ChezLark

Glenn Greenwald says heads should roll. And I must say, I agree:

[J]udicial decisions are starting to emerge which come close to branding the conduct of Bush officials as criminal. FISA is a criminal law. The administration has been violating that law on purpose, with no good excuse. Government officials who violate the criminal law deserve to be — and are required to be — held accountable just like any other citizens who violate the law. That is a basic, and critically important, principle in our system of government. These are not abstract legalistic questions being decided. They amount to rulings that our highest government officials have been systematically breaking the law — criminal laws — in numerous ways. And no country which lives under the rule of law can allow that to happen with impunity.

For the office of the President, at least, there is only one mechanism for an ouster: ITMFA.

Eugene Volokh doesn’t think much of today’s ruling striking down the President’s wiretapping program:

[T]he judge’s opinion in today’s NSA eavesdropping case seems not just ill-reasoned, but rhetorically ill-conceived. A careful, thoughtful, detailed, studiously calm and impartial-seeming opinion might have swung some higher court judges (and indirectly some Justices, if it comes to that). A seemingly angry, almost partisan-sounding opinion (”[The orders] violate the Separation of Powers orained by the very Constitution of which this President is a creature,” emphasis added, thanks to a caller for pointing this out) is unlikely to sway the other judges — especially when the opinion is rich in generalities, platitudes (”There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution”), and “obviously”’s, and poor in detailed discussion of some of the government’s strongest arguments.

Hrmph.

I nearly missed this in today’s White House briefing:

Q: Earlier you said that violence is down 80 percent in one Baghdad neighborhood. John McCain has complained about a whack-a-mole taking place across the — cross-country — you’ve heard of that.

MR. SNOW: Yes.

Q: It seems like it’s whack-a-mole now on the local level because by all accounts Baghdad is — by most accounts, Baghdad is worse than it’s ever been, as far as the security situation. So how is this not whack-a-mole on the local level?

MR. SNOW: Well, let me ask you a question. Is every time that we have a success going to be called whack-a-mole? Because if that’s the case — no, I think what you have now is we had to retool Operation Together Forward. It wasn’t producing the desired results. I’m not saying that suddenly everything is sunny and helpful and bright, but I am saying that you do have some successes. And it’s quantifiable, and you can call Major General Caldwell or others in Baghdad and they’ll give you all the good numbers on this stuff. But there has been progress. But there’s a lot to be done.

The fact is, yes, al Qaeda is going to scatter and run, and there’s going to be the need to pursue them. Now, in response to that, what have we been doing? We’ve been training up Iraq forces. We’ve also been chasing down al Qaeda independently. And so it is not as if it’s a static situation where we just have a bunch of people here. We have people who are gathering intelligence throughout the country, both U.S., Iraqi — all three and coalition forces, and they are responding.

Aside from the indignity of referring to a military operation that kills thousands as a game of “whack-a-mole”, what’s up with references to Al Qaeda while discussing the security situation in Baghdad?

While I wasn’t paying attention, has it been established that although Al Qaeda was almost certainly not active in Iraq before the invasion, they have since become the main component of the insurgency?

Or does Tony just slip this stuff in to help support the White House’s long-running lie that Iraq has something to do with 9/11?

Glenn Greenwald is excited because today’s court decision ordering the government to stop wiretapping phone conversations without FISA warrants concludes that the program is unconstitutional. This means Congress could not authorize it even if they wanted to:

The court’s ruling that warrantless eavesdropping violates the Fourth and First Amendments clearly means (although the decision is far from a model of clarity) that Congress cannot authorize warrantless eavesdropping with legislatoin, which would preclude enforcement of the [proposed] Specter [cave-in to the White House] bill.

This is clearest when the court rejects the administration’s argument that the AUMF implicitly authorized violations of FISA. The court ruled that: (a) the AUMF cannot be read to amend FISA, but that (b) even if it could be so read, it would not matter, because Congress cannot authorize an unconstitutional program

But, over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Eugene Volokh has been busy punching holes in the Court’s reasoning about First and Fourth Amendment violations.

