Moon Festival Java Time

This week has been a stuff-'o'-rama extravaganza. Oracle / Java has a huge exhibition at Moscone. Streets blocked south of Market, shuttle busses all over the place, and everyone suddenly has an opinion about some aspect of cloud computing. It's also the weekend of the Moon Festival next door to me in Chinatown. Both events have conspired to produce a tsunami of folks that aren't quite sure where they are or what they're doing there. But everyone seems to be having a good time, and things sort themselves out by daybreak, so what the heck. The first three links are humor. (at least I hope they're humor).

• How to Spot a Spy: So it is possible that there are spies in your midst, blending in and going about their daily business just the same as you, only covertly, and probably with a lot more riding on the outcome than most of our daily toiling. It is equally possible, of course, that our wild imaginings are creating spies out of people and situations that are perfectly innocent or un-spy related.
• The Top 5 foreign policy initiatives of the Tea Party: But given the ever increasing strength spinning up this storm that's sweeping across the American landscape (Tropical Storm Sarah?), the world's questions will soon be answered. Tea Partiers will inevitably be elected. Maybe a bunch of them. And soon the world will have to deal with the policy initiatives of the Tea Party Caucus in the Congress.
• Consensus Statement on Morality: I dunno why these big-brain “EDGE” guys are making such a fuss here about “morality.” Everybody knows that morality is whatever God says. And God says, whatever me, my best friends, and my hierarchical coalition say that God says.

The next set is a bit of theology paired with an essay denoting every worker's nagging feeling that they've just taken it in the touchis ... again.

• Beck, Christianity, and Individual Rights: Traditional soteriology in the patristic era taught that Christ assumed human nature like ours in every respect except for sin, which meant that He assumed a sinless humanity that was substantiated in His Person, the Person of the Logos, the Second Person of the Trinity.
• The Tea Party: There is a lot of truth to this. There is a visceral dislike among at least some conservative and Republican elites who have little more than disdain for the rank-and-file supporters who make their careers possible. While they are willing to tolerate the rank-and-file so long as they remain in a supporting role, they will absolutely refuse to accept them as equals, much less as leaders.

The next is our bit for the media / showbiz. The talking heads (Sunday yap-yap shows) are all a-flutter over Dinesh D'Sousa's Forbes article. Will some obscure academic bring down the President? Can his laser-sharp insights be denied? Will Scooby Doo get away from the lake monster? Some of these folks need to get out more. Maybe have a moon cake. They only bake this large a variety once a year, and they'll be gone by Tuesday too.

• All Eyes on the Horse Race: We all know today’s news cycle as generated and perpetuated by the cable news/Internet bubble is famously ephemeral. It’s certainly nothing new to say that we live in an age when stories explode in clouds of links, only to disappear like so much smoke before the next “publish” button is clicked.

Here is a crypto page, with links to some more detailed papers.

• Post Quantum Cryptography: Here's the one-minute introduction: "Imagine that it's fifteen years from now. Somebody announces that he's built a large quantum computer. RSA is dead. DSA is dead. Elliptic curves, hyperelliptic curves, class groups, whatever, dead, dead, dead. So users are going to run around screaming and say 'Oh my God, what do we do?

The remaining links are political in nature. The one that makes me think impure thoughts is the radical President essay. Written by an foreign policy expert, you can read it two ways. 1) As written or 2) Where would the writer's cushy internationalism, deal making, and generally unsupervised lifestyle go if America elected a President who was concerned about Americans. It must be so tough. (another round, and freshen the caviar. I'm about to generate an opinion.)

• The Radical Presidency: After America's century-long rise to world hegemony, the presidency is a vastly different institution than it was in the days of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. The next few decades will be equally transformative, but in ways that will cause great difficulty for the sober formulation of U.S. foreign policy.
• The insurgency next door: I note that Clinton used the phrase "We [the United States] face an increasing threat ...," not "they [Mexico]." The cartels are transnational shipping businesses, with consumers in the United States as their dominant market. The clashes over shipping routes and distribution power -- which over the past four years have killed 28,000 and thoroughly corrupted Mexico's police and judiciary -- could just as well occur inside the United States.
• Interdependency Theory: In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the economies of North America and Europe remain fragile while those of Asia continue to grow. This is especially true in the cases of China and India, which both boast near double-digit rates of growth and have therefore inspired confidence around the region.