March 14, 2003 – 12:00 am
I can’t talk about the Senate’s ‘pro life’ bill without sputtering, so go read Ampersand instead. The ban’s not about ’saving babies.’
Lance, over at Davos Newbies, makes a frightening discovery:
Michael Drosnin, author of the ludicrous hoax The Bible Code [ it's actually called "The Torah Code"], ‘gets meetings with Pentagon’s top intelligence officer and CIA’s No. 3, on his theory that bin Laden’s hideaway is revealed in the Old Testament’s ancient Hebrew.
January 27, 2003 – 12:00 am
Over at TomDispatch, a sensational advisory to Americans abroad. However, the current version of the State Department’s warning has been toned down from Sunday’s.
Also, how the War may start, and an introduction to Howard Ullman, who plans to deliver “shock and awe” onto Iraq. It’ll win the war, but like Galadriel, we would be beautiful [...]
December 20, 2002 – 12:00 am
The Nation Institute launched a weblog, TomDispatch, and it opens with a doozy: Die Tageszeitung plans to publish the list of US and other Western firms who supplied Iraq’s weapons programs.
It’s been a common assumption that the Bush Administration wants to remove those names in the edited version of Iraq’s WMD disclosure intended for public [...]
December 17, 2002 – 12:00 am
Over at KQED, Krasny and company were talking about media ownership on Forum, so after listening to the suits talk about how concentration of ownership is good for you and the public interest being so 1930’s, it’s good to read Aaron Swartz talking about Open Spectrum. Technology has made broadcast spectrum frequency scarcity a thing [...]
December 6, 2002 – 12:00 am
Professor Kiesling discusses how new markets created by the Internet ran afoul of existing institutions (wholesale liquor distributors) that had their niche by law.
New York, Michigan and other states prohibited shipments to individual buyers from out of state wineries.
The liquor wholesalers arrangements grew out of the post-Prohibition environment. Laws which were enacted out of a [...]
November 27, 2002 – 12:00 am
Seth Finkelstein wrote a HowTo on petitioning the Librarian of Congress to grant exemptions to provisions of the Digital Milleniumn Copyright Act. The act requires the Librarian to review comments and possiblity grant exemptions every three years. 2003 is the next review period.
The document walks you through the process of writing a petition, using the [...]
November 27, 2002 – 12:00 am
Annalee Newitz on Total Information Awareness:
For some reason, TIA reminds me of a scene from the movie “Blue Velvet” in which evildoer Frank rapes damsel in distress Dorothy. As he subdues her, he screams, “Don’t look at me! Don’t you fucking look at me!” His power comes, in part, from his ability to look at [...]
November 17, 2002 – 12:00 am
By now, everyone’s linked at Instapundit Glen Reynold’s article riffing on Unqualified Offering’s concept of massively parallel counter-terrorism, but in the light of the Administration opening the crypt where the Nation bricked-in John Pondexter, it’s useful reading.
This is a lesson I keep having to relearn from the Libertarians, you can trust your fellow citizen until [...]
November 7, 2002 – 12:00 am
Update, via Lynn Anne Morse, the Corrant has removed the original article, and published a retraction. The library in question and the FBI say that a warrant had been served to look at the contents of a hard disk in connection with the investigation of an attempt to crack a business computer system in California.
More [...]
August 19, 2002 – 12:00 am
A forensics researcher at the FBI who helped chase down the Unabomber and revealed the ‘anonymous’ who wrote the Clinton satire Primary Colors told the BBC that the person responsible for mailing anthrax spores throughout the Eastern Seaboard last fall is most likely a well connected individual in the defense and intel communities. Furthermore:
Controversially, Prof [...]
August 6, 2002 – 12:00 am
Laurent Murawiec is the RAND Corporation analyst who gave the briefing on Saudi Arabia as the Bete Noir of Islamic Terrorism which made the Bushies howl, and many folks on the Left and Right say “at least someone with the Beltway’s ear gets it.”
Murawiec’s briefing is, as far as I know, a classified document, but [...]
[ via Scripting News ] Glenn Reynolds puts words to a fear I’ve had for quite a while:
These legislative initiatives aren’t just about copyright. They’re about building a regime that’s hostile to content that comes from anyone other than Big Media suppliers. That’s because their real fear isn’t copied Britney Spears CDs — it’s [...]
Because now that the Soviet Union’s gone, someone has to keep up the tradition of the State spying on it’s own citizens.
It’s the Cultural Revolution, only with better marketing.
Joey deVilla observes that its something outta Bablyon 5. Unfortunately, Dellen isn’t around with a Minbari Fleet to save our collective keisters.
[ via NTK ] In which fighting terrorists is compared to staking vampires:
While uncertainty is the dominating motif, the “Buffy paradigm” has the following additional characteristics:
What expertise there is consists largely of bad or uncertain advice and old, flawed, and
confusing technical data.
The importance of any given threat changes constantly, past threat behavior does not
predict [...]
