Sad, but becoming true

.gov is the new .com [Link]

Remarking on Anil Dash joining Expert labs, Theresa D. Singh tweeted:

.gov is the new .com

and I couldn't help but think back to a New York Times article which mentions Henry Chung, formerly an assistant vice president at Merrill Lynch, now a NYPD patrol officer, and another officer who formerly worked for WaMu:

“I was making a lot of money, and then not making money,” he said. “As the economy got worse, the investments dried up and I needed more stability. The police offer a pension that’s unheard of.”

And I shudder at the notion that ".gov is the new .com" is completely plausible.

Fear of Sarah Palin

I'm not sure why, she is a private citizen who holds no office. So stop acting like she does. [Link]

Y'all well know that I really don't like Sarah Palin.  In fact, more than one of you has yelled at me about this.  And I find the whole schtick about how the media is just a bunch of elitist hooligans who are out to get her really grating.

That's why I really wish the media wouldn't act like, well, a bunch of elitist hooligans who are out to get her.  I've coined a new phrase to cover the situation:  Palinoia.  It's when you think people are out to get you, and then they do their best to justify your erroneous belief.

The Newsweek cover was a sexist embarrassment.  Hell, they wouldn't have highlighted an article about Hillary Clinton with that stupid nutcracker, yet there's apparently a photo of "Sarah Palin doll as slutty schoolgirl".  This is enormously disrepectful to someone who, like it or not, was a vice presidential candidate, and deserves to be treated the same way that her predecessors were.  If you wouldn't put a photo of Joe Biden in his running shorts on the cover, you should damn well extend the same courtesy to Palin, howeer much you dislike her.

They fear her.

Eric Holder gets schooled

From Althouse. [Link]



UPDATE More on Eric Holder's testimony and why this whole thing is a bad idea. [Link]

3.  We can protect classified material because of the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA).  It is not just classified information that is helpful to terrorist organizations. The list of people who might be identified as unindicted coconspirators that I had to turn over in 1995 was not classified, but it told al-Qaeda who was on the government's investigative radar screen. Moreover, CIPA does not shield all classified information from the terrorists — just the classified information the judge decides is neither discoverable under the rules nor relevant to the trial. If it is discoverable and/or relevant, the defense gets it. And in civilian court, the terrorists can demand to represent themselves (as I explained in this column), so the government can't shield the classified information from them as it can in the military system (where it can require them to have military lawyers with security clearances in order to get access to the discovery).

In answering Senator Hatch's questions, Holder emphasized that the coconspirator list in my case was not a classified document (as I explain above). That, however, doesn't help the attorney general's argument. To the contrary, it demonstrates that there is a great deal of non-classified information that comes out in a civilian trial, and that gets made available in civilian discovery, that is not classified. This information is still incredibly helpful to the people trying to kill us.

Moreover, the Left always complains that too much information in government is classified. Implicitly, Holder is now suggesting that we classify far more information than we otherwise would to bring it under the protection of CIPA. In addition, CIPA requires that all classified information issues be litigated (including any appeals) prior to trial. If we classify everything, that's going to require a mammoth pretrial trial and appeal before the actual trial happens. And, even if you did that, CIPA cannot control what goes on in the courtroom once witnesses start answering questions and blurting out information — and once defense lawyers start asking questions about classified information in order to provoke the prosecutors into objecting (defense lawyers often don't care about the answers to these questions; they ask for the purpose of inducing the prosecutor to object and make the government look like it is hiding important information from the jury).

It's not a tumor

It isn't. It's a worm. [Link]

Rosemary Alvarez started experiencing numbness in her arm and blurred vision. She went to the emergency room twice and had acat scan, but everything came up clear, MyFOXPhoenix.com reported.

Click here for a video.

It wasn’t until doctors took a closer look at an MRI that they discovered something very disturbing.

“Once we saw the MRI we realized this is something not good,” neurosurgeon, Dr. Peter Nakaji told the news station. “It's something down in her brain stem which is as deep in the brain as you can be.”

Alvarez was wheeled into surgery where Nakaji and his colleagues were expecting to remove a tumor, but they uncovered a worm instead.

On a video of the surgery, Nakaji can be heard chuckling after he made the discovery.

