Happy New Year 2008

Snowfall up here in December 2007 will not quite beat the December record in 1895 but it's close.
Snow depth on Saturday was around four feet between our cottage and the barn.
 On Sunday wind roared in with heavy rain and took over half of it away --- Yuk!
What to expect in New Hampshire's varied  weather (in general) --- Click Here

Our closest mountain (Cannon) is about 10 miles to the east.
60 ski trails on Cannon Mountain --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon_Mountain
9 lifts (and an aerial tramway) can handle 11,000 skiers per hour

Ski conditions are still good on the mountains --- http://www.snocountry.com/snowclient/srlist.php?state=NH
(Most now have snow cannons that make their own snow if needed.)

Below is a sunset shot of Cannon (on the right) from the shore of Echo Lake
A few of Cannon's 60 ski trails are shown in the clearings.
The V in the terrain is called Franconia Notch Mountain Pass

Below are two views of Cannon and some wild turkeys in front of our living room in late autumn.
 

 

One Cannon chairlift descends into a quaint alpine village called Mittersill (for history Click Here )
This alpine village was the brain child of Austrian Baron Hubert von Pantz.
Part of the Mittersill Resort Hotel is shown below.
During it's prime, Mittersill became "the place to be" for some celebrities.
Bandleader Desi Arnaz, his famous wife Lucille Ball, and friends once trashed the place in a wild party.
At the time the damages were over $60,000 (over $100,000 in today's repair costs).

 

Cannon Mountain Videos

History of Cannon Mountain --- --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon_Mountain 

The Ridley Report Does Franconia Notch in 2006 --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXfLlhcjA5A
(The foliage was much better in 2007)

I didn't get a single thing on my XMAS wish list --- http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312922,00.html

Tidbits on December26, 2007
Bob Jensen

Videos From Bob Jensen's Personal Camera (the pictures are clear but some of them lost a bit in the video) ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/EdTech/Video/Personal/
The Tidbits.wmv video is narrated.

For earlier editions of Tidbits go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm 

Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter --- Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron" enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and other universities is at http://www.searchedu.com/.


Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations   

Bob Jensen's Threads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm

Bob Jensen's Home Page is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/

CPA Examination --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination

You can read about Erika's surgeries and see her pictures at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Erika2007.htm
Personal pictures are at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/PictureHistory/
Some personal videos are at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/EdTech/Video/Personal/ 

Bob Jensen's blogs and various threads on many topics --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
       (Also scroll down to the table at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ )

Set up free conference calls at http://www.freeconference.com/
Also see http://www.yackpack.com/uc/   

Free Online Tutorials in Multiple Disciplines --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials

Google Maps Street View --- http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/

World Clock --- http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php

If you want to help our badly injured troops, please check out
Valour-IT: Voice-Activated Laptops for Our Injured Troops  --- http://www.valour-it.blogspot.com/

Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video available free on the Web. 
I created a page that summarizes those various links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm

Bravo America --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/BravoAmerica.asf
How to gesture thank you --- http://www.gratitudecampaign.org/fullmovie.php
Also see http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/12/rejoice_americas_love_for_troo.html

Proud Russia --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSgqSRtU28M

How do polar bears fight back against global warming? --- Click Here

Should you buy a trunk monkey? --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8avOiTUcD4Y
Also see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYpG5wlq2Ls
Also see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8avOiTUcD4Y
Also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geynA-JYDHE
There are now a bunch of similar videos on YouTube

Auntie Bev got Elfed --- http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1237605322

Baby Boomers Are Getting Old --- http://weblogs.newsday.com/news/opinion/walthandelsman/blog/2007/11/animation_baby_boomers.html

Tejano and the Seven Dwarfs --- http://www.youtube.com/v/tAq3hWBlalU 

Tom Rush on Getting Old --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yN-6PbqAPM

Crisis Guide: The Korean Peninsula --- http://www.cfr.org/publication/11954
This is a very, very informative site about political and military balance. The Council on Foreign Relations has similar Crisis Guides for other high tension locales in the world.
See http://www.cfr.org/

Walter H. G. Lewin, 71, a physics professor, has long had a cult following at M.I.T. And he has now emerged as an international Internet guru, thanks to the global classroom the institute created to spread knowledge through cyberspace. Professor Lewin’s videotaped physics lectures, free online on the OpenCourseWare of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have won him devotees across the country and beyond who stuff his e-mail in-box with praise. “Through your inspiring video lectures i have managed to see just how BEAUTIFUL Physics is, both astounding and simple,” a 17-year-old from India e-mailed recently.
Sara Rimer, The New York Times, December 19, 2007 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/education/19physics.html
Jensen Comment
MIT's Open Courseware portal and other open courseware sites are linked at --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

MIT's Video Lecture Search Engine: Watch the video at --- http://web.sls.csail.mit.edu/lectures/
Researchers at MIT have released a video and audio search tool that solves one of the most challenging problems in the field: how to break up a lengthy academic lecture into manageable chunks, pinpoint the location of keywords, and direct the user to them. Announced last month, the MIT Lecture Browser website gives the general public detailed access to more than 200 lectures publicly available though the university's OpenCourseWare initiative. The search engine leverages decades' worth of speech-recognition research at MIT and other institutions to convert audio into text and make it searchable.
Kate Greene, MIT's Technology Review, November 26, 2007 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19747/?nlid=686&a=f
Once again, the Lecture Browser link (with video) is at http://web.sls.csail.mit.edu/lectures/
Bob Jensen's search helpers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm

Möbius transformation may be performed by performing a stereographic projection from a plane to a sphere, rotating and moving that sphere to a new arbitrary location and orientation, and performing a stereographic projection back to the plane --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6bius_transformation
Chronicle of Higher Education, December 18, 2007 --- Click Here
Möbius Video

How Jon Stewart got CNN Crossfire's commentators fired
Here's the not-so-funny episode that did it --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE
Harry Frankfurt (Emeritus Princeton University Philosophy Professor) talks about Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-7IW8CxgXY

Jon Stewart on The O'Reilly Factor  --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5pK7sK0i4A

Harry G. Frankfurt : on Bullshit (Emeritus Princeton University Philosophy Professor) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSbI8MtuBN0
Interview with Harry G. Frankfurt --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q_h5ZyjJWA
On Bullshit Part 1 --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1RO93OS0Sk
On Bullshit Part 2 --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp_c8-CfZtg

Garrison Keillor --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrison_Keillor

Free music downloads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm

Bob Jensen listens to music free online (and no commercials) --- http://www.slacker.com/ 

The Irish Blessing for the New Year --- http://www.jessiesweb.com/blessing.htm 
If the sound does not commence after 30 seconds, scroll to the bottom of the page and turn it on.
Then scroll back to the top for the Irish countryside slide show.
Also found at http://www.barb-coolwaters.com/c001/thebend.html
Also see http://www.e-water.net/viewflash.php?flash=irishblessing_en

Proud Russia --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSgqSRtU28M

Classical Music Christmas Around the Country 2007 (and 2005) from NPR --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16932702

Piano Jazz: 2007 Christmas Special (Part 1) --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17214337

Janie Breck forwarded a new Elvis Christmas Page  --- http://mjbreck.com/SharisDesignsElvisLeaveTheLightsOn.html

White Trash Christmas --- http://www.andycouch.com/whitetrashxmas/

Loretta Lynn (the Queen of Country Music) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_Lynn

Canada's jazz pianist legend (truly a legend) Oscar Peterson died December 24, 2007 --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Peterson

