The phone number flap

The numbers you dial on your phone are NOT private, and the police or the NSA can get them by just asking. Says who? Why the US Supreme Court, of course, in 1979! See U.S. Supreme Court SMITH v. MARYLAND, 442 U.S. 735 (1979)

David

Good News?

Is there such a thing? Apparently so, as you can read in Bill Crawford on Iraq on National Review Online. I wonder why none of this ever makes World News Tonight? Maybe their computers are down?

Kinsley on double standards

Kinsley in this article - The press's constitutional double standards. By Michael�Kinsley - gives us an example of a liberal writing a thoughtful comment. And I'm not saying this because I happen to agree with most of what he says. Kinsley is making a plea for intellectual consistency from the press - worth a read.

Zarqawi a wienie?

As you can read in this article: US says zooming in on Zarqawi - Yahoo! News:

"[U.S. military spokesman Major-General Rick Lynch] showed brief clips from what he said was an unedited copy of a video Zarqawi released last week, showing the al Qaeda leader wearing American running shoes, struggling to handle a machine gun and handing the weapon to one of his aides, who appears to fumble with it as he grabs the gun's hot muzzle.

In the version Zarqawi posted on the Internet and that aired on television, Zarqawi is seen poring over maps, receiving battle reports and firing bursts from an automatic weapon in a video in which he warned of more attacks.

But at his weekly media briefing, Lynch mocked Zarqawi for wearing sneakers and suggested he was unable to fire a weapon.

'What he didn't show you were the clips that I showed you: wearing New Balance sneakers with his uniform, surrounded by supposedly competent subordinates who grab the hot barrel of a just-fired machine gun, ... a warrior leader, Zarqawi, who doesn't understand how to operate his weapons system."

Wow. I think that's funny - "Hey, Akbar, how do you work this thing?" Zarqawi apparently is more Colonel Klink than an evil military mastermind. Here's hoping this gets the same play as last week's Zarqawi info-mercial. Fat chance.

I'm strangely reminded of John Kerry's posed Vietnam "he-man" films. Did you know he served in Vietnam?

Off the beaten path

I know we don't really do this here, but

YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS SUPERMAN RETURNS TRAILER!!!

Holy. Crap. That. Looks. Awesome.

Gasoline and Milk

Think about what is required to get a gallon of milk to your refrigerator. An animal (a cow) grazes around on grass. Twice a day she gets hooked up to a milking machine. The milk she produces gets stored in a chilled holding tank until it is picked up by a truck. The truck takes it to a processing plant (probably not many miles away) where the milk is stirred briskly (homogenized) and heated (pasteurized) and placed in a plastic jug. The jugs are transported (again usually only a few miles) to your store where they are kept in a refigerator until you buy them.

On the other hand, think about what is required to get a gallon of gas in your tank. Crude oil (which had to be discovered and a well drilled) is pumped from the ground, collected in a tank and transported through a pipeline to a port. It is loaded on a tanker and moved perhaps half way around the world to another port. The crude is then off loaded from the tanker and sent through another pipeline to a refinery where through a series of mystical, dirty and dangerous processes it is reduced in volume by a factor of 10 or so and refined into gasoline. A number of carefully selected additives (manufactured by other complex processes) are added and the gasoline is made ready for one of a number of potential geographic market areas. It is then transported again either by truck or pipeline, usually a long distance, to a terminal where it is loaded into trucks and delivered to a gas station. At the station it is stored in a carefully monitored tank until you put it in your car via an expensive pump loaded with vapor recovery technology and an electronic link to a credit card processor.

So how come the average price of a gallon of fresh milk is about $3.25 and the price of a gallon of gas is about $2.90?

See Retail Milk Prices.

David

White House responds to Biden's dumb plan

The White House responded today to Senator Biden's recent monument to sleep-inducing ignorance - Balkanize Iraq (White House rebuffs Iraqi autonomous regions idea - Yahoo! News).

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the administration remained committed to a unified Iraq."A partition government with regional security forces and a weak central government, as you are referencing, is something that no Iraqi leader has proposed and that the Iraqi people have not supported," he said.

Following the quoted statement, McClellan went on to say "I also feel the Biden is yet again treading into territory where he has little to offer, that is the realm of actual policy being made. I mean, like when he says....(thud)....zzzzz"

Fortunately, tall White House correspondent David Gregory was able to catch McClellan before he struck the floor.

Senator blamed for mass narcolepsy

Americans were shocked across the nation that Sen. Joe Biden had caused a mass attack of sudden sleepiness with his latest announcement (Sen. Biden: Iraq should be divided into 3 regions - Yahoo! News).

"I happened to be sitting at my desk when I happened to read the Senator's statement," said Rob Swartz, a junior analyst at Charles Schwab, "What I found most boring was the Senator's assertion that.....(thud)....zzzz"

Swartz' reaction is apparently typical, as many found that even the recollection of the Senator's statement to cause immediate unconsciousness.

"It's just that, you know, he doesn't have anything even remotely interesting to say, like when he says....(thud)....zzzzz," said Florita Hernandez, a patent attorney from Washington, D.C.

"I'm just glad that the radio stations still refuse to play clips of him," said Brad James, a truck driver from Trenton, NJ. "I mean, if I was heading down the road and heard the Senator start to talk about Iraq....(thud).....zzzz."

Fortunately, most americans are smart enough to not even read most stories involving the Senator. Most are shocked that a noted plagiarist would not steal something more interesting.

Like the time that the senator....

(thud)


zzzzzz.