To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style.

In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop

It is tempting to keep uncovering facts, all of them interesting.

I don't wear a hijab, nor am I Muslim, but textiles fascinate me.

Do not try to teach a child any lessons on an airplane.
This is not the time to square off about limit setting.
This is a time for distraction and entertainment.

Two adults and one cat do not need two, identical lasagna pans.
It is tempting to ponder why I own two, but this is not the time.

It is tempting to opt for baby blue rather than bright blue with black,
because it seems like a softer combination, but that looks like business wear.
There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not fashion, darling.

The Breeders frontwoman is back with a new album—and some choice words for a fellow alt-rock star.

Kim Deal in The Hot Seat | Time Out New York

A friend of a friend just received the following email from a junior officer serving in Iraq. It makes for especially powerful reading in the wake of the Second Sadrist Intifada.

Letter from Iraq

FRONTLINE goes to war with a platoon of National Guard soldiers to see the war through their eyes, as they filmed it using their own camcorders.

FRONTLINE: bad voodoo's war | PBS

What is surprising, given the recent controversy over Obama’s membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ, is how little the Obamas apparently gave to charity — well short of the biblical 10% tithe for all seven years. In two of the years, the Obamas gave far less than 1% of their income to charity; in three of the years, they gave around 1% of their income to charity. Only in the last two years have they given substantially more as their income skyrocketed — 4.7% in 2005 and 6.1% in 2006. (Of course, it is possible that the Obamas may have made gifts to other worthy causes that were not deductible for federal income tax purposes.)

Obama Releases 2000-2006 Tax Returns

No one really expects a disk crash but drive failures do happen-and often at the most inconvenient times. In addition to the possible loss of important data files, a disk crash can leave you with the daunting task of having to replace the dead drive and reinstall your operating system and all of your applications. While you're doing this-assuming you know how to do this, your computer remains nonfunctional.

While this "rebuilding" time can range from mildly annoying to extremely aggravating for a home computer user, it can bring a computer-dependent small business, or even a large office, to a virtual standstill. Whatever you use your computer for, having a quick and easy-to-restore backup can eliminate both the distress and the expense of the prolonged downtime normally associated with a hard drive failure.

Avoiding Disaster When Your Hard Drive Fails

The United States depends on space assets to support national security activities as well as civil and commercial activities. The Department of Defense (DOD) depends on space assets to support a wide range of military missions to include intelligence collection; battlefield surveillance and management; global command, control, and communications; and navigation assistance. This operational dependence on space has placed new and increasing demands on current space systems and organizations to meet Joint Force Commanders’ needs. Moreover, concerns have increased regarding emerging threats that could affect the United States’ and other countries’ access to the free use of space.

National Security Space Strategy Needed to Guide Future DOD Space Efforts

The duration of the current instability is in marked contrast to financial shocks of recent decades — stock market crashes, bond market disruptions, the 9/11 attacks — when the central bank was able to contain market problems quickly with little or no interruption of U.S. economic growth. Depending on how soon normal market conditions are restored, and at what cost, policy makers may consider whether regulators have access to adequate information about market conditions, and whether currently unregulated market participants should be subjected to disclosure and reporting requirements. In addition, the social costs of failed financial speculation may be judged great enough to warrant new restrictions designed to lower the incidence of losses that have system-wide impacts or to put the markets and the economy in a better position to weather such shocks.

Averting Financial Crisis

Telephone records contain a large amount of intimate personal information. Recent years have seen a rise in the use of this information for marketing and even for criminal purposes. The purchase and sale of telephone record information, therefore, became a booming business. Websites and data brokers claiming to be able to obtain the phone records for any phone number within a few days abounded.

However, the methods by which these data brokers obtained their information came under intense fire from public interest groups concerned about consumer privacy. Consumer groups and news outlets reported that telephone records were being obtained fraudulently by data brokers or other individuals without the knowledge or consent of the customers to whom the records related. Data brokers are thought to employ three different practices to obtain customer telephone records without the approval of the customer. The first method occurs when an employee of one of the phone companies sells the records to the data broker. The second method occurs through a practice called “pretexting,” where a data broker pretends to be the owner of the phone and obtains the records from the telephone company under false pretenses. The third method is employed when a data broker obtains the customer’s telephone records by accessing the customer’s account on the Internet.

In response to increased concern over the unauthorized disclosure of private telephone records, Congress and other regulatory agencies have taken a number of steps to improve the security of this information. Congress enacted the Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act of 2006, which makes “pretexting” a federal offense. The Federal Trade Commission has instituted a number of enforcement actions against data brokers. In the 110th Congress, bills have been introduced to ensure greater security of phone records. And the FCC recently amended its regulations governing the disclosure of Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI) in an attempt to address the concerns raised by Congress, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), and other consumer groups regarding the unauthorized disclosure of such information.

This report discusses recent legislative and regulatory efforts to protect the privacy of customer telephone records and efforts to prevent the unauthorized use, disclosure, or sale of such records by data brokers. In addition, it provides a brief overview of the confidentiality protections for customer information established by the Communications Act of 1934. It does not discuss the legal framework for the disclosure by telephone companies of phone records to the government. For an overview of laws that address disclosure of telephone records to the government, see CRS Report RL33424 (PDF; 138 KB), Government Access to Phone Calling Activity and Related Records, by Elizabeth B. Bazan, Gina Marie Stevens, and Brian Yeh. For an overview of federal law governing wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping, see CRS Report 98-326 (PDF; 464 KB, via EPIC), Privacy: An Overview of Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping, by Gina Marie Stevens and Charles Doyle. This report will be updated when warranted.

Selected Laws Governing the Disclosure of Customer Phone Records by Telecommunications Carriers