You Just Wait

Year to date statistics on Airport screening from the Department of Homeland Security

• Terrorist Plots Discovered 0
• Transvestites 133
• Hernias 1,485
• Hemeroid Cases 3,172
• Enlarged Prostates 8,249
• Breast Implants 59,350
• Natural Blondes 3

Mirrored from Phil's Fun

Limen

Approximate absolute sensitivities, expressed in everyday terms:

• Vision – A candle flame seen at 30 miles on a dark, clear night
• Hearing – The tick of a watch under quiet conditions at 20 feet
• Taste – One teaspoon of sugar in two gallons of water
• Smell – One drop of perfume diffused into the entire volume of a three-room apartment
• Touch – The wing of a bee falling on your cheek from a distance of one centimeter

Via: Mind Hacks

We're in Debt, Why.

According to Germano, each mile of border fence costs US taxpayers about $4 million to build and will cost another $6.5 billion over the next 20 years to repair and maintain.

Kiewit is the contractor. (yeah, the same ones doing the Bay Bridge retrofit) In their defense, they actually have something in place. Boeing, of the virtual fence Boeings, is 1.2 Billion dollars into the contract and have produced a real nice report about why they need more money.

Dang, It's Another Year

Happy New Year. For those of us in the events industry it's usually a slow time. We'll see. I got a laugh from the news. Previously the story had been that a Navy Officer on the USS Enterprise was under investigation for tomfoolery. Facts stated, lead line pitched, story due to be deep sixed the next day. Suddenly a JOURNALIST found that some sailors had opened a Facebook page in the officer's defense. Suddenly, as if by magic, it morphed into a raunchy video, salacious innuendos tumbled out in abundance, and lots of play was given to the newsworthiness of Facebook and the current movie about the founder. One might say that the story became an infomercial about a product. No story about which members of the Board of Directors have a percentage of said product. As is always the case, keeping them honest is a slogan and newsworthy is a relative position. Seems to depend on who's dog is in the ring.

The first set of links are two views of WikiLeaks.

• Stirling on Assange: Instead, he’s very like Jerome Kerviel, that obscure French stock trader who stole 5 billion euros without making one dime for himself. Jerome Kerviel, just like Bradley Manning, was a bored, resentful, lower-echelon guy in a dead end, who discovered some awesome capacities in his system that his bosses never knew it had. It makes so little sense to behave like Kerviel and Manning that their threat can’t be imagined.
• Lanier on AssangeA sufficiently copious flood of data creates an illusion of omniscience, and that illusion can make you stupid. Another way to put this is that a lot of information made available over the internet encourages players to think as if they had a God's eye view, looking down on the whole system.

The next one I picked not so much for any political insight, but for the sheer fun the reviewer seems to be having in savaging the book.

• Damn Right: Decision Points holds the same relation to George W. Bush as a line of fashion accessories or a perfume does to the movie star that bears its name; he no doubt served in some advisory capacity. from London Review of Books

Links To the full Report of the Bioethics Commission.

• Link Page for Bioethics Report: Bioethics commission delivers synthetic biology report to President Obama (December 16)

Next is an international story with local implications. SF's transportation system went on the clipper card system. In short, everyone that rides a bus, takes a train, or pays a toll can be tracked by a foreign (Israel) company. And just to put whipped cream on the pie, the local transportation companies have agreed to pay any shortfall. How do you think that will work out? Weak encryption here in hacker central. If you want to try your own hand at it, Fries sells card readers for under $110.

• Smart Cards: Taipei’s EasyCard system has been in place since 2001, largely as a means of paying for the subway, bus, taxis and parking. It has also been widely known to use a smartcard system called MIFARE Classic, produced by NXP Semiconductors, the security of which was publicly demonstrated to be broken by CCC members at their annual congress three years ago. Note: S.F. started the Clipper Card System last year. An election year. I'm sure you know what I'm thinking.

Here's a lament for days gone by.

• The Disneyland Dream: But, for all those inequities, economic equality seemed within reach in 1956, at least for the vast middle class. (Michael Harrington’s exposé of American poverty, “The Other America,” would not rock this complacency until 1962.) The sense that the American promise of social and economic mobility was attainable to anyone who sought it permeates “Disneyland Dream” from start to finish.

The last four are bunched together because they interest me, but don't have any common theme.