Photographs and Art

The New Museum of Contemporary Art --- http://www.newmuseum.org/

National Galleries of Scotland --- http://www.nationalgalleries.org/education

Funny Photographs --- http://blog.impactmt.com/2007/12/what-i-found-in-my-email-mondays-vol1_17.html

Photos on Blogs --- http://technorati.com/photos/

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow --- Click Here

Drawings of People on Subways --- http://www.subway-life.com/

World Wide Arts Resources --- http://wwar.com/masters/v/varo-remedios.html

Visual Dictionary --- http://visual.merriam-webster.com/

Luke Duval Photography (some nudes) --- http://www.lukeduval.com/

Adam Burton Photography --- http://www.adam-burton.co.uk/

Jay Patel Photography --- http://www.jaypatelphotography.com/

Photos by Martin --- http://www.extremeinstability.com/

Artsy Magazine --- http://www.artsymag.com/

Extreme Instability --- http://www.extremeinstability.com/

Digital Durham, NC ---  http://digitaldurham.duke.edu/

 

Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available free on the Web. 
I created a page that summarizes those various links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm

From the University of Pennsylvania
Online Books Page --- http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/

101 Best Websites for Writers --- http://www.writersdigest.com/101sites/2005_index.asp

Online Library of Literature --- http://www.literature.org/

Great Books Index --- http://books.mirror.org/gb.titles.html

Full Text Classics --- http://www.bookspot.com/features/fulltextfeature.htm

Classics Reader --- http://www.classicreader.com/

Harvard Classics Fiction --- http://www.bartleby.com/hc/

Works and Life of T.S. Eliot --- http://www.whatthethundersaid.org/

Literary Quotations --- http://www.literary-quotations.com/e/t_s_eliot.html

Dylan Thomas Poetry --- http://www.dylanthomas.com/

Collected Poetry by Winston Churchill --- http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=463

Collected Poetry by Rudyard Kipling --- http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/kipling_ind.html

Visual Dictionary --- http://visual.merriam-webster.com/

Cool Words --- http://www.ptolus.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?mc_los_121

Common Errors in English --- http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/

Calvin and Hobbes Cartoon (one of my favorites) --- http://www.marcellosendos.ch/comics/ch/index.html

Shoe Cartoon --- http://www.jewishworldreview.com/strips/shoe/shoe.asp

Other Cartoons

Shoe
Andy Capp
Archie
9 to 5
Baloo
Bliss
The Born Loser
Bound and Gagged
Bottom Liners
Flo & Friends
Frank & Ernest
The Grizzwells
Herman
Mallard Filmore
Moderately Confused
Momma
One Big Happy
The Other Coast
Prickly City
State of the Union

A partnership between Stanford University and Cambridge University will make 538 manuscripts spanning the 6th to the 16th centuries available online. The collection, which has been located in the Parker Library at Cambridge's Corpus Christi College since the 16th century, consists mostly of manuscripts from monastic libraries, and includes about a quarter of all surviving early Anglo-Saxon manuscripts --- http://parkerweb.stanford.edu

"Transatlantic partnership puts British library online, spotlighting rescued books," by Cynthia Haven, Stanford Report, November 15, 2007 ---
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2007/november28/parker-112807.html

One of the biggest cultural earthquakes of the 16th century was the dissolution of the English monasteries under King Henry VIII. His motive was simple: He wanted the land and assets. The effects were long lasting and complicated: The Protestant Reformation was irreversibly launched in England, and so was a period of bitter religious strife.

Books were among the first casualties. In the quest for quick cash, the great monastic libraries perished. Their charms were perhaps too subtle for the new men. (The former abbeys and priories that were not left to ruin were sold at a pittance or given outright to royal favorites.)

Said the aptly named John Bale, notorious for his anti-clericalism: "A great number of them which purchased those superstitious mansions, rescued of those library books, some to use in their jakes [i.e., their toilets], some to scour their candlesticks, and some to rub their boots. Some they sold to the grocers and soap-sellers."

These lost books and manuscripts contained much of English history. (Only six of Worcester Priory's 600 books survived intact to the present; only three of 646 volumes from the Augustinian Friars of York.) Many of the earliest Anglo-Saxon manuscripts vanished.

Many, but not all. Some of the monastic treasures are now available to the world, thanks to a partnership between Corpus Christi College (Cambridge), the University of Cambridge and Stanford.

A new website, http://parkerweb.stanford.edu , will eventually include high-resolution images of every page of Corpus Christi's Parker Library. The remarkable collection includes 538 manuscripts spanning the sixth to the 16th centuries. The project is supported by $5.6 million in grants from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The beta version currently online includes about a sixth of the total content that eventually will be available. The project is scheduled for completion in late 2009.

Scholars and students in the pertinent subjects—medieval, Renaissance and early modern studies; art history; paleography; church history; the history of the English language; Anglo-Saxon studies—are invited to use the test site and provide criticism and suggestions to guide revisions and enhancements. Help is available for instructors or institutions using the site for coursework or research. Material will be added to the site periodically.

The library is named for Cambridge-educated Matthew Parker (1504-75), a bibliophile and a shrewd mover-and-shaker of his day. He was a defender of the "New Religion," a master at Corpus Christi and confessor to Anne Boleyn, the siren who fascinated the king so much he was willing to break with Rome for her. Parker lay low during the brief, violent Catholic reign of Mary Tudor, but when Boleyn's daughter, Queen Elizabeth I, assumed power, his star was shining. Elizabeth was famously kind to those who had been good to her ill-fated mother, beheaded in 1536. Parker became Archbishop of Canterbury, a position he held until his death.

He kept busy, supervising the revisions that established the doctrine of the Anglican Church. He organized the translation of the Bible into English, personally translating Genesis, Matthew and some of the Epistles.

He was so busy, in fact, that he became a household word. His supervision of the minutiae of the church became so intrusive, exhausting and tiresome to the clergy that he inspired the sobriquet "Nosy Parker."

Elizabeth mandated her trusted archbishop to rationalize and defend her church. Parker was to build the case that the Protestant Reformation in England was no reformation, but rather a restoration of an English church that had existed from the remote past, separate from Rome. In other words, he was to justify the fait accompli.

And he was in an excellent position to do so. "Parker was more or less the first serious collector of the Reformation, buying and commandeering books with virtually unlimited money and power," said Christopher de Hamel, chief librarian at Corpus Christi.

For Parker, it was a working collection; he used these books himself, copiously annotating them, and did not collect them only for their elegant calligraphy and bindings.

His library, consisting mostly of manuscripts from monastic libraries, includes about a quarter of all surviving manuscripts in Anglo-Saxon. The Parker Library is one of three major library foundations of early England. Sir Thomas Bodley's collection became Oxford's famous Bodleian Library. Sir Robert Bruce Cotton's library, including the renowned Lindisfarne Gospels, became the equally famous British Library.

But, de Hamel said, Parker antedates Bodley and Cotton by a generation: "Parker had the first pickings, acquiring many of the earliest books in English history."

The Parker Library survived the destruction of the Protestant Reformation, but paper and parchment are vulnerable to other kinds of destruction. For example, a 1731 fire destroyed a quarter of the Cotton Library and sent the librarian fleeing the inferno with the Codex Alexandrinus under his arm.

The Parker Library also needed to survive its own inaccessibility. It remained entirely intact but largely untouched in one room at Corpus Christi. To gain entry, according to Andrew Herkovic, director of communications and development for Stanford University Libraries, you had to "be nice, be important, and write in advance."

"The who's who of people denied access is incredible in itself—including Christopher de Hamel," Herkovic added.

Having the Parker Library online means it is universally accessible and virtually indestructible. In 2001, Stanford and Corpus Christi began negotiations for a cyberspace Parker Library. "It may seem an unlikely marriage, but it had an underpinning of logic to it," said John Haeger, the Stanford Libraries' special projects director.

