The tone of the video -- a seven-minute clip, entitled “Impossible is nothing” -- seems too serious to be parody, yet too over-the-top to be credible.

Mr. Vayner’s experience shows the not-so-friendly side of the social-networking phenomenon.

He said he may have lost his chance to work on Wall Street, and added that he may not succeed in securing a financial job at all.

A Student’s Video Résumé Gets Attention (Some of It Unwanted)

If you thought the belief that "the flaw inherent in western society is the bifurcation between science [including human law] and religion" is a position unique to Al Qaeda, or that it is an extremist position, then this article is for you.

In 1983, Nimeiri, aiming to counter Turabi’s growing popularity, decided to make his own Islamic claim. He hastily pushed through laws that imposed a severe version of Sharia on Sudan, including its Christian and animist south. Within eighteen months, more than fifty suspected thieves had their hands chopped off. A Coptic Christian was hanged for possessing foreign currency; poor women were flogged for selling local beer. It was exactly the kind of brutal, divisive, politically motivated Sharia that Taha had long warned against, and southerners intensified a decades-long civil war against Khartoum. Taha and other Republican Brothers, including Naim, had been jailed in advance by Nimeiri to prevent them from leading protests; their imprisonment lasted a year and a half.

Soon after Taha was released, he distributed a leaflet, on Christmas Day, 1984, titled "Either This or the Flood." "It is futile for anyone to claim that a Christian person is not adversely affected by the implementation of sharia," he wrote. "It is not enough for a citizen today merely to enjoy freedom of worship. He is entitled to the full rights of a citizen in total equality with all other citizens. The rights of southern citizens in their country are not provided for in sharia but rather in Islam at the level of fundamental Koranic revelation."

Taha, who was now in his mid-seventies, had been preparing half his life for this moment. It was central to his vision that Islamic law in its historical form, rather than in what he considered its original, authentic meaning, would be a monstrous injustice in modern society. His opposition was brave and absolute, and yet his statement reveals the limits of a philosophy that he hoped to make universal. Taha opposed secularism -- he once declared that the secular West "is not a civilization because its values are confused" -- and he could not conceive of rights outside the framework of Islam and the Koran. At the very moment that he was defending non-believers from the second-class status enshrined in Islamic law, he was extending their equal rights through a higher, better Sharia.

Abdullahi an-Naim defends Taha’s approach, saying that in the Islamic world a Turkish-style secularism will always be self-defeating. "It is an illusion to think you can sustain constitutionalism, democratization, without addressing its Islamic foundation," he said. "Because for Muslims you cannot say, 'I’m a Muslim, but—' That 'but' does not work. What unites Muslims is an idea. It is Islam as an idea. And therefore contesting that idea, I think, is going to be permanent." Whenever secular intellectuals in Muslim countries try to bypass the question of Sharia, Naim said, "they leave the high moral ground to the fundamentalists, and they lose." Invoking Islam as the highest authority for universal rights was not simply a matter of belief; it meant that Taha and his movement could stay in the game.

You should also check out God's Country?, Walter Russell Mead's article in the latest Foreign Affairs.

The difference between fundamentalists and evangelicals is not that fundamentalists are more emotional in their beliefs; it is that fundamentalists insist more fully on following their ideas to their logical conclusion.

The Moderate Martyr | George Packer | The New Yorker

"This is like prewar Iraq all over again," said David Albright, a former nuclear inspector who is president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. "You have an Iranian nuclear threat that is spun up, using bad information that's cherry-picked and a report that trashes the inspectors."

The committee report, written by a single Republican staffer with a hard-line position on Iran, chastised the CIA and other agencies for not providing evidence to back assertions that Iran is building nuclear weapons.

Maybe they're not providing the evidence because according to everyone in intel and at IAEA, they're not building them.

