Dandy’s Western Wear, the local cowboy attire shop, cannot keep enough python skin and cowhide boots in stock because of all the Danes and Germans who have come to town to invest and work in the wind fields, then take home Texas souvenirs.

“Wind has invigorated our business like you wouldn’t believe,” said Marty Foust, Dandy’s owner, who recently put in new carpeting and air-conditioning. “When you watch the news you can get depressed about the economy, but we don’t get depressed. We’re now in our own bubble.”

Move Over, Oil, There’s Money in Texas Wind - New York Times

This highly recommended article is now freely available.

The dot-com crash of the early 2000s should have been followed by decades of soul-searching; instead, even before the old bubble had fully deflated, a new mania began to take hold on the foundation of our long-standing American faith that the wide expansion of home ownership can produce social harmony and national economic well-being. Spurred by the actions of the Federal Reserve, financed by exotic credit derivatives and debt securitiztion, an already massive real estate sales-and-marketing program expanded to include the desperate issuance of mortgages to the poor and feckless, compounding their troubles and ours.

That the Internet and housing hyperinflations transpired within a period of ten years, each creating trillions of dollars in fake wealth, is, I believe, only the beginning. There will and must be many more such booms, for without them the economy of the United States can no longer function. The bubble cycle has replaced the business cycle.

The Next Bubble, by Eric Janszen | Harper's, February 2008

While the fact covered here is quite interesting, the way its being reported is annoying, which perhaps is to be expected.

The technique, which could undermine security software protecting critical data on computers, is as easy as chilling a computer memory chip with a blast of frigid air from a can of dust remover.

Thats kind of like saying brain surgery is as easy as cutting someone's head open with a saw.

Officials at the Department of Homeland Security, which paid for a portion of the research, did not return repeated calls for comment.

What sort of comment is he expecting? "Good job with the research, Ed?" Of course, the idea that police might show up to raids with a computer freezer is not completely far fetched now. I seriously doubt the DOJ comments publicly on forensic tactics.

A federal magistrate ruled recently that forcing the suspect to disclose a password would be unconstitutional.

That subject is rather controversial, apparently. Orin Kerr in particular has attempted to rationalize that forcing someone to disclose a password is not a 5th amendment violation because the password itself is not incriminating, just the information it protects. This, to me, is quite obviously the point where you ought to step back and wonder whether your over-thinking of the wording of the rules has put you in a place where you've managed to undermine the purpose those rules were put in place to serve... The fifth amendment is obviously intended to prevent the sort of situation where the the judicial system finds itself coercing people into aiding in their own convictions -- is this intended only to prevent the coersion of false confessions (which doesn't apply to passwords) or any situation were the system might be tempted to torture people.

RE: A Method for Critical Data Theft

Late at night several times a week, Terrill powers up the 4-foot-tall, 300 pound device and reaches for a remote control packed with two joysticks and various knobs and switches. Standing on a nearby corner, he maneuvers the machine down the block, often to a daycare center where it accosts what Terrill says are drug dealers, vagrants and others who shouldn't be there.

He flashes the robot's spotlight and grabs a walkie-talkie, which he uses to boom his disembodied voice over the robot's sound system.

"I tell them they are trespassing, it's private property, and they have to leave," he said. "They throw bottles and cans at it. That's when I shoot the water cannon. They just scatter like roaches."

OMG, I can't believe he actually built it, and I can't believe it actually works.

Who needs security when you have a robot? | ajc.com

Reason number 572 why I'm going to die alone.

xkcd - Priorities

The rescue operation brings to mind John Kenneth Galbraith's dictum that in the United States, the only respectable form of socialism is socialism for the rich.

Massive Bailout Planned for Banks - Economics Column - John Cassidy - Print - Portfolio.com

Stanford Law School Professor and former Wired magazine columnist Larry Lessig said Tuesday that he's considering a bid to take over the late Rep. Tom Lantos' D-Calif.'s  congressional seat.

He's given himself a March 1 deadline to make the decision.

Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig Explores A Bid for Congress | Threat Level from Wired.com

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Former high-flying label TVT Records, home to such hip-hop artists as Lil Jon, Pitbull and Ying Yang Twins, will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week, the company's founder said Tuesday.null

Dang. Kind of sad, even if they've been producing shite lately.

Of note, Trent's reaction.

Music label TVT Records to file for bankruptcy | Entertainment | Industry | Reuters

This spring, the stoner screwball movie of 2004, “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle,” will get a sequel. This time, because of some unfortunate confusion on an airplane between a “bong” and a “bomb,” our slacker antiheroes are shipped off to the moviemakers’ idea of the worst prison imaginable.

On April 25, on a screen near you: “Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantánamo Bay.”

Seriously, dude.

Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantánamo Bay

This would be funny if it wasn't for the millions of partisan Republicans who believe it and will be parroting versions of it for the next few days.

Amanda Carpenter, a Townhall.com columnist, has prepared a spreadsheet showing that 66 trial lawyers representing plaintiffs in the telecommunications suits have contributed $1.5 million to Democratic senators and causes. Of the 29 Democratic senators who voted against the FISA bill last Tuesday, 24 took money from the trial lawyers (as did two absent senators, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama).

Even if correlation were causation, it takes a special kind of blindness to put a huge amount of effort into researching the campaign contributions of all of the lawyers involved in various suits against the telecommunications companies without doing any research at all into the contributions made by the companies themselves or the members of the law firms they've hired.

Irrespective, the people who work for the EFF (and similar organizations like the ACLU) make enormous career sacrifices in order to contribute to issues that they consider important. The idea that they are sitting in a lair somewhere counting gold coins and laughing manically as they make strategic campaign donations in attempt to further their personal success, all the while harming America's security against terrorism... Well, that idea might help some Republicans sleep better at night, because it allows them to ignore the strenuous objections raised to the power grabs that have been made by this administration, but its perfectly insane.

I care whether or not the phone company looks twice when someone claiming to be a law enforcement officer engaged in a legitimate investigation wants access to my phone calls. I want them to double check, and if the request isn't legal I want them to refuse access. This immunity sets a precedent that if the police engage in an illegal investigation there is no reason the phone companies should refuse to grant them access. It reopens the door to the sort of domestically targeted, politically motivated spying which lead to the passage of FISA in the first place. If this immunity is passed an administration that wishes to target it's domestic political enemies need merely come knocking with a document which says "Authorized by the AG" and if the phone companies object they can say "worst case, you'll get immunity."

I'm, frankly, open to the idea that the amount of civil liability faced here is too much. But, if the Republicans wish my support for immunity they must first explain HOW they intend to hold the Administration and the telcos accountable for illegal activities! They are not going to get anywhere by trying to convince me that no one actually has the concerns that I actually have, and that those who claim to have those concerns have been paid off.

Bob Novak thinks the EFF is in it for the money!