Corpus Christi hired a staff of scholars to do bibliographic work and update and expand the catalog. The University of Cambridge provides "image capture." Stanford provides website development and the post-processing of archival TIFF images.

Beyond that, said Herkovic, "What we brought to the table was a comprehension of what it takes to make a project succeed—from concept to being fundable by a grant agency. We knew about digitization and process—how to roll up our sleeves and get it done."

Continued in article

Parker Library: Printed Books
There are approximately 4,750 books printed before 1820 in the Parker Library, of which around 1,075 are from the collection of Matthew Parker. Between April 2003 and April 2006 these books were recatalogued online by William Hale, Parker-Taylor Bibliographer, in a project generously funded by Dr. John Taylor, an old member of the College ---
http://www.corpus.cam.ac.uk/parker/catalogue/index.php

The collection covers a wide range of subjects, but is unsurprisingly particularly strong in sixteenth century church history and the writings of the Reformers. The new catalogue describes these books for the first time to modern bibliographical standards, with extensive indexing enabling searching by subject, provenance and binder where applicable. A secondary objective of the project was to determine as far as possible which of the books in the collection are from the library of Archbishop Parker and which are from other sources. A list of Parker's printed books was compiled as part of the project, and is now available in the Library; details of other former owners and other material can be found by clicking the links below.

To search the Parker Library catalogue, click here or here http://collan-newton.lib.cam.ac.uk/
I found many links under the term "accounting." Of course most of these cataloged books are not freely online because they are still copyright protected. However, the Google project may one day free these up for online reading --- http://www.corpus.cam.ac.uk/parker/catalogue/index.php

Soon to be the largest scholarly library in the world:
Google Book Search --- http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search

One Million University of Illinois (Free) Books to be Digitized by Google --- http://www.cic.uiuc.edu/programs/CenterForLibraryInitiatives/Archive/PressRelease/LibraryDigitization/index.shtml
Google Digitized Books --- http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search?q=Accounting
For example, key in the word "accounting"
Then try "Accounting for Derivative Financial Instruments"
Then try "Robert E. Jensen" AND "Accounting"

The Million Book Project, an international venture led by Carnegie Mellon University in the United States, Zhejiang University in China, the Indian Institute of Science in India and the Library at Alexandria in Egypt, has completed the digitization of more than 1.5 million books, which are now available online. For the first time since the project was initiated in 2002, all of the books ... are available through a single Web portal of the Universal Library (www.ulib.org), said Gloriana St. Clair, Carnegie Mellon's dean of libraries.
The University of Illinois Issues in Scholarly Communications Blog, November 30, 2007 --- http://www.library.uiuc.edu/blog/scholcomm/

Bob Jensen's links to electronic literature --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm

 

I expect to pass this way but once; any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature. Let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
Etienne Griellet

If we are on a path of getting nowhere fast, technology is allowing us to get nowhere faster and faster.
John Renesch --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Renesch

The Wisconsin Virtual Academy has grown in its four years to about 850 students, all there by choice. The online public charter school gets good results on state tests, equivalent to small-town districts from which it draws students. Parents rave about it.So, naturally, the state's biggest teachers union got a court to order it closed . . . Mind you, nobody says the place does poorly. "They meet the state standard," conceded the state's lawyer — 92% of the students score advanced or proficient in reading. That's beside the point, he told the court. Because parents help when children are stuck or act as an on-hand coach, they're the teachers. Such parents are "unlicensed, untrained, unqualified and, um, adults who are not required to prove competence," the state's lawyer said, though he later said the state wants these incompetent peasants involved in schools anyhow. Maybe they can show up with juice boxes or something.
Patrick McIlheran, "It's Virtual War," New York Sun, December 14, 2007 ---  http://www.nysun.com/article/68078

This solitary voice will open the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, held each year in the chapel of King’s College at Cambridge University. The King’s Festival was first organized in 1918 by the chapel’s then-dean Eric Milner-White, and since the 1930s it has been broadcast annually by BBC radio and its international affiliates.Millions of people now listen every year, and visitors to Cambridge “from all over the world are heard to identify the Chapel as ‘the place where the carols are sung.’ “ . . . The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols is a Christian religious service, of course, and the older colleges of Oxford and Cambridge were all originally Christian religious foundations. But the general social principles that are manifest here — the regularity of the service, its stability and variety, and the way it binds the community together — apply with great generality. And they apply not only to Oxbridge-style colleges founded within other religious traditions (Shalom College at the University of New South Wales and Mandelbaum House at the University of Sydney are Jewish foundations, and the colleges of the Universiti Putra Malaysia follow Islamic traditions), but also to fully secular colleges and universities across the United States and around the world.
Robert J. O'Hara, "‘To Gather From the Air a Live Tradition’ ," Inside Higher Ed, December 26, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/12/21/ohara 
Jensen Comment
Meanwhile in the U.S., public schools are fearful of performing Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol or singing Christmas songs at school events even if these were former annual traditions. King's College at Cambridge in the United Kingdom has no such fear of lawsuits. Also see http://www.nashvillecitypaper.com/~citypaper/news.php?viewStory=18362

Congressman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) is calling for an immediate suspension of the earmarking process after learning that a House Democrat suggested to Speaker Nancy Pelosi that additional earmarks could assist the campaigns of vulnerable Democrats. “Inherently, we understand that this earmark process is not equitable… There are a few examples of where your help could significantly assist a few members in highly contested races,” wrote Rep. Kilpatrick (Rep. Kilpatrick letter to Speaker Pelosi, 12/13/2007). Want to ask Speaker Pelosi whether she believes granting earmarks to re-elect Democrats is ethical and an appropriate use of tax dollars? Give her a ring at 202-225-4965 and ask her.
Brendan Steinhauser, "Liberals admit using earmarks for re-election," Freedom Talks, December 18th, 2007 ---
http://www.freedomtalks.org/2007/12/18/liberals-using-earmarks-for-political-purposes/

Before leaving town, Senate Democrats, led by Majority Leader Harry Reid, Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and Sens. Chris Dodd and Russ Feingold, left a lump of coal (and a stink bomb) in the stockings of the American people when it comes to prevention against terrorist attack. After they failed on Monday failed to block Republican efforts to retroactively bar lawsuits against telephone companies that helped the government monitor suspected jihadist communications after September 11, Mr. Reid pulled from the floor legislation to modernize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the primary law governing the monitoring of electronic communications. Unless Congress acts, on Feb. 1 U.S. intelligence agencies will lose the ability to monitor at least some overseas terrorist telecommunications without first obtaining court approval.
"Sen. Reid's stink bomb," The Washington Times, December 19, 2007 --- Click Here

Ethanol, after all, is hardly an ideal fuel. A two-carbon molecule, it has only two-thirds the energy content of gasoline, which is a mix of long-chain hydrocarbons. Put another way, it would take about a gallon and a half of ethanol to yield the same mileage as a gallon of gasoline. And because ethanol mixes with water, a costly distillation step is required at the end of the fermentation process. What's more, because ethanol is more easily contaminated with water than hydrocarbons are, it can't be shipped in the petroleum pipelines used to cheaply distribute gasoline throughout the United States. Ethanol must be shipped in specialized rail cars (trucks, with their relatively small payloads, are usually far too expensive), adding to the cost of the fuel. So instead of ethanol, the California startups are planning to produce novel hydrocarbons. Like ethanol, the new compounds are fermented from sugars, but they are designed to more closely resemble gasoline, diesel, and even jet fuel. "We took a look at ethanol," says Neil Renninger, senior vice president of development and cofounder of Amyris Biotechnologies in Emeryville, CA, "and realized the limitations and the desire to make something that looked more like conventional fuels. Essentially, we wanted to make hydrocarbons.
David Rotman, "Part III: The Price of Biofuels:  Do we really have any alternative to biofuels?" MIT's Technology Review, January/February 2008 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/19926/?nlid=764

