I think Joe Lieberman …

… is almost down to a constituency of one. I have no idea why McCain lets him linger around the fringes of his campaign. Joe-mentum provides zero bipartisan bona fides and sounds crazier with each new sound bite.

From the link:

In describing the reasons he believes the Republicans’ presumptive nominee for president would be better prepared than the Democrats’ to lead the nation next January, Sen. Joe Lieberman said that history shows the United States would likely face a terrorist attack in 2009.

“Our enemies will test the new president early,” Lieberman, I-Conn., told Face The Nation host Bob Schieffer. “Remember that the truck bombing of the World Trade Center happened in the first year of the Clinton administration. 9/11 happened in the first year of the Bush administration.”

538 projections — end of June

Here’s the latest election projections from FiveThirtyEight.com.

Update 8/14/08 — If you’re finding this page now hit this link for my latest update, or better yet head straight to 538 for their very latest projections.

Quantum stickiness, Hawking and teh funny

From KurzweilAI.net, micromachine stiction, Stephen Hawking tackles the universe’s inflation and defining humor.

How a quantum effect is gumming up nanomachines

New Scientist news service, June 28, 2008 Researchers are making progress in overcoming static friction, or or “stiction,” which sticks together the parts of micromachines on scales of between 10 and 300 nanometers and limits progress in reducing their size, affecting computer hard drives and other devices with small moving parts. Stiction is due to the Casimir effect, a quantum-mechanics phenomenon that causes surfaces to be attracted. Methods to reduce its effect include use of patterned surfaces, suspending the components in a liquid, and use of metamaterials.   Read Original Article>>

Hawking ‘close’ to explaining universe’s inflation

New Scientist (article preview), June 28, 2008 Starting with current observations of the universe and working back to narrow down the initial set of possibilities and by treating the early cosmos as a quantum object with a multitude of alternative universes that gradually blend into ours, Stephen Hawking and colleagues think they are close to perfecting an answer to explain why the infant universe expanded so rapidly. (Subscription required)   Read Original Article>>

Mechanism and function of humor identified by new evolutionary theory

PhysOrg.com, June 27, 2008 Humor occurs when the brain recognizes a pattern that surprises it, suggests Alastair Clarke in the forthcoming book, Humour. “Now that we understand the mechanism of humour, the possibility of creating an artificial intelligence being that could develop its own sense of humour becomes very real,” he says. “This would, for the first time, create an AI capable of exhibiting one of the defining characteristics that make us human, making it seem significantly less robotic as a result.”   Read Original Article>>

The US can’t change administrations fast enough

This is just one more bit of governing overreach from the failed Bush 43 regime.

Two excerpts from the link:

Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.

The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.

But the decision to freeze new solar proposals temporarily, reached late last month, has caused widespread concern in the alternative-energy industry, as fledgling solar companies must wait to see if they can realize their hopes of harnessing power from swaths of sun-baked public land, just as the demand for viable alternative energy is accelerating.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Holly Gordon, vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs for Ausra, a solar thermal energy company in Palo Alto, Calif. “The Bureau of Land Management land has some of the best solar resources in the world. This could completely stunt the growth of the industry.”

And:

While proponents of solar energy agree on the need for a sweeping environmental study, many believe that the freeze is unwarranted. Some, like Ms. Gordon, whose company has two pending proposals for solar plants on public land, say small solar energy businesses could suffer if they are forced to turn to more expensive private land for development.

The industry is already concerned over the fate of federal solar investment tax credits, which are set to expire at the end of the year unless Congress renews them. The moratorium, combined with an end to tax credits, would deal a double blow to an industry that, solar advocates say, has experienced significant growth without major environmental problems.

“The problem is that this is a very young industry, and the majority of us that are involved are young, struggling, hungry companies,” said Lee Wallach of Solel, a solar power company based in California that has filed numerous applications to build on public land and was considering filing more in the next two years. “This is a setback.”

POPaganda on public television

I’m not going to tell you how to vote, but I would heavily suggest hitting this link and voting for POPaganda.

I’m sure the other two films are wonderful, but my loyalties lie with Ron and his amazing artwork.

