The left has been pretending to support the war in Afghanistan ever since we went into Iraq, as a cudgel against the Bush administration. Obama himself played that game. Well, now that he’s got the keys to the White House, and the actual responsibility for foreign policy, what will he (and they) do?
What Is A Hero?
Some thoughts from Joe Katzman. I agree with the commenter who said that ditching the plane safely wasn’t heroic — that was just doing his job. The heroism lay in risking his life to help get all the passengers off the plane.
Making Sure We Get It Right
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?