Jacob Weisberg, providing “content” for the fused media effort known as Slate-Newsweak, posits that Obama has really accomplished a great deal to this point in his candiacy presidency.

It just doesn’t wash.

Weisberg’s false math thinks legislative effort equals American success.  He couldn’t be more wrong.  Americans are looking right down the barrel of a lost decade based on the absurd legislative efforts Obama has allowed the Dem-led Congress to lead.  The result will be reduced health care for those who actually pay for it, mountains of debt which will take extreme action to overcome, higher unemployment, higher taxes, and a legacy of foreign policy ineptness which will greatly diminish the military instrument of national power.

Other than that Jacob, it has been a great success.

Reprinted from Slate Magazine:

What is the single worst sentence in Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue? According to Slate’s Going Rogue index, it comes on Page 102: “As the soles of my shoes hit the soft ground, I pushed past the tall cottonwood trees in a euphoric cadence, and meandered through willow branches that the moose munched on.” Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times didn’t have to read past the first paragraph for her nomination: “I breathed in an autumn bouquet that combined everything small-town America with rugged splashes of the Last Frontier.”

These sentences have the markings of what might be called the high Palin style (her writing, as opposed to her speeches): multiple references to local flora and fauna, heavy use of PSAT vocabulary, slightly defensive tone, difficult-to-parse meaning.

Do you think you can write like Sarah Palin? If so, we want to hear from you. The goal is to write a sentence that could be mistaken for one from her book. Keep it to a single sentence of fewer than 150 words and send your entry to writelikepalin@gmail.com by Wednesday. We’ll publish our favorites later in the week.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2236477/

Here’s a warm up: I tossed the Rueger and gave chase, my high heels sinking in the loamy Alaskan soil but before my shoes could drum out the National Anthem against the fragrant ground, I snared the jack rabbit with my teeth.

Does your e-mail reveal how productive you are?

This is an article I wrote about Cataphora, a company of mathematicians and linguists that sifts through e-mail, IMs, and the office communications structure to model your behavior as an employee. This won’t be the last you hear of them.

One new Hindi movie hits Chicago area theaters in time for the Thanksgiving holiday. De Dana Dan stars Akshay Kumar and Sunil Shetty as a pair of loafers who concoct a get-rich-quick scheme to appease their girlfriends, played by Katrina Kaif and Sameera Reddy. Earlier this year, a reporter for Slate wrote about working as an extra for a day on the set of De Dana Dan.

De Dana Dan opens on Wednesday, November 25 at the AMC South Barrington 30 in South Barrington, AMC Cantera 30 in Warrenville and Big Cinemas Golf Glen 5 in Niles. The movie’s runtime is listed as 2 hrs. 40 min.

Kurbaan, which earned $403,678 in U.S. theaters its opening weekend, sticks around through next week at the Golf Glen 5, Cantera 30 and South Barrington 30, which is also carrying over Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani.

Other Indian movies playing in the Chicago area include the English language film Rockin’ Meera, opening on Thursday, November 26 at the Golf Glen 5. Also opening on Thursday is the Telugu movie Arya 2 at Sathyam Cinemas in Downers Grove.

I have been recently mulling over this whole iTablet MID thingy that Apple is reportedly working on, to try to put this in perspective of what the market is ready for, looking back at the way the PC has evolved over the years.
 
A number of companies in the past 15 years have run after the touchscreen computer market intently, only having had their collective fingers burned badly. I remember AT&T with their EO, Slate computers, and later followed by Momenta (remember that disaster anyone?), 3COM Audrey, various other Internet tablets and more recently Microsoft with their Tablet PCs and the laughable Origami UMPC disaster of a form-factor. None of these have ignited the imagination of the consumers and have been largely relegated to niche uses in certain verticals like healthcare, logisitcs and education.
 