• The court’s ruling doesn’t address two credible arguments that the program might pass muster under the Fourth Amendment
• It may not be the case that there is a “fully independent” basis for the ruling under the First Amendment
• Eugene believes that the strongest argument against the NSA wiretapping is that it violates FISA, but not that it is unconstitutional

Jack Balkin at Balkinization is also unimpressed with the ruling:

Although the court reaches the right result– that the program is illegal, much of the opinion is disappointing, and I would even suggest, a bit confused. The first amendment holding is novel although plausible, but it is not supported by very good arguments. The basic idea is that when the government spys on its citizens, they are likely to avoid making controversial statements or join controversial organizations. Fair enough. But the problem is that the program was secret. It was the disclosure of the program that created the chilling effect. And even if we put that problem to one side, it is not clear whether a program that is otherwise legal under the Fourth Amendment and federal law ipso facto violates the First Amendment simply because people are chilled by its existence.

Second, the court does not really deal with a number of very good arguments for why the NSA program might be within the Fourth Amendment. The best argument for the court’s position is that if the program reaches United States persons who are not agents of a foreign power, like the plaintiffs, it may be unconstitutional. But the court does not make that distinction.

Finally, the court seems to be very weak in its reasoning about the separation of powers.
[...]
It is quite clear that the government will appeal this opinion, and because the court’s opinion, quite frankly, has so many holes in it, it is also clear to me that the plaintiffs will have to relitigate the entire matter before the circuit court, and possibly the Supreme Court. The reasons that the court below has given are just not good enough. This is just the opening shot in what promises to be a long battle.

Bold is mine.

Thomas Greene argues in the Register that the plot to blow up airliners heading to the US from the UK was infeasible as it’s been described to us by the authorities:

Now we have news of the recent, supposedly real-world, terrorist plot to destroy commercial airplanes by smuggling onboard the benign precursors to a deadly explosive, and mixing up a batch of liquid death in the lavatories. So, The Register has got to ask, were these guys for real, or have they, and the counterterrorist officials supposedly protecting us, been watching too many action movies?

We’re told that the suspects were planning to use TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, a high explosive that supposedly can be made from common household chemicals unlikely to be caught by airport screeners. A little hair dye, drain cleaner, and paint thinner - all easily concealed in drinks bottles - and the forces of evil have effectively smuggled a deadly bomb onboard your plane.
[...]
Making a quantity of TATP sufficient to bring down an airplane is not quite as simple as ducking into the toilet and mixing two harmless liquids together.

First, you’ve got to get adequately concentrated hydrogen peroxide. This is hard to come by, so a large quantity of the three per cent solution sold in pharmacies might have to be concentrated by boiling off the water. Only this is risky, and can lead to mission failure by means of burning down your makeshift lab before a single infidel has been harmed.

But let’s assume that you can obtain it in the required concentration, or cook it from a dilute solution without ruining your operation. Fine. The remaining ingredients, acetone and sulfuric acid, are far easier to obtain, and we can assume that you’ve got them on hand.

Now for the fun part. Take your hydrogen peroxide, acetone, and sulfuric acid, measure them very carefully, and put them into drinks bottles for convenient smuggling onto a plane. It’s all right to mix the peroxide and acetone in one container, so long as it remains cool. Don’t forget to bring several frozen gel-packs (preferably in a Styrofoam chiller deceptively marked “perishable foods”), a thermometer, a large beaker, a stirring rod, and a medicine dropper. You’re going to need them.

It’s best to fly first class and order Champagne. The bucket full of ice water, which the airline ought to supply, might possibly be adequate - especially if you have those cold gel-packs handy to supplement the ice, and the Styrofoam chiller handy for insulation - to get you through the cookery without starting a fire in the lavvie.

Easy does it

Once the plane is over the ocean, very discreetly bring all of your gear into the toilet. You might need to make several trips to avoid drawing attention. Once your kit is in place, put a beaker containing the peroxide / acetone mixture into the ice water bath (Champagne bucket), and start adding the acid, drop by drop, while stirring constantly. Watch the reaction temperature carefully. The mixture will heat, and if it gets too hot, you’ll end up with a weak explosive. In fact, if it gets really hot, you’ll get a premature explosion possibly sufficient to kill you, but probably no one else.

