Labor day is almost over. One of the weekend's headlines was 'The CEOs that fired the most people received the largest salary". My personal bug-a-bear this week is Senator Simpson and the million breasted cow suckers. My guess is that he'll stop collecting on his senator's pension, special medical insurance deal, and the other perks he didn't pay into as soon as he realizes that that would help the debt... Then again, maybe not. Ragging on Vietnam vet's disability benifits is a pretty long stretch for a guy who spent his two years driving a desk around in Germany. Parallel universe, whiskey in the kool-aid, not enough ventilation in the limo, who the heck knows.
The first links are cyber security related. The one about cracking the quantum encryption shows a major weak point. It was in fact cracked at a hardware point, which is where most monkey business is done. The weak spot isn't some Alice, hidden in an underground bunker in West Slovinia, it's at the origination and destination points. With Homeland handing out Top Secret ratings hither and thiver combined with the turf-walls that seem to grow like mushrooms, COMSEC security becomes a bit illusionary.
- Successful Attack Against a Quantum Cryptography System: Quantum cryptography is often touted as being perfectly secure. It is based on the principle that you cannot make measurements of a quantum system without disturbing it. So, in theory, it is impossible for an eavesdropper to intercept a quantum encryption key without disrupting it in a noticeable way, triggering alarm bells.
- NEW DELHI: Borrowing a page from China’s art of cyber war, the government is giving shape to an IT infrastructure setup manned by a small army of software professionals to spy on the classified data of hostile nations by hacking into their computer systems. (((Lemme know if you find their shoulder-patch.)))
- HP Holds Navy Network ‘Hostage’ for $3.3 Billion: It’s become a Washington cliché that the military and the intelligence community rely too much on outside contractors. Everyone from President Obama to Defense Secretary Robert Gates has promised to cut back on Pentagon outsourcing. But the Navy’s ongoing inability to separate itself from Hewlett-Packard – after years of trying – shows how difficult that withdrawal is going to be.
- Iran to search for WMD on its own: Now, in the case of Iran, we know very little about this new search enterprise; some fear that it might create some kind of an intranet in Iran -- but that's about it. Let's assume it would be very expensive and very ineffective -- not unreasonable assumptions to make in the context of a sluggish state like Iran, which has a few other things to take care of before exploring the world of Web2.0 in all its glory.
Next is a continuation of the computer meme. The commentator, Marc Thiessen, comes across as a tough American hard-butt, but the record shows him to be a Toupac, in the limo headed South when the going gets tough. He hasn't got the message that the real tough guys don't have to tell you over and over about how manly their manhood is.
- The Best Part About WikiLeaks: Honestly, the best part about the whole Wikileaks phenomenon is the spectacle of Mark Thiessen saying that America should invade Iceland to kill or capture Julian Assange.
- McClatchy D.C. Law
- Philip Brennan
The next two could be filed under philosophy.
- Does Language control thought: Eventually, Whorf’s theory crash-landed on hard facts and solid common sense, when it transpired that there had never actually been any evidence to support his fantastic claims. The reaction was so severe that for decades, any attempts to explore the influence of the mother tongue on our thoughts were relegated to the loony fringes of disrepute.
- Christianity and the West: Whenever I see or hear politically conservative and religiously traditionalist Christians make an argument like this, it brings me up a little short. There is some truth in this claim, but it seems to me that it is especially important for traditionalist Christians to distinguish between arguing for the undeniable Christian heritage of Western societies and the importance of Christianity for the flourishing of those societies, which Christians should argue for, and making claims for the direct link between modern political arrangements and the Gospel.
And last, that darn old politics.
- How Washington Rules: Worldly ambition inhibits true learning. Ask me. I know. A young man in a hurry is nearly uneducable: He knows what he wants and where he’s headed; when it comes to looking back or entertaining heretical thoughts, he has neither the time nor the inclination. All that counts is that he is going somewhere. Only as ambition wanes does education become a possibility
- Whitewashing the Failure in Iraq: On the eve of President Obama's speech to the nation on Iraq, some of the people who dreamed up this foolish war or helped persuade the nation that it was a good idea are getting out their paintbrushes and whitewash. I refer, of course, to the twin op-eds in today's New York Times by former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and neoconservative columnist David Brooks.
- The Nuclear Domino Myth: But there's one problem with this "nuclear domino" scenario: the historical record does not support it. Since the dawn of the nuclear age, many have feared rapid and widespread nuclear proliferation; 65 years later, only nine countries have developed nuclear weapons.