SHELL is to become the first major oil company to produce diesel fuel from marine algae. Algae are a climate-friendly way to make fuel from carbon dioxide. They produce an oil that can readily be converted to diesel, and can be fed CO2 directly from smokestacks. Unlike biofuels such as corn, they don't use up soil or water that could otherwise be used to grow food, which can pump up food prices. The US government abandoned research on algal biofuel in the 1990s because of the low cost of crude oil. But as oil and food prices began to rise, small algal fuel producers sprang up. Shell plans to begin construction on a pilot plant in Hawaii immediately, which it expects will produce 15 times as much oil for a given area as other biofuel crops, thanks to the efficiency of algal photosynthesis.
New Scientist, December 22, 2007 --- Click Here

The United States will offer the moderate Palestinian leadership more than half a billion dollars at Monday's international donors' conference in Paris, a US official said Friday. Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas is seeking a total of 5.6 billion dollars between 2008 and 2010 to help tackle poverty, build a viable Palestinian state and give impetus to a new peace process with Israel. "The US will make a generous contribution," a government official said on condition of anonymity. "The expectation would be 100 million dollars more than last year's context, in the vicinity of 500 million (dollars) plus." The figure would still be subject to approval by the US Congress. The administration of US President George W. Bush had asked Congress to approve 400 million in economic support for Palestinians in the 2007-2008 budget which began on October 1. That amount has not been approved. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will fly Sunday to the donors' conference aimed at supporting Palestinian reform of political, security and economic institutions that would underpin a future Palestinian state.
AFP, December 15, 2007 --- http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jB9nLVrfmY-gq4YrvbKEjER6dx0Q

In 1977, Reagan expressed doubt about the "illegal alien fuss" and suggested that such foreigners were "doing work our own people won't do." In 1986, he signed the immigration reform bill that conservatives now revile as "amnesty." Clearly the party has undergone a transformation since his day. The question is why. It's not just that we have an estimated 12 million foreigners here illegally—the 1984 GOP platform estimated there were 12 million then. Their economic impact hasn't changed: They still mostly take unpleasant, low-wage jobs. The gripe that they don't speak English and don't assimilate has been around a long time. But a quarter century ago, the issue was seen through a different lens. What really changed the party faithful's attitude toward illegal immigrants was something seemingly unrelated: the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War.
Steve Chapman, "Why the Right Shifted on Immigration And how Tancredoism took over," Reason Magazine, December 13, 2007 --- http://www.reason.com/news/show/123922.html 

The 52 senators from the nation's smallest states could command a Senate majority even though they represent only 18 percent of the American population . . . According to the Census Bureau's July 2004 population estimates, the 44 Democratic senators represent 148,026,027 people; the 55 Republican senators 144,765,157. Vermont's Jim Jeffords, an independent who usually votes with the Democrats, represents 310,697. (In these calculations, I evenly divided the population of states with split Senate delegations.) What does majority rule really mean in this context? If the Republicans pushing against the filibuster love majority rule so much, they should propose getting rid of the Senate altogether. But doing so would mean acknowledging what's really going on here: regime change disguised as a narrow rules fight. We could choose to institute a British-style parliamentary system in which majorities get almost everything they want. But advocates of such a radical departure should be honest enough to propose amending the Constitution first.
E. J. Dionne Jr., The Washington Post, March 22, 2007, Page A17 --- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55429-2005Mar21.html

Nicole Kidman has revealed how her Catholic faith helped her through the loss of two babies and the collapse of her marriage to Tom Cruise. Despite spending a decade married to Scientologist Cruise, she says her family faith is "ingrained" in her, and that she turned to her devout father, Anthony, at the time of the break-up.
London Daily Mail, December 22, 2007 --- Click Here
Jensen Comment
I quoted this only to show the irony in Ms. Kidman's starring role in the current atheism movie (Golden Compass) that the author, Phillip Pullman, claims is part of his quest to "kill God." Snopes says this anti-religion theme is true --- http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/compass.asp
The Catholic League condemned her movie "as a pernicious effort to indoctrinate children into anti-Christian beliefs." I guess for Kidman money speaks louder than faith. She claims to be a devout Catholic while accepting money to help steer children away from all religion, especially Catholicism. Have a good day Nicole!

Sen. Patrick Leahy is preventing the Bush administration from requiring passports next year from people crossing the U.S.-Canada border and the U.S.-Mexico border by land.
"Democrat Blocks Passport Requirement at Canada, Mexico Borders," by Susan Jones, CNSNews.com ---
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200712/NAT20071221b.html
Jensen Comment
Leahy seems to side with al Qaeda on every issue proposed by Bush for homeland security. The Vermont Senator's hatred for President Bush is even more visceral than that of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

Which is what makes this Republican presidential contest so striking. It is hard to think of another campaign when Republicans have seemed less excited about their choices. That was the unmistakable lesson of the rapid ascension in recent polls of Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, the latest in a line of Republican flavors of the month. A New York Times/CBS News poll last week found that none of the Republican candidates — not even the suddenly hot Mr. Huckabee — was viewed favorably by even half of Republican voters.
Adam Nagourney, The New York Times, December 16, 2007 --- Click Here

In October of this year, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist signed a pardon for Richard Paey, a paraplegic with multiple sclerosis who had served nearly four years of a 25-year prison sentence for drug trafficking. Paey, who requires high-dose opioid therapy to treat pain brought on by his MS, a car accident, and a botched back surgery, was convicted of trafficking despite concessions from prosecutors that there was no evidence the painkillers in his possession were for anything other than his own use. When police came to arrest the wheel-chair bound Paey, they came with a full-on SWAT team, battering down the door and rushing into the home of the wheelchair-bound Paey, his optometrist wife, and their two schoolage children. Prosecutors offered Paey a plea bargain, but he refused, insisting that he’d done nothing wrong, and that he shouldn’t have to plead guilty to a felony for treating his own pain. Paey was tried, convicted, and given a 25-year mandatory minimum sentence. While in prison, the state of Florida paid for a morphine pump that administered painkillers to Paey at rates higher than what the state convicted him of for possessing in the first place.
Radley Balko, "Richard Paey Speaks:  An interview with the paraplegic man sentenced to 25 years in prison for treating his own pain," Reason Magazine, November 20, 2007 --- http://www.reason.com/news/show/123589.html

What worries state department officials, former national security officials and counterterrorism researchers is that, if attacked, Iran could stage strikes on American or allied interests from Nicaragua, deploying the Iranian terrorist group Hezbollah and Revolutionary Guard operatives already in Latin America. Bellicose threats by Iran's clerical leadership to hit American interests worldwide if attacked, by design or not, heighten the anxiety. "The bottom line is if there is a confrontation with Iran, and Iran gets bombed, I have absolutely no doubt that Iran is going to lash out globally," said John R. Schindler, a veteran former counterintelligence officer and analyst for the National Security Agency. "The Iranians have that ability, particularly from South America. Hezbollah has fronts all over Latin America. That is not new. But it's certainly something we're starting to care about now." American policymakers already had been fretting in recent years over Tehran's successful forging of diplomatic relations, direct air routes and embassy swaps with populist South American governments that abhor the U.S., such as President Hugo Chávez's Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. But Iran's latest move places it just a few porous borders from Texas, where illegal Nicaraguan laborers routinely travel.
Todd Bensman, "Iran making push into Nicaragua," San Antonio Express News, December 16, 2007 --- Click Here 