• Don't Fear China: The belief that values like democracy and liberalism, rather than geo-strategic and economic factors, affect the competition between global powers tends to reflect a post-Enlightenment western bias that supposes the existence of an ultimate universal truth and assumes that history is a continuous ascent towards progress. That march towards progress manifests itself through conflicts between ideals–enlightenment and freedom vs. their opponents–and the people, groups, and nation-states that represent them. That has certainly been a crucial theme in the narrative about foreign policy advanced by neoconservative and liberal ideologues.
• Mosque as Yesterday's News: There can be no single explanation for why a news story of this magnitude disappears. But, given the timeline here, it seems likely that the electoral calendar played a role. National Republicans who used Park51 as a bludgeon against Democrats suddenly were less interested in talking about the project after the election.
• Dissidents and Foreign Policy: ...and it is possible that public hectoring of the Bahraini government would undermine such efforts by embarrassing the Bahrainis and forcing them to issue defiant demands that the U.S. mind its own business. What seems clear is that publicly denouncing a government’s crackdown will not end the crackdown, could intensify it, and might adversely affect U.S. interests in the process. Unless fruitless moral posturing that harms concrete American interests is the goal, I don’t see the point.
• Shock and Waugh: Auberon Waugh hated war. He loathed the pomposity of Western politicians who thought they had a divine right to go around the world intervening in the affairs of sovereign states. Lots of people are calling for the arrest of Tony Blair for war crimes in 2010, but very few were doing so in 1999, when Waugh was. “The charge against Tony Blair is not so much that he took a very stupid decision … or even that his high moral pose may have been a front for ordinary self-importance and power mania, ....

Ah Well

You Tell Me

Happy New Year. The above picture is a proto-VR module, a tele-(You know what I'm tring to say) unit, or a ....

Seriously Deep

A section of the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route: Japan

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas. As someone who grew up in the snowbelt, I got a chuckle out of the mess some of our southern cities were in when they got some snow. Upon reflection, I think I was more ammused by the historonics of the weather commentators. Anything to stir up some drama. City governments have come under fire? For what. Not maintaining a fleet of very expensive equipment for something that happens every hundred years and will melt off by morning. Better get the news team to 'vestigatin this dilemma. More on this breaking story when we write it up .. or it rains.

I'm going to start the link-dump with an essay on Americanism, then punch on through pretty quickly. The sun is out for the first time in days and the remainder of my to-do list can be set aside for a few hours.

• What is American: After two hundred years, our democracy appears beleaguered and in need of revitalization. It is expressly the magnitude of our problems that make it possible for some to long for apparently better systems that haven’t a prayer in America. However, revitalization, if it is to occur, must take advantage of resources native to our tradition and, what is just as important, to do so in a native idiom.
• Was Washington a Christian: These founders were most emphatically not modern secularists, and Washington was not an exponent of modern democracy. Our first president was a man of the eighteenth century, who believed in the benefits of property relations and gender-specific education, and, perhaps above all, as he tells us in his Farewell Address as president, in the public need for religious beliefs. In these respects he was little different from the English monarch his countrymen broke from during the Revolution.
• The Evil Empire: What the Obama administration has delivered, of course, is not only the continuation of the policies of the previous three administrations but a profound exaggeration of them. If anything, we suffer more violations of our privacy and civil liberties now than at any time during the Bush administration, all in the name of a national-security state that keeps the populace in its place while perpetuating war abroad.
• Judicial Activism: ones that touch on the broad competing visions of the proper role of government. Striking down a law passed by a democratically-elected legislature is not necessarily “activism.” Nor is upholding a law necessarily “restrained.” It depends on whether or not the law violates the Constitution (and the primary failing I note in left-wing resort to the phrase “judicial activism” is that they ignore this rather significant distinction).
• Iron Dome: The defense establishment is still weighing the balance between the number of radars for the systems to the number of intercept missiles necessary. Different estimates suggest that each intercept missile will cost $40,000.
• What was the Saudi Arms Deal About:A look at the remainder of the Saudi deal indicates that Riyadh has other concerns in mind. The Saudis are also acquiring 190 helicopters. These include 70 Apache Longbows, an upgraded version of the U.S. Army's highly successful attack helicopter which carries, among other weapons, a powerful 30 MM gun and anti-tank missiles. Riyadh is also purchasing 36 AH-6i "Little Bird" light helicopters, which are often used by Special Forces. Finally, the Saudis are buying 72 UH-60 Blackhawks, which are ideal for moving troops into and around combat zones.
• Revolver: The libertarian/conservative rejoinder is that less regulation equals less opportunities for politically-connected firms to hijack the system. As a safeguard against future financial meltdowns, I find this unsatisfying for a number of reasons: First, attempts to describe the roots of the financial crisis solely through the lens of government intervention sound pretty silly. And second, if the regulatory and administrative superstructure of government is fatally compromised by insiders and corporate lobbyists, are we sure we can successfully deconstruct that system from within.
• Start Treaty: A link to the Naval Institute and a subsequent link-through to the text itself. Why bother having some goofy-goober tell you what it means, when you can see for yourself?
• Dirty Underwear: I find it interesting that, despite the furor over the Wikileaks disclosures relating to the military's activity in Iraq, the U.S. government did not come down on him full bore, nor did they assign a team of government lawyers to scour the statute books looking for a way to criminally charge Assange, until it was the State Department and, by extension, the political leadership of the nation that was being embarrassed.
• Two States - No Solutions: At the same time, Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Gen. David Petraeus have stated publicly that the ongoing failure of the peace process constitutes a threat to American national security. The despair the Palestinians now feel, and the anger among broader Arab publics, is very dangerous for the United States. Not only al Qaeda, but Hamas and Hezbollah feed on the anger in the Islamic world over the plight of the Palestinians.

