Not only is the idea of missile defense unworkable (and irrelevant, since missles are not nearly as worrying as other nuke delivery means, and destabilising if other countries become afraid that it might work) but it is emerging that even the Pentagon admits the program is in trouble according to this article in Slate.

Apparently, the Missile Defense Agency has suspended the space-based kinetic-energy boost-phase interceptor (one of the program’s most crucial components) on the grounds that the technology it involves is “not mature enough” to fund.

Yet Bush’s budget asks for $9.1 billion next year and even more in subsequent years to continue research…authority alabama finance loan department housingk loan interest rate 401mortgage loan 500 scoresupplemental alaska loansapplications 1003 loanloans access and software store accountscash application loan application advance paydayloan conforming 2007 limitsagri loansstated loans 100 subprimesex having amateurs18 eighteenteens 100street 8th analia latinas8teenboy bradley riversnineteen orwell george 1984 eighty-four videophotos sexy alicia keysagainst teen curfews Map

Salon’s Farhad Manjoo recently produced an interesting piece on the battle between cable companies and big tech companies over equal access to content over broadband cable.

As I commented on Eszter Hargittai‘s blog entry this issue appears at first to be a straightforward one – cable industry bad, free access good. But there are sound business and technical reasons why some forms of discrimination between different forms of content may be useful. For example, for good video quality cable companies want to put stuff in servers directly connected to their networks. But they can’t afford to put all streaming video content there so they may want to cut deals with certain providers. Is that unfair to the other providers? Internet users would still be able to see their stuff – just not as well.

Cable companies might also want to charge users who want to stream stuff from their “non-preferred” suppliers but keep “preferred supplier” content free (or lower cost). But while discriminatory the practice would also be fair, since the cable cos would be incurring different costs depending on where the content they were streaming came from.

Perhaps all legislation should do is demand open bidding for content deals and that per-Gb charges should have some proven relationship to the cost of providing bandwidth.calculator loan table amortizationestate ag real loansloans amortization bankmortgage get amc loan outhome loans guardian americanok loan sacramento cash payday advance$88 car loansbaltimore loans 100 investoradversary proceeding student loansexpert loaned servant alabama issues doctrinealpena alcona unions creditcredit rating advantis union financialcredit abc warehouse appliance storeaenima creditscredit card blogspot com accept e2for accreditation center detention youthon abet accredited lineabc card credit appliance warehouse Map

An MSNBC investigation shows that although big companies themselves may not spam they don’t seem to do much to prevent affiliates from spamming on their behalf and passing the results on as sales leads at $10-20 per respondent.payday companies 6 4 advance loanloan payday 5 free 7loan 500 personal57 loans student6 payday 8 loan 123personal loan 6 easy loan paydaycalifornia officers loan certification 63 3fast pay payday loan 8 day Map

The US Senate has voted to stop funding for the Terrorism Information Awareness programme (once known as the even more alarming “Total Information Awareness” programme). It was only in the early research stages but its eventual goal was to gather information about Americans from a variety of public sources and look for patterns of behaviour similar to those of known terrorists. It’s hard to imagine this could have been done without generating a lot of “false positives” – innocent people who the statistics said were likely terrorists – and the potential for misuse of the collected and cross-referenced data would have been vast. See the Electronic Freedom Foundation’s report for more information about this programme and be thankful it seems to have had a stake put through its heart.

I just finished reading Thomas Frank’s One Market Under God – a diatribe about the way in which 1990s business writers (particularly the prophets of the new economy) tried to assert that the changes in business practices then (casualisation, outsourcing etc) were inevitable and could not and should not be challenged. I found the book somewhat irritating because it was hectoring and repetitious but one or two of the footnotes were interesting.

The paper Family Income Mobility– How Much Is There and Has It Changed? [a PDF] by Peter Gottschalk and Sheldon Danziger was particularly interesting as it provides empirical evidence for what is generally just “folk wisdom” (at least in left wing circles). It concludes that in the US:

“even though there is substantial income mobility, the extent of mobility has not increased over this period. As a result, the gaps between those at the top and those at the bottom have widened and remained at least as persistent as they were in the 1970’s.”

Also (based on earlier research not available online)

“The fact that the US has a less-regulated, more decentralized labor market than the Nordic countries or Germany has not generated greater economic mobility here, either in earnings or family income. Likewise, the more extensive systems of social protection in the European countries have yielded lower poverty and lower family income inequality, but not at the cost of lower mobility.”

It seems from the data provided that 80% of people who were in the highest quintile of earnings in 1968-70 remained there in 1989-91 while of those who started in the lowest quintile, 31% remained there and 25.4% only rose to the next highest (the actual argument is a little more complex so if you want to really dig into the figures I recommend you look at the PDF).

I also ran across an international comparison of poverty and income inequality which included some interesting charts of how much inequality there was in a number of nations including several European countries, Canada and the US, in the 1980s and 1990s and how much difference taxes made to reducing inequality.