From the link:

	POPaganda: The Art & Subversion
	Director: Pedro Carvajal A profile of the artist and activist Ron English who dares to hijack corporate advertising by using familiar words and images to create confrontational art with a message.

Boosting brain power

I’d love to get my hands on one of these devices. Or maybe just track down some plans and build one.

Via KurzweilAI.net:

Want to Enhance Your Brain Power?

Technology Review, June 26, 2008 Researchers at the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke are studying how applying gentle electrical current to the scalp can improve learning. The transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS) deviceuses a simple nine-volt battery, which passes about 2 to 2.5 milliamps of electrical current directly to the brain through the scalp and skull. Researchers found that direct current stimulation could improve memory in participants asked to learn and then recall a list of 12 words.   Read Original Article>>

Nanowire circuits and tracking asteroids

From KurzweilAI.net, the House passed a bill to begin tracking potential Earth-strike asteroids, and a new low-cost, high-volume method of integrating nanowires onto silicon has been developed.

House passes bill mandating a plan for asteroid warning and deflection

KurzweilAI.net, June 27, 2008 In recently passed H.R.6063, The U.S. House of Representatives would direct the NASA Administrator to develop plans for a low-cost spacemission to rendezvous with the Apophis asteroid and attach a tracking device (subject to Senate approval). The Apophis is expected to pass at a distance from Earth that is closer than geostationary satellites in 2029. The bill would also require the Director of the White House’s Office of Science and TechnologyPolicy (OSTP) to develop a policy within two years for notifying Federal agencies and relevant emergency response institutions of an impending near-Earth objectthreat. And the OSTP would be required to recommend a Federal agency (or agencies) to be responsible for protecting the Nation from any near-Earth object anticipated to collide with Earth, and for implementing a deflection campaign.

 

Researchers develop new technique for fabricating nanowire circuits

Nanowerk News, June 26, 2008 Scientists at Harvard University and German universities of Jena, Gottingen, and Bremen have developed a reproducible, high-volume, low-cost fabrication methodfor integrating nanowire devices directly onto silicon. The method incorporates spin-on glass technology, used in silicon integrated circuits manufacturing, and photolithography, transferring a circuit pattern onto a substrate with light. These devices can then function as light-emitting diodes, with the color of light determined by the type of semiconductor nanowire used. Because nanowires can be made of materials commonly used in electronics and photonics, they hold great promise for integrating efficient light emitters, and could lead to the development of a completely new class of integrated circuits, such as large arrays of ultra-small nanoscale lasers that could be designed as high-density optical interconnects or used for on-chip chemical sensing.   Read Original Article>>

Obama and Clinton together …

… onstage at a rally in Unity, New Hampshire.

Here’s a running diary of the event from the New York Times.

From the link:

The View From Unity

By Katharine Q. Seelye

Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama in Unity, N.H. (Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

3:15 p.m. | Hillary’s Women So we just met up with a couple of die-hard Clinton supporters who said this unity event had not persuaded them to back Mr. Obama.

Carmella Lewis, 57, a retired ad saleswoman and a Clinton delegate from Denver, was carrying a big “Hillary” sign. She came all the way from Colorado for the event, even though she didn’t believe in it, because she wanted to convey her support to Mrs. Clinton.

“As a politician, she’s got to try to bring the party together,” Ms. Lewis said. “But I have a gut feeling that something’s going to happen so that she becomes the nominee.” She said she would not vote for Mr. Obama and that when he spoke, she stuffed her ears with tissue.

Is the SEC growing instead?

This post is a follow-up to one earlier this week about a Wall Street Journal article stating the SEC is on its way out and the way the Bear Stearns debacle was handled is a symptom of the disease within the commission.

Christoper Cox, current chairman of the SEC, has vehemently fired back (albeit internally) in response to Monday’s WSJ story.

From the second link:

Rarely in its 74-year history has the Securities and Exchange Commission been so squarely on the griddle, with new reforms seeming to target its very existence and Chairman Christopher Cox personally being criticized as “peripheral,” in the words of a critical Monday profile on the Wall Street Journal’s front page.

Cox has said little publicly about the criticism, much of which relates to his and the SEC’s role in dealing with the collapse of Bear Stearns and its later bailout managed by the Fed. But in internal memos made available to CFO.com, the chairman clearly seems to be simmering close to the boiling point.