Come Jan. 1, Massachusetts residents who still haven’t signed up for health insurance will start racking up fines on a monthly basis. Those penalties may be up to half of the monthly premiums for the least expensive health care plan available, although the exact amount of the fines is expected to be announced as soon as this week. That’s on top of the loss of the $219 personal tax exemption for anyone not insured by the end of December. The fines are part of an increasingly more aggressive approach written into the state’s landmark health care law designed to pressure Massachusetts residents into getting insurance. The law, intended to create near-universal coverage in the state, was approved by lawmakers and signed by former Gov. Mitt Romney in 2006. Even those residents who already have insurance will see some changes when they file their taxes this year. Everyone, including those insured through their employers, will be required to fill out a new tax form proving they have insurance to avoid paying penalties. That form — dubbed 1099-HC — will require taxpayers to provide the name of their insurer and their subscriber number. The form will also allow individuals and families to claim an exemption to the law — either for religious or hardship reasons. Those claiming exemptions will be asked to provide supporting information to back up their claim. Those who still refuse to get insurance even after being deemed able to afford it, will see the penalties add up quickly. The monthly premium for the least expensive health care plan — a so-called "bronze level" plan with no prescription drug coverage — for a 37-year-old male living in Boston is $196. Under the law, the penalty for not getting insurance could be up to half that cost — about $98 a month, or $1,176 for the year. The actual penalty will be determined by the Department of Revenue that is charged with coming up with the fine structure.
Boston Herald, December 24, 2007 --- http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1062608&format=text

Belgian police Friday arrested 14 Muslim extremists suspected of planning the jailbreak of an al-Qaida prisoner convicted of plotting a terrorist attack on U.S. air base personnel, officials said. Extra police were deployed across the capital at airports, subway stations and other public places. The U.S. Embassy warned Americans of "a heightened risk of terrorist attack in Brussels," although it had no indication of any American targets.
Raf Casert, Yahoo News, December 21, 2007 --- http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071221/ap_on_re_eu/belgium_terrorism
Also see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7155539.stm
Jensen Comment
All 14 arrested were later released for "lack of evidence" in spite finding explosives and weapons in their homes.

Afghanistan has ordered a top European Union official and a United Nations staffer to leave the country for threatening national security, government and diplomatic officials said Tuesday. The two were declared persona non grata, apparently after allegations they had met with Taliban insurgents, a European diplomat said. The office of President Hamid Karzai had at first announced at a press conference that the two, said to be British and Irish, had been arrested. Spokesman Homayun Hamidzada later told AFP the pair, whom he did not identify, had been asked to leave the country. Another official said that two of their Afghan colleagues had been arrested. "The foreign nationals have been declared persona non grata and their Afghan colleagues have been arrested and are being investigated," Hamidzada said.
Sardar Ahmad, Yahoo News, December 25, 2007 --- http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071225/wl_afp/afghanistanunrestbritaineuun 

The Federal Reserve is especially blameworthy. Starting as early as 2000, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan brushed aside warnings from another Fed governor, Edward M. Gramlich, about subprime lenders who were luring borrowers into risky loans. Mr. Greenspan’s insistence, to this day, that the Fed did not have the power to rein in such lending is nonsense. In 1994, Congress passed a law requiring the Fed to regulate all mortgage lending. The language is crystal clear: the Fed “by regulation or order, shall prohibit acts or practices in connection with A) mortgage loans that the board finds to be unfair, deceptive, or designed to evade the provisions of this section; and B) refinancing of mortgage loans that the board finds to be associated with abusive lending practices, or that are otherwise not in the interest of the borrower.” Yet, the Fed did nothing as junk lending proliferated — including loans that were unsustainable unless house prices rose in perpetuity, riddled with hidden fees and made to borrowers who could not repay. Mr. Greenspan has said that the law was too vague about the meaning of “unfair” and “deceptive” to warrant action.
"A Crisis Long Foretold," The New York Times, December 19, 2007 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/opinion/19wed1.html
Jensen Comment
Greenspan's defense rings hollow in light of the recent actions of the Fed to make mortgage lending less deceptive. Greenspan was always biased toward the financial institutions vis-a-vis accounting transparency and limiting deceptive practice of those institutions.

Hay prices, which have doubled because of the drought, have left some horse owners unable to properly care for their animals. The U.S. Equine Rescue League has been there to help, taking in horses sometimes hundreds of pounds under their ideal weight . . . "More and more people are wanting to surrender their horses because they can't afford to take care of them," said Susan White, the rescue league's lead investigator for equine cruelty in Virginia. "We are getting calls all the time now."
The Washington Times, December 16, 2007 --- http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20071216/METRO/172248005/1004

Virginia Western Community College was hit with a lawsuit filed today by 59 current and former nursing students, who say it never told them its nursing program had lost its national accreditation, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. The students, who say they will have trouble getting jobs with credentials from an unaccredited program, are demanding recompense of $350,000 each, a total of $20,650,000. The Times-Dispatch could not reach any officials at the college for comment because it is on winter break.
Andrew Mytelka, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 20, 2007 ---
http://chronicle.com/news/article/3677/nursing-students-file-21-million-lawsuit-against-2-year-college?at

Margaret Boyes, a spokeswoman for Virginia Western, said the school could not comment on active litigation. She did point out, however, that the school's nursing program is accredited by the Virginia Board of Nursing. Earlier this year, when the some of the students filed notices of possible litigation, Boyes said that NLNAC accreditation -- or the lack of it -- does not affect a student's ability to apply for a job, transfer to another school or take the licensing exam for nurses. Boyes said at the time that students were not notified of the loss of accreditation because the school believed it would have no practical effect on their futures.
Lawrence Hammack, "Students sue college over accreditation," The Roanoke Times, December 21, 2007 ---  http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/144269

Three fatal shootings since Saturday have pushed San Francisco's murder total for the year to the highest level in more than a decade. In the latest killing, a 24-year-old man died after being shot in the city's Hunters Point neighborhood Monday afternoon. That murder follows the fatal shooting Saturday morning of two men who were gunned down in the city's Mission neighborhood.
The Bakersfield Californian, December 18, 2007 --- http://www.bakersfield.com/119/story/313717.html 

Measure H was placed on the November 2005 ballot by the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors, who were frustrated by an alarmingly high number of gun-related homicides in the city of 750,000. The NRA sued a day after 58 percent of voters approved the law. In siding with the gun owners, San Francisco County Superior Court Judge James Warren said a local government cannot ban weapons because the California Legislature allows their sale and possession.
"U.S. Supreme Court To Consider Handgun Bans," Fox Reno, November 27, 2007 --- http://www.foxreno.com/news/14650468/detail.html?rss=reno&psp=news

During 2000--2002, the Task Force on Community Preventive Services (the Task Force), an independent nonfederal task force, conducted a systematic review of scientific evidence regarding the effectiveness of firearms laws in preventing violence, including violent crimes, suicide, and unintentional injury. The following laws were evaluated: bans on specified firearms or ammunition, restrictions on firearm acquisition, waiting periods for firearm acquisition, firearm registration and licensing of firearm owners, "shall issue" concealed weapon carry laws, child access prevention laws, zero tolerance laws for firearms in schools, and combinations of firearms laws. The Task Force found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws or combinations of laws reviewed on violent outcomes. (Note that insufficient evidence to determine effectiveness should not be interpreted as evidence of ineffectiveness.) This report briefly describes how the reviews were conducted, summarizes the Task Force findings, and provides information regarding needs for future research.
"First Reports Evaluating the Effectiveness of Strategies for Preventing Violence: Firearms Laws Findings from the Task Force on Community Preventive Services," U.S. Center for Disease Control, October 3, 2007 --- http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm

