I have to wonder to what lengths we might go in order to "keep it real" ...

One of the biggest challenges facing the United States in Asia is keeping the region’s leaders focused on the terrorist threat, a recently retired senior defense official told reporters here today.

That’s particularly important among nations that don’t see themselves as terrorist targets, said Richard Lawless, who retired last week after almost five years as deputy assistant secretary for Asian and Pacific affairs.

“If we don’t keep people’s attitudes and eyes focused on the threat, they tend to drift away to other subjects,” he said. “And keeping people focused on that issue has been very tough.”

Lawless acknowledged that some Asian-Pacific countries “are just simply not impacted by terrorism.” Others have gone so long since experiencing a terrorist attack within their borders that they have shifted their attention elsewhere ...

... to things like individual rights, economic development, global free trade, eliminating poverty, fighting AIDS and reducing the risk of global pandemics, and so on. How dare they!

Just what is it going to take to instill fear, and maintain that fear, when some people have nothing to be afraid of?

People say to me, "Whatever it takes." I tell them, It's going to take everything.

The headline here has been revised, but I've used the original one that was on the article as it went out for distribution.

US Must Keep Terror Threat 'Real' to Other Nations, Official Says

Tom Perkins had done it all. He'd made a fortune, conquered Silicon Valley, even been Danielle Steel's fifth husband for a time. His venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, was an early backer of Genentech, Netscape, and Google. But when he turned 70 a few years ago, Perkins decided to do something even grander and a bit crazier: He would build the biggest, riskiest, fastest, most technologically advanced, single-hulled sailing mega yacht in the world. The 289-foot Maltese Falcon, launched in spring 2006, is that engineering dream come to life.

If the 1,367-ton Falcon were anchored in New York Harbor, its masts would nearly reach the tablet in the arm of the Statue of Liberty. The exterior has teak decks, a varnished cap rail, and exquisitely finished surfaces — all attributes of a classic ship — yet the overall look is sleek, metallic, and ultramodern, almost foreboding. When Darth Vader builds his own intergalactic yacht, it will look like this.

Wow. Tom Perkins wins..

I want one!

Tom Perkins, Silicon Valley Pirate

The eagerly awaited new album by Prince is being launched as a free CD with a national Sunday newspaper in a move that has drawn widespread criticism from music retailers.

"It's all about giving music for the masses and he believes in spreading the music he produces to as many people as possible," said Mail on Sunday managing director Stephen Miron. "This is the biggest innovation in newspaper promotions in recent times."

Prince is not stupid. Quite the contrary, actually. He knows where he makes his real money. For artists of his caliber, that's live performance and broadcast royalties.

One music store executive described the plan as "madness" while others said it was a huge insult to an industry battling fierce competition from supermarkets and online stores. Prince's label has cut its ties with the album in the UK to try to appease music stores.

The Entertainment Retailers Association said the giveaway "beggars belief". "It would be an insult to all those record stores who have supported Prince throughout his career," ERA co-chairman Paul Quirk told a music conference. "It would be yet another example of the damaging covermount culture which is destroying any perception of value around recorded music.

"The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behaviour like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores. And I say that to all the other artists who may be tempted to dally with the Mail on Sunday."

High street music giant HMV was similarly scathing about the plans. Speaking before rumours of a giveaway were confirmed, HMV chief executive Simon Fox said: "I think it would be absolutely nuts. I can't believe the music industry would do it to itself. I simply can't believe it would happen; it would be absolute madness."

The record industry is scared shitless. They are at the point where they have to try new things. Teaming up with newspapers is an interesting idea. When it comes to entertainment, the Sunday papers and the weekly papers are the ones that must out innovate each other.

All the players here are correct that the perception of the economic value of music is broken. Rather, it's just downright lost now. People place emotional value on music, and always will. As it stands right now, the only place people still place economic value is in the direct connection you get with the artist when seeing them perform live.

