The upside of the Kindle’s tether could be that when lost or stolen, Amazon would use its technology to help you get it back. Don’t count on it. The NYTimes: Samuel Borgese, for instance, is still irate about the response from Amazon when he recently lost his Kindle. After leaving it on a plane, he canceled his account so that nobody could charge books to his credit card. Then he asked Amazon to...

The White House has just released the text of a controversial back-to-school speech that President Barack Obama will be making to our children tomorrow. The speech will be broadcast directly into the schools, mainlining into the minds of our vulnerable children in a brazen attempt to, in the guise of civics education, indoctrinate our young ones and to fill their little heads with communist propaganda. No...

I must admit that when it comes to the man and his work, my views are somewhat mixed. I find some of Jerry’s stuff is absolutely brilliant but much of his slapstick humor goes a bit silly for me. I’ve also heard that when it comes to Jerry Lewis the man he’s not exactly the nicest human being and can often be quite a jerk. But when it comes to Labor Day weekend I can say nothing but God Bless...

Sonny already plugged Matt Labash’s great article about America’s most notorious mayor. I second that. The strangest thing I learned about Barry was that he came within one year of finishing a PhD in chemistry. He was an Eagle Scout. He recited poems in church. He went to college, and stopped one year short of getting his doctorate in chemistry, quitting to join the civil rights movement. “In...

In the wake of 9/11 attacks in the USA, the relations between the “Christian West” and the “Muslim World” took a nose-dive. Australia is among the few countries who made a concerted effort to win over the hearts and minds of the Muslims in their own country and elsewhere. Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard, now on a visit to India, announced in New Delhi that the International...

Pat Buchanan’s anti-Semitic, ahistorical screed about Hitler and World War II (linked through Matthew Yglesias) has caught some attention today, although not nearly enough considering that this is the same man who accused Sonia Sotomayor of being a racist:

Russia’s first nuclear test, Operation Joe Lightning. Soviet designs for the bomb were in large part stolen from the United States. Yesterday was the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II. As part of its coverage, Russian newspaper Vedemosti carried this article defending the admittedly wholesale theft of Manhattan Project data. For Vedemosti, columnist Igor Korotcheko writes in part: “The...

Ezra Klein has a column today in the WaPo’s Food section. In it he ponders, Is Technology a Friend or Foe to Food? A 2003 study [link to abstract or purchase] by economists David Cutler, Ed Glaeser and Jesse Shapiro found that the rise in obesity over the past few decades could not be explained simply by food becoming cheaper or people consuming more meals in restaurants. It was the result of technological...

This one’s made its way around my office today. Technically Incorrect: [C]onsider the plight of Vicki Walker, an accountant with ProCare Health in Auckland, New Zealand. According to the trusty New Zealand Herald, ProCare, in dismissing Walker, told her that her e-mail style had caused ripples of disturbance in the serene landscape of her fellow workers’ minds. Her sins, for there were reportedly...

No wonder Americans are increasingly opposed to Obama’s socialist, radical vision of a nationalized health care system. Just look at what Obama will do to you, to me and to our loved ones if we allow him to succeed with his downright evil plan. In the first place, Obama’s diabolical health care plan would kill many of our children even before they are born, because Obama will force pro-life doctors,...

UPDATE: It’s back Here’s what happened. ———— I didn’t notice because Gmail is still accessible via IMAP and POP, so I’m getting it via Mail and Outlook. It’s also apparently accessible via iGoogle. The official Google Twitter account, 18 minutes ago: We’re aware that people are having trouble accessing Gmail. We’re working on fixing it. Apologies...

Did you ever have a beloved pet disappear as a child and your parents told you that it had been sent off to live on a farm where it could chase rabbits, roll in the grass and play with the rest of the pets? And what the heck does that have to do with NASA and our space program? The answer is found in a strange but yet intriguing editorial in the New York Times by Lawrence M. Krauss. I’ve written here in...

