THE WORLD’S COOLEST HANDGUN
This is a Smith & Wesson 340PD .357 magnum. Incredibly powerful, a bullet fired from this gun will go right through an engine block. It weighs twelve ounces.
It is an American gun, manufactured in Springfield, Massachusetts. The cylinder is titanium, and to get it to be that impossibly lightweight, the frame is made of scandium.
Scandium? What's that? Scandium is a basic element with the atomic number 21. It is a rare earth metal that is far stronger, lighter, and corrosion-resistant than stainless steel. So strong and lightweight that it can withstand the enormous forces generated by the sequencing of a nuclear warhead detonating.VOLTAIRE AND MOHAMMED
This Monday (3/6), the Wall Street Journal had a front page article about Moslems rioting in France over the staging of a play in a small village in the French Alps called Saint-Genis-Pouilly. The play was written in 1741 by Voltaire (1694-1778), and hasn't been staged for centuries. The title of the play is Mahomet, which is an older way to spell Mohammed.
The article provided very little information about the play's content. The author of the WSJ article clearly did not see the performance himself. An internet search turns up a French edition of the play but none in English. It's far out of print, so to actually read the play, you'd have to go a large public or university library.
It just so happens, however, that I have the English translation of the complete works of Voltaire - all 42 volumes - in my personal library. So I immediately sat down and read the entire play. It is a drop dead, stone cold, mind blow. It is fantastic. And it couldn't be more perfectly written for our day than if Voltaire was a clairvoyant.
Here's the play's synopsis.
BDS ON THE RIGHT
Ever since George W. Bush won the presidency by preventing Al Gore's hanging-chad attempt to steal it, liberal Democrats have become progressively infected with BDS - Bush Derangement Syndrome.
Here's how I think that the contagion of BDS is now infecting a number of conservative Republicans.
If you're a guy, perhaps you have endured this unpleasant and bewildering experience. You're in a relationship and you and the lady have had some disagreements but nothing major. From your perspective things are pretty ok. Then one day you and she disagree on some minor trivial issue - and suddenly, inexplicably, it escalates as she unloads on you.
It seems like the love of your life has had a personality transplant, you're facing a virago disgorging a torrent of anger, and all you can think is, "Where did this come from?"
If you're a guy, you're nodding your head in understanding. If you're a gal, you're muttering, "Men are so clueless. We give them all these hints for so long that things are bugging us, they never get the message, then when we finally can't take it any more and snap, they're mystified."
I think you get the analogy.
HOW CLOUDMARK PROTECTS E-MAIL FROM SPAM, PHISHING, AND VIRUSES
Spam e-mail isn't very new. In fact the term was originally coined to describe early attempts at e-mail marketing first made in the early 1990's, using a name derived from a Monty Python song lampooning Hormel's canned meat product.
Spam-fighting companies began to emerge in late 2000 and throughout the next few years. Some developed filtering systems that attempted to identify the contents of e-mail messages as spam by using mathematical models or other message analysis tools. Others used syndicated "black lists" compiled by various security vendors, while still others simply allowed desktop users to develop "white lists" of e-mail senders they wished to receive e-mail from.
Cloudmark, launched in 2001, has taken a different approach.PROSECUTING JOURNALISTS – AND SENATORS – FOR TREASON?
Journalists will be paying rapt attention when Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman go on trial next month for violation of the Espionage Act of 1917.
Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman were officials of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. They received classified information from Lawrence Franklin, an analyst at the Department of Defense, which they passed on to an Israeli diplomat, and to journalists. They are the first private citizens ever to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act.
Mr. Franklin pled guilty Jan. 20th and was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison, though his sentence could be reduced in exchange for testimony against Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman.
Journalists note there is little difference between what Mr. Rosen and Weissman are accused of doing, and what reporters who have published stories based on leaks of classified information have done, and beads of sweat form on their brows.