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Added Mon 27, 3:00 PM: I flipped on the news to eat my lunch with, and was treated to a BREAKING NEWS STORY. (yes, the onscreen graphix were all capped) It seems that the wind was blowing snow onto roads that had already been plowed. Great googly-moogly, that must be why they called it a snow storm. Better images are promised for the 5:00 show. I can't wait.

That Swag Attitude

NY Daily News

Inventor Andrew Lewis, 43, of Hamilton Heights sez:

"Sagging is a huge issue in my community," he said. "I spent a lot of time observing and I noticed that even for saggers, there is a point which even they're not comfortable with how their jeans were falling."

So he did something about it, at $36 a pop. Why loose that jailhouse look when, for a few extra bucks, you can get a special guy in a jailhouse accessoire. The odd thing is you can get the same thing cheaper from a tool catalog. Linemen, and others I'm sure, use something similar to keep their tool belt stable when they're off the ground. You don't want your tools around your ankles while leaning out of a scissors lift. Sort of a blue-collar fashion statement.

Via: BoingBoing

Born for Trouble

Blind drunk driver falls flat on face in front of judge:

A reported legally blind man arrested on Sunday night for driving while intoxicated, has been re-arrested for public intoxication after allegedly coming to court drunk. Mark Alan Watson, 41, of Bartlesville, was about to be arraigned on Monday on charges of driving under the influence of alcohol, leaving the scene of an accident, driving under suspension and assault on a police officer when he fell on his face in front of Associate District Judge Russell Vaclaw.

The remainder of the story is at Nothing to do with Abroath. Some folks just don't have a plan.

Before they had Les Pauls

Nathaniel Sichel, 1843-1907. German artist.

It comes out here

Sunday I worked on the set-up for a salesforce.com convention. The product was, I guess, a cloud based sales something or another. You set up a FB style interface and all your orders, derived from a social networking thing-a ma-bob, flow through a totally secure cloud application, then it zooms around here, does an interactive jiggery-do, and comes out there. To keep everyone's mind on the pitch, Stevie Wonder has a set, Will I Am hosts the party, and the hall was equipped with more Barcos, moving lights, and general whoop-de then I've seen outside a Pink Floyd show. Wi-fi antennas were flown throughout the hall. In addition to their customary use, they streamed a reflection of what was on the stage overlaid with sales graphix and talking points. If some lady with a big hat obscures the projection in front, you can glance down at your laptop to get the juice. I guess I'm showing my age, but I can remember when we had factories and farms and we built things. Now, in the future, we make money by taking in each other's laundry, and big money by providing a cloud app for keeping track of it. The bug in the code, of course, is having to depend on others for the detergent, the washing machine, and the clothes.

The two stories I'm following as I write this are 1) Julian Assange arrested. It seems that about twenty minutes after Forbes announced that WikiLeaks had some dirt on a large American Bank, the muttering about State Security turned into a full-throated roar calling for a non-judicial execution. Of course the timing is only circumstantial and it's really about the Italian Prime Minister's embarrassment over the wording of a single cable. 2) Uncle BomBom has reached another comprimise. The other side wasn't even in the hall, yet he blinked anyway. I guess he needs to stockpile his powder for something, you know, down the road. Then he'll show 'em what for, you bet-cha. Or not. Maybe it's different in the rarified atmosphere of an elite policy maker, but here in prole-world you can only promise, explain, and do damage control for so long, then you need to do the job or loose it. Now for this week's link dump.