In a 17-paragraph memo to the entire SEC staff that started with a note that he was “very disappointed” by the Journal story, Cox defended the SEC’s role in dealing with Bear as “one of a high degree of inter-agency cooperation.” And he noted that the SEC’s position in the case of the bailout was legally limited because the agency could not be “cast in the role of regulator of the merger and also potentially enforcer of the laws against fraud in connection with the transaction.”

Nanny state in action — UK style

Really there’s so much to choose from when writing about nanny statism in the United Kingdom, but this story is pretty special. Insane government overreach? Check. Outlandish fines? Check. Mind-numbingly vapid and inane target for the regulation? Check.

From the article:

The citizens of Whitehaven try, really they do. They separate out their cans, their paper, their cardboard and their glass, and they recycle them all. They compost. They jump up and down on their trash to cram it into their government-issued garbage cans, and they put the trash out for collection at exactly 7 a.m., twice a month.

But when Gareth Corkhill, a bus driver, was fined $215 — and given a further $225 fine and a criminal record when he failed to pay — for leaving his garbage can lid slightly ajar this spring, Whitehaven’s residents banded together in dismay. They raised the money to pay the fine, and they began to complain.

 

Quantum images

From KurzweilAI.net:

Physicists Produce Quantum-Entangled Images

PhysOrg.com, June 25, 2008 Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland (UM) have produced “quantum images,” pairs of information-rich visual patterns whose features are entangled (linked by the laws of quantum physics). (NIST) Matching up both quantum images and subtracting their fluctuations, their noise is lower (so their information content potentially higher) than it is from any two classical images. In addition to promising better detection of faint objects and improved amplification and positioning of light beams, the researchers’ technique for producing quantum images may someday be useful for storing patterns of data in quantum computers and transmitting large amounts of highly secure encrypted information.   Read Original Article>>

Broadband, the US and the future

The New America Foundation — a think tank self-described as investing in, “new thinkers and new ideas to address the next generation of critical challenges facing the United States” — hosted a forum on broadband in the US.

Here’s a quick description from an email I received from the group:

On Monday New America’s Wireless Future Program hosted a policy forum highlighting the critical need for developing an affirmative national broadband strategy to keep the U.S. prosperous in the 21st Century.  We also released a new Issue Brief, by NAF’s Benjamin Lennett, that explains how unlicensed access to TV band ‘white space’ will give a big boost to rural broadband.  

Here’s a link to a PDF of the report’s executive summary.

Update — this post was initially only going to cover the NAF forum, but here’s some interesting broadband news via KurzweilAI.net:

Time reversal allows wireless broadband under the sea

New Scientist news service, June 25, 2008 Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and NATO Undersea Research Center have developed an “acoustic time reversal” technique that boosts underwater wireless broadband speed by up to three times, or extends the range up to 3500 km. The system compensates for reduced signal/noise ratio due to phase-delay artifacts from surface and sea-bottom echoes. A receiver first transmits an acoustic carrier signal. The sender then time-reverses what they receive, and also modulates the signal to carry a message.   Read Original Article>>

Second Amendment intact

In a widely anticipated result, the Supreme Court overturned the ban on handguns in the nation’s capital by ruling on DC v. Heller. I was hoping to link to the Volokh Conspiracy for more substantial legal reasoning, but had to settle for the easy link via Drudge above as Volokh is apparently facing major web traffic today (something along the lines of four to five times the usual). I’ll update later with something a little heavier.

I’ll add my own bravo for SCOTUS. This decision seemed pretty cut-and-dried given the current makeup of the court, but it is the first substantial ruling on the language of the Second Amendment and it was important the berobed nine got it right.

From the link:

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense in their homes, the justices’ first major pronouncement on gun rights in U.S. history.

The court’s 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia’s 32-year-old ban on handguns as incompatible with gun rights under the Second Amendment. The decision went further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most firearms restrictions intact.

The court had not conclusively interpreted the Second Amendment since its ratification in 1791. The amendment reads: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

The basic issue for the justices was whether the amendment protects an individual’s right to own guns no matter what, or whether that right is somehow tied to service in a state militia.

Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that an individual right to bear arms is supported by “the historical narrative” both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted.

Do go ahead and hit the Volokh link in my blogroll and dig around. The site is slow today, but there’s a wealth of opinion and analysis of this decision.

Update — here’s a link to the entire decision via the Daily Dish.

Some good news from Iraq

The Iraq war has been very polarizing, especially this election year since the general consensus is Hillary lost because of her vote for the war. In fact, it’s been reasonably opined Obama would’ve never joined the race this year without that wedge. And of course, earlier in the GOP primaries John McCain stated the US might be in Iraq for 100 years or more. This topic will be in the forefront for the rest of this election cycle.

Strip away the polititicking and the reality on the ground is still going on right now. There are US soldiers in harms way, the mission to create a democratic Iraq from the rubble of Saddam’s oppressive rule continues and solutions to a very difficult position are being sought and tried out.

One solution that has been very effective is the “surge,” adding more boots on the ground. There is still much violence — it is a war zone — but in way we are beginning to win some of the “hearts and minds” battles that seemed to become lost in the haze of the insurgency, and a civil war among Muslim factions.

Here’s an interesting account by Kevin Ferris in the Philidelphia Inquirer on the topicthat features Michael Yon, the noted milblogger.

From the link:

As I rewatched the movie Obsession – Radical Islam’s War Against the West recently, a few things jumped out, including these quotes from various Arab media outlets:

“America is the foremost enemy of the Muslim nation . . .”

“They have come to fight the people of Iraq . . .”

“The Americans must understand that when they attack the holy places, they attack all the Muslims of the world.”

The film also showed propaganda videos from Iran, which included shots of U.S. forces kicking in doors, missiles being launched, Arab children crying, Muslims running with their wounded. Interspersed throughout were images of a smiling President Bush.

None of this was particularly original. What stood out, though, was the realization that since this movie was released in 2006, the United States had actually increased troop levels in Iraq, had redoubled efforts to rout al-Qaeda there. If anything, Bush had given propagandists more fuel to inflame the anti-American Arab street.

The result?

Rather than our forces’ driving Iraqis into the arms of the radicals, the reverse happened.

It seems Iraqis have decided that al-Qaeda, not America, is the “foremost enemy.” That al-Qaeda, not America, had come to fight the people of Iraq. That al-Qaeda, not America, was the enemy of Muslims and their holy places.

Does this mean Iraqis want America encamped there forever? Of course not. Or that innocent life hasn’t been lost as the result of U.S. actions? No.

But what irony. In the heart of the proposed capital of the radical Islamist caliphate, the antidote to jihadi propaganda has actually been exposure to the courage, decency and values of U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.

Over the last five years, Iraqis have had the chance to see both sides in action: terrorists, extremists and militias that slaughter civilians at every opportunity vs. Americans who go out of their way to protect innocents, to help provide basic services, to rebuild communities.

(Hat tip: Millblogging.com)

Post number …

… 500. Woot!

I started this blog early this year. This post marks the 500 mark. And in exciting news, this blog will soon be distributed through the Newstex “Blogs on Demand” syndicate.

Thanks for the support and do keep on reading. You can expect more of the politics, technology and business, with a little extra … mix I strive to post.

Police state in action — Fed style

This is unbelievable. Unless there’s a lot more to this story than the article suggests it seems if you are a US citizen consider your civil liberties threatened, if not nonexistent, until a sane group of individuals (either party will do just fine) can get into the halls of power next January.

If this activity is common and has become standard operating procedure, the terrorists truly have “won” the last six-plus years. I wonder how a group of dark age fools could wreak such ongoing havoc on the very fabric of the world’s largest, and really only, superpower.

The Bush 43 regime has been an abject failure on so many levels it’s truly astounding. In 2000 I honestly thought he would be an adequate president, and that might have come to pass had 9/11 not occurred. Of course it seems Cheney and a small group of the ex-Nixon administration neocons had some objectives going into their second tour of the White House that might have been executed with, or without, 9/11. We’ll never know, but man we’re dealing with an awful aftermath of failed policy, government overreach and the absolute gutting of the civil liberties on which our founding fathers placed the utmost importance. 