“I'm sure this is a very strange response for the people in the operating room,” he told MyFOXPhoenix.com. “But because I was so pleased to know that it wasn't going to be something terrible.”

My head is itching just thinking about it.

Explaining Auto-tune

Funny and informative.

3D simulation of Flight 1549

Pretty amazing. [Link]

When the plane went down in January, it didn’t take long before the internet was flush with videos of Flight 1549 landing in the Hudson. They appeared everywhere from YouTube to the evening news, offering a fascinating look at a flight that lasted less than six minutes and made Capt. Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenbergerand First Officer Jeffrey Skiles household names.

But the latest work by Kas Osterbuhr, an engineer at K3 Resources who specializes in the visual presentation of complex data, goes one step further. It reconstructs the flight using vast amounts of material, including radar information showing the position of the geese that led to the Airbus A320 losing power. The result is an incredible series of videos providing an immersive look at the flight of Cactus 1549.

The main video (featured below) shows a 3-D simulation of the flight from the moment the brakes are released at La Guardia to the collision with the geese to Sully’s amazing touchdown. It shows the flight from several angles, including a constant cockpit view in the corner, as well as the plane’s air speed and altitude. The video also includes the audio between the crew and air traffic control and text of the conversation between Sullenberger and Skiles. It’s an up-close-and-personal look at the demeanor of both pilots.

Subsequent videos provide an overhead view of greater New York with radar returns for all the aircraft and bird flocks in the area. You can see there was more than one flock in the area and the birds that hit Flight 1549 were visible before the collision. Osterbuhr notes these types of radar returns often are filtered from controllers — they don’t see them, in other words — to keep the controllers focused on the aircraft instead of smaller things that often pose no danger to the planes. Smaller returns often are false positives anyway, and there’s a lot of work being done to develop a reliable avian radar system to warn airports, controllers and pilots of birds that may pose a hazard.

Much more info here. [Link]

Cool Rider

Cheaper, cooler alternative to the Segway. [Link]

Now you can have all the fun of a Segway without looking like a dork. Notice how the Cool Rider is positioned to be a much more stylish conveyance, ridden by a suave gentleman with an insouciant sunglasses-wearing air.

He's probably happy that he can zip along at 12mph, looking cool while spending $1250 for the privilege, about a quarter the price of the much-geekier Segway. If he wants to be really daring, he can don a pair of roller blades and ditch that standing sled altogether. 

Now that's a casemod

Awesome glowing cube that is a computer. [Link]

The ION Cube is a design by Bill Owen of Mnpctech.com, and it won first place in NVIDIA's competition. It's a fully functional computer — one that glows, to boot. "The concept reminded me of when LEGOS started incorporating UV Green parts into their "Space" sets in the late 70s and continue to today," Owen said of his design.

More Torchwood coming

Great. Children of Earth was very good, if very depressing. Looking forward to seeing the band get back together. [Link]

Talking to TV Guide magazine, Russell T Davies has confirmed that there are plans afoot for a fourth season of Torchwood, which was widely expected after the success – critically and commercially – of Torchwood: Children Of Earth earlier this year.

Speculation had been rife that a new series was coming, but Davies admitted that "The recession has hit British television, but fingers crossed, it will be a go.” Furthermore, he said, “We expect things to start to move in January. We've got great ideas for the show. I think there's a further lease of life for many years to come.”

From what he also said, it seems that he knows exactly where everything will pick up, too. He admits that he already knows where Gwen, Rhys, their baby and Jack are, and what shape Torchwood itself would actually take (which is a big unresolved issue in itself).

Why is he bowing again?

More apologies to world about America? [Link]

This time to the Japanese emperor.

Power Line says:

Obama's breach of protocol is of a piece with the substance of his foreign policy.

Breach of protocol? Obama is establishing the protocol here. It is what heintentionally does, I would think. But it is fair to tie the gesture to Obama's general message:

He means to teach Americans to bow before monarchs. He embodies the ideological multiculturalism that sets the United States on the same plane as other regimes based on tribal privilege and royal bloodlines. He gives expressive form to the idea that the United States now willingly prostrates itself before the rest of the world. He declares that the United States is a country like any other, only worse, because we have so much for which to apologize.

Once is an accident. Twice means...