On the power to lead;

• Mental Prisoner of the Congress: ....he could say “I’m against cutting Medicare reimbursement rates, but only if it’s paid for.” Repeat that enough times and suddenly it becomes congress’ problem. Congress wants an AMT patch? Fine, then congress needs to pay for it. There are lots of things the President can’t do in the legislative process, but refusing to sign deficit-increasing bills is something he definitely can do.
• Will the GOP Raise the Debt Ceiling: It’s one thing to win an election with a lot of incendiary rhetoric. It’s another thing to actually get things done. And it appears that the new members of the GOP are determined to make obstructionism their bread and butter.

On the power of the people:

• Porno Scanners and Perpetual War: It’s finally coming into focus, and it’s not even a difficult equation to grasp. It goes like this: take a country in the grips of an expanding national security state and sooner or later your “safety” will mean your humiliation, your degradation. And by the way, it will mean the degradation of your country, too.
• State's Rights: At present, the only way for states to contest a federal law or regulation is to bring a constitutional challenge in federal court or seek an amendment to the Constitution,” the pair wrote. “A state repeal power provides a targeted way to reverse particular congressional acts and administrative regulations without relying on federal judges or permanently amending the text of the Constitution to correct a specific abuse.

On certain segments of the people and a sudden shrinking of ... numbers during the recent cold snap:

• Overexposed: The exact genesis of this movement is hazy, but most agree it had something to do with the city opening a high-visibility plaza at Castro and Market last year. Among the lunchers, retirees, and shoppers, naked men showed up, too: A construction supervisor named Barry appeared in his fedora and flip-flops — and nothing else. (kinda safe for work)

The kind of thinking that gets you branded as a crazy until it turns out you were right:

• WikiLeaks as Psyop: .. Zbigniew Brzezinski’s speculation that the latest WikiLeaks dump might have been selected to further a foreign agenda. I haven’t seen any evidence that would lead me to think that, but it’s a possibility that has to be considered. The possibility that a domestic interest or intelligence agency could engineer a leak should also be entertained. Manufacturing paper trails is one of the things that “community” does best, after all.

Some writting that caught my eye:

• The Teleology of Vodka: I would not willingly offend the whole Alexander Nevsky choir or five fifths of its audience, but it needs saying that the true end of vodka is not a glass. Vodka, properly speaking, is not really a drink. So used it is more like an excuse—or a carrying device, much as a cigarette is a carrying device for nicotine. For although vodka may please the brain and the bloodstream, it can never fully satisfy the nose or the tongue—and will quite often offend the one and make offensive the other.

A bit of biology news that's getting shunted aside in the Christmas rush:

• NASA finds arsenic based life form: When cooking up the stuff of life, you can’t just substitute margarine for butter. Or so scientists thought. But now researchers have coaxed a microbe to build itself with arsenic in the place of phosphorus, an unprecedented substitution of one of the six essential ingredients of life. The bacterium appears to have incorporated a form of arsenic into its cellular machinery, and even its DNA, scientists report online Dec. 2 in Science.

A bit of history:

• Merchant Capital: If we now look back on European history from the sixteenth century to the twentieth century, this assessment seems badly wrong as an historical observation. Merchants and their companies played key roles in the establishment of a world trading system; they actively facilitated the race for colonies by the European powers; and often they played a quasi-military role in suppressing resistance by locals in distant parts of the world.

Which leads to:

• Brookings Institute (pdf): The upshot: The past two decades have seen lower-income metro areas in the global East and South “close the gap” with higher-income metros in Europe and the United States, and the worldwide economic upheaval has only accelerated the shift in growth toward metros in those rising regions of the world. Note: Austin, the highest American city on the list, is # 40, San Francisco is # 133.

Fun with the Legal Industry

A doctor in Miami is suing a restaurant for not explaining to him the proper method of eating an artichoke. He ate the entire thing, and developed bowel obstruction from the indigestible leaves. The restaurant asks "Are we going to have to post warnings on our menu they shouldn't eat the bones in our barbecue ribs?"

Both image and link from Tywkiwdbi

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Added later:A Texas Roadhouse and its TP dispenser

Having Been There Myself

Swedish photographer Håkan Dahlström made this shot of one of San Francisco's steeper hills, turning his camera so that the road (and not the houses) were at level.

