There was a time when we could afford to think about this
-Headline of the day-
"We could have colonized Mars with the money we spent on the Iraq war -- what else could we do?"
Turns out, a lot. Your dollar may not have much buying power these days, but if you had $6 trillion of them, you could get something done. We could replace every generating plant in the country and go nuclear (the author calls this "carbon-neutral," which is bullshit), spend it "Eliminating childhood diseases in South-East Asia," or we could "Build first-world grade housing in shiny new cities for 600 million Chinese peasants" -- or, of course, colonize Mars.
No word on how much gas it would buy. Either way, it's all academic now -- all that money's already been poured down a rathole in Mesopotamia. (Boing Boing)
-If we don't panic and throw away our civil liberties and common sense, then the terrorists have won-
A student at Nottingham University ran afoul of his country's version of the PATRIOT Act while researching a paper on terrorism. According to the report, "A masters student researching terrorist tactics who was arrested and detained for six days after his university informed police about al-Qaida-related material he downloaded has spoken of the 'psychological torture' he endured in custody."
What he downloaded was described as "an al-Qaeda training manual." The document was, apparently, was a breach of national security -- or something. It's a little hard to figure out what Rizwaan Sabir did that was wrong. Sabir was held for nearly a week after the document was found on an administrator's computer.
The problem is that the document was freely available on the internet. In fact, he downloaded it from a US government website. Once the document was discovered, the administrator, Hisham Yezza, was also arrested.
You get the idea that this isn't so much about the document as it is these guys' names? Both were released without being charged, but Yezza now faces deportation.
Wow, good thing I don't live in the UK, huh? Stuff like that could never happen here... (Guardian, via reddit)
-BREAKING: The vast majority of Americans agree with Bush-
But not in a good way.
When asked by a reporter about John McCain's efforts to distance himself from the charge that he'd be "Bush's third term," White House press secretary Dana Perino had this to say:
He’s been involved in this for a long time and you can’t wish for something that’s not going to happen -- [President Bush] doesn’t wish for a third term. He thinks it’s good that we have a two-term limit in the United States. It’s good for the country to have that smooth, peaceful transition of power every four or eight years; one where you get new energy and new ideas across the board -- from the President on down, throughout the administration.
Even Bush doesn't want a third term of Bush. Of course, the fact that he would lose to an unwashed jock strap probably had nothing to do with it. (Think Progress)
