He got the ammo

Keith Olbermann is out at MSNBC.

MSNBC, via its NBC parent, just got taken over by Comcast.  The Comcast CEO is Brian Roberts.  May 2010 --

Mediaweek‘s Anthony Crupi was also at the keynote, and reports that Roberts dodged a question from Chernin (who once counted Fox News among the divisions he oversaw) about what he would do regarding MSNBC firebrand Keith Olbermann.

“Let’s have that conversation in 12 months when we’re playing with live ammo,” Roberts said, before adding that he would ensure that NBC News continued to “keep [its coverage] down the middle, whatever that means.”

It hasn't stopped the consulting firms

From announcement that Abu Dhabi solar power plant is being affected by dust --

“Dust in the atmosphere absorbed a substantial part of the direct irradiation,” Wouters said at a conference in Barcelona. “There’s a huge difference between PowerPoint and real life.”

Russian spy network latest

No one could have conceived of a strange Russian-accented person with gadgets effortlessly blending into American suburbia. Never been done.

Somehow this must be Barack Obama's fault

Kuwait official news agency --

In Kuwait, the Ministry of Interior is eyeing the option of stopping the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service, and a decision to this effect might be issued in the near future, according to a number of local media reports.
These reports said the ministry is considering the ban due to the fact that the service cannot be controlled by the Ministry of Communications or security authorities and hence, users of BlackBerry sets were taking advantage of the situation to spread rumors and call for strikes.

Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose

As fitting an epilogue to the Celtic Tiger as any, former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who ran the economy and the Northern Ireland peace process into the ground and collected all the plaudits in the world while doing it, being a good Irishman at his local Fagan's, one of just 9 pubs in Britain and Ireland to get the exclusive Sky 3D view of Arsenal vs Man Utd. Maybe Bertie could use the cool specs as a disguise when he moves out of the safe company of his Murdoch Inc. friends.

UPDATE: Nice choice of words from the Indo story --

The Drumcondra pub, along with eight other British bars

Indeed.

Photograph: Cyril Byrne, Irish Times.

The more dioxide the better

Powerline's "Hindrocket" is wading through the Univ of East Anglia Climate Research Unit file dump. He highlights an interesting sequence where various scientists are informally discussing why the predicted increase in global temperatures has not been observed in recent years. One discussant raises the possibility that it's because China and India are producing so much sulphur dioxide from their industries that the resulting cooling effect of all that stuff in the atmosphere is offsetting the warming from carbon dioxide. He goes on to propose, seemingly sarcastically, that we should be encouraging pumping of even more of the stuff into the atmosphere for precisely this reason. Of course to Hindrocket, this is merely a glorious free lunch: by letting China and India pollute all they want, we wouldn't need to anything about global warming.

A couple of points. First, the e-mails complain that there's no data on China and India sulphur dioxide emissions that would help verify the cooling hypothesis. Scientists like having data before making radical proposals. Second, there's the link to the Superfreakonomics idea that caused so much controversy -- the geo-engineering plan hyped in the book to directly pump SO2 into atmosphere and achieve global cooling by design. Although the advantage of their plan was cheapness, it appears they missed the freest lunch of all -- the status quo! It's amazing that the Earth seems to feature of a form of "intelligent design" if you will, allowing us to scale up all our forms of pollution in proportion and carry on as before.

Except for the acid rain, diminishing sunlight, polluted oceans, and increasingly dioxified air. Though it would probably set the stage for a resurgence of Impressionist art.

3 minutes to spare

Megabands like Coldplay don't need links from bloggers but their new video is extremely funny. They should make the Youtube embed code a little easier to find.

Note for Bush bloggers

All the links to the White House website during the Bush years don't work anymore. But they can be saved. In the web address, replace www.whitehouse with georgewbush-whitehouse.archives and the links will work. Example: if you're looking for the quote where Bush said he'd leave town with his head held high, it used to be [http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2009/01/20090113-1.html] and now it's here. Three cheers for the US National Archives. Now, if only there was a Blogger utility that can do a find-replace for the links on every post at once?

