Why isn’t this terrorist attack on US soil all over CNN, Fox, etc?

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At a LexisNexis conference on DRM this week, MPAA boss Dan Glickman said the movie studios were now fully committed to interoperable DRM, and they recognize that consumers should be able to use legitimate video material on any item in the house, including home networks. In a major shift for the industry, Glickman also announced a plan to let consumers rip DVDs for use on home media servers and iPods.

[..]

Speaking to Ars after the speech, Glickman acknowledged that the plan was still in the early stages. I asked him specifically about DVDs, which are currently illegal to rip under the DMCA, and how the law would square with his vision of allowing consumers to use such content on iPods and other devices. “You notice that I said ‘legally’ and in a protected way,” Glickman responded, suggesting that some form of DRM would still be required before the studios would sign off on such a plan. He noted, however, that no specific plans have been made.

So they realize they have a problem, know what the answer is, but still cling to DRM. I’m reminded of some river in Egypt…

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Jack Valenti, the urbane Washington lobbyist who served as Hollywood’s public face for nearly four decades and was best known for creating the film rating system, died this afternoon, according to Warren Cowan, his longtime friend and publicist for the MPAA. He was 85.

Valenti had been in ill health since suffering a stroke in March. He was treated several weeks at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore but was released Tuesday and returned to his home in Washington, where he died.

For 38 years until retiring in 2004, Valenti headed the Motion Picture Assn. of America, guiding the trade organization from a clubby group of movie studios led by autocratic moguls into a collection of global media conglomerates involved in television, the Internet and an array of other media businesses.

To the moviegoing public, however, Valenti’s legacy will always be the ratings system he fathered in 1968, which now labels movies G, PG, PG-13, R or NC-17. Valenti defended it for years against attacks by critics. Today, it remains largely intact as the self-policing vehicle he envisioned.

“It’s the end of an era,” said industry veteran Sherry Lansing, former Paramount Pictures chairwoman.

Let’s hope so – it’s time we got rid of the piracy-is-killing-our-business mentality he pioneered as well.

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Young people prefer to download film and music illegally because they don’t think that the biz is capable of giving bang for their buck.

An Edelman survey claims that more than a quarter of 18- to 34-year-olds in the U.K. and France would download film and music content illegally due to a lack of trust in the entertainment industry.

While technology companies rated highest in Edelman’s report on levels of consumer trust among opinion elites, defined as educated, affluent and media informed, in France and the U.K., media and entertainment companies ranked behind only insurance companies in terms of the public’s distrust. That distrust helps fuel piracy, argues the report.

Some 41% of 18- to 34-year-olds in the U.K. did not trust entertainment companies to provide them with value for money, compared with an even higher figure of 54% in France. In the U.K., 35% of those asked did not think entertainment companies respected the rights of people who pay for digital entertainment, with that figure rising to 46% in France.

You reap what you sow. If the industry doesn’t trust the customer and uses DRM against them, the customer will have no reason to trust the industry.

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In the wake of Monday’s massacre at Virginia Tech in which a student killed 32 people, Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg has limited the use of stage weapons in theatrical productions.

Students involved in this weekend’s production of “Red Noses” said they first learned of the new rules on Thursday morning, the same day the show was slated to open. They were subsequently forced to alter many of the scenes by swapping more realistic-looking stage swords for wooden ones, a change that many students said was neither a necessary nor a useful response to the tragedy at Virginia Tech.

Guess what a little publicity can do:

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Stage weapons will again be allowed in University theatrical productions, in a reversal of last week’s ban, Yale spokeswoman Helaine Klasky said Tuesday morning.

[..]

But over the weekend, Trachtenberg, who is retiring at the end of the academic year, said student criticism of the stage weapons ban had been exaggerated.

“I think people should start thinking about other people rather than trying to feel sorry for themselves and thinking that the administration is trying to thwart their creativity,” Trachtenberg said. “They’re not using their own intelligence. … We have to think of the people who might be affected by seeing real-life weapons.”

And you, Trachtenberg, have yet to show the first glimmer of common sense.