People used to have strong bonds with record labels, buying new releases off certain labels, just based on track record. Now, both average and non-average music consumers hold nothing but vile for the labels. If the retail stores manage to make the artists hate them, then it's game over for them that much faster.

The big retail music store is going to die. I don't see a way for it to continue existing. I think Starbucks is drilling down the right direction. The future environment in which people are going to share music is the coffee house..

Ponder the idea of a Starbucks/iTunes partnership for a moment.. When at a Starbucks, downloads are 20% cheaper. They make up the money in saving bandwidth costs by having cache boxen on site. Starbucks makes money from having more people around, who will obviously buy decaffeinated stuff. The possibility exists that neat environments would spring into existence, where people sit around talking about music and giving each other recommendations.

Music industry attacks Sunday newspaper's free Prince CD | Guardian Unlimited

A top special operations officer from Lebanon's Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah has been captured in Iraq, where U.S. officials say he played a key role in a January attack that killed five Americans.

Ali Mussa Daqduq, an explosives expert, was captured in March in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, where he was helping train and lead Shiite militias fighting coalition troops, U.S. intelligence officials told CNN.

Something is going off here, and I think it's my bullshit detector. The reasons why the bullshit detector is going off are not entirely clear to me.. I think there is way more to this story.

The U.S. military declined official comment on Daqduq's arrest, as did the Iraqi government. But documents and forensic evidence, seen by members of the Iraqi government and shown to CNN, support the claims.

It's auspicious timing.. CI?

I've been thinking lately that this would be the time to create a link between the Iraqi insurgency, Hezbollah, and Iran in the public eye. It seems like a very Bushie thing to do. The first thing you do to your enemy is clearly define them and lump them all together, regardless of if it all actually fits. Are we about to see that game play out?

"I say clearly that we do not accept any logistic, financial, or any other kind of support from anyone outside the borders of Iraq," said Rassim al-Marwani, Sadr's cultural adviser.

That much, I have reason to believe is truthful, even if it is omitting much. In this context, "outside the borders of Iraq" can mean several things. If I had to guess, aid is accepted from anyone, at long as the strings attached only go to local tribes. In the absence of a state, these folks always revert to tribes when it comes to loyalties they are willing to honor and accept. And for that matter, the western concept of a nation-state is one of the things they are trying to reject. In that way, the Iran/Iraq border doesn't really matter all that much to them. When it comes down to it, they don't seem to like each other that much. They share beliefs, and not much else.

But then, I really have no idea what I'm talking about...

Officials: Captured Hezbollah agent helped plan deadly Karbala raid - CNN.com

You may remember the Drew Westen thread from earlier this year.

The Political Brain is a groundbreaking investigation into the role of emotion in determining the political life of the nation. For two decades Drew Westen, professor of psychology and psychiatry at Emory University, has explored a theory of the mind that differs substantially from the more "dispassionate" notions held by most cognitive psychologists, political scientists, and economists—and Democratic campaign strategists. The idea of the mind as a cool calculator that makes decisions by weighing the evidence bears no relation to how the brain actually works. When political candidates assume voters dispassionately make decisions based on "the issues," they lose. That's why only one Democrat has been re-elected to the presidency since Franklin Roosevelt—and only one Republican has failed in that quest.

In politics, when reason and emotion collide, emotion invariably wins. Elections are decided in the marketplace of emotions, a marketplace filled with values, images, analogies, moral sentiments, and moving oratory, in which logic plays only a supporting role. Westen shows, through a whistle-stop journey through the evolution of the passionate brain and a bravura tour through fifty years of American presidential and national elections, why campaigns succeed and fail. The evidence is overwhelming that three things determine how people vote, in this order: their feelings toward the parties and their principles, their feelings toward the candidates, and, if they haven't decided by then, their feelings toward the candidates' policy positions.