Let the unlocking games begin

Wall Street Journal (subs. req'd) --

German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom AG said it is lowering the price of Apple Inc.'s iPhone handset in Germany to €99 ($122) in a two-month campaign.

The iPhone currently costs a minimum €399 in Germany, where Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile unit is the exclusive carrier. The multimedia phone costs at least $399 in the U.S. where it has been in short supply.

The new offer runs from April 7 to June 30 for the iPhone model with eight gigabytes of memory, the Bonn-based company said. The €99-deal is only valid in combination with a premium contract for which the customer pays at least €89 a month.

Deutsche Telekom has also introduced a starter iPhone contract that costs €29 a month -- the handset then costs €249.

Compare to the Irish price of €399 with more expensive plans than are being offered elsewhere.

Can the Mark Ronson-produced album be far behind?

Young people move to Washington DC, share a house, and use the Internet a lot.

Apparently this is the epitome of style, judging by the prominence it gets in Sunday's New York Times.

New to you

From a New York Times assessment of Benazir Bhutto's influence in Washington --

Last week, Mr. Siegel said, he e-mailed Ms. Bhutto to tell her he had heard that their publisher, HarperCollins, was pleased with the book the two had just turned in, “Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West.” He received a happy response from Ms. Bhutto by BlackBerry. “Which we called her ‘crackberry’ because she was so addicted to it,” Mr. Siegel said.

Isn't it someone's job -- either Siegel, the writer of the article, or its editor -- to make it clear that it's not like these people actually came up with that term themselves for the addictive Canadian device?

Let the scrubbing begin

The White House website is one of the few good things about the Bush administration. It has a very clean layout, easy to find things, and mostly accurate transcripts are posted extremely promptly.

But now. The news page used to have a very nice box on the left called "News by Date" with all the material organized by month since January 2001. So one could focus an open-ended search very quickly once you knew what period you were looking for. For example, finding out exactly what Bush's demands to Saddam were right before the invasion was just a scroll through the March 2003 pages. However, the links to months prior to 2006 have been removed from the current website. All the underlying material is still there and of course the search engine still works. But what's gone is the ability to do a chronological survey of Bush's statements and positions without some extra work.

One crude fix is to type the url http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/year/month/
[year as 4 digit number, month as 2 digit number]. There is some chance the policy is not intentional as sometimes the original full menu of months does display, so there may be a html/Javascript innocent explanation for what is going on.

This is as good a time as any to make our recommendation that the first order of web business of the Clinton or Obama presidency should be to leave all the current website material untouched, because referring back to Bush's positions and precedents is going to be an important part of keeping the press corps reminded of what they accepted in the Bush years.

Partner Inconsistency

If Apple is planning on offering free WiFi access to iTunes from any Starbucks coffee shop, it's a tad odd that this is in the context of Starbucks offering WiFi through T-Mobile, whereas for the iPhone, Apple's partner is the much criticised choice of AT&T. So, it would seem, one's iPhone will be using the AT&T network for all functions except when you're in Starbucks when it will be using T-Mobile for iTunes. Or is another technical shoe yet to drop?

Will the last US libertarian please turn out the lights?

From the White House Fact (sic) Sheet explaining the new electronic surveillance law (the "Protect America Act") --

The Act Provides For The FISA Court To Direct Third Parties To Assist The Intelligence Community In Its Collection Efforts. The Act permits the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General to direct third parties to provide the information, facilities, and assistance necessary to conduct surveillance of foreign intelligence targets located overseas.

Apart from anything else, the above bullet point is atrociously written, as it refers to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court, which is judicial, in the 1st sentence, but then refers to the director of national intelligence and the Attorney General in the second, which is entirely executive branch. Unless that's become the judicial branch in the new law.

The Natural Law Party was right?