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Because of my recycling, the bomb squad came, then the state police. Because of my recycling, buildings were evacuated, classes were canceled, the campus was closed. No. Not because of my recycling. Because of my dark body. No. Not even that. Because of his fear. Because of the way he saw me. Because of the culture of fear, mistrust, hatred and suspicion that is carefully cultivated in the media, by the government, by people who claim to want to keep us “safe.”

These are the days of orange alerts, school lock-downs, and endless war. We are preparing for it, training for it, looking for it, and so, of course, in the most innocuous instances — a professor wanting to hurry home, hefting his box of discarded poetry — we find it.

That man in the parking lot didn’t even see me. He saw my darkness. He saw my Middle Eastern descent. This is ironic because though my grandfathers came from Egypt, I am Indian, a South Asian, and could never be mistaken for a Middle Eastern man by anyone who had ever met one.

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n the latest sign that Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system may be destined for less than overwhelming commercial success, a new InformationWeek survey has found that nearly one third of businesses do not plan on upgrading their computers to the much-hyped software.

Tech professionals at the businesses surveyed were asked the following question: “When, if ever, does your company plan to purchase and install Windows Vista?”

One quarter of the 612 survey respondents said they were already using the new OS; 13% said they would do so in the next 12 months, while 27% said their companies would adopt Windows Vista more than one year from now.

But in what will surely be viewed as disappointing news at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, WA, a full 30% of those surveyed said they had no plans to upgrade their systems to Windows Vista — not ever.

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Transcript of House Resolution 333, followed by the transcript of Rep. Kucinich’s news conference yesterday. Offered for information purposes only. UPDATE, Kucinich’s supporting documents

HRES 333 IH
110th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. RES. 333

Impeaching Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

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Pupils are being discouraged from taking A-level maths as schools in England chase higher places in the league tables, scientists have claimed.

The Royal Society of Chemistry said that as maths was a difficult subject, schools feared examination failures which would threaten their standings.

Chief executive Richard Pike also said universities were increasingly having to run remedial classes in maths.

What else would you expect when you give schools this kind of targets?

Give a hospital a target like “the number of wheelchairs in use must be lower than X” and they’ll take the wheels off of chairs to reach the target.

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Last week, a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee held a hearing on the Bush administration’s practice of extraordinary rendition, whereby hundreds of “terror suspects who had never been indicted for any crimes” have been abducted and flown to either secret agency prisons or to foreign countries such as Egypt or Syria where they are tortured.

Throughout the hearing, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) aggressively defended the U.S. rendition program and attacked the witnesses, three members of the European parliament, who testified that rendition actually hinders prosecutions of terrorists.

Rohrabacher told the witnesses that Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann would still be alive if they were in charge. He said the witnesses were free to doubt the motives of U.S. rendition since “I know there’s a lot of people who hate America.”

At one point, Rohrabacher argued that imprisoning and torturing one innocent person was a fair price to pay for locking up 50 terrorists who would “go out and plant a bomb…and kill 20,000 people.” When members of the audience groaned, Rohrabacher said, “Well, I hope it’s your families, I hope it’s your families that suffer the consequences.”

[..]

One member of the audience was Army Col. Ann Wright, who served 13 years on active duty and 16 years in the U.S. Army Reserves. “After 16 years in the US diplomatic corps, she resigned in March 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq.” Wright rose to protest Rohrabacher’s remarks but was quickly removed from the hearing room. You can read her account of the experience HERE.

Let’s test his resolve. Fly him out of the country and see if he knows anything… or changes his mind about torture… and I wonder if the reverse also works… Like if somebody figures that if somebody in the US administration is making plans that would lead to the slaughter tens of thousands of civilians in their country, is it ok for them to abduct 100 Americans with 90% success rate in getting Americans who may be involved?

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An early-morning German bank customer had a bit of a shock when he found a horse already in line at the automatic teller machine in front of him. It seems the horse’s owner, identified only as Wolfgang H., had a bit too much to drink the night before and decided to sleep it off inside the bank’s heated foyer, police said Tuesday.

The 40-year-old machinist told Bild newspaper he had had “a few beers” with a friend in Wiesenburg, southwest of Berlin, and decided to hit the hay in the bank on his way home.

“It was late, it was already dark and cold,” he was quoted as saying.

Confronted with the lack of a hitching-post, he brought the 6-year-old horse, named Sammy, in along with him.