After a few hours - assuming, by some miracle, that the fumes haven’t overcome you or alerted passengers or the flight crew to your activities - you’ll have a quantity of TATP with which to carry out your mission. Now all you need to do is dry it for an hour or two.

So how likely was it that the alleged conspirators would have succeeded in actually bringing down an airliner, even if they hadn’t been under intense surveillance by the UK authorities? We may never know…

The Associated Press is reporting this morning that

A federal judge ruled Thursday that the government’s warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to it.

U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit became the first judge to strike down the National Security Agency’s program, which she says violates the rights to free speech and privacy as well as the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution.

“Plaintiffs have prevailed, and the public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution,” Taylor wrote in her 43-page opinion.

The decision is available online. You can also read the judge’s injunction ordering the NSA to stop wiretapping immediately:

IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that Defendants, its agents, employees, representatives, and any other persons or entities in active concert or participation with Defendants, are permanently enjoined from directly or indirectly utilizing the Terrorist Surveillance Program (hereinafter “TSP”) in any way, including, but not limited to, conducting warrantless wiretaps of telephone and internet communications, in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (hereinafter “FISA”) and Title III;

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED AND DECLARED that the TSP violates the Separation of Powers doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act, the First and Fourth Amendments to the United States Constitution, the FISA and Title III

Snap.

Glenn Greenwald has analysis.

The Des Moines Register reports:

Glen Keenan got his shiny new personalized license plates on Aug. 1.
The polite, but firm, letter from the Iowa Department of Transportation arrived a week later.

If he would be so kind, the state told him, please “voluntarily surrender” the new plates. Within 10 days. In other words, pronto.

“I don’t know what to do, but I don’t think so,” said Keenan, a lifelong Iowan from Jefferson County. “It’s not an obscene message. I really don’t understand why I wouldn’t be allowed to keep them.”

Keenan tells me this is what his personalized Iowa license plates say: ITMFA.
[...]
“I don’t know what the big deal is with mine,” said Keenan, 41. “My plate isn’t vulgar. It’s simply a series of letters than can mean any number of things.”

Really?

“Sure,” he said. “It can mean ‘Impeach the Miserable Failure Already.’ Or it could mean ‘Information Technology Masters Fine Arts.’ You could think of lots of things. I mean, any vehicle with an ‘F’ on the license plate could be objectionable to somebody.”
[...]
What will it take for Keenan to ditch the plates?

“I’ll give them up if Bush is impeached or when he’s no longer president,” Keenan said.

ITMFA.

Yesterday, I wrote about the privilege of being male, particularly Barry Deutsch’s “Male Privilege Checklist“. One of the privileges was:

44. Complete strangers generally do not walk up to me on the street and tell me to “smile.”

Meg asks:

Seriously, men don’t get told to “Smile”? I thought that was a gender-neutral thing.

I haven’t often been told to “smile”. But here, I’m referencing something that I’ve read about but never experienced, since I’m not female. Consider this comment thread on Bitch, PhD, about the readers’ experience of misogyny:

I had a male co-worker today tell me to smile (again). While I do work retail, and being positive when you are on the floor is part of the job description, he isn’t my boss and I wasn’t upset or frowning, I just didn’t have a 60 watt bimbo smile plastered on my face at the time (and there wasn’t a customer in sight - it was, like 9:30 in the morning).

I then frowned at him, because my reaction to people ordering me to be happy it annoyance. Instead of dropping it he continued to try to “coax” me into smiling. I managed to refrain from throwing something at him.

The guys I work with never walk around with the 60 watt smiles most of the women put on their face when helping a customer. Most of the men simply put on normal “pleasant” expressions, but no one ever tells them to smile except for our managers - for whom it is part of the job description - and even they only do it when they are addressing a mixed group, never individual men.

– Jenny K

I once had a random man on the street say “Hey Baby, smile, it can’t be that bad!” Well, I had just had a wisdom tooth removed. When I opened my mouth blood came pouring out. The look on his face was PRICELESS!