But the recent phenomena of cloud based computing and increasing interests in devices like the Asus EEPC and the Everex Cloudbook (and to extraploate this to include the OLPC from Nichloas Negroponte and team), I believe the circumstances are right for a unique class of device that straddles somewhat between a mobile phone device and the traditional laptop. And at the sametime, with continued the evolution of the “Software as a Service” (SaaS) concept, cloud computing, media-rich browsers with technologies like Adobe AIR and Microsoft Silverlight for rich mobile content/applications, along with ubiquitous access to bandwidth (like community wifi or celco wifis, and the inevitable “WhiteFi”), all the elements are in place for the evolution of a third type of computing platform/form factor: a ultra-portable, small factor, always on, solid-state, wireless, touch screen, internet cloud based device, for use on the go.
 
So if Apple takes their iPhone platform, adds a faster energy efficient processor (Intel Atom), OS X with multi-touch, Safari with Adobe Air thrown in, Wifi, with a larger screen at 800×600 resolution, front & back cameras for chat and collaboration, wifi/HSPA, and a good size battery. And added to this, they launch an improved .Mac service, with more storage, iWork “cloud edition” web based producitivity apps, social network application with IM, an improved “back to my Mac” service, media player with Itunes and TV streaming via MediaFLO, we have the perfect “half-way” platform between the iPhone and the Mac.
 
This type of device will appeal to mobile knowlegde workers who need mobility, but with slightly larger screen to access remote applications, something bigger than an ipod but smaller and less wieldy than a laptop. This will also appeal to students (imagine access to learning content, online collaboration, chat, IM), to gamers, and casual users. And of course, this will be something that Apple can push for certain vertical markets, especially Medical and Education sectors. And at the right price, it might even win over the OLPC as a low cost educational tool.
 
Hope El Jobso gets another home-run here, where others have failed…

Thanksgiving is just around the corner!  As we Americans count our many blessings, I think it’s only fitting that we also pause to note just how blessed we are to have Glee in our lives.

Perhaps nothing sums up why the show makes us squeal with delight more than this glowing review by Slate’s Troy Patterson.  He writes:

At its best, Glee is not just entertaining but elating, dramatizing Breakfast Club-quality teen angst with the aid of tight production numbers covering new and classic popular songs. How can you fail to love a show featuring songs from great American writing teams including Bernstein-Sondheim, Kander-Ebb, Lerner-Loewe, Holland-Dozier-Holland, the dudes behind “The Thong Song,” and Steve Perry and his fellow power-balladeers in Journey? The cast covered “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” for the charismatic finale of the series pilot, a scene that will convert any reasonable person to the show’s effusive charm.”

So tell me, when it comes to the show, what are you most thankful – er, Glee-ful – about this year?  Take the time to answer my poll, below. NOTE: Write-in’s are welcome, and encouraged.  In fact, I’ll feature the best answers in an upcoming post.

So start counting those blessings!

What about Glee Are You Most Thankful For?

(polls)

I tried joining the site Hermit's Slate @ Hermitary.Com two times in the past couple months; my registrations were not confirmed.

I am not exactly certain as to why my registrations were not confirmed, but the only thing I can think of is that staff are getting me mixed up with a previously banned member. I'd really like to join up to the site as it looks like an interesting place.

I read and followed this off the main page, so I don't understand why they are not confirming my account:

"To distinguish you from a spammer, fill in some information for Location, Occupation, Interests — at least Interests, which is the least revealing if that is an issue. I need to have something tangible to recognize you as genuinely interested in this forum and not just spamming. "

Hermit's Slate seems like an interesting place; I hope to eventually make it in there, but until then, I'll stick to using my own forum HikiCulture (well, I'd still be using HikiCulture even if I was in Hermit's Slate – I'd just be using the two in conjunction). 