From the link:

Returning from a brief vacation to Germany in February, Bill Hogan was selected for additional screening by customs officials at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C. Agents searched Hogan’s luggage and then popped an unexpected question: Was he carrying any digital media cards or drives in his pockets? “Then they told me that they were impounding my laptop,” says Hogan, a freelance investigative reporter whose recent stories have ranged from the origins of the Iraq war to the impact of money in presidential politics.

Shaken by the encounter, Hogan says he left the airport and examined his bags, finding that the agents had also removed and inspected the memory card from his digital camera. “It was fortunate that I didn’t use that machine for work or I would have had to call up all my sources and tell them that the government had just seized their information,” he said. When customs offered to return the machine nearly two weeks later, Hogan told them to ship it to his lawyer.

 

The extent of the program to confiscate electronics at customs points is unclear. A hearing Wednesday before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on the Constitution hopes to learn more about the extent of the program and safeguards to traveler’s privacy. Lawsuits have also been filed, challenging how the program selects travelers for inspection. Citing those lawsuits, Customs and Border Protection, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, refuses to say exactly how common the practice is, how many computers, portable storage drives, and BlackBerries have been inspected and confiscated, or what happens to the devices once they are seized. Congressional investigators and plaintiffs involved in lawsuits believe that digital copies?so-called “mirror images” of drives?are sometimes made of materials after they are seized by customs.

Blog glossary

If you’ve ever wondered about some of the blog-specific words and phrases out there in the blogoshpere, look no further. Here’s a great blog glossary courtesy of Samizdata.

Is the SEC on its last legs?

According to one former commissioner, no.

From the link:

Some suggest that the Securities and Exchange Commission is hurtling toward extinction. On Monday, for example, a Wall Street Journalfront-page analysis of Chairman Christopher Cox’s “low key leadership” — especially during the Bear Stearns crisis — described Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s recent blueprint for regulatory reform as containing a proposal “to eliminate the SEC and shift responsibility for Wall Street to the Fed.”

Not likely, says former SEC Commissioner Arthur Levitt, now a senior advisor in New York for The Carlyle Group. In a telephone interview with CFO.com, Levitt noted that there have been a range of interpretations of the Treasury secretary’s comments about the future of the SEC. “Rest assured. Congress will have the last word, and the SEC is not likely to go away,” said Levitt, who served as commissioner from July 1993 to Februrary 2001.

The petabyte age

From KurzweilAI.net, Wired’s Chris Anderson has an interesting piece on the “petabyte age,” Google and the business of doing science.

The Petabyte Age: Because More Isn’t Just More — More Is Different

Wired, June 23, 2008 The new availability of huge amounts of data, along with the statistical tools to crunch these numbers, offers a whole new way of understanding the world, suggests Wired editor in chief Chris Anderson. Science can advance even without coherent models and unified theories, letting statistical algorithms find patterns where science cannot.   Read Original Article>>

 

From the original article:

The Petabyte Age is different because more is different. Kilobytes were stored on floppy disks. Megabytes were stored on hard disks. Terabytes were stored in disk arrays. Petabytes are stored in the cloud. As we moved along that progression, we went from the folder analogy to the file cabinet analogy to the library analogy to — well, at petabytes we ran out of organizational analogies.

At the petabyte scale, information is not a matter of simple three- and four-dimensional taxonomy and order but of dimensionally agnostic statistics. It calls for an entirely different approach, one that requires us to lose the tether of data as something that can be visualized in its totality. It forces us to view data mathematically first and establish a context for it later. For instance, Google conquered the advertising world with nothing more than applied mathematics. It didn’t pretend to know anything about the culture and conventions of advertising — it just assumed that better data, with better analytical tools, would win the day. And Google was right

 

A fractal universe?

I love fractals (blogged on the subject here, but sadly to note the passing of Ed Lorenz) and news that the universe may be arranged in a fractal pattern is just too cool. There’s agreement that on smaller scales — galaxies, clusters and superclusters. To now the thinking is beyond superclusters, things tend to homogenize rather than group together.

Maybe not (from the second link):

… a small team of physicists, including Francesco Sylos Labini of the Enrico Fermi Centre in Rome and Luciano Pietronero of the University of Rome argue that the data shows the opposite: the universe continues to look fractal as far out as our telescopes can see.