– Anonymous

We shouldn’t accept accusations of being “humorless” because we are legitimately angry. I never saw the “smile!!!” comments as examples of sexism (I don’t know if it really qualifies as misogyny) but now I have a new interpretation - idiot man comes along and sees a woman as an ornament who would be prettier smiling, not realizing she is a complete person who may have reasons to not smile. What should we say back to these f*ckers? I feel like an angry response won’t get through to them since they don’t respect a woman’s emotions anyway…. Obviously acting happy would encourage the behaviour. It happens way to often to just ignore it. Arg!!!

– Val

I always knew it infuriated me to the point of murderous rage when a man said this to me on the street, I never got precisely what about it (other than the presumptiousness of the commenter that I need to smile for him) that was that made me want to punch Mister Smile fo’ Me Baby until I read this passage from Anna Fels’ book Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women’s Changing Lives(p.134)

“Smiling conveys a reassuring message of accommodation to others; it is the facial equivalent of speaking softly and tentatively in order to appear pliant. Animal ethnography has raised the startling possibility that frequent smiling may actually serve as a stereotyped gesture of subordination. Studies of rhesus monkeys foudn that when nondominant monkeys worry about an attack by a dominant animal, they convey their nonthreatening, subordinate status by lowering their bodies to appear shorter and smiling–an expression known as the “fear grin.”

– dorothy rothschild

WRT: “Smile girl!” comments - I always just say, deadpan, “I only smile for people I like.” Sometimes I add a huge, sarcastic smile for extra. That usually confounds them and then they go away.

– jenny

RE. “smile honey”, my most common response is a cold, calm “NO”. If the person is obtuse enough to ask “Why not?” i inform them that they are not the expression monitor and if i want to smile i will. Their opinion will have no effect on the matter.

– Meeker

I can’t think of a single time anyone has told me on the street or in a store to “smile” if I was frowning. I think I would be somewhat surprised if someone did. On the other hand, it sounds like women often have encounters with people (men) who want to control/affect their expression/demeanor.

Thinking about it a little bit, I can completely see how this fits into a pattern of (some) men automatically perceiving women as being ornaments, and that a frowing ornament is out of place.

Is this consistent with your experience?

Barry Deutsch at Atlas offers “The Male Privilege Checklist“, a list of privileges that men automatically enjoy in modern US culture. Here are some that resonate with me:

12. If I have children and pursue a career, no one will think I’m selfish for not staying at home.

14. Chances are my elected representatives are mostly people of my own sex. The more prestigious and powerful the elected position, the more likely this is to be true.

I would add that unfortunately, my elected representatives are mostly useless. I guess no system of hierarchical oppression is perfect

16. As a child, chances are I was encouraged to be more active and outgoing than my sisters.

17. As a child, I could choose from an almost infinite variety of children’s media featuring positive, active, non-stereotyped heroes of my own sex. I never had to look for it; male protagonists were (and are) the default.

18. As a child, chances are I got more teacher attention than girls who raised their hands just as often.

I worry about all of these for Ryan Marie. We’ve already instituted a Disney ban, but finding appropriate female role models will be an uphill battle, I fear.

25. I do not have to worry about the message my wardrobe sends about my sexual availability or my gender conformity.

27. The grooming regimen expected of me is relatively cheap and consumes little time.

It is difficult to adequately convey how little male engineers worry about gender and sexual messaging generated by their clothing, or pay much attention to grooming. We should all be thankful they, for the most part, reliably cover all essential portions of their body at all.

30. I can be loud with no fear of being called a shrew. I can be aggressive with no fear of being called a bitch.

In fact, as far as I can tell, being able to yell louder than others is often (unfortunately) an advantage in my line of work.

32. I can be confident that the ordinary language of day-to-day existence will always include my sex. “All men are created equal,” mailman, chairman, freshman, he.

34. I will never be expected to change my name upon marriage or questioned if I don’t change my name.

Laura and I discussed who, if anyone, was going to change their name when we got married. We had a similar discussion about Ryan’s last name when she was born. In the end, both Laura and I kept our own names, and Ryan has my last name. My defense is that my last name is fairly rare, and I am from a very small family, so I was particularly unwilling to part with it. Laura, on the other hand, frequently has trouble naming all her (50+) cousins.