Posted via email from HikiCulture – A Forum For Reclusive People (and Hikikomori) {HikiCulture.Com Site Blog}

Interesting article by Slate’s David Feige, warning about the bad law that will be created by Khalid Sheik Mohammed in criminal court in New York, but I can’t say that I agree with his ultimate conclusion:

[I]t’s reasonable to expect that KSM’s lawyers will make all the arguments there are to make: They’ll allege a violation of KSM’s right to a speedy trial, claiming that the years he spent in CIA detention and Gitmo violated this constitutional right. They’ll seek suppression of KSM’s statements, arguing (persuasively) that the torture he endured—sleep deprivation, noise, cold, physical abuse, and, of course, 183 water-boarding sessions—make his statements involuntary. They will insist that everything stemming from those statements must be suppressed, under the Fourth Amendment, as the fruit of the wildly poisonous tree. They will demand the names of operatives and interrogators, using KSM’s right to confront the witnesses against him to box the government into revealing things it would prefer to keep secret—the identities of confidential informants, the locations of secret safe houses, the names of other inmates and detainees who provided information about him, and a thousand other clever things that should make the government squirm. The defense will attack the CIA, FBI, and NSA, demanding information about wiretapping and signal intelligence and sources and methods. They’ll move to dismiss the case because there is simply no venue in the United States in which KSM can get a fair trial.

All of these motions and three dozen more will be either denied or denuded of any significant impact on the disposition of the case. The speedy-trial argument will fail. Important documents will be scrubbed and redacted to the point of unintelligibility or will be ruled irrelevant. The motions to dismiss will all be denied. And though some of KSM’s statements will be suppressed in order to preserve the appearance of impartiality and integrity, plenty of the most damming ones will remain admissible. While condemning in stern language the terrible treatment of KSM and denouncing water-boarding as beneath the high standards of our justice system, the trial judge will nonetheless admit into evidence statements made by KSM in subsequent military tribunals, along with those made to a so-called “clean team” of interrogators, rendering all the suppressed evidence utterly insignificant.

In an idealized view, our judicial system is insulated from the ribald passions of politics. In reality, those passions suffuse the criminal justice system, and no matter how compelling the case for suppressing evidence that would actually effect the trial might be, given the politics at play, there is no judge in the country who will seriously endanger the prosecution. Instead, with the defense motions duly denied, the case will proceed to trial, and then (as no jury in the country is going to acquit KSM) to conviction and a series of appeals. And that’s where the ultimate effect of a vigorous defense of KSM gets really grim.

At each stage of the appellate process, a higher court will countenance the cowardly decisions made by the trial judge, ennobling them with the unfortunate force of precedent. The judicial refusal to consider KSM’s years of quasi-legal military detention as a violation of his right to a speedy trial will erode that already crippled constitutional concept. The denial of the venue motion will raise the bar even higher for defendants looking to escape from damning pretrial publicity. Ever deferential to the trial court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will affirm dozens of decisions that redact and restrict the disclosure of secret documents, prompting the government to be ever more expansive in invoking claims of national security and emboldening other judges to withhold critical evidence from future defendants. Finally, the twisted logic required to disentangle KSM’s initial torture from his subsequent “clean team” statements will provide a blueprint for the government, giving them the prize they’ve been after all this time—a legal way both to torture and to prosecute.

Wait for it:

In the end, KSM will be convicted and America will declare the case a great victory for process, openness, and ordinary criminal procedure. Bringing KSM to trial in New York will still be far better than any of the available alternatives. But the toll his torture and imprisonment has already taken, and the price the bad law his defense will create will exact, will become part of the folly of our post-9/11 madness.

A commenter at Slate illuminates Feige’s point better than I could hope to.  Says viretarmis:

If, as the author suggests, much bad law will come of KSM’s trial, don’t blame the courts. Neither the Defendant nor the courts were responsible for his torture, incarceration and delay in prosecution. Look to the former administration, for all the good it will do, if you need a whipping boy. The courts have been tasked with polishing a turd so that it in some way resembles “justice”. It will be a filthy and thankless task.

Forget Obama or Eric Holder: this is all Bush’s fault!  Duh!

-Mister Person

Many thanks to colleague Jake Zarnegar for pointing me toward Slate columnist Michael Agger’s Google Suggest contest.

I’m sure you’ve experienced Google Suggest in action: as you type into the search box, Google offers suggestions that change dynamically as you type each letter of your query. The suggestions are sometimes spookily on target but many times flat-out inappropriate.