There are some issues with the idea, but some of the interested parties put more than reputations on the line with a friendly wager:

What’s at stake if the universe is indeed a fractal on the largest scales? Besides a radical rethink of the laws and history of the cosmos, researchers have placed something more down-to-Earth on the line.

More than a decade ago, Sylos Labini and Pietronero wagered a bet with physicist Marc Davis of the University of California, Berkeley, US. The bet, refereed by Turok, held that if the galaxy distribution turned out to be fractal beyond scales of approximately 50 million light years, Davis would owe Sylos Labini and Pietronero a case of California wine.

Should the fractal pattern begin to disintegrate at scales less than 50 million light years, Davis would receive a case of Italian wine – which some would say is a better deal. Turok has yet to declare a winner.

IDs, airports and “security”

Jim Harper at Cato-at-Liberty has a great post pointing out the essential truth behind the policy preventing anyone from flying unless an ID is presented.

The first graf:

We’re now learning the meaning of a new policy that Americans can’t “willfully” refuse to show ID at airports. The Consumerist has a write-upof one man’s experience with IDless travel. It turns out they do a background check on you using, among other things, your political affiliation.

He goes on to point out the TSA’s “system” is easily subverted by anyone with no history of breaking the law. It does provide a burden on the overwhelming majority of travelers who just want to get from point A to point B. Oh, and it has another effect as well. This time on the civil liberties and right to privacy of the traveler. Two US Constitution granted ideals held near and dear by most Americans.

Harper’s conclusion:

Identity checks at airports require law-abiding American citizens to give up their privacy, including their political affiliations, with essentially no security benefit.

Current presidential election projections from 538

This projected election results chart from FiveThirtyEight.com looks daunting for McCain:

Pretty hard numbers coming from a group of pretty hard number-crunchers. 538’s analysis is courtesy of one of the Baseball Prospectus guys, and they take data and statistics very seriously.

The site has been accused of a pro-Obama slant and it does seem the opinion on the site leans heavily toward the Democratic nominee, but don’t think support for a candidate would necessarily translate to cooking the books for the nominee. GOPers dismissing 538’s projections are doing so at their own peril.

Update 8/14/08 — If you’re finding this page now hit this link for my latest update, or better yet head straight to 538 for their very latest projections.

Politicizing Justice

John Ashcroft turned out to be one of the early, and surprising, good guys in the Bush 43 administration — most notably on his push-back against then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales on warrantless wiretapping. All that said, his run at the head of the Department of Justice was less than perfect.

One of the more struturally damaging aspects of the DOJ under Bush 43 has been the blatant, and illegal, politicization of the hiring practices at the department, bringing in scads of underqualified graduates of third-rate at best Christian law schools simply because the candidates had what I’ll charitably term “Bush conservative” bona fides.

A black mark on Ashcroft’s mixed legacy will be setting this process into motion.

From the second link:

The blistering report, prepared by the Justice Department’s inspector general, is the first in what will be a series of investigations growing out of last year’s scandal over the firings of nine United States attorneys. It appeared to confirm for the first time in an official examination many of the allegations from critics who charged that the Justice Department had become overly politicized during the Bush administration.

“Many qualified candidates” were rejected for the department’s honors program because of what was perceived as a liberal bias, the report found. Those practices, the report concluded, “constituted misconduct and also violated the department’s policies and civil service law that prohibit discrimination in hiring based on political or ideological affiliations.”

The shift began in 2002, when advisers to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft restructured the honors program in response to what some officials saw as a liberal tilt in recruiting young lawyers from elite law schools like Harvard and Yale. While the recruitment was once controlled largely by career officials in each section who would review applications, political officials in the department began to assume more control, rejecting candidates with liberal or Democratic affiliations “at a significantly higher rate” than those with Republican or conservative credentials, the report said.

The shift appeared to accelerate in 2006, under then-Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, with two aides on the screening committee — Michael Elston and Esther Slater McDonald — singled out for particular criticism. The blocking of applicants with liberal credentials appeared to be a particular problem in the Justice Department’s civil rights division, which has seen an exodus of career employees in recent years as the department has pursued a more conservative agenda in deciding what types of cases to bring.