It's amazing what Google turns up. With the breaking news from the BBC that the source of the foot and mouth outbreak in Surrey is now considered highly likely to be a vaccine strain that somehow got out in the open from the nearby lab and production facility in Pirbright, take a look at the issues identified in this September 2001 NLP webpage, which specifically raises the biosecurity issue with vaccine manufacture at the Surrey facility. Unfortunately most of the links are dead, but we wonder how long this still live page will last?

Note also the date on the page -- 10 September 2001. The next day, the world moved on to other issues. But the previous issue remained.

UPDATE: Google this too before pages start getting pulled.

UPDATE 2: The link to Merial is confirmed. Merial's link to United Biomedical is not clear.

If anyone is calling anyone else, we need to know why

George Bush, using an endlessly repeated formulation for why he couldn't comply with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires a warrant for electronic eavesdropping on Americans:

If al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, we need to know why, in order to stop attacks.

In a new White House fact sheet, explaining why George Bush wants a drastic revision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act --

Some have suggested that FISA must be reformed, but only to permit collection against certain overseas threats like al Qaeda terrorists. This is unacceptable. There are many threats that confront our Nation, including military, weapons proliferation, and economic, and we must be able to conduct foreign intelligence effectively on all of them.

Notice the scope of the latitude he claims he needs has gone from al Qaeda to just about anything, and that when granted his initial exception, he introduces a demand for far more. As has been clear for a while, it's getting near time to assume any electronic conversation anywhere in the world could fall under the scope of a warrant-free Global War on Terror -- including on Americans, since the argument will inevitably follow that verifying physical location is impossible on the Internet.

UPDATE: Things are getting very strange in the rush to get the new FISA legislation passed. Did the White House lean on their intelligence chief to get him to reject a compromise proposal? They say they did not. But this is a serious bit of business to be transacting in a rush on Friday night.

FINAL UPDATE 5 AUGUST: The White House is apparently claiming that under current arrangements, it needed a warrant to listen in on conversations between evildoers in Iraq --

Administration officials were concerned that the new court restrictions had slowed their ability to eavesdrop on militants in Iraq who were holding three American soldiers in May, according to an Associated Press report on Friday. Asked about the report, Senator Kit Bond, Republican of Missouri, would not discuss specifics, but said, “The inability to collect on foreign targets not only impacts our security in the United States but our military abroad.”

It's weird that no one will ask for clarification of the precise circumstance under which the bad guys in Iraq were using US wires to communicate with each other. US e-mail accounts (gmail, hotmail) perhaps?

Osama really loves emoticons

As people try to piece together the extent of the domestic surveillance that the US government has been up to in the last few years, there's been a sudden burst of relevant government leaks to various newspapers. This Wall Street Journal editorial hints at one aspect of what George Bush's spooks have been up to: looking for ways to snoop on Internet traffic without a warrant.

The Journal claims that if an Internet telephone call (or, presumably, an IM conversation) was between two foreign-based suspects but routed through US servers, it becomes a domestic conversation for the purpose of US law and so a warrant would be required to intercept it. Here's the (presumably) hypothetical example the WSJ gives

If an al Qaeda operative in Quetta calls a fellow jihadi in Peshawar, that call may well travel through a U.S. network.

Indeed it could -- if the terrorists use Skype. But are we really expected to believe that the evildoer in Quetta would go the trouble of finding a broadband connection to Skype with his fellow evildoer in Peshawar -- when he could just pick up the phone and dial him direct, on plain old Pakistani phonelines that don't come anywhere near the US? And anyway, aren't these evildoers always supposed to be "on the run" in caves somewhere, where Skype access is not an issue?

2 more things to note. First, the Bush surveillance is likely just massive data mining of all Internet activity, without any attempt to sort out who is where at each end of the transaction. Second, it might be time to take another look at those French concerns that Blackberry could be part of the problem.