You’ll find many examples of Google Suggest inappropriateness documented online. But the Slate contest took a different angle, challenging readers to explore the different suggestions made in response to a “less intelligent” Google query versus a “more intelligent” one.” The winners are in:

The winning entry … follows Google Suggest into the realm of moral inquiry. It doesn’t neatly divide into “less intelligent” and “more intelligent,” but it’s the best example I received of how one word can make all the difference. [Is it wrong to…] involves love affairs, God, and younger men. [Is it ethical to…] puts us on the plane of animal research, privacy concerns, and cooking the books.

Putting aside the entertainment and cultural value of Google Suggest, how does it work? Like most things Google, those details are vague:

Our algorithms use a wide range of information to predict the queries users are most likely to want to see. For example, Google Suggest uses data about the overall popularity of various searches to help rank the refinements it offers.

On the Silverchair SCM web content management platform, we also use autosuggest to aid searchers. But there’s no mystery about how it works. Once three characters have been typed into the search box, our search engine starts matching the query against the index of semantic tags that have been applied to that specific content set from our Cortex biomedical taxonomy. Suggestions become more precise with each query character typed, and because we are matching against only those semantic tags applied to the content, the search results set is always targeted and relevant. Our search engine also checks each query against a database of taxonomy equivalents—synonyms, abbreviations, jargon—to normalize the search query and expand it to cover all possible matches.

Silverchair search autosuggest

Because the content in the products Silverchair builds is tagged so granularly, we can often suggest a more precise term than many searchers start with. Our goals for autosuggest are to save time for users, speed them to the most relevant possible query, and return the most precise answer to their question. Try autosuggest for yourself on the AccessSurgery site we built for McGraw-Hill. Search autosuggest is just one of the many ways a robust taxonomy can promote content discovery.

(I wonder how many of you are running off to play with Google Suggest—a perfect Friday afternoon time-waster…)

Google Suggest

DaVinci Roofscapes is famous for their slate and shake tile.  DaVinci Roofscapes began in 1999; they are located in Kansas City, KS.  DaVinci prides itself on being the lead provider of authentic looking and durable synthetic slate and shake tile roofing.  They are maintenance free and backed by a 50 year limited warranty.

The DaVinci products resist curling, cracking, mold, fading, algae, insects and fungus.  Because DaVinci tiles resist water it allows the tiles to be installed in all weather conditions.  Also their shake and slate synthetic tiles resist fire, high wind and high impact. DaVinci Roofscapes slate and shake synthetic roof tiles are contributing to the LEED certification process (LEED-NC Standard 2.2).  They are aiding us in our continued effort to gain our LEED certification for our Green Life Smart Life home.

The Green life Smart Life house has chose to use the slate roofing for its exceptional appeal and durability.  Although it is a synthetic slate it comes with the same look and durability as its natural counterpart.  It allows the Green Life Smart Life home to gain the look of slate without using up natures resources.  It is also much more cost effective than using real slate.  In addition the instillation process is also remarkably easier than installing natural slate with the changing of size and texture.

The DaVinci roofs are easy to install and require no special tools or instructions.  They are embedded with state of the art UV stabilizers.  The product was developed with contractors in mind, they are packaged by size and color making them easier to use.  They are also made in 5 different shapes and sizes allowing for a more authentic look and easier installation.

The DaVinci tiles are also all 100% recyclable making them even more appealing to the consumer, rather than the traditional roofing which takes up enormous space in the local landfill.  To save on transportations costs DaVinci compounds, molds and finishes all the lightweight tiles in their Kansas facility to save energy and also transportation costs.

By Kate Kiselka. Follow me on Twitter

So with no shame or irony, I can admit that I’m totally looking forward to New Moon.

At least I can now that Dana Stevens admits she enjoyed it.  Just like she enjoyed Twilight.

