Space Sunset

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?

Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb.

I've seen this before, but it is funny.

garfield minus garfield

These independents are younger and better educated than the average American. They are pragmatic, anti-ideological and results-oriented, hostile to both Big Labour and Big Government but quite prepared to see the government take an active role in dealing with problems like global warming.

Over the past decade or so, independents have been forced to act like either “soft” Republicans or “soft” Democrats—reluctant conscripts into one or other of America's armies. But in this election the opposite is happening—more and more partisans are thinking and acting like independents.

A declaration on independents

Now I can finally tell my non-technical friends and family what my company does.

New Unit of Reviewed Code Quality

Like much of the nation, New Hampshire is in a frenzy over illegal immigration. In 2005, a police chief from New Ipswich, a sleepy small town near the Massachusetts border, arrested an illegal immigrant, who had pulled over on the side of the road, on the grounds that he was trespassing in New Hampshire. "We're applying a state law to illegal aliens, instead of federal law, because the federal government refuses to enforce its own laws. Someone needed to bring it, so I brought it," the chief told the Concord Monitor. The courts threw out the case, but the police chief became a statewide celebrity.

Phantom Menace: The Pyschology Behind America's Immigration Hysteria

This paper by Bellovin, Blaze, Diffie, Landau, Neumann, and Rexford will appear in a forthcoming issue of IEEE Security and Privacy.

A new US law allows warrantless wiretapping whenever one end of the communication is believed to be outside national borders. This creates serious security risks: danger of exploitation of the system by unauthorized users, danger of criminal misuse by trusted insiders, and danger of misuse by government agents.

Noteworthy first told you about this paper in October, when he recommended an early draft. It is a follow-up on Landau's op-ed in August of last year.

Risking Communications Security: Potential Hazards of the Protect America Act

Nose, face, spite.

Changes reportedly made last night in the stimulus package would reduce its effectiveness as stimulus. Although the package includes a reasonably designed tax rebate, the two most targeted and economically effective measures under consideration — a temporary extension of unemployment benefits and a temporary boost in food stamp benefits — were zeroed out, apparently at the insistence of House Republican leaders.

The two respected institutions that have rated stimulus options in recent days — the Congressional Budget Office and Moody’s Economy.com — both give their two highest ratings for effectiveness as stimulus to the two measures that were dropped.

Reported Stimulus Package Would Provide Little Immediate Boost Due to Removal of Most Effective Provisions

The impression of America as a land of freedom, rights, and law is something that I think Muslims all over the world believed. They especially considered America the only country in the world where they could have unfettered rights to worship as they see fit. That impression has been immensely damaged.

This, fundamentally, is the most important failure of the Bush administration. He obviously needed to let the war mongering fascists at it in the wake of 9/11, the gloves did need to come off, but he went too far. He should never have hired authoritarian lawyers. He could have pursued the GWOT within the framework that existed, with maybe only minor tweaks. By shrugging the checks and balances at the heart of our system and creating legal no-mans-lands his approach became unamerican and he has therefore changed what people think we are. That has done us serious harm. Hopefully, the next president can repair some of the damage.

What America Must Do

1. Obama beat Hillary among women voters 35 to 30 percent.
2. Amid record Democratic turnout, as many people under 30 showed up to caucus as those over 65.
3. Sixty percent of the GOP electorate in Iowa were born-again Christians.
4. Rudy Giuliani finished with a mere 4,013 votes, in sixth place, with less than half of the support of Ron Paul.

Maybe he's not so Ready after all.

Everyone is talking about Huckabee. His honest expressions of faith I think have wider appeal than his actual evangelical policy stances. But is this a fluke or does this guy really have a chance of becoming the nominee? I'm been assuming the former, anyone disagree?

Iowa By the Numbers

We selected fifteen entries to be in the exhibition, with seven alternates (in case print versions of the original selections could not be obtained). Many images were highly rated by the selection panel; we present the top forty-nine here. We invite you to view all the entries that were entered into the contest.

I can't embed pictures from this page. It replaces the image with one accusing me of theft! Not all uses of img src are negative for the host. I'm driving traffic to their contest!

Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest 2007