McCain’s top adviser goes there

In an unbelievable gaffe, McCain’s top adviser, Charlie Black, went on record stating a major terrorist attack on US soil would help his candidates chances. I’m pretty sure the American public has had more than its fill of campaigns using scare tactics and fear to try and win elections.

In a year where the Democratic faithful are pumped up and enthusiastic and a portion of the Republican base is still openly talking about “punishing” the party for the Bush 43 years, I think floating the idea of terrorism helping either candidate will do no good and probably a lot of harm. Wonder if Black is out after this. I doubt it, but McCain will have to take some public measure beyond this tepid apology from Black:

“I deeply regret the comments, they were inappropriate,” Black said in a statement after McCain said that if Black had made such a comment, “I strenuously disagree” with it.

“I recognize that John McCain has devoted his entire adult life to protecting his country and placing its security before every other consideration,” said Black, one of McCain’s most trusted political advisers.

Fortune magazine said Black, in discussing how national security was McCain’s strong suit, had said when asked about another terrorist attack on U.S. soil that “certainly it would be a big advantage to him.”

Black’s comment to Fortune was a distraction for McCain as he seeks to catch up to Obama in the polls, where Obama leads by about 6 percentage points.

Obama’s camp quickly came out with this response:

The Obama campaign is going after the McCain camp over top adviser Charlie Black’s claim that a terror attack on U.S. soil would help McCain politically.

Here’s the statement from Obama campaign spokesperson Bill Burton:

“Barack Obama welcomes a debate about terrorism with John McCain, who has fully supported the Bush policies that have taken our eye off of al Qaeda, failed to bring Osama bin Laden to justice, and made us less safe. The fact that John McCain’s top advisor says that a terrorist attack on American soil would be a ‘big advantage’ for their political campaign is a complete disgrace, and is exactly the kind of politics that needs to change. Barack Obama will turn the page on these failed policies and this cynical and divisive brand of politics so that we can unite this nation around a common purpose to finish the fight against al Qaeda.”

Note the line about how Obama “welcomes a debate about terrorism” with McCain. That Obama wantsto have a debate about national security is fast becoming an Obama campaign refrain.

 

 

Parsing the future of the World Wide Web

Here’s cool bit from Technology Review with short responses from a number of luminaries when asked where the Web will be in five to ten years.

A sample of the responders:

Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Director of the World Wide Web Consortium and inventor of the Web; Cambridge, MA

Vint Cerf
Vice president and chief Internet evangelist at Google and co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet; McLean, VA

Richard Stallman
Main developer of the GNU/Linux system and founder of the Free Software Movement; Cambridge, MA

 

A couple of solar breaktroughs

From KurzweilAI.net — MIT students create a low-cost, low-tech solar dish, and carbon nanotubes may lower the cost and improve the performance of solar cells.

MIT team plays with fire to create cheap energy

Christian Science Monitor, June 18, 2008 A simple new low-cost solar dish developed by MIT students produces steam heat for less than the cost of heat from oil or natural gas, according to the MIT team. The steam heat can be used cost effectively for manufacturing, food pasteurization, and heating buildings.   Read Original Article>>

 

Perfecting a solar cell by adding imperfections

PhysOrg.com, June 16, 2008 New research at Santa Fe Institute, Michigan State University, and Columbia University shows that a film of carbon nanotubes may be able to replace two of the layers normally used in a solar cell, with improved performance at lower cost. Exposing the carbon nanotubes to ozone made the carbon nanotubes better catalysts, with more than a ten-fold improvement, and replaced expensive platinum. And making them longer improved both conductivity and transparency. The carbonnanotube films might also be used in fuel cells and batteries.   Read Original Article>>

Bob Barr v McCain

Ex-Republican; the strong, and earliest, proponent of Bill Clinton’s impeachment; and Libertarian Party nominee for president this year, Bob Barr, is pushing hard for McCain’s votes.

Here’s a post from Barr’s campaign website blog:

Barr offers “scathing critique” of McCain

June 18th, 2008 by Jason Pye

Bob Barr recently sat down with Eric Pianin of the Washington Post to discuss his campaign and offered “a scathing critique of Sen. John McCain”:

Barr, a one-time conservative Republican House member from Georgia who broke with the Bush administration and many of his former congressional colleagues, blasted McCain for his support of the war in Iraq, his energy policies and his stand on reducing government spending.

