Shake hard.
Shake hard.
{ Daily Archives }
June 21st, 2002
Signed in the fields of
Signed in the fields of Runnymede in 1215, the magna carta guaranteed protection against unlawful imprisonment by instituting habeas corpus, appeal to a higher body. President Bush and John Ashcroft have decided that this right no longer applies to certain American citizens, such as Yaser Esam Hamdi. History will not look kindly on their betrayal of the freedoms that America represents. I never expected to read these words about the US government: “The government argued today that it was perfectly legal to hold an American citizen in custody without filing charges against him and without giving him access to a lawyer.”
The cynical view of Westerner’s
The cynical view of Westerner’s obsession with Ebola and death by asteroid is that it gives us relatively innocuous ghouls to worry about while completely curable diseases like measles and malaria kill tens of millions every year. The counter-argument is that no event threatens the survival of our species the way an asteroid strike does, so it’s worth some extra effort to prepare. Timothy Ferris wrote the definitive “Death from Above” in the New Yorker in 1997, which has been excerpted and reviewed.
The New York Times carries an AP story today that an asteroid the size of a football field had a near miss last week. You’ve got to love NASA representatives calmly discussing asteroids that could “destroy civilization as we know it” versus the miss last week that would only be the magnitude of a large nuclear weapon. Of the nuclear-bomb size asteroids, another scientist helpfully adds: “Civilization has to get used to them on some level.”
Is there a pattern here?
Is there a pattern here?
MSN’s earlier efforts to expand its D.S.L. service nationwide have been star crossed. It first contracted with Northpoint Communications to provide its nationwide backbone network. When Northpoint filed for bankruptcy protection, Microsoft hired Enron, which met the same fate. Now Qwest is providing Microsoft’s backbone.
Maybe we should short QWST?