The distinction between high and low culture, between what we’re allowed to enjoy publicly and what we must sneak off to savor in private, has effaced itself to the degree that “guilty pleasures” needs to be replaced by a more morally neutral term. For our purposes here, I’ll go with a term that a friend and I coined in college and that I still deploy on occasion: movies we couldn’t intellectually defend but still unapologetically loved we called “juicebombs.”

All that to say that The Twilight Saga: New Moon (Summit Entertainment), like its 2008 predecessor Twilight, is a classic juicebomb. Mopey, draggy, and absurdly self-important, the movie nonetheless twangs at some resonant affective chord. This viewer, at least, was catapulted back to that moment of adolescence when being mopey, draggy, and absurdly self-important felt like a passionate act of liberation. The Twilight movies are schlock, but they’re elegantly appointed, luxuriously enjoyable schlock, and the world they take place in—the densely forested, perpetually overcast, vampire-and-werewolf-ridden town of Forks, Wash.—feels like a real, if fantastical, place.

…

As the screen went black after Edward’s supremely cheesy last line, my first thought was, “Give me a break.” The second was, “How long till Eclipse comes out?”

That said, you won’t see me in line tonight at 12:01am or anytime soon.  The thought of watching it in a theater full of girls who scream out loud every time Robbie Patz steps on screen is…no.  As weird as it is to say, I actually want to be able to sit and enjoy the movie without distraction.

Jesus.  My life has come to this.

La vieille al-Qaida n’est plus. Au moins 40% de ses dirigeants de 2001 ont été soit capturés soit tués. Et les nouveaux ne s’en sortent pas mieux: depuis 2008, 11 des 20 personnages les plus recherchés du réseau ont été mis hors service. Les dirigeants intermédiaires ont en outre quasi tous disparu, la plupart ont été tués dans des attaques de drones. Ce qu’il reste: probablement une coquille vide, représentée par des figures-clés isolées comme Oussama Ben Laden et Ayman al-Zawahiri, eux-mêmes entourés par un noyau de nouveaux venus, des jihadistes hyper-motivés. D’ici peu, l’Occident pourrait être en mesure de pointer son canon sur la tempe d’al-Qaida. Lui faudra-t-il presser la détente ?

L’instinct crie «oui», sans hésiter! Il serait pourtant plus raisonnable de répondre «pas tout de suite». Il serait sage de garder al-Qaida en vie, paradoxalement pour des raisons de sécurité. Qu’on le veuille ou non, maintenir al-Qaida (faible) est le meilleur moyen pour le monde de canaliser les fanatiques islamistes dans un seul réseau social — c’est là qu’ils sont le plus facilement repérables, traquables et maîtrisables. Réduire à néant cette organisation terroriste, c’est prendre le risque de fragmenter al-Qaida en des milliers de cellules, qui seraient bien plus difficiles à pister et impossibles à éradiquer. C’est le grand dilemme du contre-terrorisme, et la solution n’est pas très séduisante: al-Qaida doit survivre.

Pour comprendre ce dilemme, un peu en théorie des réseaux… Al-Qaida est un groupe aux liens souples, ses membres interagissent entre eux comme on le fait sur Twitter ou Facebook. Comme sur ces plateformes, les membres d’al-Qaida se contactent de façon irrégulière. Et comme dans les réseaux commerciaux, le groupe terroriste est construit autour d’échanges. Certes, certains acteurs du réseau sont plus puissants ou plus centraux que d’autres, mais si les recrues cherchent à rejoindre l’organisation, c’est pour de très simples raisons: une adhésion fervente au jihad, un besoin de ressources et de savoir-faire, et la chance d’agir sous le manteau de la plus célèbre des organisations terroristes.

Pour sa part, al-Qaida est plus que désireuse de répondre aux attentes de ses recrues en termes d’idéologie, de logistique et de renom. L’organisation fait face à un important turnover et doit constamment remplacer les membres perdus dans des opérations de l’Occident ou dans des missions suicide. Les dirigeants intermédiaires d’al-Qaida sont cruciaux pour répondre à ce manque de personnel. Ces membres-clé ont plus de contacts que les dirigeants isolés et les nouvelles recrues, et ils font le lien entre les deux catégories. En même temps, leur plus grande exposition fait qu’ils sont plus faciles à chasser.