The Federal Reserve is due to unveil a plan that would give people taking out home mortgages new protections against unscrupulous lending practices. The rules are designed to protect borrowers from the kind of abusive lending that contributed to the subprime mortgage crisis.
Chris Arnold, NPR, December 18, 2007 --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17344710

The UN's Human Development Index recognizes some of these defects in income accounts, and attempts to correct them by combining percentage changes (or percentage levels) in per capita incomes with percentage changes in life expectancy, and percentage changes in education levels. However, as Posner points out, the weights attached to these different changes (1/3 weight to each) are completely arbitrary. Moreover, there is substantial double counting since much of the value to increased education results from its effects on raising incomes and lower mortality, and these are counted separately.
Nobel Laureate Gary Becker, The Becker-Posner Blog, December 15, 2007 --- http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/

Groucho Marx once asked, "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?" Too bad Groucho doesn't work at either the Federal Reserve or on Wall Street, where economists have been predicting that slower economic growth would lead to a slowdown in inflation. They should have believed their own eyes. As any American who has shopped for groceries or gasoline can tell you, prices are rising. That was confirmed last Friday in the official figures for November, with overall consumer prices jumping 0.8% from a month earlier. That was the largest monthly gain in two years, and 4.3% higher than a year ago. The report for producer prices was equally as alarming a day earlier, rising 3.2%. The producer price index is up 7.7% in the past 12 months, on a seasonally adjusted basis. Some analysts continue to ignore all this and focus on so-called "core" inflation, which excludes food and energy. That is cold comfort to Americans who devote increasingly larger chunks of their monthly budget to -- food and energy. One lesson of the past few years is that relying too much on core inflation data, as the Fed has done until recently, can be a dangerous mistake. We couldn't help but notice that former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, a longtime "core" watcher, was quoted last week as saying it is now a less reliable guide to monetary policy.
"Money Illusions," The Wall Street Journal, December 17, 2007; Page A20 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119786250709733105.html

Between 2005 and 2016, college enrollments are projected to increase by about 17 percent, according to “Projections of Education Statistics to 2016,” an updated version of an annual report, released Tuesday by the Education Department. As has been the case in recent years, the updated data project a national student body that is more female and less white than the current student body. According to the report, female enrollment will increase by 22 percent, compared to 10 percent for men. And among racial and ethnic groups, the projected increases are 8 percent for white students, 29 percent for black students, 45 percent for Latino students, 32 percent for Asian students, and 34 percent for American Indian students.
Inside Higher Ed, December 19, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/12/19/qt

The results turned out to be quite odd. Vermont has one of the most homogenous populations in the country — overwhelmingly white (especially in 1967), with relatively similar levels of poverty and education statewide. Yet medical practice across the state varied enormously, for all kinds of care. In Middlebury, for instance, only 7 percent of children had their tonsils removed. In Morrisville, 70 percent did . . . But here was the stunner: Vermonters who lived in towns with more aggressive care weren’t healthier. They were just getting more health care. Dr. Wennberg would eventually move to Dartmouth and, over the last 30 years, has done versions of his Vermont study for the entire country. Again and again, he has come up with the same broad result. And that result holds the key to health care reform — how to spend less on health care while not making the population any less healthy . . . Dr. Wennberg’s story forms the backbone of “Overtreated,” by Shannon Brownlee, which is my choice for the economics book of the year.
David Leonhardt, The New York Times, December 19, 2007 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/business/19leonhardt.html

Life in southern Israel is unbearable. Since last January, on average, 6.3 mortars and rockets have been fired from Gaza on southern Israel every day. As Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilna'i warned the heads of the communities around Gaza last week, due to the improvements in the Palestinian arsenal since Israel vacated Gaza two years ago, the Palestinians now field missiles and rockets with extended ranges that place 130,000 Israelis under threat of missile attack. Wednesday, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi made clear that if Israel wishes to secure its citizens there is only one thing it can do. It can conquer Gaza.
Caroline B. Glick, "Who's being rational?" Jewish World Review, December 14, 2007 --- http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1207/glick121407.php3

"What Kind of War Are We Fighting, and Can We Win It? A Symposium," by Fouad Ajami, Commentary, Vol. 124 Issue 4, November 2007, pp. 21-43
--- http://www.commentarymagazine.com/

The origins and legitimacy of the Iraq war have been endlessly debated. For me, it is and remains a just and noble war, waged by an American leader who was fated to take on the troubles and malignancies of the Arab-Islamic world. The distinction between the Islamism of al Qaeda and the "secularism" of the Iraqi regime is a distinction without a difference. A road led from Kabul to Baghdad. We took the war from the Afghan front, which the Arab preachers and financiers and jihadists had secured as a base for their operations, to the Arab world itself. In Baghdad, a despot at once cruel and (fortunately) clumsy held out to the Arabs an example of defiance, proof that no price would be paid by those who took on American power. Once we pulled the trigger in 2003, Iraq became the central front in the war on terror. Fail there, and our enemies would have been emboldened beyond measure, and the world would have depicted our failure as evidence that history's tide was running against us.

We have paid dearly in Iraq, but we held the line, we maintained the American position in the region, we supplied proof that we would not scurry for cover and that we believed there were things worth fighting for. The despots in the region feigned a lack of interest in the fate of Saddam's brutal sons, and in Saddam's execution. But make no mistake: these personalistic regimes got the message. There but for the grace of God, they thought, go we. The sacrifices in Iraq paid dividends in Iraq's neighborhood.

WE HAVE DONE reasonably well since 9/11. American memory is unduly short, and the memory of 9/11 is steadily being lost to us. There is a growing conviction that this was a single day of grief, that the warrant given to our government back then by the most liberal of the liberals should now be withdrawn. The vigilance our country sanctioned after 9/11 is now seen as overly intrusive and given to paranoia. But we take the world as it is, and at least some of the illusions held about Arab and Muslim affairs, about the sources and wellsprings of anti-Americanism, have been shed.

I would very much want to see a more critical assessment of the role of Egypt and of Egyptians in the trail that led to 9/11. Here is a country on the American payroll, a regime in the orbit of American power. But Egypt's ruler has snookered us all along. He takes America's coin but rides with its enemies. He has winked at, and fed, a culture suffused with anti-modernism and anti-Americanism — and anti-Semitism, their inevitable companion. The prestige of Egypt in Arab affairs is great, and so is the influence of its radicalism.

Those in the know — and those who pretend to be — have written and spoken about the influence exercised by the Egyptian thinker and pamphleteer Sayyid Qutb (executed by the Nasser regime in 1966) on the course of modern Islamism. This is good as far as it goes. What is needed is a more sustained analysis of the depth of Egyptian radicalism, and of the skill of that despotic regime in directing the wrath of its own thwarted population toward the United States. Beyond this lies the need for a proper response to the Hosni Mubarak regime. We need to cast that regime adrift.

But grant George W. Bush his due: he broke with Scowcroftian realism, he broke with the likes of James Baker. His speech of November 6, 2003, to the National Endowment for Democracy will remain, for decades, a noble American declaration. It had a startling mea culpa:

Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe — because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place for stagnation, resentment, and violence for export.