I remain bothered that Ryan and Laura don’t share a last name, though.

37. Most major religions argue that I should be the head of my household, while my wife and children should be subservient to me.

38. If I have a wife or live-in girlfriend, chances are we’ll divide up household chores so that she does most of the labor, and in particular the most repetitive and unrewarding tasks.

Would that it were so

39. If I have children with a wife or girlfriend, chances are she’ll do most of the childrearing, and in particular the most dirty, repetitive and unrewarding parts of childrearing.

OK, maybe things balance out, after all. Although I do all the diapering whenever I’m around. Still, breastfeeding doesn’t look too fun.

44. Complete strangers generally do not walk up to me on the street and tell me to “smile.”

Apparently, this actually happens.

And, of course:

46. I have the privilege of being unaware of my male privilege.

Well, that was fast. I say, Ted Stevens and the Series of Tubes has officially jumped the shark. Here’s an actual television commercial for a CBS affiliate in Denver:

So, time to pack up shop. From the humble beginnings of the Series of Tubes, to stardom on the Daily Show:

It’s been a fun ride. Thank you, Senator Stevens!

I repaved my home Linux box last weekend to upgrade it from Red Hat 9 to Fedora Core 5 after concluding that attempting to upgrade it in place was madness.

Imagine my delight when I set up samba identically on FC5 and found that it didn’t work; I couldn’t mount my shares from my Windows clients; /var/log/messages showed errors like this:

audit(1105232730.949:0): avc: denied { getattr } for pid=Xxx exe=/usr/sbin/smbd path=/samba dev=hdb1 ino=blablabla scontext=root:system_r:smbd_t tcontext=system_u:object_r:default_t tclass=dir

So, what’s the problem? I’ll tell you what the problem is: out of the box, the new Secure Linux (SELinux) features on Fedora Core 5 break samba. As though sharing files with Windows boxes isn’t a primary usage scenario for Linux!

Googling turns up lots of people simply suggesting turning off SELinux either alltogether, or for samba specifically, as a fix. I’m lazy and my box is on an internal network, so that’s what I did. But go read these instructions (or these) for how to get samba to actually work properly and tell me that this is all as it should be. Or this discussion.

My personal conclusion: Linux still has too many sharp edges on it for casual use by mortals.

Well, maybe, maybe not.

Ever heard of “bump keys”?

This video makes it look as though pretty much all types of keys are vulnerable. The locksmith interviewed even claims:

For locks currently on the market, this is the end of safety by means of keys.

We have a Medeco lock on our front door, and for what it’s worth, Medeco claims their locks are “bump-proof“. I’ve read this elsewhere as well.

It seems so strange that we still have discs called “EPs”, a term left over from vinyl records.

Anyway, when was the last time you bought an EP? Most people ignore them and just focus on full-blown albums from their favorite artists. But there’s great stuff to be found in the less-trafficked releases. I was listening to the Flaming Lip’s Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell today; it’s terrific.

Go check if your favorite artist has an EP of remixes or B-sides.

On August 9th, in a conference call with reporters, Cheney claimed that Joseph Lieberman’s defeat in the Connecticut Democratic Party primary election would give comfort to “the al Qaeda types”, who are hoping to “break the will of the American people”. Presumably this was because Lieberman is thought to have been defeated due to a backlash against his support of the Iraq war.

This sort of reasoning is just one step short of coming out and saying “look, if you disagree with the President, you’re a terrorist”.

The depressing thing is, this sort of slimy innuendo is pretty much par for the course for the White House these days. The mainstream media, already used to flabbily reporting “both sides” of a story even when one side consists of demonstrably false, wild-eyed ranting, seems to be pretty much giving up alltogether. Media Matters reports that Jonathan Weisman, a staff writer for the Washington Post, had this to say about Cheney’s comments:

In an August 11 online discussion at washingtonpost.com, Washington Post staff writer Jonathan Weisman — when asked why Vice President Dick Cheney “saying basically that people who exercised their constitutional right to vote for change (ie: Conn. primary) are helping terrorists” was “not the headline of a story” — responded: “The vice president also said the insurgency in Iraq is in its death throes, and that U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators. I’m afraid to say his utterances are losing their news value.”

