am glad to see the flaws shaken out before the system’s deployed. If the MDA hadn’t caught this flaw now, it would have made living in Los Angeles or Seattle much more dangerous a couple years from now. Permanent shadows don’t log defects.

Maybe the media should understand the goals and process of testing before they start pontificating.

St. Louis Magazine has a story in its June issue (not yet online) about St. Louis gangs in the 1920s and their wacky whackings. Written in sepia-prose and laid on a parchmentesque watermark, this piece romanticizes a bloody bunch of men and their battles to control crime, which included mail truck robberies and control of the illegal drug market, which meant alcohol trafficking.

Contrast that with gangs today. Rap music, particularly gangsta rap, idealizes the lifestyle, and I suspect most people who turn to St. Louis Magazine to find dining plans or interior design ideas don’t care for gangsta rap and probably hate and fear the thought of current gangland violence.

Is the difference in gang perception based on race? That is, does middle America prefer its gangs Irish instead of another, differently-colored minority?

Maybe a little bit, but I reckon it’s more the long, long ago in galaxy far, far away aspect of it. Egan’s Rats and the Cuckoos, whose the survivors have died of old age by now, aren’t a current threat to law abiding, SUV-driving folk, but today’s gangs are.

Someday, I imagine our descendants will read about drive-by shootings with the same amused interest, thinking “Shooting from a car with a nine millimeter pistol! How quaint!”

It’s not clear which portions of the Bill of Rights or Constiturion Orrin Hatch considers sacred, but given his interest in allowing RIAAvens to destroy the computer of someone who downloads copyright songs illegally, I could only answer for certain “Article I, Section 3.”

Choice quotes from the linked article:

During a discussion on methods to frustrate computer users who illegally exchange music and movie files over the Internet, Hatch asked technology executives about ways to damage computers involved in such file trading. Legal experts have said any such attack would violate federal anti-hacking laws.

“No one is interested in destroying anyone’s computer,” replied Randy Saaf of MediaDefender Inc., a secretive Los Angeles company that builds technology to disrupt music downloads. One technique deliberately downloads pirated material very slowly so other users can’t.

“I’m interested,” Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone’s computer “may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights.”

The senator acknowledged Congress would have to enact an exemption for copyright owners from liability for damaging computers. He endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, “then destroy their computer.”

“If we can find some way to do this without destroying their machines, we’d be interested in hearing about that,” Hatch said. “If that’s the only way, then I’m all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize” the seriousness of their actions, he said.

So Senator Hatch, a legislator, wants to cede law enforcement, the duty of the executive branch of the government to private industry. Further more, he wants that private industry to punish a civil offense with damage to personal property (I cannot fight the bold font any longer) without due process and without a warrant (illegal search and seizure).

He wants this to protect an industry that’s doing its best to hang itself with mediocre music, boy bands, American Idol, and targetting an audience with no disposable income but with Kazaa.

I wish I lived in Utah so I could vote against him.

“There’s no excuse for anyone violating copyright laws,” Hatch said.

Hang ’em high, Judge Roy Bean. Make it a capital strict liablitly offense then.

Aristotle said, “Everything in moderation,” and the bureaucrats at the forthcoming People’s Democratic Republic of Europe know that since a little moderation is good, a great deal of coerced moderation must be better. Hence, they want to moderate every type of Internet site to ensure that both sides of any issue get equal time to express their viewpoints. CNet’s Declan McCullagh has the details.

As I have said before, some think that the linchpin of democracy was the unlegislated mandate called the Fairness Doctrine.

Of course, the same people tend to think that your property, whether it’s your radio station or your Web hosting, does not belong to you, it belongs to the hoi polloi, and they get to administer the application of your limited rights to your own property. You’re not qualified to decide who gets to speak on your time and your dime.

According to the BBC, to whom I was pointed by Instapundit, it wants US intervention in its uprising against the ruling theocracy.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which I get delivered on weekends because, well…. hmm, I’ll get back to you on that, the Iranian people does not want US intervention in its uprising against the ruling theocracy.

Which is it? The answer is Yes.

Because The People of Iran is not an It, they’re a They. Because the individuals within any group of people, especially a group narrowly defined based on ethnicity, location, or nation, hold different and often contradictory positions on any number of issues, you can probably attribute any sentiment to The People and not be wrong.

However, it’s an interesting way of flushing out a “journalist” and his or her own personal biases. Whenever reading one of these pieces, you can determine the point of view closest to the heart of the “journalist” (not counting limited omniscient, which is the Point Of View many journalists think they have). The “journalist” projects this sentiment to the People.