It was this declaration, and the larger Bush campaign for democracy, that gave heart to the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, which rid that country of a long and cruel Syrian captivity; it was this drive that gave continued justification to the Iraq war after the hunt for weapons of mass destruction there ran aground. The historical truth of Bush's declaration is indisputable. The Bush Doctrine brought about a veritable reversal in the realm of ideas: here was a conservative President asserting that freedom can travel to distant shores, that we can take it to strangers beyond, and here were his liberal critics at home falling back on a surly argument that Iraq, Lebanon, and other Arab and Islamic domains offer insurmountable obstacles to the spread of freedom.

Natan Sharansky is perhaps on the mark with his observation that Bush, in holding onto his belief, is a lonely man even within his own circle of power.

Continued in article

Against all odds, and despite the usual drumbeat of criticism, President George W. Bush has had a very good year. The troop surge in Iraq is succeeding. America remains safe from terrorist attacks. And the Goldilocks economy is outperforming all expectations. At his year-end news conference, President Bush stated with optimism that the economy is fundamentally sound, despite the housing downturn and the sub-prime credit crunch. The very next day, that optimism was reinforced with news of the best consumer spending in two years. The prophets of recessionary doom, such as former Fed chair Alan Greenspan, Republican advisor Martin Feldstein, ex-Democratic Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers, and bond-maven Bill Gross have been proven wrong once again.
Harry Reid Larry Kudlow, "Bush’s Very Good Year," Town Hall, December 21, 2007 --- Click Here

The masters of the mainstream media contended that the campaign in Iraq was "lost." The Associated Press, in a piece headlined "Many U.S. Troops in Iraq Oppose Escalation," baldly stated we were "embroiled in civil warfare between majority Shiite Muslims and Sunni Arabs that no number of American troops can stop." America's newspapers and television screens were full of stories about U.S. and Iraqi casualties, and liberal partisans were demanding that President Bush "bring the troops home -- now!"
Nancy Pelosi Oliver North, Town Hall, December 21, 2007 --- Click Here

As in Iraq, so in Afghanistan: it would be both morally wrong and tactically foolish for the West's politicians to exaggerate temporary gains in the vain hope of stilling the domestic clamour for withdrawal. Voters are not fools, and most already know what the politicians sometimes fear to tell them. “Victory” in George Bush's wars will at most mean preventing catastrophe; and even this modest aim will for years require spending Western lives and money in campaigns that will demand as much attention to the once-reviled business of nation-building as to the use of military force. Fortunately, Western armies are slowly learning how this can be done. As to whether either war is worth the prolonged struggle, that is a question whose answer must depend on the changing costs and benefits. A humiliation in Iraq would batter American prestige and unsettle allies who have staked their security on American power. It would embolden al-Qaeda; but might also extinguish a fire that has drawn new jihadists to the cause. At present, however, the strongest case for America to stay is its duty to prevent an even worse calamity from befalling Iraq's people. That calculation could change, too: at some point the American presence may stoke up more violence than it damps down. But for now the judgment of this newspaper remains that an American withdrawal is more likely to end political bargaining and provoke a free-for-all.
The Economist, December 15, 2007, Page 13 --- http://www.economist.com/

 

 

"This land (the United States) is a paradise not because of its beauty or richness but because of its people, the compassionate, generous Americans who took my family and me in, 32 years ago, and healed our souls, who restore my faith in humanity, and who inspire me to public service. There's a special group of people that I'm especially indebted to and I would like to dedicate this medal to them. They are the 58,000 Americans whose names are on the wall of the Vietnam War Memorial and the 260,000 South Vietnamese soldiers who died in that war in order for people like me to earn a second chance to freedom. May God bless all of those who are willing to die for freedom—especially those who are willing to die for the freedom of others. Thank you."
Anh Duong (See Below)

The Bombs Lady Video --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3tExVuoicQ&feature=related

"Anh Duong, Out Of Debt:  Such are history's caroms—she was involved in the end of the Vietnam War and the beginning of the War on Terror," by George F. Will, Newsweek Magazine, December 17, 2007, Page 84 --- http://www.newsweek.com/id/74457

History, said Emerson, is "the biography of a few stout and earnest persons." But history also is a story of unpredictable contingencies and improbable caroms, and of a 4-foot-7, 15-year-old girl's leap from a dangerously bobbing boat to a pitching South Vietnamese ship in the South China Sea. It was April 1975. The Communists were overrunning South Vietnam. At that time, Osama bin Laden was 18. The arc of his life, and Anh Duong's, would intersect.

Her leap propelled her to freedom. She grew up to be a 5-foot-1 chemist who, 26 years later, led the development of a bomb efficient at killing America's enemies in Afghanistan's caves. As a result, fewer American soldiers have had to enter those caves to engage Osama's fighters. This is Anh Duong's story.

The U.S. Navy took her and her family to Subic Bay in the Philippines. Next stop was a refugee camp in Pennsylvania. After five months this Buddhist family was adopted by the First Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. Soon Anh was in a suburban Maryland high school, headed for the University of Maryland and, eventually, degrees in chemical engineering, computer science and public administration.

Sending U.S. forces into those caves would involve a terrible butcher's bill that might be avoided if a new munition could be developed—a new thermobaric (traveling blast and heat) bomb. At lunch at the Ritz-Carlton hotel near the Pentagon, as she delicately eats a hamburger with a knife and fork, she explains that normal bombs do their work by delivering fragments (to punch through things) and blast (to collapse things). But delivered by an F-15 to the mouth of a cave, a normal bomb's blast and fragmentation dissipate too quickly to reach deep into the cave and kill those hiding there. The task for her and her team was a challenge of detonation chemistry. They had to "deliver energy more slowly—we want the energy to last longer and travel."

The three-year plan for demonstrating a prototype thermo-baric bomb was scrapped, and Anh and her team set about confirming the axiom that America is like a boiler—there is no telling how much energy it will produce once you light a fire under it. "I did not need to motivate my team," she says. Osama had done that. In 67 days their three-year mission was accomplished. BLU-118/B, a thermobaric bomb whose heat and blast persist and penetrate deep into caves, went to war.

Her current mission derives from the peculiar nature of the war against terrorists, in which the first difficult question is, she says, "Who am I aiming the weapon at?" This has become, in Iraq, a matter of high-stakes forensics using a huge biometric database. Whose fingerprints are those on that fragment of an improvised explosive device? She is devising portable labs to answer such questions in Iraq.

Anh is hardly a thermobaric person, a weaponized woman. The Washington Post reports that while she was working on the new bomb, her children, then 5 to 11, were not allowed to play with toy guns or read Harry Potter books, which the parents deemed too violent. Their parents even excised the fight scenes from their Disney "Pocahontas" video.

The trajectory of Anh's life, which has taken her from one of America's wars to another, might eventually involve another generation of her family. The oldest of her four children, a 17-year-old daughter, is considering a career in—this apple did not fall far from the tree—homeland security or international affairs.

"This land is a paradise not because of its beauty or richness but because of its people, the compassionate, generous Americans who took my family and me in, 32 years ago, and healed our souls, who restore my faith in humanity, and who inspire me to public service. There's a special group of people that I'm especially indebted to and I would like to dedicate this medal to them. They are the 58,000 Americans whose names are on the wall of the Vietnam War Memorial and the 260,000 South Vietnamese soldiers who died in that war in order for people like me to earn a second chance to freedom. May God bless all of those who are willing to die for freedom—especially those who are willing to die for the freedom of others. Thank you."

And thank you, Anh Duong. Consider your debt paid in full, with interest.
 

