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Reuters is reporting that the U.S. Federal Reserve sent $4 billion in cash to Iraq before the handoff from the CPA. The entire story can be summed up in one quote: “Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone?” The second best line is, of course, “where’s the money?”

Can someone out there tell me how many pallets this is? I want to know what $4 billion in cash looks like.

The BBC is reporting that internet scams from Nigeria are costing the UK billions of pounds. How in the world is it possible that this still works? I’ve never even seen one of scam letters before.

How exactly does all this work?

“Dear Sir:

I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. But if you want to give me unfettered access to your bank account, I’d really, really appreciate it.

Yours,
Some Nigerian Scammer”

Come one, people. Think.

There is quite a bit of talk about the Geneva Conventions in the news lately. The President and other war hawks in the Congress are advocating a view that the portion of the Geneva Conventions that refers to the treatment of persons (I’ll expand on the term later) held in custody during times of war. What in the world is so vague about the Conventions?
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The Senate rejected 56-42 a bill that would both reduce the estate tax and increase the minimum wage. According to the Washington Post, Democratic senators decided to vote against the bill to “block[] a GOP victory months before the election.” The move is a disgusting election poltical ploy by the Republicans, but the Democrats should be scolded for putting politics ahead of real people.

The short response to this vote is that election-year politics have gotten to be reprehensible. There is absolutely no reason that these two bills, completely unrelated to one another, should have come up in one vote. I’m not going to get into the problems with reducing or eliminating the estate tax, but I will say that wage reform is an issue that needs discussion. In any event, these issues should not be combined to try and force one party to bend to the will of another party, only to have the majority exploit the vote for the purposes of the election.

The long response to this is that the modern politics is ruining the American system of government. Politicians are exploiting the short-term memory of the American public. Every action is calculated to make one party look bad, as if politics were a sort of zero-sum game. Neither side will make a move only when there is some sort of “crisis.” The Congress only seems to be able to handle one issue at a time, and only “sexy” issues make the press conference.

So I decided to take a quick look through THOMAS, the Library of Congress’s resource for legislation. Here is a sampling of some the 266 public laws that were passed during the 109th Congress: Read the rest of this entry »

No soon than I wrote about the Congress’s amazing ability to both waste time and collect a paycheck, the Senate is poised yet again (that’s twice this session, if you’re keeping score) to vote on a constitutional amendment prohibiting flag burning.

Now, I don’t want to go on about how the Constitution is a “sacred” document, but it is difficult to amend, and for good reason. Read the rest of this entry »

Despite an article the Washington Post’s ‘Unconventional Wisdom’ column, Jon Stewart is not poisoning democracy. At least, not as the article indicates.

The argument, based on a study conducted by Eastern Carolina University, suggests that Jon Stewart is making college students so cynical of the voting process and the candidates that they won’t go out and vote. I don’t think Jon Stewart could, all by himself, cause such skepticism and cynicism about politics.
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My site has been attracting a lot of content spam lately. Most of it has been caught by my filtering software, so, until recently, there has not been any real problem.

Yesterday, I wrote about the issue of network neutrality. That post, it seemed, attracted a lot of attention. I received several comments, but something struck me as odd. As the comments continued to come in, it hit me: all the comments were from the same point of view, opposing network neutrality.

I noticed on my administration screen today that my blog was linked to by another blog. This blog accuses the commentor “Net Chick” of being an astroturfer, a fake blog posting created by a PR company to give the appearance of “grassroots” (grr…) support.

I have removed the comments until I can better figure out what to do with them. I will not repost them. Furthermore, I will hold all comments in moderation until I can better decide how to handle my website. I may try writing a plugin that automatically holds from free email accounts in the moderation queue. I may play with captcha systems. I will most likely implement any number of systems.

I was reading an article in Slate magazine about the cherry tree. Recently, DC had its annual Cherry Blossom Festival, a celebration of spring and the confluence of American and Japanese culture. The article mentions how the domestic cherry tree does not hold to Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

I’m not sure if this comparison is correct. I think, based on what little I’ve read of Darwin, that there really is no distinction between natural and artificial selection. Rather, Darwin was naive to believe that the processes that affected natural selection were somehow different than those that affect “artificial” selection. That we don’t work on a purely primal instinct — driven solely by a desire to survive — does not negate that we, like the rest of the animal kingdom, derive utility from plants and animals. That is how, for example, grass dominates over other forms of plants, despite the ubiquitous nature and overall superior genetic traits of most “weeds.”

In sum, I would advocate an abandonment of the “theory of natural selection.” It has certainly not led to desirable results, and, if permitted to continue, can only lead to worse results. We are a part of the world in which we live. It is time to live up to that fact.