Guest post by Michael Lieberman Michael Lieberman, a Truman National Security Project fellow, is an associate at Steptoe & Johnson LLP in Washington D.C., where he works on international regulatory and compliance issues. He was previously a law consultant at The Asia Foundation. (The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Steptoe & Johnson LLP.) In a recent piece, Stephen Walt takes...

The view of the smoke from the Station Fire in California from a NASA satellite: Smoke from Station Fire Blankets Southern California — Cross-posted between Random Fate and The Moderate Voice.

Jordan Golson, responding to Gene Munster’s claims — he thinks we’ll see Apple TV by 2011 — says maybe: Munster also thinks the Mac maker is going to launch a television that wirelessly syncs with your other Apple devices, and predicts an Apple set-top box with TV input and DVR capabilities. Both Chris Albrecht and I think most of that stuff is bunk, but I’m going to have to disagree with...

Who knew!? You know, I’ve been pregnant three times, gave birth to live, healthy babies three times and nursed each of my three babies.  If breastfeeding my babies was not related to pregnancy, someone tell me what was going on with my body, k? Kate Harding at Salon.com has an excellent take-down and analysis of this gobsmackingly narrow decision regarding Totes/Isotoner’s pregnancy discrimination...

The Moral Question by Betsy Newmark In Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, he poses the moral question of whether a person could or should kill one person if it would benefit humanity. Would you agree to the death of an unknown person in China if no one would know and the Chinaman’s wealth could be used to benefit you and your family. Raskolnikov goes beyond the death of a stranger in China to the...

Judging by these articles from Dutch and German newspapers we posted during the weekend, it doesn’t look like Europeans have much sympathy for Dick Cheney’s view of the virtues of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ or dire Republican warnings about ’socialized medicine.’ The first, an editorial from Germany’s Financial Times Deutschland, counsels President Obama that...

The third time seems to be the charm as the Space Shuttle Discovery roared off the pad shortly before midnight Florida time. Soaring with it was migrant farm worker turned astronaut Jose Hernandez. He was quoted as saying that as high as he will be flying tonight his parents will probably be flying even higher. I can just imagine how correct he is. Imagine starting out life as a migrant farm worker from Mexico,...

I’ve not paid a lot of attention to the fury over Apple, AT&T and GoogleVoice, but this AT&T “about face” from FreePress made me sit up and take notice:

Guest post by John Malone John Malone, a VP/Senior Analyst with John S. Herold, an energy investment research firm in Connecticut, is a Truman National Security Project fellow. In the world of renewables, most of the attention is on the wind and the sun. Geothermal power just hasn’t gotten the same respect. That could be changing, as both the Obama Administration and Silicon Valley are considering the...

Farhad Manjoo marshal’s the evidence that browsing at work makes us more productive: Indeed, there’s no empirical evidence that unfettered access to the Internet turns people into slackers at work. The research shows just the opposite. Brent Corker, a professor of marketing at the University of Melbourne, recently tested how two sets of workers—one group that was blocked from using the Web and...

In Vanity Fair: CNN changed the nature of politics and political reporting by compressing the time it took for something to happen, for it to become widely known, and for newsmakers and the public to react to it (i.e., the news cycle) to half a day—whereas the newspaper news cycle, from next-day publication to day-after reaction, was 48 hours, and network television’s news cycle, from one day’s evening...

Only a few hours after the passing of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, there is a flood of stories on the life and the accomplishments of the Lion of the Senate. The vast majority of the stories are complimentary of the Senator. There are some exceptions. As all humans, Ted Kennedy had his flaws and made his share of mistakes. I understand that the Senator will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Perhaps,...

And in other news…. Microsoft apologized Tuesday for using photo editing techniques to change the race of a person depicted on the company’s Web site. In a photo on the company’s U.S. Web site, three businesspeople–one black, one white and one Asian are shown as part of a pitch for Microsoft’s business productivity software. In the same photo on the site of Microsoft’s Polish...