Bob Morris @ Dec 28th 2007 20:13 - Category: Unfiled Tags: lithium metal batteries, TSA;
Near as I can tell, this affects pretty much no one except audio/visual professionals.
Cell phone lithium metal batteries are under the limit as are most laptop batteries. Batteries in a device are ok, batteries not in a device can not be checked. Best bet. Carry-on all devices and batteries.
Bob Morris @ Dec 28th 2007 17:09 - Category: Election 2008 Tags: Obama;
Washington Note wonders, as are many, why Obama’s chief political strategist tried to imply that Hillary Clinton was somehow responsible for Bhutto’s death. And why Obama made things worse by not denouncing the comments immediately.
Obama may have just destroyed himself as being the high road candidate.
The primary elections haven’t even started yet. Imagine the rivers of mud that will be slung once the primaries are over and the general election begins. And none of it will have anything to do with the issues either. Pathetic, isn’t it?
Bob Morris @ Dec 28th 2007 13:35 - Category: Renewable energy Tags: biodiesel, recycling;
Hydrogen power plant fueled by garbage.
That’s a whole lot of blorp that won’t be clogging up landfills but will instead be turned into energy.
Bob Morris @ Dec 28th 2007 11:34 - Category: Politics Tags: Pakistan;
The seriousness of the situation in the streets of some of Pakistan’s important towns and cities doesn’t seem to me to be being reported in the US press and media. In contrast, Pakistani newspapers are giving chilling details of large urban centers turned into ghost towns on Friday morning.
Folks, I’ve seen civil wars and riots first hand, and revolutions from not too far away, and this situation looks pretty bad to me.
Bob Morris @ Dec 28th 2007 10:54 - Category: Politics Tags: Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan;
There were multiple snipers shooting armor-piercing bullets, a decoy suicide bomb, and two of the snipers blew themselves up after firing. There was another attack at the hospital.
A working theory, according to this American source, is that Al Qaeda or affiliated jihadist groups had effectively suborned at least one unit of Pakistan’s Special Services Group, the country’s equivalent of Britain’s elite SAS commandos.
Or not. But clearly they were stone cold professionals. With help.
Police officers had frisked the 3,000 to 4,000 people attending Thursday’s rally when they entered the park, but as the speakers from Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party droned on, the police abandoned many of their posts.
Tip: FDL, who also has a fascinating piece by someone who knew Bhutto as a student at Harvard and says she was being groomed, even then, to lead Pakistan.
Bob Morris @ Dec 28th 2007 10:35 - Category: Credit crisis Tags: Loundon county;
This from Loundon County VA, one of the wealthiest counties in the nation. Real estate taxes fund 72% of their budget but values dropped 10% last year with more drops predicted. Now they have a budget shortfall of $251 million. Foreclosures are up dramatically too.
Now imagine what it must be like for counties with far less money and resources…
Bob Morris @ Dec 28th 2007 07:26 - Category: Unfiled Tags: airport security, TSA;
A new study finds no evidence that x-raying luggage, making passengers take off shoes, or confiscating small items helps prevent attacks or incidents.
The goal isn’t to confiscate prohibited items. The goal is to prevent terrorism on airplanes. When the TSA confiscates millions of lighters from innocent people, that’s a security failure. The TSA is reacting to non-threats. The TSA is reacting to false alarms. Now you can argue that this level of failures is necessary to make people safer, but it’s certainly not evidence that people are safer.
Bob Morris @ Dec 28th 2007 00:15 - Category: Unfiled Tags: Crystal Island, skyscrapers;
Designs for mega-buildings like Crystal Island in Moscow are popping up all over the planet. While they are certainly dazzling and some are decidedly green, they also clearly are for the monied class only. Everyone else stay out unless they are the hired help. I’m sure security is a major design factor and with impenetrable doors and security cameras everywhere.
One could easily live and work in a city-inside-a-building like this, and never have to leave. The area outside, around the building, would probably become a sterile wasteland (except maybe for support services for the building) as residents wouldn’t need to go outside to eat, socialize, etc. as they could do all that inside. Order a pizza? Not from a pizza place outside the building, because parking and getting through security then up the elevators would take too long. No, the pizza place would have to be inside the building. Thus, any bustling street life around the building would probably vanish.
Buildings like this seem primarily about making a statement, and while they might be green, they stand apart from and contribute little to the city they are in. To make a real city, buildings need to be designed to consciously be part of the surroundings.
Bob Morris @ Dec 28th 2007 00:12 - Category: Politics Tags: Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan;
So how did the assassin get close enough to Bhutto to be able to shoot her at point blank range? And how did they know when she’d be out of the protective bubble of her car? This seems a well-planned hit that had inside help.
The killing was clearly intended to create chaos and a collapse of the government. Indeed, Musharraf may not last in power much longer.
But why would anyone want to see the 4 horseman unleashed? It helps to recall Lenin. The early revolutionary leaders in Russia wanted to have a new democratic government - in effect they wanted to replace the Tsar with a kind of English system. Ms Bhutto = Kerensky.
Lenin had no ambitions to simply take over the existing state - he wanted to create a Theocracy - a new ideal state based on a religion. AQ have the same desire.
But Lenin had a disciplined mass party and enjoyed broad support. AQ has no such support, not even in Pakistan.
They want chaos in Pakistan that will lead to conflict with India. They want the US to back order and Musharraf so that when M falls, the loss for the US will be even greater. They want Europeans to fear the Muslim immigrants and to have a reaction thus building up the tension inside Europe.
But at some point chaos becomes no one’s friend. Even gun runners and drug smugglers need basic societal stability. Once chaos starts, almost by definition, the outcome is unpredictable.
This creates the ideal conditions for a tribal theocracy.
The brilliance of this move is that while I think I can see how it can all turn out, I can’t think of how I would do anything but follow the script that they have forced upon us. Like in 1914, the powder charges have been laid over 40 years. Now the fuse is lit - the bang is inevitable.
Maybe not. We don’t have to take the bait. There’s no need for the US to do anything militarily and every reason to not do so. Perhaps the absolute best thing the US could do, both ethically and in terms of power politics, is to let Pakistan handle their own problem. Not only would the world breathe a sigh of relief that the US is finally acting sensibly, it would also defuse much of the threat from AQ.
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