In traditional U.S. Army slang dating back to the Second World War, a blivet was defined as "ten pounds of manure in a five pound bag," (a proverbial description of anything egregiously ugly or unmanageable); it was applied to an unmanageable situation, a crucial but substandard or damaged tool, or a self-important person.

When referring to political issues that are not what they seem, I have used the word "football", mostly because of how they are passed around. Internally to myself, this term has always been "footbal" with only one L. Now, I may have a new term. Or rather, I have a new meme that needs to be carried forward...

Blivet = Ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag

On a scale of 1 to 10, in which 1 is the least important and least far-reaching and 10 is the most important and most far-reaching, the controversial parts of the Patriot Act renewal were about a 2. Nonetheless, the Bush Administration struggled for months to push through the legislation. Congress held hearings on almost every teeny tiny piece of text...

Compare that to the developing politics surrounding the Specter NSA bill, which was voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. On the same scale of 1 to 10, in which 1 is the least important and 10 is the most important, the Specter bill is somewhere around an 8. The Specter bill would reorient the basic role of the legislative branch in national security surveillance. In terms of importance, its provisions dwarf the provisions in the Patriot Act renewal by orders of magnitude.

The Volokh Conspiracy - The Politics of Surveillance and the Specter NSA Bill:

Mike the Usurper wrote:

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

Decius wrote:

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.

Have you read this article on North Korea yet?

The Bush administration has argued that Iraq was a case of picking our battles. I assume the administration sees Iran as a battle we are being forced into. North Korea could wind up being a battle dropped in our lap.

Wait a minute.. Weren't Iran and the DPRK trading weapon technology with each other? Wasn't the DPRK just caught shipping weapons to Syria? Does that mean China gets all the oil and we get all the bullshit?

The Axis of Evil, indeed.

When North Korea Collapses...

A blog on social software, collaboration, trust, security, privacy, and internet tools, by Christopher Allen.

It is clear this is an excellent blog just based on a once-over. I'm going to have to catch up on this guy's content.

Life With Alacrity

The Republic of Cyprus has stopped a ship full of North Korean weapons systems bound for Syria.

Officials said Greek Cypriot authorities responded to an alert by Interpol to capture a ship bound for Syria from North Korea. They said security agents found a mobile air defense system and components of a missile launcher.

The ship, named the Panamanian-flagged Grigorio-1, reported a consignment of weather-observation equipment, officials said. But Interpol asserted that the freighter contained North Korean weapons systems and asked Nicosia to detain the ship for inspection.

Officials did not identify the North Korean air defense system. But they reported 18 truck-mounted mobile radar systems and three command vehicles.

Officials said Damascus had asked Nicosia to release the seized shipment. They said the ship's manifest does not identify Syria as the consignee.

The Grigorio-1 was tracked by Interpol for several months, officials said. They said the ship was seized on Sept. 5 when it sailed near Larnaca for refueling.

Officials said Grigorio-1 left North Korea for the Middle East and stopped at several ports. They said the last leg of the journey began from Egypt's Port Said toward the Syrian port of Latakia.

World Tribune.com -- Ship with N. Korean weapons seized enroute to Syria

Stop squinting at tiny web video. Instead, download and watch all the best internet TV shows in one powerful application: any video RSS feed, video podcast, video blog, or BitTorrent file. Fullscreen, high resolution, 100% free and open source. New channels arrive daily in the built-in Channel Guide.

Democracy - Internet TV Platform - Free and Open Source

The reliability of information collected from at large Internet users by open collaborative wikis such as Wikipedia has been a subject of widespread debate. This paper provides a practical proposal for improving user confidence in wiki information by coloring the text of a wiki article based on the venerability of the text. This proposal relies on the philosophy that bad information is less likely to survive a collaborative editing process over large numbers of edits. Colorization would provide users with a clear visual cue as to the level of confidence that they can place in particular assertions made within a wiki article.

Congratulations to Tom, who has been published in this month's issue of First Monday.

The material his article covers was first presented at last year's PhreakNIC Conference. Video of the talk (Google Video) is available. The point where Tom talks about his reliability system for Wikipedia is about 30 minutes into the presentation.

Update: Instalanche.

Update2: Slashdotted.

Puppy smoothies: Improving the reliability of open, collaborative wikis

Russian diplomats believe it is now "highly probable" that North Korea will officially join the nuclear club by carrying out its first underground test of an atomic device.

Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader, is said to have made clear his intention to explode a device during recent talks with Russian and Chinese officials in Pyongyang.

Their fears appear to bolster American suspicions that a test is being prepared, after intelligence reports last month of unusual vehicle movements in the area believed to be the test site. Any such test would be an escalation of tension in the region and would raise the stakes in the stand-off with the United States.

Kim did his missile tests on the 4th of July. What are the odds that he would . . .

North Korea 'determined to carry out underground test'

Over the weekend, British papers discovered that Banksy, the artist who notoriously sneaked fake versions of famous paintings into art galleries last year, replaced as many as 500 retail store copies of Paris Hilton's debut CD with a retouched and remixed version. Now, it has been revealed that Danger Mouse -- the producer behind Gnarls Barkley, Gorillaz, and the famous Grey Album -- is behind the remix portion of the disc. Along with completely reworked liner notes that included topless photos of Paris slathered with slogans like "Every CD you buy puts me even further out of your league," the CD featured remixes of Hilton songs by someone credited as "DM," letters that stand for Danger Mouse. The song titles were also changed to names like "Why Am I Famous," "What Have I Done," and "What Am I For." According to an email from his management company obtained by SPIN.com, Danger Mouse met Banksy in London while shopping for disguises. The two had one singular statement about the project: "It's hard to improve on perfection, but we had to try."

Remember what Paris had to say about her album?

Of her album, she says, "I, like, cry, when I listen to it, it's so good."

I wonder what she does when she listens to Danger Mouse's version...

SPIN.com: Danger Mouse, Banksy Burn Paris

Stealth jets? Hypersonic bombers? What's really being developed at the military's most famous classified base?

There must be a certain amount of giddy enjoyment derived from working at a place many people think houses alien corpses.

The Top-Secret Warplanes of Area 51 - Popular Science