TERRORIST MEDIA DENIAL
Denial is an often useful innate human trait. Few of us would be able to function in the present if we did not put out of mind many unpleasant realities - such as our inevitable death. The Woody Allen character in the movie "Annie Hall" stated the comic extreme version of not using the denial mechanism when, as a child he refused to do his homework because in 5 billion years the sun would explode, "So, what's the use?" But when a person, or a society, denies emerging or imminent dangers, the peace of mind it gains will be extremely short term, while the harm may be sustained or fatal.
Most of the world today not only is in denial concerning the truly appalling likely consequences of the rise of radical Islam, it often refuses to even accept unambiguous evidence of its existence.DUDE, WHERE’S MY CIVIL WAR?
BAGHDAD. I'm trying. I've been trying all week. The other day, I drove another 30 miles or so on the streets and alleys of Baghdad. I'm looking for the civil war that The New York Times declared. And I just can't find it.
Maybe actually being on the ground in Iraq prevents me from seeing it. Perhaps the view's clearer from Manhattan. It could be that my background as an intelligence officer didn't give me the right skills. And riding around with the U.S. Army, looking at things first-hand, is certainly a technique to which The New York Times wouldn't stoop in such an hour of crisis.
Let me tell you what I saw anyway. Rolling with the "instant Infantry" gunners of the 1st Platoon of Bravo Battery, 4-320 Field Artillery, I saw children and teenagers in a Shia slum jumping up and down and cheering our troops as they drove by. Cheering our troops.CONDI TAKES RUSSIA TO THE WOODSHED
This Monday, March 6, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will visit Washington to discuss the Middle East. Today, March 3, a high-ranking delegation of Hamas will visit Moscow at President Vladimir Putin's invitation, to meet with Lavrov. A coincidence? Hardly.
Russia aggressively courts Iran and Hamas. Last week, Russia negotiated in Tehran on establishing a uranium-enrichment joint venture, which will supply nuclear reactor fuel to the Islamic Republic.
A nuclear-armed Iran, allied with and armed by Russia and China will become a regional challenger hostile to the US, its interests, and its allies in the region.
This is why, during Mr. Lavrov's visit, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will inform her Russian counterpart that Moscow's actions in the Middle East are jeopardizing its presidency of the group of eight (G-8) leading industrial nations, its position in the Middle East Quartet, and its international role.
BREAKING OUR CULTURE’S BACK
Let's see, what shall I do this Sunday night - watch the Academy Awards or rearrange my sock drawer? That's a no-brainer: it's the sock drawer hands down. I'll pass on ridiculously-costumed America-hating egomaniacs spewing praise of homosexuality, tolerance for terrorists, and ridicule of everything normal Americans hold dear.
Hollywood thinks it is so avant-garde, courageously blazing new cultural trails, when the reality is that it is so behind the cultural curve. It will spend most of Oscar night praising itself for making a movie about homosexual sheepherders and pretend it's about happy cowboys.
Cowboys herd cattle, not sheep. "Gay" means happily carefree, as in the 1934 Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie, The Gay Divorcee. That homosexuals have hijacked the term in an act of linguistic thievery does not mean we should let them get away with it.
It turns out they haven't.THE DEAL ON DUBAI
In Dubai, everyone refers to their ruler, Emir Mohammed Bin Rashid al-Maktoum, as "MBR." Just to give you an idea of how he is into tourism not terrorism, here's a quick story.
He has closed circuit television in his private office. And what are the cameras trained on? Immigration/passport control lines at the airport. If MBR sees the lines are getting too long, he picks up the phone and orders more personnel to reduce the lines. Again, his focus is tourism not terrorism.
The US Navy docks its ships at Dubai more often than at any other non-US port in the world. 25,000 Americans (and 100,000 Brits) live and work in the Emirates now.
The realization that Dubai and the UAE is the most pro-American Arab country on earth is sinking in to fevered Congressional brains as their spasm of knee-jerk xenophobia dissipates.
The shame in this is that Conservative Republicans in Congress, by allowing themselves to get suckered into Bush-bashing Democrat xenophobia, blew their chance to make a deal with GW.