Lileks discovers a useful Obama-related on-line survey.
This Seems Like Bad News
Not for most people, but for James Lileks:
The page you requested could not be found. Many articles published on StarTribune.com remain on the site for a limited period of time.
Sadly, this is the future for many papers, many of them much better than that one…
[Via Instapundit]
The Geese Have Come Home…To Roost
I should have written this.
It is time — indeed, past time — for us to ask: why do the geese hate us?
Fridge Caption Contest
Lileks (who has started actually blogging, with multiple updates per day and stuff) has a good one.
Bailout Questions
Here are some good ones. I suspect that the socialists will have a response to this one, though:
President-elect Obama claims that spending approximately $800 billion will create 3.675 million new jobs. That comes to $217,000 per job. This doesn’t sound like a very good value, especially with the national average salary around $40,000. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to just mail each of these workers a $40,000 check?
The response will be that the jobs will last more than a year. But of course, they’d have to last at least five years to be equivalent.
A Legend In His Own Mind
A self assessment from the Veep elect:
He said he would bring more to the job than any of his predecessors, except possibly Lyndon B. Johnson. “I know as much or more than Cheney,” Mr. Biden said. “I’m the most experienced vice president since anybody.”
Joe Biden is a man with much to be modest about, but he doesn’t seem to realize it.
Smarter Spambots
This is great news (he wrote sarcastically):
New zombies now routinely request new IP addresses from their ISPs, so anti-spam software that works by blocking spam based the originating IP addresses can no longer effectively halt them, the company said in its most recent quarterly Internet Threats Trend Report.
While some ISPs deny their request to change IP address, others accede, giving them new IP addresses in real time, Amir Lev, chief technology officer at Commtouch (NASDAQ: CTCH), told InternetNews.com. The result is that zombies can change addresses much faster than most security services and software can respond, which means their users are not protected, Lev said.
Why do ISPs allow such a thing? Is there a legitimate reason that couldn’t be handled by a personal phone call? If not, there should be pressure on them to stop this.
I mean, come on. A hundred and fifty billion spam emails a day? Just think how much cheaper bandwidth might be if the majority of it wasn’t spam.
AWOL
It’s been a year now since Jesse Londin’s most recent post at Space Law Probe. Anyone know what happened?
Good Luck With That
Jim Pinkerton thinks that space development should be at the center of Obama’s stimulus plan.
The problem is that, as “anonymous.space” points out, it isn’t particularly stimulating in the short run:
Unfortunately, departments and agencies with large portions of their budgets dedicated to multi-year development projects — like NASA and DoD — are extremely poor prospects for near-term economic stimulus funding. Congress appropriates the vast majority of NASA’s $17 billion budget as two-year funding, meaning that NASA has two years to get the funding on contract or otherwise awarded. NASA has an even longer period of time to spend the funding — i.e., obtain a receipt from the contractor and pay them. If the White House and Congress want to see federal funding pumped into the economy in early to mid-2009, NASA would be a very poor choice of vehicle for that funding (as much as I wish it were otherwise). Funding appropriated for NASA in 2009 would not really be flowing until 2010-12.
Space projects are about the farthest thing from shovel ready. And there’s a lot of up-front effort that has to go in to how to properly spend the money.
I met Pinkerton at a free-market space symposium sponsored by Cato about a decade ago. He was (and remains) very enthusiastic about space, but very skeptical about private space.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Over in the same comment thread as the one from “anonymous.space,” Charles in Houston has a great stimulus idea:
OK, I can’t help myself!!! I have to at least fire off a controversial and pointlessly realistic posting on the NASA As Stimulus idea!!!
Why not create a few more NASA centers? We have created lots of jobs by opening the Shared Services Center and the Independent Verification center and some other center that I forgot about and maintaining a whole host of overlapping Centers for years. Why not open a few more in Detroit and hire a bunch of auto workers to do something or the other?? You would build parking lots and visitor’s centers and attract tourists – all NASA facilities attract tourists like picnics attract ants.
He might be able to get John Conyers’ support for that one.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s the original version of the Pinkerton piece at Fox News, which is much easier on the eyes to read. The Lifeboat Foundation really needs a site redesign.
Just Arrived In Big Hollywood
Cold Humpcrack Creekwater: Two retarded gay cowgirl sisters (Rene Zellweger, Traci Lords) defy a fundamentalist sherriff (Chris Cooper) and discover love in this 1930’s period piece set in the Appalachian outback of Nebraskansaw.
Angel Soft This: In a shocking and sometimes humorous indictment of the toilet paper industry, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock documents the ravages he suffers after 30 straight days of non-stop butt-wiping.
Snow Fuji Mountain: Mothra (Toby Damon) and Gamera (Orlando Law) discover forbidden love while destroying Tokyo in this story of nuclear-triggered sexual awakening.
I would actually pay to see some of these.