I have had the privilege of writing at The Moderate Voice for about two-and-a-half years. Looking back at what I have written, a few things become apparent. First, it is incredible how much can happen in such a relatively short period of time. Second, it is interesting how some things never change or take an awful long time to do so. Third, it is humbling—perhaps embarrassing—to see how many subjects...

Low-Tone Security by Peter Funt I don’t have access to any terrorist handbooks, but I imagine that having succeeded beyond expectations in the chapters dealing with “how to disrupt,” those who would threaten air travel have moved on to sections covering “ways to divide.” And the beauty, from the terrorists’ point of view, is that it’s all working without the need for much actual terrorism. When...

Tainter makes this observation; substantial increased costs occurred late, shortly before collapse and were incurred by a population already weakened by a pattern of declining marginal returns. It was not a challenge that caused the collapse but a system that had been unproductively complex was unable to respond. Tainter says that the only solution for over complexity is simplification but complex systems are...

Mike Keefe, The Denver Post This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

This is what it means to put partisan politics above the national interest:

Nate Beeler, The Washington Examiner This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

To begin with, what Facebook announced yesterday is not email. The new offering has three main features: 1) Seamless Messaging, 2) Conversation History, and 3) Social Inbox. Zuckerberg at 10:07 PST, “It is not email.” And it’s not a Gmail Killer. Zuckerberg at 10:33, “Gmail is a great product [and] email is still really important to a lot of people.” So what is it? Called Messages,...

When it comes to TSA’s full-body scans and pat-downs, many passengers are not willing to turn the other cheek: A growing pilot and passenger revolt over full-body scans and what many consider intrusive pat-downs couldn’t have come at a worse time for the nation’s air travel system. Thanksgiving, the busiest travel time of the year, is less than two weeks away. Grassroots groups are urging...

The first real iPad competitor runs Android, has a 7″ screen, a white plastic back, front and rear cameras with a flash, video, exposure controls and special effects and it plays [cough] Flash videos. And it weighs 13 ounces compared with 1.5 pounds for the iPad. David Pogue: the dawn of the would-be iPad is upon us. But the Android tablet concept represents more than just a lame effort to grab a slice...

A little break from politics.  Who manufactured one of the first personnel computers?  Hint – it wasn’t IBM or Apple. In the 70s and early 80s I worked at Tektronix as a manufacturing engineer in the CRT division. At the time Hiro Moriyasu developed the digital oscilloscope and the 4051 computer the best microprocessors were 8 bit which meant only 64K of memory could be addressed. As a result...

It’s possible that we are all aliens from outer space.

With Republicans in firm control of the House, Democratic influence diminished in the Senate, and interest being expressed from the White House, a political opportunity may exist for proponents of expanding nuclear power in the United States. In 2003 MIT published an interdisciplinary report on the future of nuclear power. You can read the report summary and link to the full report here. The report was the...

Members of Indian Parliament listened mesmerized as US president Barack Obama today transformed himself from being a mere salesman-in-chief of America to a visionary world leader who aspired to live up to the great ideals that had inspired Indian and US founding fathers in laying the foundations of the two democratic republics. (Of course, he did also make major policy commitments, such as US support for India’s...

On reaching India, while US president Barack Obama virtually played salesman-in-chief for American companies/business, his wife Michelle Obama let her hair down and kicked off her shoes to play hopscotch, and sang and danced with children in Mumbai. The Indian media gave her as much publicity as her famous husband. The Indian Express reported: “It’s not everyday that a First Lady takes off her shoes...

It is ironic that US President Barack Obama will today stay in the same hotel in Mumbai which was one of the targets scouted by American spy David Headley for the bloody Mumbai terror attacks in 2008, better known as India’s 26/11. According to Reuters: “Access to David Headley, who is in custody in the United States, and intelligence linked to his visits to India have emerged as thorny security...

Is Barack Obama and his entourage visiting India to taste its curry and the famous non-vegetarian cuisine at the Maurya Sheraton in New Delhi? Or, to visit the sites connected with Mahatma Gandhi? Or, market the US arms? Or, help US business and trade make further inroads into Indian market? A recent article, and the comments that follow, in Wall Street Journal provides some intersting insights. What strategic...

If you, like me, use your inbox for reminders, NudgeMail will be your friend: NudgeMail provides one feature: it turns any e-mail client into a reminder system. So say you receive a message that necessitates a reply, but not until Friday. Simply forward the e-mail to “friday@nudgemail.com” and, on Friday, the message will be sent back to you for response. You can also schedule items for particular...

As the American mid-term elections begin today with a rather bleak prediction about Barack Obama’s future, the President of the USA and his team must have begun their preparations for their three-day visit to India that begins Saturday (November 6). Although India will roll out the customary red carpet, and there would be visible cordiality and warmth extended to Obama that the diplomatic niceties demand,...

In light of yesterday’s news that explosives-laden toner cartridges bound for a Chicago synagogue had “all the hallmarks of Al Qaeda,” here’s one more on the exaggerated cyber war threat from Hersh’s New Yorker piece: There is surprising unanimity among cyber-security experts on one issue: that the immediate cyber threat does not come from traditional terrorist groups like Al Qaeda,...

For all the talk of a cyber-war threat, it turns out, Attacks on Pentagon Networks Dropped this year: In the first six months of 2010, there were about 30,000 such incidents, according to statistics compiled by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Last year, there were more than 71,000. “If the rate of malicious activity from the first half of this year continues through the end of the...

Is all that worry about cyber-attacks stirred up by strategically placed stories? Susan Crawford sees a trail of data points worth following. I’ll quote here only her first, second and last: 1. Cyberattack – there appears to be a deep interest in the ability to declare war online, as evidenced by cybersecurity research and public speeches by Herbert Lin, a key player who has worked on several cybersecurity...

A few weeks ago everyone was in a tizzy over Google’s announcement that they had made some cars that could drive themselves. With the caveat that I have a growing chip on my shoulder about corporations copying academic work and getting lots of good press for “inventing” stuff a good 5-10 years after government funded grants and awards (in this case primarily DARPA) have already done so I found,...

Bull has enjoyed a central place in mythology cutting across many civilizations. In agrarian India it enjoyed a special place but is now in decline owing to widespread artificial insemination of cows. The photo above of a bull in an Indian town is symbolic of the waning power and majesty of the bull. I am reminded of the following poem… “I am monarch of all I survey; My right there is none to dispute;… I...

Seymour Hersh wonders, should we be worried about a cyber war? The short answer, NO! The amount of cyber-jargon we’ve got in government is stupefying: A Cyber Czar rules Cyber Command assessing the cyber threat to our cyber security; we need cyber weapons to defend against a cyber attack, protect against cyber-pillaging and wage cyber war; we must develop cyber capabilities able to withstand sustained...

Google Now Accounts for 6.4% of Internet Traffic: Netflix Accounts For 20% Of Peak U.S. Internet Bandwidth (subscriptions jump in third quarter): Internet traffic has grown 62 percent in 2010 (it was up 74 percent in 2009):