Read the talk and watch the walk

In April 2007 the blog search engine Technorati reported that it was tracking 70 million blogs, with 120,000 new ones arriving every day --- http://technorati.com/weblog/2007/04/328.html
Technorati --- http://technorati.com/

PC World's choices for the Top 100 blogs on June 25, 2007 --- http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,133119/article.html

Search for Blogs (Weblogs) ---  http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#Blogs
Also see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm 

In July 2006, the YouTube revealed that more than 100 million videos were being watched every day on YouTube, and 2.5 billion videos were watched in June 2006. 50,000 videos were being added per day in May 2006, and this increased to 65,000 by July --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube

Potential Roles of ListServs and Blogs
Getting More Than We Give --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm

Question
In terms of the "right to carry" handguns, what are the 40 states that have RTC laws?
What's the status of RTC on college campuses?

Answer
See the map at http://www.nraila.org/images/rtcmaplg.jpg
There were 29 states added since 1989. Actually there are 47 states that allow carrying of handguns but only 40 now qualify to be designated a RTC state.
See http://www.nraila.org//Legislation/Read.aspx?ID=1861

Wisconsin is one of only four states that prohibit citizens from carrying concealed firearms. The other three states are Nebraska, Kansas and Illinois. The Kansas Legislature overwhelmingly passed a Right to Carry Law in 1997 and 2003 but, like Wisconsin’s Legislature, it could not override the Governor’s veto. (Since then Nebraska became a RTC state.)

RTC does not mean that guns can be carried anywhere within a state. Generally court houses, bars, public transportation, K-12 schools, and college campuses are off limits. Details of RTC vary from state to state. RTC does not mean that any adult may carry a handgun. To my knowledge there's no state that does not require licensing and issuing of permits to carry hand guns.

Generally college campuses are off limits to handgun carrying in all 50 states, although there are challenges to this that have become particularly active since the shootings at Virginia Tech. To read more about Utah, Colorado, Texas, and other states read in the term "campus" in the search box at http://www.nraila.org//Legislation/Read.aspx?ID=1861
Personally I think gun toting on college campuses is a bad idea. Even if licensed students were all model adults, the availability of such guns on campus makes it easier for others, perhaps in a rage, to quickly get their hands on a gun. And the definition of a "model adult" is difficult to apply in practice.

Efforts by some cities (e.g., San Francisco and Washington DC)  to ban the possession of hand guns even within the home are still tied up in the courts. The U.S. Supreme Court will soon make an important ruling in the case of Washington DC.

The RTC generally has extreme side effects --- some very good (discouraging sex offenders) and some very bad (killing unarmed car thieves).  Many claims and counter claims are made regarding the impact of RTC on crime prevention ---  http://www.nraila.org/images/rtcmaplg.jpg

The National Rifle Association (NRA) is the most politically active organization in favor of gun ownership and the RTC.

Police associations generally oppose the NRA regarding the RTC --- http://www.napo.org/

Interestingly the highly liberal American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) remains generally neutral on gun control and the Second Amendment --- http://www.aclu.org/police/gen/14523res20020304.html
There are all sorts of complications and interactions, however, with other ACLU action agendas. For example, states banning RTC conflict with ACLU actions to prevent racial profiling. The ACLU fears police might racially profile to detect carrying of weapons.

We all dream of bygone days in England (not the U.S.) when neither criminals nor police carried guns. Gangs and drugs have ruined this even in England. Now the issue is one of drawing lines regarding who is legally permitted to own guns and who is permitted to carry guns and in what circumstances. This will probably remain an emotionally-charged issue with evolving political action and court decisions on where to draw bright lines in legislation.

One thing is certain --- no circumstances are exactly alike in terms of key factors like police protection and crime vulnerability. Moscow and Christ Church, New Zealand are worlds apart. Rio Grande border cities like Laredo versus Madison, Wisconsin are worlds apart. No worldwide RTC law fits all circumstances and all types of weapons. One of the most important factors is the culture of crime. In some parts of the world violent car jackings, kidnappings, serial/gang rapings, serial/gang murders, home invasions and other fearful crimes are relatively rare. Sadly this is not the case in other cultures where RTC becomes more of an issue. It's interesting to note how most high-crime cities in the U.S. are in states that have RTC protections in place in large measure because voters viewed crime in their largest cities as growing out of control and spilling out into the suburbs.  The noteworthy exceptions are Milwaukee and Chicago that lie in states not allowing the RTC. For all practical purposes, NYC and Washington DC also do not have the RTC. Police associations/unions in those particular cities are especially forceful in banning the right to carry arms.

Actually RTCTM legislation may become even more controversial. RTCTM stands for "Right to Carry a Trunk Monkey!"

Should you buy a trunk monkey? --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8avOiTUcD4Y
Also see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYpG5wlq2Ls
Also see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8avOiTUcD4Y
Also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geynA-JYDHE
There are now a bunch of similar videos on YouTube

From Business Week on December 14, 2007
Innovation Predictions 2008
Get ready for … anything. As companies, governments—indeed, entire countries—confront an array of dilemmas, the only constant will be change --- http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/dec2007/id20071213_733494.htm?link_position=link3

And the Big Idea for 2008? Stop competing against your competitors. Your traditional rivals aren't your biggest worry. Disruptive innovation is hitting corporations from outside their business. Verizon was forced to open its cell-phone service because Apple and Google smacked it hard. Verizon's new business model will probably generate 10 times the demand for service. You just never know. That's life, in beta.

Jensen Comment
"Stop competing" is a poor expression if they're truly your competitors. A better statement is that your traditional competitors may not always be your main concern in this dynamic era of innovation, especially innovation from literally any part of the world.

 

Top 25 (most visited) Websites --- Click Here
You can also enter a previously-registered URL to see where it ranks

The 10 Best Websites for 2007 according to Time Magazine, December 24, 2007, Page 79 --- http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1694481,00.html

#1| lemonade.com
Set up a virtual lemonade stand on your Facebook or MySpace page and recommend your favorite products. You make money on every purchase.

#2 | asksunday.com
Hire a social secretary to make dinner reservations and cancel unwanted dates.

#3 | wink.com
Search over 200 million social-networking profiles to find long-lost friends.

#4 | techpresident.com
Track candidates' presence on the Web, and compare how many friends they have on MySpace.

#5 | goodreads.com
Browse book reviews from your trusted network.

#6 | menupages.com
Order takeout from more than 25,000 restaurants in eight cities.

#7 | don'tforgetyourtoothbrush.com
Make a list of items to take on vacation.

#8 | volunteermatch.com
Give back to your community by finding a volunteer position you'd enjoy.

#9 | fatsecret.com
Connect with others who are trying to shed pounds.

#10 | indeed.com
Search for a new vocation across job boards and company employment sites.

The 10 Most Popular Time Magazine Articles in Terms of Email Volume  for 2007 according to Time Magazine,
December 24, 2007 --- http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1694481,00.html

World's Best Websites --- http://www.worldbestwebsites.com/

Jensen Comment
Actually Website rankings are in the eyes of the beholder. Possible criteria include design, links to areas of interest, and content itself on given topics. I generally vote for content (text, audio, video), and interactivity. I always thought that meters that count Website hits are a joke. I know one professor who designed a site that his students are required to visit multiple times per day. Also commercial sites (including Google) are prone click frauds for purposes of getting higher prices for advertising.

"The Wired Campus," Chronicle of Higher Education, December 17, 2007 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2625&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

5 Most Popular Wired Campus Entries of 2007

Here’s what readers of Wired Campus clicked on the most:

1. Walt Mossberg Shows College Leaders His New iPhone — Days before the official release of the iPhone, Walter S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal’s personal-technology columnist, gave attendees at The Chronicle’s Presidents Forum a sneak peek. He noted that the iPhone is just one sign of a major shift of computing away from PCs and into users’ hands through new mobile devices.

2. A MySpace Photo C