Bottom line: We urgently need a national commission to look at all the little changes we have made in response to 9/11 - from visa policies to research funding, to the way we've sealed off our federal buildings, to legal rulings around prisoners of war - and ask this question: While no single change is decisive, could it all add up in a way so that 20 years from now we will discover that some of America's cultural and legal essence - our DNA as a nation - has become badly deformed or mutated?

This would be a tragedy for us and for the world. Because, as I've argued, where birds don't fly, people don't mix, ideas don't get sparked, friendships don't get forged, stereotypes don't get broken, and freedom doesn't ring.

America's DNA - Tom Freidman

Felt said that if he had something for me, he could get me a message. He quizzed me about my daily routine, what came to my apartment, the mailbox, etc. The Post was delivered outside my apartment door. I did have a subscription to the New York Times. A number of people in my apartment building near Dupont Circle got the Times. The copies were left in the lobby with the apartment number. Mine was No. 617, and it was written clearly on the outside of each paper in marker pen.

Felt said if there was something important he could get to my New York Times -- how, I never knew. Page 20 would be circled, and the hands of a clock in the lower part of the page would be drawn to indicate the time of the meeting that night, probably 2 a.m., in the same Rosslyn parking garage.The relationship was a compact of trust; nothing about it was to be discussed or shared with anyone, he said.

How he could have made a daily observation of my balcony is still a mystery to me. At the time, before the era of intensive security, the back of the building was not enclosed, so anyone could have driven in the back alley to observe my balcony. In addition, my balcony and the back of the apartment complex faced onto a courtyard or back area that was shared with a number of other apartment or office buildings in the area. My balcony could have been seen from dozens of apartments or offices, as best I can tell.

A number of embassies were located in the area. The Iraqi Embassy was down the street, and I thought it possible that the FBI had surveillance or listening posts nearby. Could Felt have had the counterintelligence agents regularly report on the status of my flag and flowerpot? That seems highly unlikely, if not impossible.

Bob Woodward on his relations with Mark Felt.

How Mark Felt Became 'Deep Throat'

The system of bracket quotations has been killed. Decius has cut the site over to using blockquote tags, and the italics that were popular early in the history of the site.

Text enclosed in "blockquote" tags, or "bq" for short, look like this!

We have not, and won't convert all of the old posts in the system. Such a process is fraught with peril. Going forward, things will look nicer. In a few weeks you won't even recall the old quoting system.

As always, let us know if there are any problems.

MemeStreams Update: Death to bracket quotes!

... "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...

] The Washington Post today confirmed that W. Mark Felt, a
] former number-two official at the FBI, was "Deep Throat,"
] the secretive source who provided information that helped
] unravel the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s and
] contributed to the resignation of president Richard M.
] Nixon.

] The confirmation came from Bob Woodward and Carl
] Bernstein, the two Washington Post reporters who broke
] the Watergate story, and their former top editor,
] Benjamin C. Bradlee. The three spoke after Felt's family
] and Vanity Fair magazine identified the 91-year-old Felt,
] now a retiree in California, as the long-anonymous source
] who provided crucial guidance for some of the newspaper's
] groundbreaking Watergate stories.

Washington Post Confirms Felt Is 'Deep Throat'

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

Chances are good that Bhavya in Bangalore will read your next x-ray, or as Thomas Friedman learned first hand, "Grandma Betty in her bathrobe" will make your Jet Blue plane reservation from her Salt Lake City home. In "Globalization 3.0," Friedman contends, people from far-flung places will become principal players in the marketplace.

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

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.

Another MemeStreams Update

Decius just posted a code update, which clears up some minor annoyances with the recommend function.

1. Escapped unicode characters in html selected by the bookmarklet should now be handled properly.

2. When you click recommend in the site there is no longer a pop-up.

3. You can now include HREF links in your posts. Standard html format.

Let me know if there are any problems.

MemeStreams Update

Mixing together anecdotes, graphics, and fables, Rucker teases out the implications of his new worldview, which he calls "universal automatism." His analysis reveals startling aspects of the everyday world, touching upon such topics as chaos, the internet, fame, free will, and the pursuit of happiness. More than a popular science book, The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul is a philosophical entertainment that teaches us how to enjoy our daily lives to the fullest possible extent.

The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul

] More than a third of the mortgages written in the
] Washington area this year are a risky new kind of loan
] that lets borrowers pay back only the interest, delaying
] for years repayment of any loan principal. Economists
] warn that the new loans are essentially a gamble that
] home prices will continue to rise at a brisk pace,
] allowing the borrower to either sell the home at a profit
] or refinance before the principal payments come due.

] The loans are attractive because their initial monthly
] payments are tantalizingly low -- about $1,367 a month
] for a $320,000 mortgage, compared with about $1,842 a
] month for a traditional 30-year, fixed-rate loan. If home
] prices fall, though, borrowers could lose big.

] "People are buying houses like they used to buy cars,"
] said Alan E. Hummel, past president of the Appraisal
] Institute, who likened the process to buyers leasing a
] car. "They are renting the property from the bank, in
] this case," he said.

Decius was recently telling me about these loans. We both agreed they were a very stupid proposition. Apparently, they are catching on like wildfire, accounting for the bulk of homes sales in upscale areas. When the housing bubble bursts, the banks are going to own about 40% of your local upscale communities, and they are going to be selling for extremely low prices. Either that, or renting houses will become the norm once the ensuing banking scandals calm down, because that's pretty much what is happening right now..

America has officially given birth to Exurbia, defined by the "McMansion" and the "debt-hole".

Many Buyers Opt for Risky Mortgages