UPDATE: Let's compare how other world leaders have greeted royalty. [Link]

When is a tax not a tax?

When levied by Obama. Emphasis added. [Link]

Obama has come up with a strategy to avoid the fate of George H.W. Bush: Although he will raise your taxes, he will never admit he is raising your taxes.

Campaigning in Dover, New Hampshire, in September 2008, Obama declared: “I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”                    

Five months later, Obama signed a bill that more than doubled the federal cigarette tax, which falls especially heavily on the poor. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs argued that it didn’t really count, because “people make a decision to smoke.” Similarly, White House spokeswoman Linda Douglass says financial penalties for failing to obtain medical coverage are not taxes because “a fee would only be imposed on those few who could afford to purchase insurance but refuse to do so.”

Yet the fact that you can avoid a tax by changing your behavior does not mean it isn’t a tax. You don’t pay gasoline taxes if you don’t drive, you don’t pay property taxes if you don’t own real estate, and you don’t pay income taxes if you don’t earn income. In this case, people are subject to the “fee” simply by virtue of living in the United States and choosing not to buy something the government thinks they should.

Douglass likens the individual health insurance mandate to state requirements that drivers have liability insurance and that parents educate their children. But people who violate such laws are subject to criminal penalties. Neither the House nor the Senate health care bill would establish criminal penalties for refusing to buy health insurance, presumably because due process requirements would make it hard to impose them.

Instead the bills would establish a “tax on individuals without acceptable health care coverage” and an “individual responsibility excise tax,” respectively. “If you put something in the Internal Revenue Code and you tell the IRS to collect it,” a tax expert told the Associated Press in September, “I think that’s a tax.”

The president disagrees. “For us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase,” he insisted during a squirm-inducing September 20exchange with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “You can’t just make up that language and decide that that’s called a tax increase.” Stephanopoulos responded by literally getting out the dictionary to demonstrate that “a charge…imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes” is commonly considered a tax.

If Obama can deny that a charge is a tax even when it’s collected by the IRS and identified as a “tax” in the legislation creating it, he surely sees nothing tax-like in the money people are required to spend if they want to avoid that charge. Yet forcing people to buy insurance they do not want so their premiums can subsidize other people’s health care looks a lot like a tax-funded welfare program, even if the money does not flow through the public treasury.

Clash of the Titans

Trailer.

Now you can watch arbitrary decisions in real time

Apple App Store adds dashboard for developers to see where their app is in the approval process. [Link]

In Apple’s Dev Center website, iPhone app developers can view Apple’s progress on reviewing their apps from start to finish. When an app is in line to be reviewed, the status will read “Waiting for Review.” And when it’s actually being reviewed, the status reads “In Review.” Finally, when the app is launched, the status will read “Ready for Sale.” Each status update is accompanied with a time and date. (In the screenshot above, the developer’s name and app were omitted for the sake of privacy, and to prevent violating a nondisclosure agreement.)

Apple’s previous review status system was terse and impersonal. All developers could see was a status graphic providing the average wait time for submitted apps. The bulletin would read, for example, “Based on current app submissions, 96 percent of applications are being approved within 14 days.”

Now developers can see individual progress reports on the apps they’ve submitted.

Though Apple’s App Store is the most prolific in the mobile space, with over 100,000 apps and counting, the Cupertino, California, company has come under fire for its opaque, inconsistent approval process for iPhone apps.

Apple’s App Store reviewers have made questionable rejections as well as approvals. For example, theyrejected an e-book reader app called Eucalyptus because it was able to retrieve the Kama Sutra from Project Gutenberg, a repository of public-domain books. The reviewers later approved the app, admitting there was “confusion.” However, Apple earlier approved Baby Shaker, a game whose objective was to shake a baby to death. The company later pulled the app after it sparked parental outrage.

The April Fools Joke that became reality

The Tauntaun Sleeping Bag. [Link]

When ThinkGeek's Tauntaun sleeping bag debuted last year as an April Fool's joke, a million voices cried out demanding it be made. The company picked up on this disturbance and, now, you can finally preorder your very own alien kangaroo Snuggie for $100.