They likely see other reasons for attacking Iran, like Hezbollah. I supported Afghanistan, I was wavery on Iraq, but I'm going to go ahead and pre-emptively come out against a war in Iran. We have two intractable insurgencies on the go. I think thats quite enough, thanks. There is no good reason to add a third. If they know where nukes are and want to go get them, then thats cool, but regime change in Iran is way more then we can chew right now.

U.N. Inspectors Dispute Iran Report By House Panel - washingtonpost.com

terratogen wrote:
If you put an encypted file in a password protected stuffit file, would that give the file fourth ammenment protection from the access needed to open the stuffit file and actual protection from the encryption?

Why would stuffit creat an expectation of privacy where encryption doesn't? I think that it would be couched as "understanding" just as encryption is, under this theory.

If you are handed a warrant demanding "access" to some file, you should not be required to surrender your encrypted key as well because "understanding" is not required by law, right?

I think you would unless you claimed a 5th amendment right. They would imprison you for refusing to disclose the key. Think Judith Miller.

Somehow I think that the analogy doesn't hold water.

There is a huge gap missing in the analysis, and that is the 4th amendment protection for communications in transit. This same lawyer has argued that the 4th doesn't apply to internet communications in transit because internet communications aren't naturally enveloped. One might argue in that context that encrypting them would envelope them. However, there is a statute which requires a warrant to obtain electronic communications in transit, so that statue is, in that context, 4th amendment equivelent and so it doesn't matter anyway.

Having said that, what is the scenario in which you want the 4th amendment to apply where it does not already apply? They need one to search your house. They need one to intercept your email. Where are you worried they'll get access to the cyphertext without a warrant and you'd expect the 4th amendment to protect you in the event that they happen to know how to decrypt it without the key?

RE: The Volokh Conspiracy - Can Encryption create an expectation of privacy

Google has launched a site that allows you to do searches on keywords for graphs of their usage, as well as the top cities, regions, and languages involved. This is the right way to expose this kind of data. This type of statistical data is useful, but does not infringe in anyone privacy. This will be useful for trend spotting and interest gauging.

Google Trends

Bush spoke:
The recent arrests that our fellow citizens are now learning about are a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to -- to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation.

When he uses that "those of us who love freedom" line its hard to take him seriously or conceive that he has a plan. These people don't want to kill Americans because we love freedom. They want to kill Americans because we're the most prominent political power center for people who don't practice their religion. Maybe what Bush really wants to say is "those of us who love jesus" but, of course, that would be extremely divisive, so he says "freedom," knowing that his constituency sees "freedom" and "jesus" as interchangable concepts.

It -- travelers are going to be inconvenienced as a result of the steps we've taken. I urge their patience and ask them to be vigilant. The inconveniences occurs because we will take the steps necessary to protect the American people.

By searching their hard drives for kiddie porn.

I'm sure if they hadn't caught these guys I wouldn't feel like making light of Bush's comments, so, my thanks goes out to the CT people in the UK and US governments who brought you this blog post tonight.

I'll be here all week.

RE: Does Bush have something in store?

What is the significance of Aug. 22? This year, Aug. 22 corresponds, in the Islamic calendar, to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to "the farthest mosque," usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back (c.f., Koran XVII.1). This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world. It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for Aug. 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind.

A passage from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an 11th-grade Iranian schoolbook, is revealing. "I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [i.e., the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another's hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours."

In this context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead--hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement.

How then can one confront such an enemy, with such a view of life and death? Some immediate precautions are obviously possible and necessary. In the long term, it would seem that the best, perhaps the only hope is to appeal to those Muslims, Iranians, Arabs and others who do not share these apocalyptic perceptions and aspirations, and feel as much threatened, indeed even more threatened, than we are. There must be many such, probably even a majority in the lands of Islam. Now is the time for them to save their countries, their societies and their religion from the madness of MAD.

The August 22nd meme was going around at Defcon.

Does Iran have something in store? | Bernard Lewis

Unbelievable. AOL released a file containing the search engine queries of over 500,000 users during a three month period. It's being mirrored all over.

