Being "always on" is being always off, to something.
Militants gaining ground in Pakistan
Topic: War on Terrorism
6:51 am EST, Nov 5, 2007
Once restricted to pockets in the mountains along the Afghanistan border, radical mullahs and their followers now wield power in vast areas of northwest Pakistan.
"The Pakistanis, and by extension the United States, have almost no control of events" in the northern, ethnically Pashtun regions, said Milt Bearden, a former CIA station chief in Pakistan.
I Am Tired of Being Mistaken for a Golden-Rumped Lion Tamarin.
Topic: Arts
6:50 am EST, Nov 5, 2007
Latkes are potato pancakes served at Hanukkah. Lemony Snicket is an alleged children's author. For the first time in literary history, these two elements are combined in one book.
There are plenty of other choices on the table, of course: duff, glutes, buns, booty, rump, caboose, backside, badonkadonk, bum, tail. We'll ignore fanny (in Britain, it means vajayjay), but how about prat? (Yes, that's what a pratfall is.) They all have their charms. But the bottom line? I'm still betting on butt.
I doubt there will ever be a stick-shift revival in the United States, no matter how much gas prices and temperatures soar. Gearheads will always adore manuals, but they're in the minority—most Americans prefer the ease of an automatic, especially on gridlocked freeways. Fewer than 9 percent of new cars in the United States are manuals, and that figure is set to drop to 6 percent by 2012. And rare is the driving school that teaches teenage newbies how to work a clutch.
Drivers apply their brakes between 10 and 25 percent more than they need to!
A single solitary driver, if they stop "competing" and instead adopt some unusual driving habits, can actually wipe away some of the frustrating traffic patterns on a highway. That "nice" noncompetitive driver can erase traffic waves. I suspect that the opposite is also true: normal competitive behavior CREATES the traffic waves.
From the recent archive:
Although there are about a million more miles of road in the United States today than there were in 1947 (there are also two more states), two hundred million more vehicles are registered to drive on them. There is little romance left in long car rides.
National Strategy for Combating Terrorism: Background and Issues for Congress
Topic: War on Terrorism
4:04 pm EDT, Nov 3, 2007
This is a recent report from the Congressional Research Service.
The 2006 Strategy differs from the 2003 version primarily in that it sets different priorities for the strategic elements designed to achieve its goals. Perhaps most significant of these differences is a major increase in emphasis on democratization as a method of combating terrorism. Additionally, the 2006 strategy places greater emphasis on denying terrorists sanctuary in underdeveloped, failed, and rogue states. The use of economic and political tools to strengthen nations vulnerable to the spread of terrorist influence appears to receive less emphasis in the 2006 Strategy than in the 2003 version.
Inherent in the National Strategy are a number of issues for Congress. These include:
(1) democratization as a counterterrorism strategy;
(2) the validity of the Strategy’s assumptions about terrorists;
(3) whether the Strategy adequately addresses the situation in Iraq including the US presence there as a catalyst for international terrorism;
(4) the Strategy’s effectiveness against rogue states;
(5) the degree to which the Strategy addresses threats reflected in recent National Intelligence Estimates;
(6) mitigating extremist indoctrination of the young;
To the degree that the 2006 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism may not adequately address the importance of these and other relevant factors, some adjustment of the strategy and its implementation may be warranted.
Valerie Plame was just the latest woman to run up against Langley's Kafkaesque workplace culture.
The broader problem, says Janine Brookner, is a dysfunctional workplace culture that uses the cloak of national security to insulate itself from demands for reform.
Click through for a rather colorful rant toward the end of the article.
A land surveyor takes a job at a mysterious castle, only to meet resistance from co-workers who have been organized by the company’s bureaucracy to impede his progress. He also is met with hostility from the residents of a nearby town who conspire with the castle’s workers. Haneke’s faithful adaptation of Franz Kafka’s novel fragment successfully incorporates the writer’s prose into a startling cinematic vision.
In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, the Bush administration had a choice: Aggressively pursue potential terrorists using existing laws or devise new, secret intelligence programs in uncharted legal waters.
Unfortunately, President Bush often chose the latter ... his decision to go it alone ... had devastating consequences.
The chairman of the Senate's intelligence committee is unhappy with the President, but he comes out in defense of telecom collaborators.
If we require them to face a mountain of lawsuits, we risk losing their support in the future.
Maybe if we just offer to indemnify UBL we can win his support.
In adamantly refusing to declare waterboarding illegal, Michael B. Mukasey, the nominee for attorney general, is steering clear of a potential legal quagmire for the Bush administration: criminal prosecution or lawsuits against Central Intelligence Agency officers who used the harsh interrogation practice and those who authorized it, legal experts said Wednesday.
Rockefeller puts the responsibility/blame on the government:
There is little doubt that the government was operating in, at best, a legal gray area.
But he holds nothing back:
We face an enemy that uses every tool and technology of 21st-century life, and we must do the same.
