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April 10, 2005
THE WEEK IN REVIEW, II
This week's odds and sods:
Elections are nigh; the date is set for the 5th of May (and Alex saw it coming). Labour say blah blah economy blah blah, while the Conservatives are preparing to say even more stupid things about immigration. Zzz. And Labour bails out MG-Rover. Why, I ask, are the left wing nowhere to be seen in this? They should be protesting what is a blatant hand-out to corporations, but they are not, despite that nothing could possibly be just about taking money from the taxpayer and using it to bail out failed businesses.
The Segway has turned out to be a huge success in Britain, with a staggering 30-50 of them sold:
It was supposed to revolutionise transportation as we know it, so why is the Segway Human Transporter nowhere to be seen on the streets of Britain?
Maybe because they're painfully slow, they look extremely stupid, and they cost more than a half-decent used car? Just a guess. Some little noticed news in Iraq is that a Kurd has been appointed as President and a Shi'ite as Prime Minister. Tony Blankley comments, as does Jonah Goldberg, who notes:
This is truly joyous, exciting stuff to behold. It wouldn't have happened were it not for George W. Bush, and that fact seems to blind many from appreciating it.
Indeed. He Of The Surname That Inviteth Many A Typo rounds up some good news from Afghanistan (via Kathy K). Meanwhile, here's an "awww" moment (my hat is tipped), the usually obnoxious Ann Coulter on the purpose-driven left, Don Bordreux on Disneyworld, and one-dimensional tetris. Yes, one-dimensional tetris.
In other news, OH NOES! TEH FBI PWN UR LANS!!!:
Millions of wireless access points are spread across the US and the world. About 70% percent of these access points are unprotected--wide open to access by anyone who happens to drive by. The other 30% are protected by WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) and a small handful are protected by the new WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) standard.
At a recent ISSA (Information Systems Security Association) meeting in Los Angeles, a team of FBI agents demonstrated current WEP-cracking techniques and broke a 128 bit WEP key in about three minutes. Special Agent Geoff Bickers ran the Powerpoint presentation and explained the attack, while the other agents (who did not want to be named or photographed) did the dirty work of sniffing wireless traffic and breaking the WEP keys.
This appreciation of "interior freedom" wouldn't be joined with full acceptance of liberal democracy until the 1960s, when American bishops pushed for adoption of a "Declaration of Religious Freedom" as part of the Vatican II council.
It was only a few centuries ago, in fact, that the Romanists stopped murdering everyone that disagreed with them. Sigh.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth -- then got bored and made the mother of all particle accelerators:
Astronomers have discovered a loop-like structure some 20 light-years across close to the centre of the Milky Way.
And the team that found it believes the vast, bizarre structure could be some form of cosmic particle accelerator.
The loop may produce sub-atomic particles with a thousand times more energy than those in man-made accelerators.
In addition, Charles and Camilla married, and nobody cares. And finally, continuing the 7-day-long tradition of finishing with a quote that was issued in the week preceding the one in review, I'll conclude with Sean Gabb's thoughts on the Me-Too Party:
[T]hey richly deserve their present embarrassment. They are political frauds. By continuing to exist and to show some prospect of being able to win an election, they attract funding and votes from genuinely conservative parties. Yes, this Labour Government is dreadful. Yes, Tony Blair is personally and politically the vilest wretch who ever lied his way into the House of Commons, and his colleagues are a gang of traitors who deserve hanging from the nearest lamp post. But this is not good enough reason for thinking that another Conservative Government would be in our long term national interest. We need to destroy New Labour. Before then, though, we need to destroy the Conservative Party. The Enemy Class media has its own reasons for kicking the Conservatives down. But this media should be regarded in this respect as objectively allied to the forces of conservatism.
I fear he may be right.
Posted by Lewis at April 10, 2005 12:56 AM