] Bank of America (Research) will require Internet clients
] to register their computers and assign a digital image,
] such as a photo of a pet, to their accounts in an effort
] to cut down on fraud, the bank announced.
]
] The image will appear on the site every time a customer
] has to enter a password.

I think this is a pretty good idea, and quite simple.

An interesting approach to phishing scams

... "Never, ever talk to the federal government."

] Thomas Campbell Butler, at 63 years of age, is completing
] the 1st year of a 2-year sentence in federal prison,
] following an investigation and trial that was initiated
] after he voluntarily reported that he believed vials
] containing _Yersinia pestis_ were missing from his
] laboratory at Texas Tech University. We take this
] opportunity to remind the infectious diseases community
] of the plight of our esteemed colleague, whose career and
] family have, as a result of his efforts to protect us
] from infection by this organism, paid a price from which
] they will never recover.

The FBI sends a strong message to the scientific community...

But, in fact, this world of binary outcomes is an illusion.

The Illusion of 'Either-Or' Politics

Here's an example of making a story out of nothing:

] President George W. Bush's remark that a resolution to
] the North Korea nuclear arms dispute would be "either
] diplomacy or military" marks a shift in tone from his
] previous statements that played down the military option.
] In numerous other pronouncements, Bush had unequivocally
] ruled out a U.S. invasion of the North, without
] commenting on the possibility of a military air strike.

The question and answer, in context, are as follows:

] Good morning, Mr. President. This morning you reiterated
] diplomacy as the way to deal with North Korea. With all due
] respect, some people say that's precisely the wrong approach
] because diplomacy has produced nothing, while at the same
] time it has allowed North Korea to progress in its nuclear program.
]
] THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
]
] Q How do you -- what do you say to them?
]
] THE PRESIDENT: Well, then let's see -- if it's the wrong -- if
] diplomacy is the wrong approach, I guess that means military.
] That's how I view it -- it's either diplomacy or military. And I am
] for the diplomacy approach. And so, for those who say that we
] ought to be using our military to solve the problem, I would say
] that, while all options are on the table, we've got -- we've got a
] ways to go to solve this diplomatically --

To interpret this statement as a shift in US policy toward military options in NK is silly. Of course, the Republicans have been trained to say that everytime the media does something like this its because they are "liberal." This is just as much a fantasy. They do this for money. They do it to everyone. Its what they do.

Bush calls military a N. Korea option - Asia - Pacific - International Herald Tribune

] I suspect Naftali would say that the recent thread about
] al Qaeda being a "scene" (more traditionally a
] "movement") is Right On Point. This goes a long way
] toward explaining the challenge.
]
] Suppose I wrote that "liberal democracies like the US are
] incapable of effectively stopping hacking." Would you
] disagree with that?

Jlm is in rare form here.

[[ MemeStreams ]] RE: Timothy Naftali to appear on Fox News

The Amnesty report has been mentioned by both Cheney and Bush in recent days. The header of the CNN story Acidus memed is somewhat misleading, as one could read it to imply that he said that people who've raised questions about Gitmo "hate America." This isn't actually what he said. CNN is blowing the exchange out of proportion because it started with a Larry King interview that they are trying to market.

] In terms of the detainees, we've had thousands of people
] detained. We've investigated every single complaint against the
] detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on
] the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in
] detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some
] instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth. And so it
] was an absurd report. It just is.

Bush is saying that a lot of the detainees hate America. He is not saying that Amnesty international hates America. However, those who are given to believing such things are likely to believe thats what he said.

The question is what did Amnesty say, and is it truly absurd?

] In the US, almost a year after the Supreme Court decided that
] detainees in Guantanamo should have access to judicial review,
] not one single case from among the 500 or so detained has reached
] the courts because of stonewalling by the Administration.
]
] Under this agenda some people are above the law and others are
] clearly outside it.
]
] Guantanamo has become the gulag our times, entrenching the
] notion that people can be detained without any recourse to the law.
]
] If Guantanamo evokes images of Soviet repression, "ghost detainees"
] – or the incommunicado detention of unregistered detainees - bring
] back the practice of "disappearances" so popular with Latin American
] dictators in the past.
]
] According to US official sources there could be over 100 ghost detainees
] held by the US.
]
] In 2004 thousands of people were held by the US in Iraq, hundreds in
] Afghanistan and undisclosed numbers in undisclosed locations.
]
] AI is calling on the US Administration to "close Guantanamo and disclose
] the rest". What we mean by this is: either release the prisoners or charge
] and prosecute them with due process.

Hrm... Absurd? I can see that. The rhetoric in this essay is firey and analogies chosen are bad ones. However, the specific allegations aren't false. By responding to the gulag analogy as if it was an accusation of willful detainee abuse (it isn't), Bush and Cheney avoid addressing the actual matter that Amnesty has raised, which is about accountability and not torture. The administration is making a straw man argument, betting that no on... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

President on Amnesty report

I had originally intended this to make it easy to use MemeStreams as a bookmark management system, but its not particularly well considered. It makes the UI inconsistent, and it shows you all the text of your memes, which isn't particularly helpful. I'm thinking of replacing this with a view of the MemeBox that only shows you links that you sent yourself. I thought I'd post on it to see if that would interfere with how anyone is using the site...

Thomas Friedman spends an hour talking to MIT about his new book. Watch streaming video of the May 16 event.

I haven't watched this yet but I'm memeing anyway. I'll probably watch it tonight. Friedman's recent Wired Article was excellent.

The World is Flat: An Hour With Thomas Friedman | MIT World

] For their brutish strength and technological savvy,
] Wookiees were enslaved by the Empire for use as labor.
] For a time, Chewbacca was a slave, toiling away for the
] betterment of the Empire until an impudent Imperial cadet
] named Han Solo freed him.
]
] Drummed out of the military, Solo had few options but to
] return to the fringe lifestyle he knew so well. Chewbacca
] swore loyalty to Han, and became his partner in crime.
] The two of them became a well-known smuggling duo.

I was wondering how Chewie went from being a leader of the Wookies to running drugs for Jabba the Hut. Someone sent me the answer...

Star Wars: Databank | Chewbacca

Several annoyances with the threads have been repaired:

1. Previously the URL was displayed at the top of a thread. This made the thread hard to read in browsers that will not wrap long lines of unbroken text. The URL has been replaced with its title.

2. The redundant post cleaner is now smarter, and it lists the names of the people whose posts were cleaned at the bottom of the thread.

3. A small UI change was made to make the thread look more like a thread. This change was applied to the memebox as well. In particular, the sender's name was moved to the top. In a discussion you want to see the person's name first.