Obama as Saruman Obama as Saruman

Obama as Saruman (LOR):

“…Those who listened unwarily to that voice could seldom report the words that they heard: and if they did, they wondered, for little power remained in them. Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire awoke within them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves…”

Obama and Palin riding their bikes Obama and Palin riding their bikes

An example why Obama is in trouble.

U.S. hands back a quieter Anbar Province - International Herald Tribune U.S. hands back a quieter Anbar Province - International Herald Tribune

U.S. hands back a quieter Anbar Province - International Herald Tribune:

RAMADI, Iraq: Two years ago, Anbar Province was the most lethal place for American forces in Iraq. A U.S. marine or soldier died in the province nearly every day, and the provincial capital, Ramadi, was a moonscape of rubble and ruins. Islamic extremists controlled large pieces of territory, with some so ferocious in their views that they did not even allow the baking of bread.

On Monday, U.S. commanders formally returned responsibility for keeping order in Anbar Province, once the heartland of the Sunni insurgency, to the Iraqi Army and police. The ceremony, including a parade on a freshly paved street, capped one of the most significant turnabouts in the country since the war began five and a half years ago.

This was the province that two years ago was considered lost, but thanks to the Surge and the Sunni Awakening, it has been pacified.

Vista searching - using my Mac to find stuff on my Vista laptop Vista searching - using my Mac to find stuff on my Vista laptop

Last night I lost my toolbars in Visio 2003 on my laptop. I figured, no problem, I have saved the local configuration files, etc. for the various Office products. So, I figured that one of the files I needed to replace was Visio11.pip. That shouldn't be hard to find, should it? It probably would have taken maybe 5 minutes to scan my 40 gb hard drive under Windows XP or 2K. But Vista? Couldn't find it. Period. Couldn't even find the old version on the desktop.

So, what did I do to find it? I mounted my hard drive on my desktop Mac, and then used the Mac Finder Find command. It took about 5 minutes across the network for my Mac to find the files that Vista couldn't find on the system running Vista.

Status in Iraq Status in Iraq

Current status in Iraq, thanks to MNF-Iraq:

Saturday bomb scare closes 395 in Minden Saturday bomb scare closes 395 in Minden

Saturday bomb scare closes 395 in Minden: Highway 395 at the north end of Minden was closed for two hours Saturday while bomb squad officials checked out a suspicious vehicle parked at Stewart Title after the driver was arrested on traffic charges.

Here is a picture of the car:


And a picture of the wacko driving it:

What is the relevance of this?

I took a job about nine months ago in Minden as a patent attorney with Sierra Patent Group, which was merged into Lewis and Roca LLP in April. And our offices are upstairs from Stewart Title.

I worked Saturday, but didn't see the commotion in the parking lot. It may have happened before I got in, or while I was upstairs. If the later, if I had known, I would have had a ringside seat for all the excitement.

Update: It turns out that I was at work at the time, but the general consensus was that if I had looked out the office window, I probably would have been cleared out of the building, since it was adjacent to what was believed at the time to be a potential bomb.

Here is one of his business cards, picked up today from the parking lot:

Microsoft Profit Drops; Forecast May Miss Estimates Microsoft Profit Drops; Forecast May Miss Estimates

Microsoft Profit Drops; Forecast May Miss Estimates:

Microsoft Corp. declined 5 percent in extended trading after it reported an 11 percent drop in third-quarter profit and forecast earnings that may miss analysts' estimates as Windows software sales fell.

Net income dropped to $4.39 billion, or 47 cents a share, from $4.93 billion, or 50 cents, a year ago. Revenue was little changed at $14.5 billion, matching analysts' estimates and disappointing investors looking for more after industry reports showed better-than-expected demand for personal computers.

The world's biggest software maker said sales of Windows for PCs sank 24 percent and revenue from its online advertising unit came in at the low end of its projections. Microsoft's report contrasted with positive comments from chipmaker Intel Corp. and computer company International Business Machines Corp.

Could it be that Windows Vista sucks and as a result, a lot of people are not upgrading?

Quake shakes downtown Reno; no damage immediately apparent Quake shakes downtown Reno; no damage immediately apparent

Quake shakes downtown Reno. I flew into Reno about 6 hours earlier, and was about 50 miles south of the quake and didn't know it had occurred until four hours later - which is probably a good thing.

Professor Lessig Is In Professor Lessig Is In

Mark Hemingway (National Review Online): Professor Lessig Is In: Not running for Congress, but having an impact. Lessig views himself as a liberal Democrat, but is now concerned with the inherent corruption of money in politics, and the quid pro quod we now see between political contributions and legislation, etc.