C’est là le danger. Malheureusement, si cette couche intermédiaire disparaît, elle emportera avec elle tout espoir d’enrayer les attaques terroristes.

Il est tentant de schématiser la structure d’al-Qaida et de penser que si les figures-clé sont identifiées et neutralisées, le reste du réseau suivra. Mais si al-Qaida est détruite et que son encadrement intermédiaire est décimé, les fanatiques les plus fervents de la planète ne graviteront plus autour d’une base centralisée. Leur alternative? Mettre sur pied leurs propres réseaux sans nom et se rapprocher des autres rescapés d’al-Qaida. Ce n’est pas en supprimant al-Qaida que l’on se débarrassera de la menace terroriste. Ca ne ferait que rendre le monde du terrorisme plus chaotique.

Théorisation fantaisiste? Il y a pourtant un précédent. Souvenez-vous d’Aryan Nations, ce mouvement américain prônant la suprématie des blancs et considéré par le FBI comme une menace terroriste, au moins depuis 1999. En septembre 2000, Aryan Nations a perdu son quartier général de Hayden Lake, dans l’Idaho, suite à une décision de justice, mais ceci n’a pas vraiment nui à l’organisation. Au lieu de disparaître, elle s’est scindée en au moins trois entités. Dans une interview, August Kreis, le leader de l’organisation, a même reconnu les bienfaits de cette fragmentation. Désormais, a-t-il expliqué, ses collègues et lui sont «beaucoup plus difficiles à surveiller». Neuf ans plus tard, les cellules issues de la scission de Aryan Nations ont probablement proliféré — personne ne sait exactement combien elles sont maintenant. Sans leur siège, elles se retrouvent déconnectées.

Quand on démantèle un réseau, il faut souvent s’attendre davantage à voir revenir la menace plutôt qu’à accéder à la sécurité. On peut anéantir un ennemi aujourd’hui, mais on ne saura plus ensuite où les éléments rescapés, et les nouveaux, se trouvent.

Plutôt que de détruire al-Qaida, on pourrait la maintenir en vie, mais dans un état de faiblesse. L’Occident devrait alors se retenir d’attaquer les éléments-clé de l’organisation et choisir plutôt de les surveiller de près. Al-Qaida continuerait à attirer les militants islamistes dans son réseau — au moins, là, la lutte contre le terrorisme est possible.

Etant donné que les Etats-Unis et leurs alliés en apprennent, avec le temps, de plus en plus sur cette organisation, les recrues d’al-Qaida pourraient être surveillées lors de leurs entraînements et de leurs éventuelles interventions. Les nouveaux membres pourraient ainsi être neutralisés lorsqu’ils s’éloignent du réseau. Cette stratégie permettrait d’éviter la dispersion d’al-Qaida, tout en continuant à éliminer les menaces directes à la sécurité.

Pendant ce temps, les dirigeants intermédiaires d’al-Qaida doivent être maintenus en vie, comme des espèces en danger. Cela ne veut pas dire qu’ils doivent pouvoir continuer à travailler correctement. Les frappes de drones devraient se concentrer sur les leaders les plus intelligents et épargner leurs frères incompétents. Ils sont probablement plus prudents et plus difficiles à dénicher, mais de telles attaques sélectives feront d’al-Qaida une organisation gérée par des dirigeants incapables de mettre sur pied des opérations de grande ampleur.

La leçon la plus importante à tirer de la politique actuelle de contre-terrorisme est sans doute que la chasse aux grands chefs d’al-Qaida ne doit pas être une obsession. Selon toute vraisemblance, ils sont tellement isolés que les poursuivre est coûteux et n’apporte pas grand chose. Si le raisonnement tient, Ben Laden est en fait plus utile vivant que mort. Après tout, ses discours passionnés permettent à al-Qaida de continuer à séduire d’éventuelles recrues.