Now, Media Matters doesn’t think much of this point of view:

Therefore, according to Weisman’s reasoning, the vice president of the United States — reputedly the most powerful vice president in history — can get away with saying false and outrageous things, as long as he says them often enough.
[...]
Weisman’s dismissal of Cheney’s comments echoes the broader media coverage of the Bush administration’s falsehoods and manipulation of intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq war. As Media Matters for America documented, as more and more evidence of distortions and misleading claims have surfaced, the media have responded with a collective shrug, explaining that the public was already aware that the Bush administration had repeatedly made false statements about Iraq, terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and it was therefore old news. And notwithstanding the media’s assertions about what public knows, recent polling indicated that the share of Americans who believed Saddam Hussein possessed WMD at the time of the U.S. invasion increased 14 percent from 2005 to 2006.

I suppose it’s better for the Washington Post to conclude that nothing Dick Cheney says should be given any credence than for them to think that he is actually worth listening to. But in that case, they should quit reporting his rantings without further commentary or analysis. Dutifully passing on the lies that come spewing out of the government just gives them credibility on the street.

The blogosphere is (rightly) propagating the following meme in the wake of the UK/US airline bombing plot:

Note that this plot was foiled by policework, not by carpetbombing any country.

For instance,

Matthew Yglesias in the American Prospect:

Bush says today’s plots serve as a “stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists.” If anything, it’s a stark reminder of the reverse. A stark reminder that this isn’t a “war” at all — you don’t foil a plot like this with armored personnel carriers and JDAMs. We’re also not going to capture the capital city of “Islamic fascism” — not Kabul, not Baghdad, not even Teheran and Damascus — and force our adversaries to surrender.

publius in on legal fiction:

[T]he failed UK plot illustrates why the people in charge of anti-terrorism policy shouldn’t be in charge of anti-terrorism policy anymore. It also demonstrates the utter failure of the Iraq War as anti-terrorism policy.
[...]
Any remedy for this serious problem needs to be tailored to fit the nature of the threat. Thus, what’s needed to keep us safe is, as Joe Biden rightly said, “gumshoe” work. Our safety depends on our ability to gather intelligence, to act on tips, to work leads, to aggressively monitor the movement of finances, etc. For that reason, effective policy really does closely resemble law enforcement activities.
[...]
First, invading countries and overthrowing regimes does nothing — not one thing — to address the primary problem, which is the inability to identify the people who want to kill us. Second, it actually exacerbates the “root” problem by increasing the number of alienated people and intensifying their anger.

LizardBreath on Unfogged:

Nothing these people were planning to do appears to have required governmental aid; they were going to bring down planes with cheap, reasonably easily available explosives. We could overthrow every government in the world we don’t approve of, and this kind of terrorism could still happen.

So remind me again why taking a policing, rather than a military, approach to combating terrorism is fundamentally unserious?

(bold is mine everywhere)

We have a rule in our house that we don’t get to call people stupid. Most of the time, I manage to respect that. So I will try hard not to break the rule now.

But it’s hard when I read things like this (found via Slog):

In March 2004, [Rhea County] commission members voted unanimously voted to ask state lawmakers to introduce legislation amending Tennessee’s criminal code so the county could charge homosexuals with crimes against nature.

Um… that’s… uh… old-fashioned?

But wait:

Two days later, they rescinded the vote, saying they didn’t understand they were voting to ban homosexuality in the county.

Well that makes the commission members remarkably… um… insight-challenged? Comprehension-deficient?

Newly-elected member Bill Hollin says some constituents thought the gay ban wasn’t as bad as the commissioners not understanding what they had voted to do.

I have no idea who to agree with on that last point.

It used to be my rule of thumb that a sweet-spot computer could be had for around $1,000. There’s always a tradeoff between getting a shiny-new, super-powerful machine that would “last” for a while, and getting the best “bang for the buck”. $1,000 was generally where it was at, although it was perfectly reasonable to spend closer to $2,000 for a powerful machine.

