THE DEMOCRAT DANGER TO AMERICA

Judge Anna Diggs Taylor illustrates why Democrats cannot be trusted with political power in time of war.

Ms. Taylor, who is the chief judge of the federal district court in Detroit, ruled Aug. 17 that it is unconstitutional for the National Security Agency to listen in, without warrants, on telephone conversations between terror suspects abroad and people in the United States.

Her ruling was praised by Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, and other prominent Democrats.  

"With a careful, thoroughly grounded opinion, one judge in Michigan has done what 535 members of Congress have so (more…)

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES CHANGING AGAIN

If you've had trouble figuring out the differences in service and pricing structure between ADSL and cable modems, dial-up and broadband, well, all I can tell you is to prepare yourself for some complications before you get too involved in reading this since the inevitable headache is sure to result.

That's right, folks – they're changing the technology, yet again.

The current range of download speeds available for both cable and DSL/ADSL modems isn't sufficient for the "Next Big Thing": video or TV on demand. So, the people in charge of these things – phone and cable companies, international consortia (more…)

A PERSONAL JOURNEY THROUGH RELATIVITY

This is not an introductory text on the general theory of relativity.  I'm afraid some concepts won't be explained.  But most readers probably have some idea of the outlines of Einstein's famous theory.  I hope you will see in my journey that I had the same struggle you all have with the counter-intuitive nature of many of his ideas.

Jack was hesitant to publish this because there is no closure.  I'm afraid there is no final understanding.  In one of his famous books, professor of mathematical physics Paul Davis, multiple prizewinner, ends the book with a chapter titled "The Mystery (more…)

ISRAEL IN ‘NAM

Finally, a war like Vietnam.

If the cease fire in Lebanon actually goes into effect, Israel will have lost despite having won every battle, because political dithering prevented decisive victory. Hezbollah will have won through a propaganda campaign what it could not obtain on the battlefield.

Hezbollah won by surviving.  Israel's reputation for military invincibility is shattered.  The vultures are circling:

"Today Arab and Muslim society is reasonably certain that the defeat of Israel is possible and that the countdown to the disappearance of the Zionist entity in the region has begun," Ahmed Barakat, a member of Hezbollah's central council, (more…)

AOL AND GOOGLE: MORE PRIVACY PROBLEMS

 
So, it finally comes out: There's a method to the madness of Google's super-generosity in supplying users with mega-gigabytes of free storage space for e-mail, photos, and even uploads and downloads.

Why preserve users' search data not as an aggregate but as information derived from user accounts?

The latest Internet scandal caught major search engine AOL committing a serious (from users' point of view) gaffe when it inadvertently released information from about 19 million search requests made by more than 658,000 AOL subscribers during the three months ended in May.

It's all over the Internet, though legal niceties prevent (more…)

THE REAL WAR ……ONE MORE TIME

Watching the war in Lebanon and listening to the debate about it is just like watching the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and its attendant debate. Israelis are demanding the resignation of Olmert, just as Americans are demanding the head of Bush.

Israeli military experts, real and self-proclaimed, are explaining how the Lebanon war could have been won if only the ground campaign had started earlier, or had been more ambitious. American strategists of varying competence are explaining how the Iraq war could have been won, if only there were more boots on the ground, or if only a different (more…)