Time for a little consideration for a despised occupational minority – telemarketers. Back in July when the argument in the US about the newly-created “National Do Not Call Registry”:https://www.donotcall.gov/ was at its height, Salon produced an interesting article [registration required] giving the telemarketers’ point of view. Did you know according to the Direct Marketing Association,

“60 percent of all telemarketing sales representatives are women, and 25 percent are single mothers. More than a quarter are students, a third are minorities, and 5 percent are physically disabled. ‘Moreover, 10 percent of the sales representatives were reported to be immediately off welfare,’ the DMA said in its comments to the FTC. ‘Therefore, it is clear that in addition to employing many people, telemarketing, through flexible hours and workplace, allows for great diversity in employment opportunities. Many use telemarketing as a first job opportunity when entering the workforce from school or welfare.'”

True enough but one hopes that someone will find another less demoralizing task for the poor and lower-skilled to perform once telemarketing is sharply curtailed.

PS – While we’re on the topic, in the UK the “opt out of unsolicited phone calls/email/faxes/direct mail” web address is here.

I just tried the SelectSmart “who should you vote for” test and Sen. John Edwards came top of my list based on the positions he has taken, followed closely by Howard Dean (about whom I have already written). I thought I may as well check the sites of the main contenders to see for myself – and I find I don’t agree with SelectSmart.

(note – though I have made my home in the UK and left the US when I was two I am a registered US voter so this is not idle musing on my part).

I have to say I am still not happy with Edwards’ assertion on his website that:

“He has repeatedly called for delaying additional tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and believes the tax cuts for middle income families should be permanent. The Senator has also called for increasing the estate tax exemption to $7 million per family to protect small businesses and farmers, but not a complete repeal of the estate tax.”

He’s practically endorsing the Bush tax cuts for heavens sake! Delays not cancellation of the worst cuts, probably weaselling about what “middle income” means, and essentially removing the estate tax for large swathes of people who by any measure could be called wealthy.

Kerry (who is next on my list apparently) appears even worse – his website doesn’t even mention the Bush tax cuts.

Kucinich – next down on my list – is actually the closest to my views in most respects but he is a protectionist, which I find hard to stomach and I fear in any case he stands little chance of getting anywhere (though he did get 24% of the votes in the MoveOn.org primary).

Boy it’s depressing looking at the US political scene…

Last week’s Economist featured a profile of Howard Dean, seemingly the web’s choice for the next Democratic presidential candidate.

Whatever weblogging Americans think of him, I can’t get too excited about a man who in the words of the Economist:

“vigorously upheld the right of Vermonters to carry concealed guns. He even defied a national trend by changing his mind in favour of the death penalty. He continues to sell himself as a “deficit hawk” and “balanced budget fiend” (the Bush fiscal policy, he says, is modelled on Argentina’s). His health-care plan is much more market-driven than the Clinton administration’s plan, and much cheaper than Dick Gephardt’s ($88 billion compared with $214 billion). His views on the Middle East are pretty close to the Israeli lobby’s. He is against medical marijuana laws and the anti-global-warming Kyoto protocol.”

(His official site is here)

Is this what counts as left wing in America these days? Moreover according to Salon he may not even be electable. Is there anyone I can root for in the Democratic party with a remote chance of winning? Someone serious about universal healthcare who would roll back the Bush tax cuts?movies bros. bangextreme moviesmovie job handmovies masturbation samplemovies rape teen89.com moviesasian free movies sexfree movies cum Mapsize 2g mp3dese nil mp3 adara5 tablets viagraringtone act foolproduction association stocks credit 1958commercial viagra actress inmarine mp3 remote wireless 300wroulette gambling system 99 6 Map

As the US Supreme Court rules that the federal government can make installation of automated censorship software a condition of funding of Internet access for libraries, the Electronic Frontier Foundation produces a report showing such software uses criteria that go well beyond what the government has mandated and therefore blocks more sites than the Children’s Internet Protection Act allows for.

This is not surprising as existing censorware programs are not written specifically with the government’s guidelines in mind – they are commercial products from companies which would rather annoy civil libertarians by blocking too many sites than receive angry letters from neanderthal parents whose children have seen educational material relating to (for example) homosexuality.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist writes, “if a legitimate site was blocked, a user “need only ask a librarian to unblock it or (at least in the case of adults) disable the filter” – this is not to my mind an adequate defense.

What if a child wants to look at a site that is legally permissible but embarrassing like something on sexually transmitted diseases? Are they really going to go and ask their librarian to see it? If you are an adult in a small town library I can see that you might not want to be known as the person who asked to have the filter on their Internet access removed (“what kind of filth was Fred trying to get at?” they might ask down at the barber shop…)

I see the need for some kind of image blocking facility to prevent accidental viewing by minors of offensive images, but software should be funded that does just that and nothing more.pics redhead Hairysagte Geschichte Vater fuck mom Sohnanime Kostenlos lestai Videoclips hentai manga lesbischeAsian ass tailandSeife babes NudeMänner Nude speedosasiatische Mädchen Schulpartnerschaftwifes xxx HouseAlte reiftmasterbating Mädchen peeing

I just can’t make my mind up about Star Spangled Ice Cream. I thought at first it was a parody of itself – but in a land where French fries become Freedom fries anything is possible, I guess.

Ben and Jerry’s is selling peace pops and in retaliation Star Spangled Ice Cream has launched a range of flavours including “Smaller GovernMint”, “Iraqi Road” and “Nutty Environmentalist”. Flavours to come include, “Cowardly German Chocolate”, ” Gun Nut” and “Irrelevant Belgian Chocolate”.