When a customer came across the horse and sleeping rider in the bank at 4:15 a.m. Monday, he called police, who then came and woke the owner up and sent him on his way.

No charges were filed, but there might be some cleanup needed: Apparently Sammy made his own after-hours deposit on the carpet.

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De SGP vindt het boekje ‘Ontsnapt uit de dode hoek’ van Paul van Loon, door het ministerie van Verkeer en Waterstaat op basisscholen uitgedeeld, ongeschikt voor kinderen. Volgens Tweede Kamerlid Kees van der Staaij is het onnodig angstaanjagend en pedagogisch onverantwoord.

In vragen aan verkeersminister Eurlings beschrijft hij taferelen “waarbij een duivel (Ferluci) is gericht op het verzamelen van aangereden ‘kinderzieltjes’ die vervolgens met een ‘griezelbus’ naar de helse verblijfplaats van de ‘Zielenverzamelaar’ worden gebracht.”

Hij wil weten in hoeverre een pedagogische toets op het boekje is uitgevoerd. Volgens hem hebben christelijke scholen bovendien veel moeite met de duidelijke toespelingen op de duivel en de hel.

Zij werken volgens hem dan ook niet mee aan de verspreiding van het boekje dat volgens het ministerie op speelse manier ingaat op de gevaren van de dode hoek, het gebied rondom vrachtwagens dat niet via spiegels te zien is voor chauffeurs.

Van der Staaij wil juist dat fietsende schaapjes onbevangen en onbevlekt onder de wielen van een tientonner tot de Heere kunnen komen. Amen!

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Here we go again. Congress has decided it needs to protect us from spyware, but – surprise, surprise – the bill they are most seriously considering actually offers no help in that regard. What’s worse, the bill seems designed to make it harder for you to legally go after those who spy on you, particularly if they are doing so to determine if you’re authorized to use a software product.

Last week a subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce approved H.R. 964, the Spy Act, which bans some of the more blatant forms of spyware such as those that hijack computer or log keystrokes. The bill now goes to the full committee for approval, and it’s expected to move quickly as it has strong bipartisan support.

But why? There are already plenty of federal and state laws regarding computer fraud, trespass, and deceptive trade practices that make spyware illegal. The existing laws have been sufficient to allow the FTC and/or state attorneys general to even successfully go after some of the nastier adware companies like Direct Revenue and Zango/180 Solutions. So what is the purpose of this law?

A clue can be found in the Limitations section of the Act, which features this rather broad exception:

Exception Relating to Security- Nothing in this Act shall apply to–

(1) any monitoring of, or interaction with, a subscriber’s Internet or other network connection or service, or a protected computer, by a telecommunications carrier, cable operator, computer hardware or software provider, or provider of information service or interactive computer service, to the extent that such monitoring or interaction is for network or computer security purposes, diagnostics, technical support, or repair, or for the detection or prevention of fraudulent activities; or

(2) a discrete interaction with a protected computer by a provider of computer software solely to determine whether the user of the computer is authorized to use such software, that occurs upon — (A) initialization of the software; or (B) an affirmative request by the owner or authorized user for an update of, addition to, or technical service for, the software.

In other words, it’s perfectly OK for basically any vendor you do business with, or maybe thinks you do business with them for that matter, to use any of the deceptive practices the bill prohibits to load spyware on your computer. The company doesn’t have to give you notice and it can collect whatever information it thinks necessary to make sure there’s no funny business going on. And by the way, another exception provision specifically protects computer manufacturers from any liability for spyware they load on your computer before they send it to you. Of course, the exception for software companies checking to make sure you’re an authorized user is the strongest evidence of what this bill is all about. After all, in terms of function, there’s not much difference between spyware and DRM. Too bad for Sony this bill wasn’t already the law when its rootkit-infected CDs came to light.

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Astronomers have discovered the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date, an exoplanet with a radius only 50% larger than the Earth and capable of having liquid water. Using the ESO 3.6-m telescope, a team of Swiss, French and Portuguese scientists discovered a super-Earth about 5 times the mass of the Earth that orbits a red dwarf, already known to harbour a Neptune-mass planet. The astronomers have also strong evidence for the presence of a third planet with a mass about 8 Earth masses.

