Unqualified Offerings

By Thoreau
Wall Street Journal:
$26 Software Is Used to Breach Key Weapons in Iraq; Iranian Backing Suspected
For all I know the Iranians are indeed behind this, but I’m pretty sure that an operation requiring $26 software and modest hacking skillz could just as easily be launched by this dude working at the IT help desk at [...]

By Thoreau
Yesterday I bought airplane tickets for a conference.  Today, my student got an invitation to give a talk in a special session at the start of the conference.  I’ve never been happier to pay a fee for rescheduling a flight.  From now on I’m booking all of my flights early, and scheduling them to [...]

By Thoreau
The latest Nobel Peace Prize winner, last seen giving a speech in which he explains how important war is, has decided to stand behind a Bush administration legal argument in a suit against a contractor involved in “extraordinary rendition”, aka handing people over to be tortured.
Justice Department attorney Douglas Letter reiterated the government position [...]