Today is SubOrbital Day, a lobbying event for the SubOrbital Institute. I’ve cut ‘n’ pasted the talking points for the day below the fold. I’ll post more later, possibly tomorrow if the evening wrapup is especially festive. We’ll be walking around Capitol Hill briefing Senate staffers on the issues below, trying to encourage them to take action that will make it easier for you and me to get into space.
Thinner Profit Lines
I predicted this would happen a few years ago, when the low-carb diets were still fringe theories, but I couldn’t figure out what exactly was the right play–short selling doesn’t make sense for an event that may take years. They’re really killing revenues for bread and pasta makers. It’s also, just as predictably, hitting doughnut and orange juice sales.
Meet The Tree
Due to an overzealous aide to Colin Powell, Tim Russert spent a couple minutes interviewing a palm tree this morning.
If he’s been Barbara Walters, he might have asked, “What kind of a tree would you like to be?”
Crypto-Gram
Anyone who is interested in technology policy and security ought to subscribe to Bruce Schneier’s Crypto-Gram. It’s an excellent monthly newsletter written by one of the foremost experts in computer security, and it’s free. RTWT, as they say. One thing that stood out in this latest edition is the Brief Safe (fair warning – it’s kind of gross).
I’ll probably post more on some of the items in the latest Crypto-Gram later in the week. Right now I have to get my wife safely off to Wood’s Hole.
Happy Grafitti
Mohammed at Iraq The Model has an encouraging story of a trip to the southern part of Iraq:
The point behind all these pictures and stories I mentioned is that the people started to speak out and express their feelings and here we
Limited Blogging
We’re getting ready to load up the truck and move to Florida, so lots of things to do around the house for the next few days. Maybe Andrew will pick up the slack, if he has time.
Creationists
My wife’s boss (a biologist) got a book in her inbox a couple of days ago put out by the North Dakota Bible Society – the grandiosely titled Evolution Cruncher. Apparently someone mailed these to all the biology faculty at the university of Maryland. I had a brief look through last night. I’ve been exposed to creationist literature before, so I sort of knew what to expect. I was nonetheless surprised by how blatantly dishonest this book is. I guess it’s been a while since I read anything by young earth creationists, so my memory had faded somewhat. Take a look at the site. It’s scary that these guys are a significant political constituency in some parts of the country.
I should clarify that I’m not hostile to all creationists – there are sincere and honest people who are creationists. I am, however, extremely hostile to blatant manipulative liars, which the North Dakota Bible Society apparently are.
The Myth of Fingerprints
Danyel Fisher has a good post on fingerprints and false positives. He doubts the guilt of the Oregon man being held in the Madrid bombings case based on fingerprint evidence – only time will tell for sure, but he does make an excellent point that “…if you are “one in a million,” there are 293 of you in the USA…” False positives will become more and more problematic as more people are fingerprinted. One thing Danyel doesn’t discuss, but which is extremely important, is that the resulting false positives will be believed accurate with a high degree of confidence, making it much harder to convince authorities that they are indeed false positives.
Also worth checking out is the paper linked to at the end of Danyel’s piece: On the Individuality of Fingerprints (pdf).
For What It’s Worth
I’ve had several people find their way to this site today with searches on variants of “Berg Decapitation Beheading Video etc.”
Not a single one came searching for information on Abu Ghraib.
Those stupid people. They won’t let their betters tell them what’s news.
[Update at 4:30 PM PDT]
Here’s a weird one–“Arab locust beheading”
[Update on Friday afternoon]
Brian Linse disagrees.
In a sense he makes my point. There probably are many people looking for this item merely for the dubious pleasure of watching a snuff film, but the fact remains that demand for it is relatively high because the same news outlets that couldn’t wait to show us pornography that reflected badly on the administration remain unwilling to show something that might arouse “the American street.”
For What It’s Worth
I’ve had several people find their way to this site today with searches on variants of “Berg Decapitation Beheading Video etc.”
Not a single one came searching for information on Abu Ghraib.
Those stupid people. They won’t let their betters tell them what’s news.
[Update at 4:30 PM PDT]
Here’s a weird one–“Arab locust beheading”
[Update on Friday afternoon]
Brian Linse disagrees.
In a sense he makes my point. There probably are many people looking for this item merely for the dubious pleasure of watching a snuff film, but the fact remains that demand for it is relatively high because the same news outlets that couldn’t wait to show us pornography that reflected badly on the administration remain unwilling to show something that might arouse “the American street.”