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Phwoar! Thunderbirds were go!

Defense tech links to a post that seems to disclose a very well hidden Soviet-era defense program. In the 80′s the Soviet Union launched an orbiting Star Wars-style missile defense battle station prototype. It appears that it failed to deploy into a proper orbit and it and its program were eventually scuttled (is that the right term for falling out of the sky?)

Link to discussion forum with a whole slew of photographs.

It’s the booster that gets the Thuderbird juices going.

BTW: If you are reading this, my hosting service transfer has succeeded – yay!

MSN Search has been launched in Beta. Alastair has a good meditation on what it means, where it comes from, and where it’s going.

I decided to give MSN Search Beta an unscientific workout.

Let’s see if when I search for “MSN Search Beta” (the words in the title) it returns itself at top of the list:

Ok… maybe that was a glitch. I waited a minute and tried again.

That’s better.

Lets try comparing something. MSN is said to be based on Lookout for Outlook, from a company that MicroSoft purchased a little while ago. This is going to be a pretty easy task for a Microsoft search engine. Pretty much every reviewer is going to be using terms from the press release and preliminary research they’ve done, right?

I’m guessing that when people search for “lookout outlook” on the Intahwebs they’re not looking for North Stradbroke Island. Feel free to email me if you think I’m wrong and I’ll post a correction.

Kudos to MSN search. The first link is a short blog entry journaling the acquisition of Lookout by Microsoft.

The next relevant link is #8 which is someone talking about Microsoft’s Outlook Lookout search utility. Strangely, the utility itself doesn’t have much weight in MSN’s ranking system. The most definitive answers (by my judgement) would be the current and previous Lookout home pages and they aren’t listed on the first page of results.

Let’s see what a rival search engine does with the same search.

Based on 15 minutes of play my verdict is that I might use it when it’s more reliable, ranks results better, indexes my local PC, performs better than Google, and my desktop freezes over… which I guess could be the next time I upgrade Windows.

According to this AAP story there isn’t an obligation for manufacturers and retailers to adhere to traditional definitions of the words pure, fresh or natural.

Choice Magazine is concerned that consumers are being conned by these evil adjectives.

I suppose that’s fair. People should be encouraged not to confuse pure, fresh and natural with “good”

While coal-generated electricity is pure, fresh and natural it does produce plenty of carbon dioxide (which is also pure, fresh and natural!).

Plutonium gets a bad rap. Plutonium is pure, theoretically you can get it fresh, and it occurs naturally. Sure it’s a little poisonous and a little hard to handle but it’s pure and natural!

With the speculation turning from who will win the Presidential election to “when will Powell and Armitage go, and who will replace them?” I reread this excellent (as ever) New Yorker profile of Paul Wolfowitz. Wolfowitz is rumoured to be a candidate for elevation from Deputy Secretary of Defense into a more prominent role.

Wolfowitz, of course, is considered one of the principal architects of the Iraq invasion. He was recruited to the administration by Dick Cheney who headed the CIA when Wolfowitz was an analyst there. There’s a lot in the profile about how his views on Iraq were formed, and the basis for his unapologetic hawkishness – a trademark neocon outlook.

Most fascinating for me was Wolfowitz’s ties with Indonesia and how it has shaped his thinking.

En route to Poland, Wolfowitz made a brief stop in Munich, where he met with two men who had helped to shape his view of Islam. One was Anwar Ibrahim, the former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, who was in Germany for medical treatment. Ibrahim had been a nineteen-seventies-era student activist who entered politics and became, in the eyes of Wolfowitz and other Westerners, the embodiment of the moderate Muslim ideal—at once devoutly religious and tolerant, and eager to move his country into the modern world.
[...]
Wolfowitz also met with Abdurrahman Wahid, the former President of Indonesia. Toward the end of the second Reagan Administration, Wolfowitz, who was then Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, was offered the Ambassadorship to Indonesia. Wolfowitz had spent more than a dozen years in the policy grind of Washington, and he and his wife, Clare, were eager to get away. Clare Wolfowitz had a particular interest in Indonesia—she’d been an exchange student there in high school, spoke the language, and had made Indonesia her academic specialty; she holds a Ph.D. in social anthropology.
[...]
“I really didn’t expect to fall in love with this place, but I did,”
[...]
The [Indonesian] constitution protects other religious faiths, and Wahid, who is deeply devout, took that tolerance a step further, advocating total separation of mosque and state. “He’s a remarkable human being,” Wolfowitz said. “I mean, there’s the leader of the largest Muslim organization, and he’s an apostle of tolerance. How can you not admire him?”

Wolfowitz and Wahid became lasting friends, and, inevitably, one of their shared interests was the subject of Iraq. Wolfowitz told me that Wahid had studied in Baghdad, and that he was an early witness to the Baath Party’s atrocities. Wahid had described how Saddam’s regime “left the bodies hanging so long, the necks stretched,” Wolfowitz said. “It was in the main square in Baghdad, to send a message, to say, ‘This is who you’re dealing with from now on.’ And he said his teacher was taken away, the body was brought back in a sealed coffin, and they were told not to open it. They went ahead and opened it, and they found he’d been horribly tortured.”

Wolfowitz, as a Suharto-era ambassador to Indonesia, wasn’t always outwardly supportive of a changing political landscape there. There was an element of compromise and appeasement during his diplomatic career.

There’s a lot here; His history, his family, his perspective that doesn’t sit easily with criticism of the Bush Administration. Wolfowitz ‘s ideology is evidence based. There’s even an account of his encouragment of intelligence agencies to provide more visibility of dissenting views in US intelligence reports … in 1973.

His role in the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and its seminal 2000 work “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” is an interesting contrast to the first part of the New Yorker article.

