Bribe inflation: 700K for a house member?!

Brad DeLong's Website: Republican House Member Randy Cunningham Takes Bribe, Pockets $700,000

The alleged bribe was passed through using an inflated home price. The price seems high though. 700K will buy presidential access or a part of a senator. Why would Randy Cunningham be worth so much?

Shock - Corrupt Bush official resigns

Editor of Climate Reports Resigns - New York Times

Bush brings in an industry flunky opposed to climate change science. This gentleman edits documents to support his boss's agenda. He's following standard Bush procedures that happen to also be legal. He's discovered.

So far, so good. Then he resigns?! Those who've committed far worse offences usually make a move to a lateral position. This guy shouldn't have gone anywere. Is this a sign that Bush's power is fading fast? Cooney may have figured there wasn't much of a future left in the Bush administration.

Philip A. Cooney, the chief of staff to President Bush's Council on Environmental Quality, resigned yesterday, White House officials said.

Mr. Cooney's resignation came two days after documents revealed that he had repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that cast doubt on the link between building greenhouse-gas emissions and rising temperatures.

Mr. Cooney has no scientific training. Dana Perino, a deputy White House press secretary, said Mr. Cooney had long been considering his options following four years of service in the administration. Ms. Perino said the decision was unrelated to revelations about the documents...

Ms. Perino snorted her soda out her nose as she tried but failed to keep a straight face ...

Has Bush done anything lately? If he's decided to retire early that's great with me ...

Update: My wife corrected me on this; it really is hard to believe that someone as ruthless and vengeful as George the IInd would retire like this. So either Mr. Cooney had other reasons to quit and took advantage of this one, or someone felt he was an inadequate lackey and this was a handy way to get rid of him.

Toxoplasma infection alters personality?!

Dangerrrr: cats could alter your personality - Health - Times Online

The claim is that toxoplasma infection alters human personality. I don't believe it, but it's fascinating. We do know that parasites change personality and behavior in many species. (via Metafilter)

via Metafilter - the worst tv series ever?

Movie Poop Shoot - COMICS 101

A wonderful description of a kids? 1979 NBC tv action/series that lasted two episodes. It was based on DC comic book characters, and it's so bad it may move into the twilight zone of interestingly awful. One has to assume drugs were involved somewhere.

NameVoyager: explore US infant names over the century

The Baby Name Wizard: NameVoyager

I'd come across this a while back, but it deserves mention again. This time via Marginal Revolution.

Track the fall and rise of Emily.

We are primates: faces and judgment

FuturePundit: Babyfaced Politicians Lose Elections

Another bit of evidence that we are machines programmed by natural selection; weak chinned folk may be smarter and braver, but they are judged inferior and lose elctions (Science).

The most successful politicians viscerally understand we are primates and behave accordingly -- even when they themselves don't believe in either natural selection or in our programmatic nature.

It's easy to understand why the Kurds and Shiites won't disband their milias ...

Building Iraq's Army: Mission Improbable

BAIJI, Iraq -- An hour before dawn, the sky still clouded by a dust storm, the soldiers of the Iraqi army's Charlie Company began their mission with a ballad to ousted president Saddam Hussein. "We have lived in humiliation since you left," one sang in Arabic, out of earshot of his U.S. counterparts. "We had hoped to spend our life with you."...

...The reconstruction of Iraq's security forces is the prerequisite for an American withdrawal from Iraq. But as the Bush administration extols the continuing progress of the new Iraqi army, the project in Baiji, a desolate oil town at a strategic crossroads in northern Iraq, demonstrates the immense challenges of building an army from scratch in the middle of a bloody insurgency.

Charlie Company disintegrated once after its commander was killed by a car bomb in December. And members of the unit were threatening to quit en masse this week over complaints that ranged from dismal living conditions to insurgent threats. Across a vast cultural divide, language is just one impediment. Young Iraqi soldiers, ill-equipped and drawn from a disenchanted Sunni Arab minority, say they are not even sure what they are fighting for. They complain bitterly that their American mentors don't respect them.

In fact, the Americans don't: Frustrated U.S. soldiers question the Iraqis' courage, discipline and dedication and wonder whether they will ever be able to fight on their own, much less reach the U.S. military's goal of operating independently by the fall.