From ThinkGeek:

This high-quality sleeping bag looks just like a Tauntaun, complete with saddle, printed internal intestines, and a plush lightsaber zipper pull. Now when your kids tell you their favorite Star Wars movie is "Attack of the Clones" you can nestle the wee-ones snug in simulated Tauntaun fur while regaling them with the amazing tale of "Empire Strikes Back".

The zipper pull is a lightsaber! You can gut this Tauntaun just like in the film. Let's hope it doesn't smell worse on the inside because, really, just wash the damn thing.

This seems really true to life

See the cartoon. [Link]

YOU KNOW ONE OF THE NICE THINGS ABOUT BEING FRIENDS WITH A CARTOONIST?

You can tell him an idea you think is pretty good, and the next day he sends you something that's better than you could have imagined:

Normal people aren't interesting enough for the media. They want train wrecks, or clowns.

Railguns getting closer to reality

Multiple rounds fired from new system. [Link]

San Diego, Calif., October 22, 2009. General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems division (GA-EMS) has successfully fired multiple rounds for the first time in a prototype of its new Blitzer™ electromagnetic railgun air defense prototype system.  These tests were performed at the US Army Dugway Proving Grounds under a contract with the Office of Naval Research.  Testing is scheduled to continue through spring of 2010 and will culminate with the launch of tactically relevant aerodynamic rounds.

Blitzer will provide transformational, leap-ahead air defense capability against a number of threats for both naval and land-based applications.  With a muzzle velocity of more than twice that of conventional systems, Blitzer provides significant increases in standoff and lethality at lower cost without the need for propellant or high explosives.

“These tests are an important first step toward demonstrating the viability of a revolutionary technology that will significantly improve the safety and protection of our warfighters at sea and on land,” says GA-EMS Division Vice President R. Scott Forney III.  “GA’s internal investment in prototype development of both the energy pulse power system and Blitzer™ electromagnetic railgun continues to demonstrate our commitment to complement our customer’s efforts with transformational electric platform technologies.  Confirmation of the electromagnetic design increases confidence in related launcher and all-electric technologies.”

General Atomics is a San Diego-based innovation firm with a 50-year history of successful solutions for environmental, energy, and defense challenges. Affiliated manufacturing and commercial service companies include General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., which produces the Predator® family of unmanned aircraft systems.

How can we drop the Theater from "Security Theater"?

Collecting data would be a good first step. [Link]

Over these last few months, I have grown increasingly frustrated with what I view as an unjustifiable intrusion on my privacy.   It was not so much the search (then) as it was the embarrassment of being singled out, effectively being told “You are different,” but getting no explanation as to why.

That frustration has been tempered by a combination of my desire to be a good citizen, and my empathy for the TSA screeners.  These folks, after all, are merely doing what we, the American traveling public, have permitted and now expect them to do.

I am left to wonder whether my own passive acceptance of these evolving search procedures has contributed to a potentially fatal dichotomy:  what weallow TSA screeners to do in order to maximize efficiency and enhance our perception of safety, or what we really need them to do in order to preserve our rights and dignity and enhance our actual safety.

We have asked TSA to find the tools terrorists use and prevent both from boarding a passenger plane.  We have unintentionally created an agency that now seeks efficiency and compliance more than any weapon or explosive.

While returning my computer and shoes to their proper places, I watched the screening line at BWI.  I thought about the haphazard events surrounding the security screening process.  As I watched the screening officers, I wondered what information drives their decisions.  Left only to my observations, I concluded that their decisions were entirely random, and likely based upon three criteria:  passenger load, staffing, and whim.

I was left to conclude that I am not screened because I look like a terrorist. I am routinely screened because I look like someone who will readily comply.  I decided then that my next invitation to enjoy additional screening would be met with more inquiry.

I did not have wait very long.  On my return through Albany to BWI — Surprise! –  I got “randomly selected” for additional screening.

This time, I was “invited” to step into one of the explosive detection machines, commonly referred to as a “puffer machine.”  The traveller is exposed to short, intense bursts of air, which are then, supposedly, analyzed for trace residue.

I read an article awhile ago that suggested these machines are entirely ineffective.   I have subsequently observed that they now sit idle at many airports where they were originally installed (Tampa International, for example).  In recently renovated airports (San Jose) they have not been installed.  At some other airports (like BWI), they have been replaced by the body-scanning technology.