What is hard to fathom from someone who seems to understand that the bigger the government, the more corrupt it is, how he can be a liberal Democrat, where the governing tenet seems to be that more government is better, and that government can be called upon to solve all of society's ills. And, if government failures are pointed out, the answer is invariably that those in government are corrupt, and that if smarter people were running things, government would work just fine.

If Lessig continues along this route, he is likely to end up in the group most hated by the left, a neo-conservative, sometimes defined as a progressive mugged by reality.

Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling

DailyTech: - Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling:

Twelve-month long drop in world temperatures wipes out a century of warming

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snow cover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.

No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age

Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age:

Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."

China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.

Thank goodness that the consensus has won, and we all now know that Global Warming is going to end the world as we know it.

Warming temps should end worst cold snap since 2000 Warming temps should end worst cold snap since 2000

Warming temps should end worst cold snap since 2000:

While it was 48 degrees below zero at Fairbanks International Airport on Sunday, the coldest temperature recorded so far in Fairbanks’ worst cold snap in eight years, forecasters were calling for a significant warming trend beginning today.

What ever happened to Global Warming?

Sun's low magnetic activity may portend an ice age Sun's low magnetic activity may portend an ice age

Brits at their Best: Sun's low magnetic activity may portend an ice age

The Canadian Space Agency’s radio telescope has been reporting Flux Density Values so low they will mean a mini ice age if they continue.

Uh oh. Has anyone told Al Gore about this yet?

The Lewinsky Decade The Lewinsky Decade

Best of the Web Today: The Lewinsky Decade starts out: "Ten years ago today came the most interesting Drudge missive:"

BLOCKBUSTER REPORT: 23-YEAR OLD, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, SEX RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT

**World Exclusive**

**Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT**

At the last minute, at 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, NEWSWEEK magazine killed a story that was destined to shake official Washington to its foundation: A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the United States!

The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that reporter Michael Isikoff developed the story of his career, only to have it spiked by top NEWSWEEK suits hours before publication. A young woman, 23, sexually involved with the love of her life, the President of the United States, since she was a 21-year-old intern at the White House. She was a frequent visitor to a small study just off the Oval Office where she claims to have indulged the president's sexual preference. Reports of the relationship spread in White House quarters and she was moved to a job at the Pentagon, where she worked until last month.

The rest is history. Bill Clinton was impeached, but not convicted. Monica's name became synonymous with oral sex. Hillary is running for president. The Republicans are in trouble. And Drudge is still one of the most reviled names on the left of the blogosphere, while Republican candidate Mitt Romney admitted checking it out a couple of times a day.

The Economics of Marriage The Economics of Marriage

Interesting article by the Undercover Economist, Tim Harford: The Economics of Marriage. This should be read in concert with the previous article by Megan McArdle: No Country for Young Men. Together, the two articles make a lot of sense out of marriage, divorce, sex, college, and the pill.

One of the interesting points here is the viewing of marriage through the lens of comparative advantage, and going all the way back to Adam Smith's pin makers. He posits that one of the reasons that we had stay-at-home moms for so long was that women had a comparative advantage in child raising, and that the combined wealth of both in a marriage was (often significantly) higher when the two specialized, just as Smith's pin makers did. When I was born, men would average 50 hours a week working outside the house, and women would average a similar number of hours in the home. But one thing that happened is that the 50 hours expended in the home has dropped significantly through automation. What he didn't mention, is that it also dropped considerably through smaller average family sizes (and, thus, fewer kids around the house, for a shorter period of time). Thus, the eon long bargain between men and women has broken down, resulting in significantly increased divorces, etc. Megan would point out that this caused the value of a college degree and profession to increase significantly for women.

No Country for Young Men No Country for Young Men

Megan McArdle has a great article out on marriage and retirement of the Baby Boomers: No Country for Young Men. This should be read in connection with the next article: The Economics of Marriage by the Undercover Economist.

Microsoft seeks patent for office 'spy' software Microsoft seeks patent for office 'spy' software

Microsoft seeks patent for office 'spy' software . Initially, I thought that this was a patent claiming computer operation by, for example, brain waves. But instead, it just hooks up the user of a computer to leads so that his employer can monitor heart rate, perspiration, etc. Much less cutting edge, and, more worrisome because of its ability to be misused. It shouldn't have any patentability problems whatsoever, indeed fewer than the typical software patents filed by MSFT.

Mike Nifong Bankrupt Mike Nifong Bankrupt

Mike Nifong Bankrupt. Couldn't have happened to a more deserving person. I did find interesting the $180,009,081.71 figure for total non-priority unsecured debt. Nothing like pulling a figure out of thin air, and then putting it through calculations to give such an exact sounding total.