As far as I can tell, though, computers are rapidly approaching free. I keep an eye on deal-tracking sites for fun, and noticed this Dell offer today. This is a nice deal but far from unheard-of:

Dell Dimension E310 Pentium 4 3.06, 1GB DDR2, 160GB HDD, DVD-ROM + DVDRW, 17″ LCD, Color Printer

Need a translation?

• Fast, single-processor computer with perfectly reasonable memory and storage. I write software for a living on a machine roughly this powerful
• Reads and burns DVDs
• Comes with a 17″ LCD monitor and a color printer

((Infomercial voice)) — How much would you expect to pay for this package? $1,500 ? $2,000?

Dell will sell you this bundle for $398. $419 if you don’t use a Discover card to pay. Not long ago, no LCD monitor could be bought for that little, nevermind a computer. A little longer ago, a color printer cost several times that much money. Now, Dell will give you one free just for fun.

This is a very inexpensive, and very powerful, computer.

With a monitor!

And a printer!

I’m just saying.

Christopher Monk offers up what the world might look like if marriages had “signing statements” like those our President is so fond of using. I think my favorite is:

Agreement on My Finding Employment

I, your unemployed husband, agree to make a genuine effort to find a job. I will wake up before 9 every morning and check both the newspaper and Craig’s List for employment opportunities.

SIGNING STATEMENT

It’s unrealistic to expect me to get up before 9, but, sure, let’s give it a shot. I mean, I usually don’t fall asleep until 3 a.m., since the guy I play Halo with online lives in Indonesia. I’ll get less sleep than I need and probably won’t be as productive, but that’s what you want, so that’s what I’ll do. And not for nothing, but should I find awesome Phish bootlegs while looking for jobs on Craig’s List, it’s going to be pretty near impossible for me not to buy them.

You’ve probably heard this one before.

Chevy held a Web 2.0-ish participatory contest to help design an ad for the new Chevy Tahoe.

I don’t think this is what they had in mind:

Did you know that there is a “garbage patch” in the eastern Pacific Ocean, where currents tend to deposit floating material? Did you know that it’s mostly plastics?

Did you know it’s at least twice the size of Texas?

It is.

Captain Charles Moore has been there. Sailed right through the Garbage Patch, about 1,000 nautical miles, on his research catamaran Alguita.
[...]
“I often struggle to find words that will communicate the vastness of the Pacific Ocean to people who have never been to sea. Day after day, Alguita was the only vehicle on a highway without landmarks, stretching from horizon to horizon. Yet as I gazed from the deck at the surface of what ought to have been a pristine ocean, I was confronted, as far as the eye could see, with the sight of plastic,” Moore wrote in Natural History in 2003.
[...]
[T]he scale of the phenomenon is astounding. I now believe plastic debris to be the most common surface feature of the world’s oceans. Because 40 percent of the oceans are classified as subtropical gyres, a fourth of the planet’s surface area has become an accumulator of floating plastic debris. What can be done with this new class of products made specifically to defeat natural recycling?

There is now so much trash plastic in the world that it is re-entering the food chain; plastic only breaks down to a certain extent:

[T]he plastic polymers commonly used in consumer products, even as single molecules of plastic, are indigestible by any known organism. Even those single molecules must be further degraded by sunlight or slow oxidative breakdown before their constituents can be recycled into the building blocks of life. There is no data on how long such recycling takes in the ocean–some ecologists have made estimates of 500 years or more.

And then what happens?

Ebbesmeyer [a retired oceanographer] is not an optimist. He’s seen too many studies that never went anywhere.

“If you could fast forward 10,000 years and do an archeological dig, a core sample down through the beach, you’d find a little line of plastic,” he says. “What happened to those people? Well, they ate their own plastic and disrupted their genetic structure and weren’t able to reproduce. They didn’t last very long because they killed themselves. . .

“Mother Nature is writing to us, and she writes to us on the beach,” he says. “The ocean is warning us, and if we don’t listen, it’s very easy for her to get rid of us.”

Fantastic.