Category: News

It doesn’t make the press as often as it should in the US, but it’s becoming clear that the Taliban is experiencing a resurgency in Afghanistan, with an increasing amount of the country coming under their sway.

It’s good to know that the Bush Administration and its allies have an aggresive plan in place to deal with this, as well as to reverse the increasing factionalization of Iraq. Just read the closing words of the article, and see for yourself how confident

“We need to realise that we could actually fail here,” warns Lieutenant-General David Richards, British commander of the Nato-led peacekeeping force. “Think of the psychological victory for Bin Laden and his ilk if we failed and the Taliban came back. Within months we’d suffer terror attacks in the UK. I think of my own daughters in London and the risk they would be in.”

I’m catching up with some blog postings, and as I stumbled across this one I just shook my head. North Korea, a secretive, reclusive regime with weak ties to the rest of the world and one of the world’s most tense borders, in the process of developing nuclear weapons and a proven exporter of nuclear technology, test fires a long range missile that thankfully fizzled, and the Left’s response is

The fine print is important, though. As the Times notes in their dispatch today: the Taepodong-2 “is thought to be potentially capable of reaching United States territory in Alaska, if North Korea perfects the technology. But that ability has never been demonstrated in a test. (emphasis added)”

So, what, it’s just Alaska? We should wait until they have some better before we start to care?

The NJ papers never cease to amaze me. In all the coverage of the budget shutdown, the one aspect the papers have unceasingly failed to cover is the casino shutdown. It’s truly wonderful to know that the most visible and fundamental aspect of the whole budget nonsense is that people aren’t able to piss their money away at casinos and on the lottery.

In the meantime, every article I’ve read failed to give a proper accounting to why NJ ended up in the fiscal mess in the first place. Sure, they repeated so many times that the shutdown was a direct result of the failure to compromise on a sales tax increase between the Governor and the head of the Assembly. But the discussion beyond that failed to provide a proper context to the sales tax increase. I saw little to no answers to questions such as how many budget cuts were being proposed, and where; what spending increases were being proposed; what contractual obligations the state had to honor in its budget, etc. Perhaps this was all done prior to the shutdown, yet, even if it was, I somehow doubt many people have been paying that much attention before it became a reality.

I understand how writing about casinos may be more fun, and likely a lot easier, but it does a disservice to the community these papers supposedly support to not educate readers properly on the topic of the day.

I laughed out loud as I read this article on how to defeat the copy protection schemes in the current batch of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players built in to computers.

Computer magazine c’t has discovered that the first software players running on Windows XP allow screenshots of the movies to be created in full resolution. To do so, you only need to press the Print key on your keyboard while the movie is running. Such a screenshot function could then be automated to produce copies of HD movies both from Blu-ray Discs and from HD DVDs picture by picture. As c’t calculated, the performance of current PC systems is sufficient for a clean recording using this procedure. Once a pirate has all of the individual pictures, they can be put together to create a complete movie and mixed with the audio track that is grabbed separately.

I love when a low-tech option can circvumvent high-tech restrictions.

A temporary stay allowed our day of OTB to go on up at my cousin’s house. It turned out to be a great time, though I did end up losing somewhere around $40 when all was said and done.

So, the NJ state government begins the shutdown process. While this is disappointin(and ruins my plans for some quality OTB time with the family tomorrow) I have to respectfully disagree with this quote:

“It’s just unbelievable. It’s like communism,” said Marty Campagna of Rahway who was among the 2,400 people at the Meadowlands before it closed.

I doubt Marty has lived under communism, and I certainly know I haven’t. But if you consider for a moment that communism involves the state planning and allocation of resources in place of the private sector, then you could safely consider the shutdown the complete opposite.

Since so many of my fellow New Jerseyans can epitomize the definition of short-term memory less at times, I’m sure that they’ll continue to blame the long-term mess on the current bigwigin charge. However, the seeds of this mess were planted in the late 1990s, during the boom times, when the Republican governor at the time cut taxes too far while increasing spending. That’s what happens when you let Republicans in to power. They end up screwing you later while letting Democrats take the fall for it.

I’m not thrilled with the budget plans, nor the shutdown. But I am glad to see someone’s finally tackling the real problem here and trying to fix it once and for all (or at least until the next Republican fucks it all up again).

Japan announced last week that the country’s birth rate had fallen to an all-time low of 1.25 births per woman.

With its falling birth rate, Japan is hardly alone among advanced countries. South Korea’s fertility rate fell to a record low of 1.08 in 2005, well below the global average of 2.6 children and the average in developed countries of 1.6.

As the article states, a birth rate of 2.1 is needed to maintain a stable population. For the anti-Americans who are against immigration, Japan provides an excellent peak in to our own future as our internal birth rate falls below 2.1.

Singapore went to the polls last week amid questions about how big a showing the opposition parties would make as they fielded candidates in more districts than many years prior. While the ultimate showing (82 of 84 seats returned to the party in power) was on par with the previous election, excitement did seem to be increasing for a change in government, especially among the younger generations.

Tym, a 32 year old Singaporean, spent the past week attending some political rallys and commenting in general on her experiences as the electioneering process continued.

• My Very First Political Rally
• Another Night, Another Rally
• Election Rally Survival Tip #3212
• On the ground
• It’ll do

While our own elections here are often on the dry side, with gerrymandering, entrenched incumbents, and political parties that seem out of touch, it’s so easy to forget that in some places with elections you don’t really have a choice. Add to that the sense of being watched and recorded when attempting to assemble to hear divergent views, and it’s a strong reminder that we really do have certain freedoms here we so easily and often take for granted (and don’t take advantage of!).

I stumbled on a BBC article from 2002 while reading something else forgettable this morning. When I read this, though, I thought to myself how much less jaded people would be overall if we adopted a similar structure here in the US.

Anssi Vanjoki, 44, has been ordered to pay a fine of 116,000 euros ($103,600) after being caught breaking the speed limit on his Harley Davidson motorbike in the capital, Helsinki, in October last year.

Harley Davidson motorbike
Mr Vanjoki is a Harley Davidson enthusiast
Police say he was driving at 75 km/h (47 mph) in a 50km/h (31 mph) zone.

In Finland, traffic fines are proportionate to the latest available data on an offender’s income.

I could likely count the number of people who don’t take our current traffic violation system as a giant revenue generator for local governments on one hand. If we had this kind of system, two things would happen. First, violations would likely drop because the punishment is actually significant. And second, people might begin to feel the system is less corrupt overall.

But here in the heart of capitalism, this would never fly, so we don’t have to worry.

I’ve heard this line a lot. That Saddam Hussein was “one of the worse tyrants of the twentieth century”. I’m just curious, for anyone out there with a knowledge of modern world history. Who would you rank as the top 10 tyrants of the 20th century?