This exoplanet – as astronomers call planets around a star other than the Sun – is the smallest ever found up to now and it completes a full orbit in 13 days. It is 14 times closer to its star than the Earth is from the Sun. However, given that its host star, the red dwarf Gliese 581, is smaller and colder than the Sun – and thus less luminous – the planet nevertheless lies in the habitable zone, the region around a star where water could be liquid! The planet’s name is Gliese 581 c.

[..]

The host star, Gliese 581, is among the 100 closest stars to us, located only 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra (“the Scales”). It has a mass of only one third the mass of the Sun. Such red dwarfs are intrinsically at least 50 times fainter than the Sun and are the most common stars in our Galaxy: among the 100 closest stars to the Sun, 80 belong to this class.

Hi-res imaging of the planet shows that there’s already three Starbucks stores, a bridge project sponsored by Ted Stephens, and fourteen RIAA lawyers looking for copyright infringers. In other words, it is devoid of life, culture and civilization.

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The current French presidential election provides rich material for RISKS, in particular many stories related to the somewhat botched introduction of voting machines. Here is a report on the Web consequences, as seen by one “Internaute”, of today’s (22 April 2007) first round of balloting.

French law prohibits any publication of estimates in the last two days and until the closing of the polls at 8 PM; in recent years it was extended to cover the Internet. Partly because penalties for breaking the ban are serious, and partly because the rule enjoys broad support, no reputable French Web site was tempted to publish any estimate before the deadline (although lemonde.fr reported at 18:46 that the mood at one of the principal candidate’s headquarters was “not ebullient”, a rather blatant giveaway). Neither was it easy to find a list of links to the sites of foreign news media, to which the rule cannot apply.

Several of these foreign sites, especially those of French-language papers in Belgium and Switzerland, had announced that they would start giving out estimates at 6 PM, when exit polls provide a credible picture. *La Libre Belgique*, for example, explicitly invited Web readers to come at 6.

Starting in the afternoon, most of these sites (*La Libre Belgique*, *Le Soir* from Brussels, *Le Matin* from Lausanne…) were, for me at least, impossible to reach; they were timing out. It looked like all of wired France (Internet penetration per Nielsen: 50.3% in late 2006) was trying to access them, and either the servers or the bandwidth couldn’t follow. Long into the evening I still couldn’t reach lalibre.be.

I got my first taste of the results around 6:30 through an Italian site, *Corriere della Sera*; other Italian newspapers such as *La Repubblica* had estimates shortly thereafter. One of these reports pointed to Swiss French-speaking TV (I hadn’t checked tsr.ch earlier but it was working properly when I did). The Swiss German-language newspaper sites (NZZ, *Tagesanzeiger*) published the estimates a few minutes later. In stark contrast with foreign French-language sites, none of the non-French-language sites showed any sign of stress.

At some point in the afternoon someone at *Le Temps* (Geneva), whose site had been slow but reachable, had the good sense to replace the site’s usual home page — with the usual combination of ads, photographs, cartoons, links, tables, CSS and other complicated layout — by a text-only page entirely devoted to a concise report about the French election, with a note that traffic was unusually high and that the normal page would be restored later. As a result one could find estimates there too. Le Soir eventually did the same.

If this experience is representative, it would seem that the infrastructure for many newspapers’ online editions isn’t ready to withstand a steep surge in visits. True, today’s situation was exceptional because of the news blackout about an event that has generated considerable passion (the turnout was the highest ever, and the outcome was hard to predict) in a large country whose language is spoken by much smaller neighboring communities. Scaling up a site to accommodate millions of foreign visitors on a couple of afternoons every few years probably doesn’t sound like an attractive investment; it is unlikely to yield many new advertisers or subscribers. Still, one can wonder about the effect on these sites of the next major news event.

It is surprising to see how few sites had *Le Temps*’s reaction of providing a pared-down, text-only version of the site with the key information that visitors are seeking. Granted, such sites are there to sell advertisements, not provide a public service; but a site that no one can access doesn’t do much for advertisers or anyone else. It seems that other media sites didn’t have any contingency planning, or didn’t even realize what was going on.

