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Cyber-Security, China, and SENDS
Lots of pieces in motion on the China-v-the-world security front in recent days. The Wikileaks-borne report that a member of the Chinese Politburo ordered the attack on Google's systems there,...
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Contest: Best Wikileaks Quote
Reader Ben Huang of Pasadena suggests a contest for best found-art in the Wikileaks info dump. (No, I'm not trivializing larger debates about Wikileaks; just letting them be fully debated elsewhere for...
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Walk Like an American: The Finale (part 1)
Thanks to many readers from around the world who wrote in with accounts stimulated ages ago by the "Chinese Professor" ad, with ensuing discussion about whether you could tell someone's nationality...
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Why Not Just Stamp 'Secret' Across the Front Page of the NY Times?
[See important UPDATE below.] A government contractor forwards an email he received today from the Commerce Department. Its gist: just because State Department memos had been posted by Wikileaks and...
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The Very Least Surprising Wikileaks Revelation
From the NYT today:Non! Pas possible! Next up: Secret cables reveal Mexicans unhappy that their country is "so far from God, and so close to the United States."
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More About 'Secret' Info on the Front Page
I mentioned yesterday a memo sent to employees and contractors of the Department of Commerce, warning that even though Wiki-leaked State Department cables had been published all over the world, their...
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The Mystery of John McCain
I have been on the road, got home late tonight (while my wife is traveling elsewhere), and amused myself with.... the C-SPAN rebroadcast of today's Don't Ask Don't Tell Senate hearings. Yes, this is...
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John McCain: 'You Should Be Ashamed'
Last night I mentioned that in his mid-70s -- a stage of life in which many public figures seem driven to moderate their sharp edges, to broaden their appeal, to reflect on their standing in history --...
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Secret to a Strong Marriage? VOLU!
Long ago, for reasons that sounded "interesting" at the time, my wife and I decided to spend our honeymoon by ... working for several months as laborers in the Ghanaian hinterland, under the Voluntary...
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Must-Read: NYT-Wikileaks on China and Google
The latest in the NYT's presentation of of Wikileaks documents, focusing on Chinese government efforts to control the internet in general and Google in particular, has just gone up on the NYT site. It...
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'Too Good to Check': Google and the Chinese Propaganda Boss
Several friends and sources in China have written in to say that one of the most vivid details in the new Google/China/Wikileaks saga sounds slightly too neat and convenient to be accepted as settled...
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An Effective Presentation of the Dems' Tax-Cut Case
By John Kerry, no less. On Meet the Press today. (Clip may start with an embedded ad):Note to Administration officials: make these points, and just keep making them. The Administration is offering a...
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Good for Aviation, Not So Good for America
From a business news site: I'm a notorious bore about big enthusiast for small-plane general aviation and non-airline flight, and whenever I can invent a rationalization for doing so, I will fly a...
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Walk Like an American: The Finale (part 2)
Last week I posted an assortment of reports on the "Walk Like an American" question -- whether you could tell peoples' nationality by their clothes, stride, head shape, etc. It all started with the...
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On John Kerry and Framing the Tax Argument
On Sunday I mentioned that John Kerry had given other Democrats a lesson in how to stand up against the Republicans' insistence on bonus tax cuts for people in the top 2 percent of the income...
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On Those 'Stunning' Shanghai Test Scores
The most popular item on the NYT site at this moment concerns the "stunned" reaction of U.S. educators to the high scores of students in Shanghai, in the latest PISA results. PISA is the Program on...
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Elizabeth Edwards
This is predictable to say, but I will say it: I am very sad to hear of Elizabeth Edwards's death, six years after she was diagnosed with cancer while in her mid-50s. Her untimely illness was the...
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The Pistole Tapes: The Atlantic Meets the TSA
No arm of the government has taken more grief from Atlantic writers, more often, over a longer period of time, than the Transportation Security Administration. Naturally I think that the criticism --...
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The Evolution of the TSA
A computer screen is not the ideal vehicle for reading long essays or documents. (A carefully laid-out print magazine is one ideal vehicle. Let's say it together... subscribe!) Thus the value of...
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Well Done SpaceX, Elon Musk, et al
In last month's "Brave Thinkers" issue, I had a brief Q-and-A with Elon Musk, founder of (among other enterprises) Space Exploration, or SpaceX. Today, of course, SpaceX had an apparently near-flawless...
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