“With regard to domestic policy, Sen. McCain really has put forward nothing that would indicate he believes in dramatically shrinking the size and cost of the government,” Barr said during an interview on washingtonpost.com’s “PostTalk” program. “He does talk a great game about doing away with earmarks, but that really does not get near to the heart of the matter of the massive federal spending, the massive federal debt and the deficits we’re running.”
[…]
Barr said that “the tremendous growth” of federal government powers since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks “has so dramatically shrunk the sphere of personal liberty in this country … that it has really caused myself and many other Americans … to take a much harder look at government power than we did in the past.”

(note: hit link for video)

 

The Washington Times also published an article on why McCain’s team ought to be concerned about Barr becoming the Nader of 2008.

George Carlin, RIP

Stand-up comedian George Carlin has died at 71 of heart failure.

His work the last few years was a lot of the old crank and not quite as funny, but he delivered many classic lines and honed some of the great comedy routines of the last forty-plus years. His voice and (strong) opinions will be missed.

From the link:

Carlin, who had a history of heart and drug-dependency problems, died at Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica about 6 p.m. PDT (9 p.m. EDT) after being admitted earlier in the afternoon for chest pains, spokesman Jeff Abraham told Reuters.

Known for his edgy, provocative material, Carlin achieved status as an anti-Establishment icon in the 1970s with stand-up bits full of drug references and a routine called “Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television.” A regulatory battle over a radio broadcast of the routine ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the 1978 case, Federal Communications Commission vs. Pacifica Foundation, the top U.S. court ruled that the words cited in Carlin’s routine were indecent, and that the government’s broadcast regulator could ban them from being aired at times when children might be listening.

Moodstream by Getty Images

Moodstream is an odd/interesting multimedia online tool from Getty Images. It’s probably better for you to just try it out than for me to attempt a description.

Here’s what the creators have to say:

Moodstream is a powerful brainstorming tool designed to help take in inspiring, unexpected directions. Whether you want images, footage or audio, or just need a stream of fresh ideas, tweak the Moodstream sliders to bring a whole new creative palette straight to you.

Ready? Stream. Create.

Bush 43 regime, meet the bus wheels

You can have any opinion of onetime White House press secretary Scott McClellan you want — disgruntled ex-staffer, shameless opportunist, speaker of truth to power — but one thing is very clear, the Bush 43 regime has no one to blame but itself for any claim to be given some level of traction at this point.

Tales of domestic spying and torture that seemed like incredible smears against an administration fighting an amorphous enemy have turned out to be all too true. As more sordid details about the inner workings of the rotten sausage factory that has been the White House the last seven-plus years, the more any fantastic claim will be taken at face value.

I’m guessing McClellan’s book will just be the tip of the iceberg of administration officials coming clean once Bush is out of office. I expect an ongoing parade of public “confessionals” from insiders with heavy hearts and sullied consciences.

As McClelland put it testifying before Congress this week, the Bush 43 regime is solely to blame for the culture of secrecy and cover-up that let all the dirty details fester away. Something the US system of government by the people, for the people is supposed to prevent. Hopefully we’re already starting the healing process and becoming an America we can all be proud of again. Hopefully Bush 43’s offenses against the United States and the American people will be seen as an anomaly fostered by a cabal of half-mad insiders (read: Cheney, Addington, Yoo, et.al) who twisted a horrible national tragedy in 9/11/01 into an opportunity to seize and wield power our nation simply does not allow to concentrate in one branch of government.

From the link:

If the nation doesn’t trust the Bush White House, it’s the president’s and Dick Cheney’s own fault, Bush’s former spokesman told Congress Friday.

From life-and-death matters on down – the rationale for war, the leaking of classified information, Cheney’s accidental shooting of a friend – the government’s top two leaders undermined their credibility by “packaging” their version of the truth, former press secretary Scott McClellan said.

He described the loss of trust as self-inflicted, telling the House Judiciary Committee that Bush and his administration failed to open up about White House mistakes.