Westen turns conventional political analyses on their head, suggesting that the question for Democratic politics isn't so much about moving to the right or the left but about moving the electorate. He shows how it can be done through examples of what candidates have said—or could have said—in debates, speeches, and ads. Westen's discoveries could utterly transform electoral arithmetic, showing how a different view of the mind and brain leads to a different way of talking with voters about issues that have tied the tongues of Democrats for much of forty years—such as abortion, guns, taxes, and race. You can't change the structure of the brain. But you can change the way you appeal to it. And here's how…

This looks interesting...

The Political Brain

In essence, the phrase “long tail” refers to those numerous objects that have very limited popularity but that together form a significant share of the total volume. The aim of this article is to make it possible for anyone to utilize the long tail concept not only as a general idea but also as a tool to make realistic and useful analysis of real phenomena.

A feasible analysis requires a mathematical model, enough raw data, and good understanding of the subject and the properties of the model. Thus not only is a formula necessary in this essay, in fact the selected formula forms the concrete basis for the whole analysis of long tails. Nevertheless, we have to be aware of the fact that there cannot be any simple formula that is able to explain all the diverse phenomena that result in a long tail distribution.

A practical model for analyzing long tails

"We have information on security practices out there. The disconnect is that we don't have an intermediary that says how these things apply to you as you build Web 2.0 or other applications," Hoffman said. "Will a nonprofit or some other group arise that tries to publish standards? Probably. We definitely need a central clearing house of good information, because there is a lot of bad information out there."

Are there any articles on Web 2.0 security out there that are not made up of Billy Hoffman quotes? I hope not..

Solving the Web security challenge | CNET News.com

Shortly after 9/11, Senator Bob Graham, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called for “a symbiotic relationship between the intelligence community and the private sector.” They say you should be careful what you wish for.

... As it happened, the dot-com bubble had burst shortly before 9/11, cutting loose a generation of technology entrepreneurs who, when the government came calling, were only too happy to start developing new data-mining algorithms and biometric identification programs.

There is nothing inherently wrong with all this.

The problem is that the “symbiotic relationship” has turned decidedly dysfunctional, if not downright exploitative.

Don’t Privatize Our Spies

Bill Haley was a small-time disc jockey and unsuccessful country and western singer when he took up a six-nights-a-week gig at the Twin Bar in this gritty industrial city.

Soon, he started messing around with rhythm and blues and the sound he created there in 1951 and 1952 made him one of the first stars of rock 'n' roll.

But do his appearances here qualify as the birth of the genre?

Officials in Gloucester City and Camden County think so. They also think claiming ownership of such historic trivia could help the city's redevelopment efforts and even attract a few tourists.

Wildwood, N.J.; Cleveland; Hattiesburg, Miss.; Galveston, Texas; and Memphis, Tenn. also claim the title as the birthplace. Until now, though, Gloucester City had not been part of the conversation.

Steve Martorano, who has lived all his 78 years in Gloucester City and remembers going to the Twin Bar at 16 or 17, doesn't remember a lot about the Haley or the other performers.

"I used to listen to the music sometimes," he said, "and we used to get into rowdy fights sometimes."

Now, that's rock 'n' roll.

South Jersey city wants to claim a birthright | Asbury Park Press

The Center for American Progress and Free Press today released the first-of-its-kind statistical analysis of the political make-up of talk radio in the United States. It confirms that talk radio, one of the most widely used media formats in America, is dominated almost exclusively by conservatives.

The new report — entitled “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio” — raises serious questions about whether the companies licensed to broadcast over the public radio airwaves are serving the listening needs of all Americans.

While progressive talk is making inroads on commercial stations, right-wing talk reigns supreme on America’s airwaves. Some key findings:

– In the spring of 2007, of the 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial station owners, 91 percent of the total weekday talk radio programming was conservative, and only 9 percent was progressive.

– Each weekday, 2,570 hours and 15 minutes of conservative talk are broadcast on these stations compared to 254 hours of progressive talk — 10 times as much conservative talk as progressive talk.

– 76 percent of the news/talk programming in the top 10 radio markets is conservative, while 24 percent is progressive.

REPORT: The Right Wing Domination Of Talk Radio And How To End It