Gmail goes for new colors and themes
This explains why Gmail got a little weird this afternoon. The new themes and colors appear to be purely aesthetic and don't seem to have any real effect on the function of the site.

Time for another Firefox upgrade
Mozilla has patched almost a dozen security holes in the latest update to Firefox -- version 3.0.4.

Gremlin-like miniature primates found in Indonesia
The pygmy tarsier was thought to have been extinct since the 1930s. That's only a little bit longer than the length of time a North Carolina mail carrier went without delivering anyone's junk mail.

Water groups want more money, fewer mandates



Can the Detroit automakers be saved? Does a rescue require government intervention?
Suppose that the foregone conclusion isn't that we need to help the automakers, but that we're going to invest $50 billion in taxpayer dollars. Are there better investments out there than the Detroit Three? Cancer research? Solar power? College scholarships? Roads, bridges, and water plants? Bike trails? Taxpayers deserve the highest return on investment (ROI) we can get.

Can Barack Obama be President without a BlackBerry?
There's apparently a lot of resistance to the idea that Obama, who seems to be a bit of a PDA addict, could use his BlackBerry in the Oval Office and still stay inside the bounds of legal requirements and Presidential security. Yet the objections seem almost ridiculous: First, it's ludicrous to suggest that we couldn't find ways to make communication with the President reasonably secure, even if it requires building a custom PDA just for his hot little hands. Encryption? Call the NSA. Archival needs? Enlist the Library of Congress. Whatever the objection, it would be astonishing if there weren't a fix available. Want to prevent people from spamming the President? Try using forms instead of giving out his address. Second, though we should try to avoid becoming so technology-dependent that we can't go without our tools, it's also a bit absurd to try to get a person whose management style specifically includes the use of certain tools to abandon those tools altogether upon embarking on the most difficult job on the planet. Teddy Roosevelt read magazines voraciously and tore them to shreds as he found things he wanted to make note of; is someone saying that Barack Obama shouldn't be able to scan the Internet whenever he wants?

Context: Who needs it?
Journalists, unfortunately, tend to be among the people who understand the least about inflation. Without context, just about everything with a price tag can be a "record."

Shipping chlorine is about to get more expensive



Pirates hijack a huge oil tanker
The pirates are from Somalia, which has completely fallen to pieces as a nation-state and has no real central government at this time. The loss of a single oil tanker isn't enough to make world oil prices go wobbly all over again -- but if it becomes apparent that the security of any oil tanker can be threatened by high-seas thugs with guns, that's going to make maritime shipping a more dangerous and more costly endeavor than it ought to be. While there's legitimate reason to look out for the potential for terrorists and others to use high-tech tools to cause trouble, piracy is just old-fashioned crime. The US dealt with it in Thomas Jefferson's day by fighting back -- but one significant difference between then and now is that Jefferson had a nation-state to threaten. Somalia has no such central power, and yet has more people than Sweden.

PJ O'Rourke thinks the conservative movement has been killed by mock conservatives
"We've had nearly three decades to educate the electorate about freedom, responsibility, and the evils of collectivism, and we responded by creating a big-city-public-school-system of a learning environment."

LA wildfires force 40,000 people to evacuate
The Los Angeles Fire Department deserves credit for using lots of relatively-new tools to help inform the public: They have a weblog, a Twitter feed, and a YouTube channel.



Notes from the Brian Gongol Show on WHO Radio - November 16, 2008
Topics include Obama, the brand...recession versus depression...and more steps towards the surveillance society. A highlight reel is available.



Is science moving too quickly for science fiction?
One writer says the genre is in danger of being nothing more than "fantasy in a space suit"

Modern technology begets modern threats



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