... Last week, U.S soldiers from 1st Platoon, Alpha Company, and Iraqis from 2nd Platoon, Charlie Company, clambered into their vehicles to patrol the streets of Baiji. The Americans drove fully enclosed armored Humvees, the Iraqis open-backed Humvees with benches, the sides of which were protected by plating the equivalent of a flak jacket. The Americans were part of 1st Battalion, 103rd Armor Regiment of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard.

As an American reporter climbed in with the Iraqis, the U.S. soldiers watched in bemused horror.

"You might be riding home alone," one soldier said to the other reporter.

"Is he riding in the back of that?" asked another. "I'll be over here praying."

One hopes this is a worst case scenario. I wish we had a different president.

Is the least terrible option to configure the situation for the quickest possible civil war with the lowest number of casualties and the least objectionable tyrant victor for each partitioned nation, then abandon ship? Impeaching Bush would be nice, but unlikely.

Oh, and offer refugee status to any Iraqi that had anything to do with the US.

Good news from Sudan

The Onion | Well, I Guess That Genocide In Sudan Must've Worked Itself Out On Its Own

...Not that I wanted to be an alarmist, but when I first heard about the Darfur conflict, I thought to myself, "Uh oh! Sounds like another massive ethnic cleansing, not unlike Bosnia and Rwanda!" Those genocides sure were unfathomable! And not only because of the inhumanity of the acts, either—the blind indifference with which the world allowed the killings to continue unchecked was upsetting, too.

Well, someone must've invaded or overthrown a corrupt government or something like that. I know it wasn't the U.S., though. I may not be all that up on current events, but I do follow the news enough to know when my own country attacks another country. Maybe it was one of those genocides that solves itself without substantive international intervention. Well, that's one less horrific reality of modern geopolitics hanging over our heads!

Good thing, 'cause for a while there, it seemed like the Sudan situation was pretty serious, especially when both President Bush and Sen. Kerry talked about it in the presidential debates. Heck, that the Darfur conflict qualified as genocide was practically the only thing they agreed on! So, if both presidential candidates acknowledged on TV that genocide was taking place, it's pretty safe to assume that someone stepped in before more innocent victims were systematically butchered. Right?

What a great turn of events! Frankly, I'm relieved that all the horror, death, and human agony is over. I mean, after all those reports of ongoing murder, rape, and looting, I confess I was a little surprised when I didn't hear much more about it, beyond some international sanctions and aid packages. Ah, but what's the point in belaboring the grisly details? Why go on and on about which paramilitary militias were killing and raping which women and children? The important thing is that the conflict's apparently over.

Evidently, the hatred has been healed, peace has been restored, and the perpetrators of this unimaginable crime have been brought to justice. It sure is good to know it all must've turned out all right. It's like they say: No news is good news! Right?

Even I can't bring myself to read Kristoff's editorials any more. What exactly does he think we can do? Impeach Bush? I wish.

Another step in the march: a synthetic virus combining features of HIV and Ebola

BBC NEWS | Health | HIV and Ebola lung disease 'cure'

Creating a synthetic virus that combines the most "cunning" adaptations of two fabulously notorious pathogens to treat a horrible genetic disorder -- yes, that's a step in the "march".

It feels like the biological equivalent of juggling antimatter. What will the world be like when a high school student in southern China or northern Maine can play these games? Tough enough to be an adolescent in a world of lightweight high velocity hand guns ...

Gordon's Notes: Why the name change?

Gordon's Notes

This blog has, I assume, a pretty small regular readership. Some persons, however, may wonder what happened to the old name of the blog. Has the author been replaced? Has he changed his name?

No and no, but I am shifting to a less public web profile. I'd rather it not be trivially easy for casual business colleagues to enter my name in Google and be instantly exposed to my hobby of unread opinionating. With the changes I'm making here I expect that over the next few months search engines will gradually cease to identify my "true" name with these writings. For now "John Gordon" will do as a nom-de-plume (Google has 141,000 hits on that string; it's not an identifying string!).

Since my name can be inferred from the URL of this blog, I'm hardly being anonymous -- but search engines don't match search strings against URLs. I may change the URL eventually, but there's no great hurry.

MacTel: It's a Palladium kind of world

Put your tinfoil hat on!

I've been reviewing some excellent OS X commentary (Best analyses on Apple's MacTel switch), and I think this is ultimately all about Palladium. Apple wouldn't have switched if the G5 had worked as intended, but I think Palladium was a big factor in why IBM couldn't justify investing further in the non-Intel personal computer marketplace. More in the above link, where I add my comments as an update to the initial post.