“Rebuilding America’s Defenses” is a plan that has been executed for the last 4 years by the Bush administration and will almost certainly continue to provide a blueprint for future security policies. With feet firmly in right-wing nationalistic territory this document’s authors lament the dismantling of the Star Wars program and the dramatic reduction in military funding after the cold war. They praise Reagan and condemn Clinton. It is the sharpened axe, the manifesto, of a group that will not tolerate compromise or appeasement. PNAC puts faith in building up and using the sharp end of the military to “shape circumstances before crises emerge.” It’s hard to reconcile the “conservative” part of “neocon” with this type of thinking.

“Of course, the United States must be prudent in how it exercises its power. But we cannot safely avoid the responsibilities of global leadership of the costs that are associated with its exercise. America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests. The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire. The history of the past century should have taught us to embrace the cause of American leadership.”

The risk associated with a policy of preemption is undoubtedly high. The critical historical data points for this policy are; appeasing Germany in World War II was obviously the wrong strategy; the 1st Gulf war was such a success, but not satisfactory; Serbia was low-risk for NATO tactically, and high-risk strategically; and, out-spending the USSR on nuclear-related defense systems during the Cold War worked. Vietnam, when a strategic russian roulette hasn’t turned out for the best are not often discussed.

Even if Wolfowitz does not become the new National Security Advisor there are more than enough neocons in the Bush administration to keep the plan alive, stay the course, for 4 more years. A lot is riding on whether the Iraq and Afghanistan bait and switch is seen as a success or failure of this policy. A lot is riding on whether the reality of Iraq and Afghanistan results in a different, more measured and better resourced approach or more of the same for the rest of the Axis of Evil and Friends.

I just wonder if Wolfowitz is finding the new reality sufficiently different from the vision to change his world view.

Is Wolfowitz the only person in the administration who is capable of using the apalling experience of Iraq to moderate the next 4 years?

Why pile onto the navel gazing blog entires when you can linkpimp Fafblog?

“Eleven States voted to Define Marriage tonight,” says Lester Holt, “and they have Defined it as a slow-moving, thick-skulled poison-spitting reptile that hates queers. America has spoken.”

Is here, as usual.

NEW YORK—Observers from around the world report that they were inspired and moved by America’s most recent attempt to hold a public election in accordance with the standards of a democratic republic.

“After all of the recriminations, infighting, and general madness before the election, the people of this fractured nation still found the courage to show up at the polls,” said Anas Salman, an Afghan U.N. official who was in New York during the American electoral experiment. “More than half of America’s citizens—a large portion of them women—made a valiant attempt to choose their own leader, even though there was no guarantee their votes would be counted. It was truly inspirational.”
[...]
The multinational watchdog group Organization for Security and Cooperation sent 600 official observers to monitor proceedings, from countries as disparate as North Korea, Syria, and China. Many reported that they came away deeply touched.

“To see a country with such overwhelming problems—problems that affect every last citizen—have so many of its voters feel that they can still influence their leadership… words fail me,” said Dae Jung Kim, a North Korean OSC delegate. “Certainly, my report to my own government will emphasize this. I will recommend that my leaders implement such American election-time strategies and tactics as would fit the North Korean model of personal freedom, such as their elegant Electoral College and the inscrutable voting machine.”

Here’s what I just commented over at TIS

I’m hoping for a Kerry win. I just have no sense of which direction it’s heading. As with the Australian election, a 2% shift is hard to pick up on my poorly equipped radar.

When I was in NJ for the 2000 election I really had a sense that Gore would win… and he did, after a fashion.

This time I have a sense it’s going to be closer than 2000 – if that’s possible.

And all that I can tell you about my instincts is that I’m usually wrong about something, but not everything.

So, I’d like to see Kerry win.

Conventional wisdom says that elections are lost and not won.

Something I’ve picked up in the delicate conversations I have with American collegues and friends about the US election is that many voters will be voting against Bush even though they don’t feel terribly comfortable with Kerry. I’d discount it as a consequence of my limited and sheltered contact with the great American unwashed voter… but it’s the source of my nagging doubts about whether Kerry can carry it.

Bush has done plenty to lose this election, but has he done enough?

**Update: Brad deLong thinks he’s done enough. And he lists the point of no return.

I was talking to a friend in Colorado today and she brought up something her tax accountant had mentioned. It was to do with the enourmous increase in numbers of Hummers on the roads and in her neighbourhood.

The “Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003″ was designed to stimulate the economy and give a tax break to primary producers and other industries that use of heavy vehicles as part of their business.

This poorly targeted tax applied to any vehicle weighing over 6000 pounds that was used for business-related activities. Savvy Doctors, lawyers, dentists, salespeople, CEOs and other business vehicle users began to acquire vehicles heavier than 6,000 pounds. Vehicles like the BMW X5, Dodge Ram, and Hummer H1. The tax breaks were up to $106,000 in the year of purchase on vehicles that cost $50,000-$110,000.

Something had to be done to better target the tax break for the intended beneficiaries.

Hummer tax break gets hammered

In the wake of mounting criticism, on both tax policy and environmental grounds, lawmakers have narrowed the SUV loophole. Now the $100,000 write-off applies only to vehicles weighing 14,000 pounds or more. This protects most business-use heavy trucks or vans, such as refrigerated trucks. If you drive something smaller for your business, as soon as President Bush signs this new bill into law you’ll be able to expense only $25,000 of the amount it cost.

Brilliant! Don’t proscribe types of vehicles or limit the tax break to specific industries. Double the weight limit and add some! That’ll stop those pesky executives from filling up the roads with truck-o-sauruses.

The changed conditions are simply a challenge requiring innovative thought and a mountain of steel.

Weighing in at a taxation-friendly 14,500 pounds I’d like to introduce you to the International 7300 CXT. (thanks Alastair for the link)

Problem solved.