The TSA needs to start doing the same data capture that police departments did to assess how "random" random searches actually were.

Does he have to make everything be about him?

Few could have foreseen it. [Link]

Even in a two-and-a-half minute speech about an event as epochal as the fall of the Wall, somehow he finds a way to make it about him:

“Few would have foreseen … that a united Germany would be led by a woman from Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent. But human destiny is what human beings make of it,” Obama said.

Skip ahead to 4:30 or so of the Russia Today clip to watch Hillary introduce him as “someone who represents the fall of different kinds of walls.” Even here, history is a handmaiden to The One’s grandeur.

Fox News speculated earlier that Obama might have decided against attending in order to avoid annoying his new partners in peace in Moscow. Think they’re wrong? Watch the BBC clip and count the number of times The One names either “Russia” or the “Soviet Union” as the party responsible for the Wall. The closest he gets is the reference to the Iron Curtain; aside from that, all we really learn here is that there was some vague tyrant that used to oppress eastern Europe but has since receded into the mists of history. Ask the Poles and Czechs how they feel about that “recession” in the wake of our new missile defense arrangement.

Be sure to count the number of references to Reagan and Thatcher too.

Landing drones on carriers

They can, as long as the weather is calm and clear. [Link]

The Navy’s top admiral told a think-tank audience yesterday he wants more unmanned aircraft in the sea service, and he wants ‘em in a hurry. In particular, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughead said he’d like a robotic attack aircraft that can land and take off from a carrier. As it happens, I saw a full-scale mock-up of just such a plane a few weeks ago.

The X-47B is expected to make its first flight by the end of the year and could be making autonomous carrier landings as soon as 2011. In the meantime, drone-maker Northrop Grumman decided the show the thing off to the press at Edwards Air Force Base.

It’s no secret that unmanned aerial vehicles are becoming the preferred eyes in the sky and weapons platform for the military when it comes to combat zones. But so far the drones have been limited to operating from established air bases and flying relatively slow and easy, high above the action. The X-47B has the potential to change all that.

Northrup Grumman’s Tighe Parmenter says the X-47B is a test vehicle designed to demonstrate that a tailess, stealthy, unmanned aircraft can operate in the carrier environment. If the unmanned aircraft performs as planned, “it’s likely the Navy will pick a design like this to replace the F/A-18 Hornet.” The X-47B has a wingspan of just over 62 feet, has a range of more than 2,000 miles and can carry 4,500 pounds of internally stored bombs.

The bad news is the tailess, flying wing planform of the X-47B comes with some inherent stability and low speed flying issues that make the take off and landing from an aircraft carrier a real engineering challenge. The good news is Northrup Grumman has a lot of experience with the flying wing design, most recently with the B-2 bomber.

Landing an airplane on an aircraft carrier is considered one of the most difficult things to do in aviation. The Navy wants this experimental craft to do it autonomously — no humans involved. The X-47B will have to be able to take off and land from an aircraft carrier deck without a pilot sitting at a remote control station; that’ll set it apart from today’s drones, like the Predator.  Taking off isn’t too much of an issue. Landing is where the engineers will earn their paycheck.

The cost of corruption

$1.6 Trillion per year. Wow. [Link]

How much do crooked politicians and others steal every year?

Nobody really knows, of course, but as the BBC reports today, the UN estimates that $1.6 trillion each year is stolen each year and moved across national borders. Tragically, much of this money is stolen from poor countries.  It is bread taken out of the mouths of the poor.

Don’t expect this figure to drop any time soon.  Led by Russia, China and Iran, a large group of countries are fighting efforts to crack down.

This money is significantly greater than the value of all foreign development aid.  It is more than the ten year cost of the health care bill that just passed the House.  It would be enough to fund a worldwide basic  health system and provide basic primary education to every child on earth. Over the next fifty years it will cost the world much more than climate change.

More than that, the level of criminality and incompetence demonstrated by the existence of so much theft is the most serious obstacle to economic and social development around the world.  It is not just that governments administered by thieves are both indifferent to the plight of the poor and unable to run programs that will help them; it is also that voters in rich countries aren’t stupid.  If foreign aid were perceived as being more effective, political support for it would rise.