UPDATE: David Rivkin and Lee Casey, again on the apparently well-briefed Wall Street Journal editorial page, go with the same claim that overseas calls might pass through US-based servers and so George W. Bush would need to be able to listen in without a warrant. Apart from anything else, these people don't seem to realize that the long-term consequence of allowing George W. Bush access to US-based Internet servers is that other countries will develop their own infrastructure to sidetrack the US. A big source of comparative advantage would be gone.

FINAL UPDATE 3 AUGUST: It seems that the briefing to newspapers were part of a shadow debate going on about revision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, with this claim about electronic conversations between foreign parties cross US soil being a key part of the White House argument.

VERY FINAL UPDATE: While it's typical of Republican buffoonery that Congressman John Boehner apparently discussed classified information (see also here) in explaining why a new law was needed, note that it's clear from our WSJ links above that the same information -- the alleged need for a warrant to intercept communications overseas using US wires -- was being leaked to favoured news outlets before Boehner blabbed.

Energy Independence Day

In an event that will surely have some viewers at the White House, given its propensity for free tax cuts, free wars, and indeed free energy, the Irish company claiming that it has produced a perpetual motion machine will at 6pm (BST) this evening unveil a prototype of it. The machine will be on display in London and apparently streamed live here, although the website of the company, Steorn, doesn't currently mention the event.<sup>1

1</sup>On closer inspection, the company's website main page does mention the event (see bottom of page), but is unclear about the time zone. We think it's still BST.

Know nothing, do nothing

If you want an illustration of the extent of weeding of political hacks out of top US government positions that's going to be necessary when George Bush is no longer president, here's one. It's a National Public Radio interview with NASA administrator Michael Griffin, who was responding to a critique, by Gregg Easterbrook, of NASA priorities for manned travel to the Moon and Mars given other pressing issues that it could be tackling.

Besides repeatedly mispronouncing Easterbrook's name, Griffin's main lurch into deranged incompetence came with the discussion of climate change. NPR has provided some key excerpts --

I understand that the bulk of scientific evidence accumulated supports the claim that we've had about a one degree centigrade rise in temperature over the last century to within an accuracy of 20 percent. I'm also aware of recent findings that appear to have nailed down — pretty well nailed down the conclusion that much of that is manmade. Whether that is a longterm concern or not, I can't say.

Do you have any doubt that this is a problem that mankind has to wrestle with?

I have no doubt that … a trend of global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with. To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change. First of all, I don't think it's within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown. And second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings — where and when — are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take.

Thus, a case study in climate change obscurantism, from the guy in charge of the equipment that could tell us a lot about climate change. Note the phrasing of his global warming admission, designed to make it sound as small as possible -- 1 degree Centigrade over 100 years. Note the sudden interest in the metric temperature scale, when he knows his listeners think in Fahrenheit. Note the lack of interest in the bleak projections for future climate change.

But note most of all the bizarre ethical position that it's "arrogant" for current generations to take any actions that could affect the climate of future generations, since those generations could prefer the hothouse that we'll be bequeathing to them. Nick Stern's climate change report got criticised for its ethical position that the current generation should essentially assume that future generations have the same preferences and weight as the current one in making climate change decisions, but Griffin seems to think that one can't take any position at all. And yet somehow he's willing to assume that they will want that manned station on the Moon and trips to Mars.

[Update: More on Griffin's lunacy here and here]

Fearful new world

Here's the Atlanta Journal-Constitution article which includes an interview with the man who has caused a TB scare on at least two continents. His Jason Bourne-like travels in Europe should surely raise some eyebrows. For one thing, why Prague? It also highlights that if infectious diseases do become a serious issue for air travel within industrialised countries, the passport/visa/identity check regime is going to be far more transnational in scope that it is now.

UPDATE: More determined people would be looking through the same newspaper's wedding pages just in case the wedding that was the reason for the trip was announced there. But we're not determined enough.

FINAL UPDATE: He's been identified. Andrew Speaker. A personal injury lawyer. One wonders if his fellow passengers have a personal injury case?