The second round, of only two candidates, is two weeks from now, with the same law in force and presumably even higher stress and eagerness to know. It’s going to be interesting to see if the sites are better prepared this time.

One site, cnn.com, was as usual available all the time without any delay; until shortly before 8 all that one could find on the home page was a link to older material about the campaign. The text of the link was expressing a world philosophy more eloquently than many a long speech: “French polls open; candidates differ on U.S.”.

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Sprint Nextel recently lowered online music prices and introduced a feature-rich but low-priced music phone. Verizon Wireless is allowing potential subscribers to try its network for free for 30 days. Phone vendors are announcing a steady stream of flashy music phones such as the Samsung Ultra Smart F700 and LG’s Prada.

Many believe there’s one reason for this burst of activity: the iPhone. Few have seen Apple’s forthcoming phone/media player, which AT&T/Cingular says it will release in June, but it has been the topic of frantic, sometimes fanatical online discussion. And other cellular operators appear to be busily preparing themselves for its release.

Another word, loyalty, sums up the reasons for the strong response from AT&T’s competitors. Some analysts say that AT&T is attempting to use iPhone to radically change the loyalties of cellular subscribers. These analysts note that, while most subscribers aren’t very loyal to their cellular operator, many people are fiercely loyal to Apple and its iPod media players.

“We did a survey and we found … carrier loyalty wasn’t a big issue. People aren’t that loyal,” said Miro Kazakoff, director of the wireless practice for market research firm Compete. “So [AT&T] is trying to transfer loyalty to the device, not the carrier.”

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Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.

They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy – but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.

Read the entire thing for an explanation of the 10 steps:

1 Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy

2 Create a gulag

3 Develop a thug caste

4 Set up an internal surveillance system

5 Harass citizens’ groups

6 Engage in arbitrary detention and release

7 Target key individuals

8 Control the press

9 Dissent equals treason

10 Suspend the rule of law

939 more great kitty pictures

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Bill and Georgia Thomas reported they were elated Monday when they met in the Oval Office with President George W. Bush to present him with a Purple Heart.

“We were just absolutely bowled over. Without reservation, it was one of the highlights of our life. He was such a gracious host,” Thomas said. “It was just an incredible, incredible experience.”

The couple was able to meet with President Bush for about 20 minutes to present him with one of three Purple Hearts that Bill Thomas received during his service in Vietnam.

“He said he didn’t feel like he had earned it,” Thomas said, noting the president looked thinner in person than on television.

The Thomases also were able to meet Barney, the president’s Scottish terrier, and tour the White House Rose Garden.

Thomas said he and his wife came up with the unprecedented idea to present the president with the Purple Heart over breakfast one morning a few months ago as they discussed the verbal attacks, both foreign and domestic, the commander in chief has withstood during his time in office.

“We feel like emotional wounds and scars are as hard to carry as physical wounds,” Thomas said.

Well, while we’re at it, why not give him the Noble fucking Peace Prize? Amazing, isn’t it, that there are people out there who think this failure of a President is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

And you know what? It’s actually impossible to give anybody the Purple Heart right now:

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The Purple Heart is awarded in the name of the President of the United States to any member of an Armed Force or any civilian national of the United States who, while serving under competent authority in any capacity with one of the U.S. Armed Services after 5 April 1917, has been wounded or killed, or who has died or may hereafter die after being wounded-

The ultimate in Bizarro-world Bush Era weirdness: the President accepting the gift of a military honor from a veteran that can only be awarded in the name of the President.

I really wonder what future generations are going to say looking back on these eight years.

On the upside, getting a medal in this administration is usually the signal that you are about to lose your job.

So, as a counterpoint, I present you this.

No, wait, that won’t do. It deserves to be quoted in full:

I’m having the worst damn week of my whole damn life so I’m going to write this while I’m pissed off enough to do it right.

I am SICK of all this bullshit people are writing about the Iraq war. I am abso-fucking-lutely sick to death of it. What the fuck do most of you know about it? You watch it on TV and read the commentaries in the newspaper or Newsweek or whatever god damn yuppie news rag you subscribe to and think you’re all such fucking experts that you can scream at each other like five year old about whether you’re right or not. Let me tell you something: unless you’ve been there, you don’t know a god damn thing about it. It you haven’t been shot at in that fucking hell hole, SHUT THE FUCK UP!