Bien sûr, al-Qaida ne doit pas être maintenue en vie éternellement. Le coup fatal pourrait lui être porté lorsque le fondamentalisme islamiste sera en perte de vitesse, ce qui pourrait arriver par exemple si un accord de paix israélo-palestinien était signé. Si le réservoir de recrues s’épuise, plus besoin du potentiel d’attraction d’al-Qaida.

Mais on est loin d’en être là. C’est pourquoi nous devrions pour l’instant profiter pleinement du fait que ce réseau ne fait pas que réunir les pires terroristes islamistes, il les piège aussi.

Gustavo de Las Casas
slate

je ne sais pas qui est ce Gustavo de las casas, mais cet article fait le buzz sur les sites juifs et pro juifs.
C’est du grand n’importe quoi, et c’est bizarre que ce genre de pensée se retrouve sur la place publique, d’habitude, on ne dit pas tout haut des choses comme ça.
je voulais que vous lisiez cet article tellement c’est fou. c’est la théorie de la guerre perpétuelle.Son argument comme quoi Al quaïda calmerait les ardeurs des jeunes djihadistes, trop bon !!!! Comme si al quaïda était sympa, et mesuré, putain il ne savent plus quoi inventer !!!

Est ce un aveux du controle des têtes dirigeantes d’al qaïda par les services secrets occidentaux ?
Ont-ils peur de ne plus controler cette mouvance ?

C’est presque ce que laisse sous entendre cet article, ” Plutôt que de détruire al-Qaida, on pourrait la maintenir en vie, mais dans un état de faiblesse. L’Occident devrait alors se retenir d’attaquer les éléments-clé de l’organisation et choisir plutôt de les surveiller de près. ” Sérieusement c’est pas délirant de lire ça, franchement !!!!!
Nous sommes en plein 1984, la guerre c’est la paix, il ne faut pas détruire l’ennemi mais que la guerre continue ad vitam aeternam.

Cet article doit être gardé précieusement !!!! c’est un aveux terrible des manipulations en cours dans la guerre contre le terrorisme.

LOL, ” se retenir d’attaquer ” al quaïda, j’en reviens toujours pas !!!!!

Would you rather have a magic driver that added 20 yards to your drive, or a magic driver that hit your drives 20% straighter? These are the questions I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. I’m trying to expand on this article:

Moneygolf: What can stats tells us about what it takes to win on the links?

According to a memo published on gawker.com from Jacob Weisberg, chairman and editor-in-chief of the Slate Group, Double X is not closing. However, the site will no longer be published separately from Slate.

Weisberg says “returning Double X to the womb from which it sprang should be an easy fit.” He also says many readers were never clear on whether Double X was separate from Slate in the first place, adding “we’re happy to fudge on this question.”

Returning Double X to Slate will save money, a fact Weisberg underlines in his memo. This rationale is certainly understandable in the current economic climate. However, this move sends an unfortunate message to women. We, as an audience, are not deemed worthy of our own Web site anymore.

In truth, perhaps women are to blame. If a large enough audience had been achieved, it is likely Weisberg would have continued to grant Double X its independence.

Weisberg claims the latest incarnation of Double X will differ only slightly from the original. Time will tell.

Double X is owned by the Washington Post Company. The company also owns several newspapers, including The Washington Post, the Daily Herald in Everett, Washington, El Tiempo Latino and many more. Newsweek and Budget Travel magazines, several television stations, Cable One cable company and The Slate Group of online magazines also all belong to the Washington Post Company.

The Slate Group includes Slate Magazine, TheRoot.com, Foreign Policy and, of course, Double X.

Slate was launched in 1996. Double X was a spin-off of Slate’s XX Factor blog, which was a conversation between women about politics, sex and culture. These topics have carried over and been expanded upon at Double X.

Slate was already a popular magazine with an established audience when Double X was launched. The XX Factor blog on Slate created a built-in audience for Double X. The fact that the Washington Post Company is a well-known media company is also in Double X’s favor, adding financial stability in a shaky economy.