Via: BoingBoing

Gastroporn Redux

For breakfast, I usually have a cappuccino—espresso made in an Alessi pot and mixed with organic milk, which has been gently heated and hand-fluffed by my husband. I eat two slices of imported cheese—Dutch Parrano, the label says, “the hippest cheese in New York” (no joke)—on homemade bread with butter. I am what you might call a food snob. My nutritionist neighbor drinks a protein shake while her 5-year-old son eats quinoa porridge sweetened with applesauce and laced with kale flakes. She is what you might call a health nut. On a recent morning, my neighbor’s friend Alexandra Ferguson sipped politically correct Nicaraguan coffee in her comfy kitchen while her two young boys chose from among an assortment of organic cereals.

A cover article in this week's Newsweek purports to be about the class divide vis-à-vis food consumption, but in a sad way is really about the relationship of marketers and muddled thinking. The self adulation of some of the respondents, who's immoderation is redefined as respect for the planet and desire to nurture something or another, is one of the reasons that a certain class of twit isn't taken seriously by anyone outside of salespeople. (or in our case, the Mayor's office) The attitudinal baggage and cultural blindspot that accompanies a proposal to tax soda or any casse-croûte du jour, for the "health of our community", is just typical. (we know what‘s best for you)

Even the locavore hero Pollan agrees. “Essentially,” he says, “we have a system where wealthy farmers feed the poor crap and poor farmers feed the wealthy high-quality food.”

This being said, the new Congress is going to start work on the next farm bill. Between the traditional hot air (family farms, golden waves of grain, the real America) and the ceremonial larding of the pork, not to mention the sausage making in the back room, I suspect we'll be singing new boss, same as the old boss. Last time around, I remember a story about a well known newsreader / commentator who received big bucks for the Angora wool produced by the sheep on his hobby farm. (national security - military helmet liners) Monsanto, some folks on the Upper East side, and Archer Daniels Midland should be up for a chunk too. Personally I think the biggest food problem concerns whatever hallucinogen they're adulterating the water with in Washington.

• Quick cooking note for the above nutritionist neighbor: Put the kale flakes in the soup, not your kid’s cereal.

Somebody is Cranky

(ó) a dheaide! None of that circumlocution round here.

Close Enough for Government Work

As it turns out, we had $70,000,000.00 just sitting around, so we gave it to Pakistan to help the country defend themselves from the Taliban Air Force. Maybe it's a codeword for a black-op, maybe it's a nuanced diplomatic deal, probably it's a powder my nose arrangement. Working for a living was obviously the wrong career choice.

Porpoises rescue Dick Van Dyke

No rib, link to story Here

I got your Dak Bulgogi right here

I spent Thanksgiving with some friends, including the two above. For a number of years I had cooked for a group of professionals at a TV station. The idea of re-booting the dinner to reflect a busy upscale lifestyle was in the air. Thanksgiving was shortened to turkey day, then t-day. I'm all in favor of fine dining and stretching the envelope, but Thanksgiving is a day to give thanks. T-day and Black Friday precurser sales don't quite transmit that idea properly. As for the two kids, where the heck do they get all that energy? I discovered that being a human jungle gym has its attractions. (the sudden calm during their nap was pretty good too)

On to the link-dump. First is an article about the party system. Others are weighing in and I've seen some advertising regarding a centrist party. We'll see. I, like most people, think Government has shed its governing function and is acting like a business, i.e. we work for it. If fear sells, sell it. If infantile posturing gets you air time ... and so forth.

• Hyper-Polarized Party System: Still, the unending high-decibel partisan warfare of the past decade has led many Americans to look back with nostalgia on the more consensual, if muddled, party system that persisted until the 1970s.

Followed by two links that call into question the congress critters disconnect from daily life.

• A Message from the Voters: (pdf): A 53% majority of registered voters also think that those who came into power
  campaigning on Obamacare repeal should decline their federal health plan, and only a third think they should accept it. Many Democrats have been pushing Republicans to deny their benefits, but among all voters, the pressure is actually by far stronger with Republicans and independents than with Democrats.
• Where's Mine: Harris, who defeated Rep. Frank Kratovil (D) earlier this month, drew unwelcome attention last week when Politico reported that he complained at an orientation session for new lawmakers upon finding out that his government-provided health care coverage would not take effect until February, a month after he takes office.

The next two are about banks. I'm tempted to mutter something about the power behind the throne, but writing the obvious takes too much time.