Here is a screenshot of the download page before it was taken down, complete with a spelling error.. "ananomized"

This will probably be a watershed moment for Internet privacy.

Link to AOL data release

US Ambassador John Bolton said there was no moral equivalence between the civilian casualties from the Israeli raids in Lebanon and those killed in Israel from "malicious terrorist acts".

U:I've decided to revise this post. I reacted too strongly to this comment.

I'm sitting on a train trying to write this out with my sidekick. We'll see how well this goes. Its been a busy day.

The violence going on in the Middle East right now is senseless. Isreal is defending itself from action that seems to have no strategic purpose at all. Hezbollah certainly intends to kill civilians, and their strikes are unprovoked, unwarranted, and ultimately, self destructive. Isreal has both a right and a need to defend themselves.

Having said that, Stratfor warned that Isreal would attempt to punish the Lebanese people, in hopes of making them resent Hezbollah. Its a long term strategy. Isreal will likely demolish Hezbollah's operational capacity in the coming weeks. However, they can't destroy it culturally... So they want, in theory, to teach the people of Lebanon a lesson so that they won't support Hezbollah in the future.

That's not ok, legally, or morally. The use of violence to apply political pressure to an innocent civilian population is definition of terrorism. Its particularly concerning when the population has, at best, a tangental relationship to your enemy.

It appears that this may have occurred. Some commentators have painted civilian deaths as an unfortunate side effect of war. However, some have observed that a portion of the strikes appear to be beyond the scope of what would be needed to suport a ground invasion targetted at Hezbollah. Its unclear. If its true, its wrong. Period.

No international leader is going to call Isreal out on it if it is true, due to the geopolitical implications if it were concluded that it was true. Bolton picked poor wording here. The mere fact that Isreal is defending itself does not mean they they are absolved of responsibility for civilian deaths, particularly when those deaths are intentional.

What international leaders have done is call for restraint. They have done this because they are concerned that civilians are needlessly being killed, and because the scope of the infrastructural damage is so severe that it threatens to undermine the sustainability of Lebanon as a state.

I think unwarranted strikes on Lebanese civilians help, not hurt, Hezbollah culturally. The Shia in particular see Hezbollah as their protectors from these kinds of attacks. Furthermore, the International Community baddly wants to see Lebanon come back into the fold. If the present, weak, government is unable to sustain control over the country as a result of the damage that Isreal does, this will open up the door for Syria, and Shia extremeists, to come back into power there. Everyone, but especially Isreal, looses if this happens.

No doubt these are some of the reasons that we haven't seen a ground invasion yet and the west is engaged in serious diplomatic efforts. However, Stratfor thinks a ground invasion is inevitable. We should hope that the civilian impact, and the impact on the Lebanese government, are minimal, and that Isreal is able to secure their homeland. However, we should not serve as apologists if things get out of hand. There are moral rules here even if we know that Hezbollah will disregard them.

Lebanon civilian deaths morally not same as terror victims -- Bolton - Yahoo! News

Charlton explained to Discovery News that humans have an inherent attraction to physical youth, since it can be a sign of fertility, health and vitality. In the mid-20th century, however, another force kicked in, due to increasing need for individuals to change jobs, learn new skills, move to new places and make new friends.

A “child-like flexibility of attitudes, behaviors and knowledge” is probably adaptive to the increased instability of the modern world, Charlton believes. Formal education now extends well past physical maturity, leaving students with minds that are, he said, “unfinished.”

“The psychological neoteny effect of formal education is an accidental by-product — the main role of education is to increase general, abstract intelligence and prepare for economic activity,” he explained.

“But formal education requires a child-like stance of receptivity to new learning, and cognitive flexibility."

"When formal education continues into the early twenties," he continued, "it probably, to an extent, counteracts the attainment of psychological maturity, which would otherwise occur at about this age.”

WHAT A POO POO HEAD! HAHAHAHAHA!

Serious Study: Immaturity Levels Rising :: Discovery Channel :: News - Human