Living area downstairs (26 x 15 sq ft)

Living area downstairs; original parquet floors, from fireplace corner looking toward built-in storage/console cabinets

Living area downstairs; looking toward built-in storage/console cabinets; furnace/laundry room to front right

Living area downstairs; triple slider walkout to front patio

Living area downstairs; detail of built-in storage cabinets

Living area downstairs; looking into attached furnace/laundry room

Living area downstairs at night; triple glass slider walkout to front patio

Living area downstairs at night; triple glass slider walkout to front patio

Living area downstairs at night; note built-in storage/console cabinets

Living area downstairs at night; fireplace in stacked stone wall

Living area downstairs at night; looking down hall toward foyer with bathroom and garage entry

Today I would like to connect infrastructure improvements to both jobs and social interactions.

With all the talk of the thus-far jobless recovery, investment in transportation and other infrastructure may never be more important.  We have shipped so many of many of our manufacturing jobs overseas, and that has dramatic consequences because the people who used to have those jobs are not trained to suddenly take desk or service jobs.  However, construction and its related needs–such as concrete production–cannot be shipped overseas.

Bob Herbert noted the tremendous importance of infrastructure in America historically and the incredibly important role it will play in the American future.  He stated the obvious, that we have neglected our infrastructure for too long and that if America is to thrive once again it will be on the back of dependable infrastructure:

We used to be so much smarter about this stuff. A recent publication from the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution reminds us that:

“Since the beginning of our republic, transportation and infrastructure have played a central role in advancing the American economy — from the canals of upstate New York to the railroads that linked the heartland to industrial centers and finally the interstate highway system that ultimately connected all regions of the nation.

“In each of those periods, there was a sharp focus on how infrastructure investments could be used as catalysts for economic expansion and evolution.”

Policy makers all but gave up on that kind of thinking years ago. America’s infrastructure, once the finest in the world, has been neglected for decades, and it shows. Felix Rohatyn’s book on the subject, “Bold Endeavors,” opens with: “The nation is falling apart — literally.”

It’s almost as if we no longer understand the crucial links between infrastructure and the health of the American economy, the state of the environment and the viability of the nation as a whole. We’ve become stupid about this.

While it is a tangential connection, I would like to suggest that building improved transportation infrastructure is also important for the social capital of this country.  We are becoming increasingly disjointed and independent, living in digital social realms and within cubicles that frequently separate us from each other, getting to work individually in cars.  It is rare outside the sporting event and church that we feel immersed in communal space and the larger venture that we acknowledge as society.

Slate recently wrote about social interactions on the subway and how people react to certain requests, such as the ability to take a seat.  There is a certain etiquette to traveling on public transportation, and admittedly different rules for different modes in different places.  However, it is amazing how the little things of seeing people of different socio-economic status, age and ability is of great value to our sense of place and understanding.  Moreover, transportation is the great uniter.  Working for the MBTA this past summer, everyone always reacted to my experience with a story or notion about public transit.

Getting people out of their cars and into shared spaces is an important element of reuniting a divided society and to do it we need to invest in infrastructure, one of the keys to jobs for people of all talents and classes, going forward.

I am accosted on dual fronts by twin loves. I hate my hands, and my scars embarrass me. I believe that I am judged for my tar-y throat. For that, the love of my right hand will fail. I can’t help that I repeat myself; I’d dedicate my anthology to one I never knew. That semi-porous stone: if I knew its history, I would know all there is to know. I still hate my hands, and I cherish the tearing of my plastic fingertips. My mouth waters through the blood. I forget the pain. It was only ever in my left hand.

From all across this great nation (and Canada), entries arrived in my inbox for Slate’s Google Suggest contest. The question at hand: What’s the best example of “less intelligent” Google query contrasted with a “more intelligent” Google query?

Sorting through the contenders led to more than a few instances of intellectual whiplash. One moment, I’d be considering a stemwinder such as “Why is it that only part of the energy stored in one trophic level is passed on to the next level?” and the next moment, I’d be learning about “cake farts.”

Without further descent into fetishes, let’s go to the top five.

Read the rest at Slate. . . .