• The Best Congress Money Can Buy: ...the financial sector has paid little for bringing the world to near-collapse or for receiving the taxpayers’ bailout that was denied to most small-enough-to-fail Americans. The sector still rakes in more than a fourth of American business profits, up from a seventh 25 years ago.
• What Good is Wall Street?: A few months ago, I came across an announcement that Citigroup, the parent company of Citibank, was to be honored, along with its chief executive, Vikram Pandit, for “Advancing the Field of Asset Building in America.” This seemed akin to, say, saluting BP for services to the environment or praising Facebook for its commitment to privacy.

Oh Lordy. Korea. We're gonna win this one by golly. Mess with us and we'll borrow some money and fix your kim chee. Yeah boy, you be gettin' a stern rebuke when we done with you.

• The Tyranny of Metaphor: In the midst of the Korean War, Brogan was not only commenting on Americans' frustration with their inability to prevail decisively against supposedly inferior Chinese and North Korean forces, but also cautioning against other misadventures in which the United States falsely assumed its superpower status assured a military victory in any conflict it chose to fight. Brogan could just as easily have titled his essay The Omnipotence of American Illusion in an echo of Friedrich Nietzsche's critique of true believers. Convictions, the great German philosopher wrote, are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
• Why Are We Still In Korea?: We will stand by our Korean allies, says President Obama. And with our security treaty and 28,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, many on the DMZ, we can do no other. But why, 60 years after the first Korean War, should Americans be the first to die in a second Korean War? Unlike 1950, South Korea is not an impoverished ex-colony of Japan. She is the largest of all the "Asian tigers," a nation with twice the population and 40 times the economy of the North.
• Lunacy His Principal Export: These events may also ultimately be seen as wins for Kim on two other levels. First, the nuclear facility almost certainly required international collaboration. If it turns out that support came in part from, say, Pakistan, already suspected of helping the Koreans develop a nuclear ballistic missile capability, it would be deeply embarrassing and awkward for the United States.
• Stuxnet and N. Korea: While U.S. officials are trying to figure out how to respond to North Korea’s unveiling of a new uranium enrichment plant, there are clues that a piece of malware believed to have hit Iran’s nuclear efforts could also target the centrifuges Pyongyang’s preparing to spin.

And meanwhile we're clearly and decisively taking care of our other loose ends.

• How to Schedule a War: Going, going, gone! You can almost hear the announcer’s voice throbbing with excitement, only we’re not talking about home runs here, but about the disappearing date on which, for the United States and its military, the Afghan War will officially end.

Diplomatic Frolics

Another WikiLeak dump. The president is on damage control again. The fear industry is howling. Between the somebody is trying to ban Christmas stories and the war with Korea / Iran bonanza, they can pretty much coast the rest of the week. The leaks do raise some questions, however. By this I mean the cables themselves, not the fragmented excerpts getting play. You'll need an extra big cup of coffee and a scroll wheel to deal with the current batch.

• Traitors - Incalculable Damage- Full Might of the Law: one might be tempted to comment, "If you're doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear." But that would sound as sad as when the government tells it to you. Instead I'll call on my current hobbyhorse and note that the powers that be don't seem to be too pleased by their public pat-down and x-ray. (why yes, I can still spell schadenfreude with the help of my Webster's)
• Secret Stuff: It doesn’t matter how robust your encryption is if you leave plaintext copies around for every Junior Officer, Congressional hopeful, and janitor with some spare time to read. And don’t store them in one place with sequential call numbers. WikiLeaks isn’t some super duper spy org, it’s just a vacuum cleaner that sucks up information that was pretty much in plain sight. The real spy organizations: Israel, England, Russia, China, Liechtenstein, probably had a copy a minute after the cable was sent. No foreign country was really shocked or taken by surprise. The secrecy rubric really refers to the taxpayers.
• Embarrassing Revelations: If you read some of these cables, you would suspect they were written by frat boys on Facebook. Pedigreed ivy league frat boys mind you, but... Some things don’t belong in a diplomatic cable. An awful lot of embarrassment could be avoided if an adult explained to the wonderkinder that they’re on the job, not at a swell party texting their buddy.
• Other countries will question if we can keep a secret: Uh ....yeah! Well, can we? So instead of whining about one guy from Belgium or Private somebody or another, we might want to consider putting the house in order. If following security protocol or setting aside those little side deals discommodes some of the more entitled members of the foreign service, tough.
• The other Arab countries want us to invade Iran: For a definition of getting played refer to our Talaban Commander that turned into a shopkeeper several million dollars later. But they agree with Israel. Sure, as long as we pony up the money and shed the blood, what the heck.

The sad part was contained in a British Minister's comment. He said the lone superpower came off like someone wandering the world and wondering why no one would do as bidden. Coming up next, WikiLeaks on banks.