Bloglines top links: what bloggers are linking too

Bloglines | Most Popular Links

I may add this to my news page links.

Update: Maybe not. It's kind of boring, actually. Hmm. That's not a commentary on blogs like this, is it?

Know the currents - teach your children to ride the rip

Stalking a Killer That Lurks a Few Feet Offshore - New York Times

Something to teach your children:

Usually rip currents are narrow. But sometimes, according to the National Weather Service, they can be hundreds of yards wide. And although they usually run out of steam just beyond the breakers, they may carry swimmers hundreds of yards offshore.

Rip currents form when wind, wave and beach conditions combine to push up water on the beach so that when it flows back out to sea a large volume is squeezed into a relatively narrow passage at a low place in a sandbar, perhaps, or under a pier. A result is a swath of fast-moving water that cuts across the surf zone, where waves are breaking, carrying sand, seaweed and, sometimes, swimmers with it.

Savvy surfers rely on rip currents for free rides beyond the surf zone. But unwary bathers may wade into the water only to find themselves suddenly swept away. If they keep their heads and swim across the current, parallel to shore, they can escape its grip and make their way back to the beach.

They can carry a swimmer pretty far from shore (beyond the breakers), and they can take some time to swim clear of, but they don't pull swimmers down. A good swimmer can swim across the current and/or ride the current until it dissipates -- then swim in a bit away from the path of the current.

Spyware: Hewlett-Packard and the HP 1012

Spyware is everywhere. Sure it's a part of various scams, but it shows up in commercial software as well.

I bought an HP LaserJet 1012 for my 75 yo mother. She's been frustrated with cheap inkjet printers that never work for her (she prints so infrequently the cartridges clog or expire); I wanted something I could setup and forget about. The LJ1012 costs $175 to $200 or so, is utterly quiet and pretty compact, has a flat paper tray, is quite simple, and ought to do the trick for the next 5-10 years. So far, I'm pleased.

But it does include spyware. The driver installation installs a "reminder" utility on the sly. It pops up every two weeks and recommends buying printer supplies. True, it comes with an uninstaller and one can turn off the reminders without uninstalling, but it is fundamentally marketing software installed without my awareness that provides me no benefit. By some definitions, that's spyware.

It's hard to resist such the temptations that the act of installation offers a vendor.

After you install your HP 1012, uninstall the nagware.

Best analysis on Apple's MacTel switch (OS X on x86, aka OS X86)

Apple shifts to Intel: what is all the fuss about? | The Register

The Register is improving. I have to add them back to my bloglines subscription. This is the best analysis I've read thus far on the OS X IBM -> Intel switch (My preferred name: OS X86). The conclusion is pretty upbeat. I think Apple will have a bad year for PowerBook and Tower sales, but some of that business will divert to iMac (if only they had a reassuring fix for the heating problem, but that's why they're going to Intel) and Mac Mini sales. I do expect their stock to take a serious hit, but they have money in the bank. It's not a happy move, but they didn't have much choice.

This commentary is pretty good too. The claim is that Apple will outsource almost all of its manufacturing to Intel, presumably retaining their design expertise and (of course) the OS. One wonders then if Apple will allow Intel to sell Apple's sophisticated designs as Windows machines -- for a price of course. Such machines would emulate Apple's 'stealth' strategy, if purchased via Intel there might be an option to 'switch' the buyers with a second sell of the OS. I think it very unlikely, however, that Apple would allow any old PC vendor to run OS X. They'll have lots of ways to prevent that from happening.

Update: My own thoughts: ... and one Palladium to rule them.

I've posted previously about Intel's Palladium and DRM. Palladium binds a computer's identity to all of its transactions [1], and allows enforcement of very powerful Digital Rights Management. There exists a possible American and Chinese future in which it's quite legal to own a machine gun (a pathetic toy really, good only for killing a few people) but utterly illegal to own a non-Palladium computer. Palladium is where Homeland Security (security), Corporate America (security), healtchare industries (security) and Hollywood (entertainment) agree completely; it will be mandated one day for all corporate and governmental computer purchases. It will be required, eventually, for iTunes like distribution of high-definition movies and entertainment.

All of them. Intel owns Palladium. It could be forced to share it, but for now they control it.

Palladium, under some other name, is the future.

Ultimately, I think this decision is really about Palladium.

It will be interesting to see what Cringely writes.

[1] Binding a person to the transactions is more challenging. Palladium technology could be used to mandate biometric identification, but that's a weaker link.