When you go to work, stop at the store, fly in a plane, or surf the web, you are being watched. They know where you live, the value of your home, the names of your friends and family, in some cases even what you read. Where the data revolution meets the needs of national security, there is no place to hide.I think this is a futile effort, but I admire the sentiment.
A company that sells personal data on consumers said Wednesday that it's alerting 145,000 Americans -- including 35,000 Californians -- that they might be vulnerable to identity theft after a crime ring paid for their credit reports, Social Security numbers and other sensitive information.About seven years ago a group of scammers set up a California bank so they could purchase credit card account information. This is a variant on this technique.
ChoicePoint, a Georgia company that boasts it has compiled the deepest database in the nation, said Tuesday that it had alerted 35,000 Californians that they were vulnerable, as required by state law. But it balked at first at notifying a far larger number of potential victims outside California.
Driving Solutions Program (Inpatient and Outpatient)When I was in practice the aging driver was one of my tougher management challenges. It's not only that driving ability decreases with advanced age, it's also that judgment often deteriorates in parallel with visual, sensory and motility loss.
This specialty program provides driver assessment, training and adaptive equipment recommendations for vehicle operation. The assessment process includes tests of vision, visual perception and reaction time, as well as assessment of cognitive and physician functioning. Driver training is available to new and experienced drivers to promote safety and competency behind the wheel. Training in the use of adaptive equipment is available.
It is the task of National Socialist theory to construct a program that can hold its own in the daily political struggle. We have worked on this program since the start of the movement. Its basics are laid out in the 25 points [the party's official program, adopted in 1920]. The 25 points provide the foundation of all of National Socialist practice.
... It will not be the goal of this magazine to spread and deepen National Socialist theory and practice... Rather, our goal is to show practitioners the methods they can use to gradually gain power by winning the souls of the people.
... each of these methods requires a political group to win the sympathies of the broad masses, if it wishes over the long run to maintain is power. But the sympathy of the people does not come of itself; it must be won.
The means of gaining that support is propaganda. The task of propaganda is not to discover a theory or to develop a program, but rather to translate that theory and program into the language of the people, to make them comprehensible to the broad masses of the people. The goal of propaganda is to make what the theorists have discovered clear to the broad masses.
... No other political movement as understood the art of propaganda as well as the National Socialists. From its beginnings, it has put heart and soul into propaganda. What distinguishes it from all other political parties is the ability to see into the soul of the people and to speak the language of the man in the street. It uses all the means of modern technology. Leaflets, handbills, posters, mass demonstrations, the press, stage, film and radio — these are all tools of our propaganda. Whether or not they serve or harm the people depends on the use to which they are put.
In the long run, propaganda will reach the broad masses of the people only if at every stage it is uniform. Nothing confuses the people more than lack of clarity or aimlessness. The goal is not to present the common man with as many varied and contradictory theories as possible. The essence of propaganda is not in variety, but rather the forcefulness and persistence with which one selects ideas from the larger pool and hammers them into the masses using the most varied methods.
Therefore, we named this magazine "Will and Way." The will of the National Socialist movement is laid out in its program. The way changes every day...
... Today, we have a tight network of National Socialist propaganda throughout the country...National Socialist propaganda serves to educate the people. Its task is not only to win them for the tasks of today, but to assist in the transformation of the character of the broad masses. We are convinced that a new politics in Germany is possible only after a complete transformation of our national character, after an entirely new national way of thinking.
... Our goal in these pages is to bring will and way together in an unified synthesis of practical techniques. We are not writing for the general public, but rather for those active in daily politics throughout the country. It is a forum for discussion firmly tied to the party. Each who has something to say has the right and duty to speak. We will here exchange experiences, make proposals, criticize mistakes and suggest improvements.
These pages should over the course of time become a resource that political fighters will need for their daily battles. They should receive teaching, education and strength. They will receive the power to bring our ideas to Germany, and learn the ways and means to put a good theory into effective practice...
Before Godel's incompleteness theorem was published in 1931, it was believed that not only was everything proven by mathematics true, but also that within its conceptual universe everything true could be proven. Mathematics is thus complete: nothing true is beyond its reach. Gdel shattered that dream. He showed that there were true statements in certain mathematical systems that could not be proven. And he did this with astonishing sleight of hand, producing a mathematical assertion that was both true and unprovable.But Godel's genius came with a price:
[jf: actually if memory serves a better statement might be: "He showed that there were true statements in certain nontrivial and interesting mathematical systems that could not be proven. And he did this with astonishing sleight of hand, producing a mathematical assertion that was both true and unprovable."]
... those leaps and connections could go awry. Godel was an intermittent paranoiac, whose twisted visions often left his colleagues in dismay. He spent his later years working on a proof of the existence of God. He even died in the grip of a perverse esotericism. He feared eating, imagined elaborate plots, and literally wasted away. At his death in 1978, he weighed 65 pounds.Genius, connections, intuition, courage, fascination with the infinite, then madness.
It was fate,' said Am Changkraichok, 68, a fisherman. 'If you were meant to die, you died. People visiting here to see friends, or foreigners here on holiday, all were here because their time had come to die.'
'I've lived here all my life but I was spared,' he said. 'How do you explain that? My time had not yet come. When I think like this, it makes me feel better. Nature decides. Things come and things disappear. If you don't just let go, it can make you crazy.'
...Then at some point Iraqis will have to become reconciled to the the crimes of the past. Giving Saddam and his deputies a fair trial in Baghdad will be a start, but not enough. The emotional and psychological cost of a dictatorship that for three decades persecuted so many is difficult to fathom.A man who ought to hate Saddam as much as any person alive, is troubled by the humiliation of "his father".
Shortly after the war a quiet Iraqi from Hilla, Ali Abid Hassan, took me to a mass grave outside the town where he was supposed to have been killed and buried along with 3,000 others after the regime crushed an uprising in 1991. He was shot but crawled away to safety.
Among the reeds he showed me where it had happened. On a pathway we found the tokens of history: some vertebrae, a rib bone, one button and 11 long, creamy-brown teeth. A year later I went back and asked him about Saddam's brief appearance in court and he of all people was deeply troubled. "I couldn't bear to see him in such a miserable condition. He shouldn't be humiliated; after all he was our president. He was our father," he said. Then I asked if he thought Saddam should be punished. "He deserves the ultimate punishment. Yes, death. He executed many of us.
...To most Americans, the federal budget, more than 2,000 pages of fine print, is hard to grasp; it isn't easy to summon a mental image of $2.57 trillion. One way to look at it is to consider how much the government spends per household. In the 1990's, the figure held steady at about $18,000, according to Brian M. Riedl, a budget analyst for the Heritage Foundation. But last year, it exceeded $20,000, adjusted for inflation, the highest amount since World War II. But the government only takes in $17,000 for each household. 'So right there,' Mr. Reidl said, 'we're borrowing $3,000 per household.'We borrow from other countries, but mostly we borrow from the future. This is not necessarily irrational -- assuming the money is used wisely and that our future selves can afford the cost. Unfortunately we are borrowing more than the near future will likely repay.
