It is a shameful distinction, but Texas is the undisputed capital of capital punishment. At a time when the rest of the United States is having serious doubts about the death penalty, more than 60 percent of all American executions this year took place in Texas. That gaping disparity provides further evidence that Texas's governor, legislature, courts and voters should reassess their addiction to executions.

State without pity - International Herald Tribune

While the United States has long imported oil and other raw materials from the third world, we used to import manufactured goods mainly from other rich countries like Canada, European nations and Japan.

But recently we crossed an important watershed: we now import more manufactured goods from the third world than from other advanced economies. That is, a majority of our industrial trade is now with countries that are much poorer than we are and that pay their workers much lower wages.

For the world economy as a whole — and especially for poorer nations — growing trade between high-wage and low-wage countries is a very good thing. Above all, it offers backward economies their best hope of moving up the income ladder.

But for American workers the story is much less positive. In fact, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that growing U.S. trade with third world countries reduces the real wages of many and perhaps most workers in this country. And that reality makes the politics of trade very difficult.

Trouble With Trade - New York Times

Pakistani former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated in a suicide attack.

BBC NEWS | World | South Asia | Benazir Bhutto killed in attack

TORONTO (AP) — Oscar Peterson, whose flying fingers, hard-driving swing and melodic improvisations made him one of the world's most famous and influential jazz pianists in a career that spanned seven decades, has died. He was 82.

Oscar Peterson's Christmas Album was recommended by Barry Ritholtz in a post I memed earlier in the month. I bought it and I've been enjoying it this season. I was saddened to hear this news.

The Associated Press: Jazz Piano Legend Oscar Peterson Dies

J K ROWLING has made an emotional return to the cramped Edinburgh flat where she wrote the first book in the Harry Potter series.

The author, who has notched up almost 400m book sales, broke down in tears as she recalled the hardship she endured while living there as a single mother with her baby daughter Jessica.

Rowling in tears on return to Harry’s lowly birthplace - Times Online

There is good and bad to the news that Britain surpassed the United States for the first time ever in donations to the World Bank's unit to combat world poverty.

This should help dispel the notion that the bank's International Development Association is an arm of the U.S. Treasury doing Washington's will around the world. The more depressing side to the news is that the United States - with an economy five times the size of Britain's - is doing far less than it could and should to help the world's poorest countries.

Bested by the Brits in the fight against poverty - International Herald Tribune

The UN General Assembly voted on Tuesday for a global moratorium on the death penalty. The resolution was nonbinding; its symbolic weight made barely a ripple in the news ocean of the United States, where the rights of governments to kill a killer is enshrined in law and custom.
...
The United States, as usual, lined up on the other side, with Iran, China, Pakistan, Sudan and Iraq.

blood brothers

Lining up against the death penalty - International Herald Tribune

THE separation of the wealthiest from the rest of the country is alarming. But it would be even more alarming if we recognized that income isn’t the only measure of wealth. Health and education are forms of wealth, too, essential to happiness and a strong society. Yet in the discussion of America’s growing wealth gap, they too often go unnoticed.

the article contains an suggestion which is very socialist and a good idea!

Gold in the Ivory Tower - New York Times

Ajax Security is out and the feedback I'm getting is incredible.

Andrew van der Stock The Executive Director of OWASP reviewed a draft of Ajax Security and here is what he had to say about it:

If you are writing or reviewing Ajax code, you need this book. Billy and Bryan have done a stellar job in a nascent area of our field, and deserves success. Go buy this book.

Is it just a re-hash of old presentations? No. The book breaks some new ground, and fills in a lot of the blanks in all of our presentations and demos. I hadn’t heard of some of these attacks in book form before. The examples improved my knowledge of DOM and other injections considerably, so there’s something there for the advanced folks as well as the newbies.

I really liked the easy, laid back writing style. Billy and Bryan’s text is straightforward and easy to understand. They get across the concepts in a relatively new area of our field.

The structure flows pretty well, building upon what you’ve already learnt ...
there is advanced stuff, but the authors have to bring the newbie audience along for the ride.

Billy and Bryan spend a bit of time repeating the old hoary “no new attacks in Ajax” meme which is big with the popular kids (mainly because their products can’t detect or scan Ajax code yet and still want money from you), and then spend the rest of the book debunking their own propaganda with a wonderful panache that beats the meme into a bloody pulp and buries it for all time.

Web security guru dre offers up this review of Ajax Security:

It’s quite possible that many Star Wars Ajax security fans will be calling Billy Hoffman, the great “Obi-Wan”, and pdp “Lord Vader” to represent the “light” and “dark” sides that is The Force behind the power wielded by Ajax.

The book, Ajax Security, covered a lot of new material that hadn’t been seen or talked about in the press or the security industry. The authors introduced Ajax security topics with ease and provided greater understanding of how to view Javascript malware, tricks, and the aberrant Java... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Ajax Security Book Out! Awesome buzz!

It has been 50 years since scientists first created DNA in a test tube, stitching ordinary chemical ingredients together to make life's most extraordinary molecule. Until recently, however, even the most sophisticated laboratories could make only small snippets of DNA -- an extra gene or two to be inserted into corn plants, for example, to help the plants ward off insects or tolerate drought.

Now researchers are poised to cross a dramatic barrier: the creation of life forms driven by completely artificial DNA.

Scientists in Maryland have already built the world's first entirely handcrafted chromosome -- a large looping strand of DNA made from scratch in a laboratory, containing all the instructions a microbe needs to live and reproduce.

Synthetic DNA on the Brink of Yielding New Life Forms - washingtonpost.com