How do I dare say this to you moronic war supporters who are “Supporting our Troops” and waving the flag and all that happy horse shit? I’ll tell you why. I’m a Marine and I served my tour in Iraq. My husband, also a Marine, served several. I left the service six months ago because I got pregnant while he was home on leave and three days ago I get a visit from two men in uniform who hand me a letter and tell me my husband died in that fucking festering sand-pit. He should have been home a month ago but they extended his tour and now he’s coming home in a box.

You fuckers and that god-damn lying sack of shit they call a president are the reason my husband will never see his baby and my kid will never meet his dad.

And you know what the most fucked up thing about this Iraq shit is? They don’t want us there. They’re not happy we came and they want us out NOW. We fucked up their lives even worse than they already were and they’re pissed off. We didn’t help them and we’re not helping them now. That’s what our soldiers are dying for.

Oh while I’m good and worked up, the government doesn’t even have the decency to help out the soldiers whos lives they ruined. If you really believe the military and the government had no idea the veterans’ hospitals were so fucked up, you are a god-damn retard. They don’t care about us. We’re disposable. We’re numbers on a page and they’d rather forget we exist so they don’t have to be reminded about the families and lives they ruined while they’re sipping their cocktails at another fund raiser dinner. If they were really concerned about supporting the troops, they’d bring them home so their families wouldn’t have to cry at a graveside and explain to their children why mommy or daddy isn’t coming home. Because you can’t explain it. We’re not fighting for our country, we’re not fighting for the good of Iraq’s people, we’re fighting for Bush’s personal agenda. Patriotism my ass. You know what? My dad served in Vietnam and NOTHING HAS CHANGED.

So I’m pissed. I’m beyond pissed. And I’m going to go to my husband funeral and recieve that flag and hang it up on the wall for my baby to see when he’s older. But I’m not going to tell him that his father died for the stupidty of the American government. I’m going to tell him that his father was a hero and the best man I ever met and that he loved his country enough to die for it, because that’s all true and nothing will be solved by telling my son that his father was sent to die by people who didn’t care about him at all.

Fuck you, war supporters, George W. Bush, and all the god damn mother fuckers who made the war possible. I hope you burn in hell.

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A few years ago, an obesity researcher at the University of Washington named Adam Drewnowski ventured into the supermarket to solve a mystery. He wanted to figure out why it is that the most reliable predictor of obesity in America today is a person’s wealth. For most of history, after all, the poor have typically suffered from a shortage of calories, not a surfeit. So how is it that today the people with the least amount of money to spend on food are the ones most likely to be overweight?

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For the answer, you need look no farther than the farm bill. This resolutely unglamorous and head-hurtingly complicated piece of legislation, which comes around roughly every five years and is about to do so again, sets the rules for the American food system — indeed, to a considerable extent, for the world’s food system. Among other things, it determines which crops will be subsidized and which will not, and in the case of the carrot and the Twinkie, the farm bill as currently written offers a lot more support to the cake than to the root. Like most processed foods, the Twinkie is basically a clever arrangement of carbohydrates and fats teased out of corn, soybeans and wheat — three of the five commodity crops that the farm bill supports, to the tune of some $25 billion a year.

[..]

That’s because the current farm bill helps commodity farmers by cutting them a check based on how many bushels they can grow, rather than, say, by supporting prices and limiting production, as farm bills once did. The result? A food system awash in added sugars (derived from corn) and added fats (derived mainly from soy), as well as dirt-cheap meat and milk (derived from both). By comparison, the farm bill does almost nothing to support farmers growing fresh produce. A result of these policy choices is on stark display in your supermarket, where the real price of fruits and vegetables between 1985 and 2000 increased by nearly 40 percent while the real price of soft drinks (a k a liquid corn) declined by 23 percent. The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow.

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Aussie TV show The Chaser performed an experiment to see what happens if you try to video the the Sydney Harbor Bridge and a nuclear reactor that produces medical isotopes. If you do it dressed like an Arab, you get intercepted by security within three minutes.

If you do it dressed like an American, you get instructions on getting inside the nuclear facility. As Bruce Schneier notes, “Moral for terrorists: dress like an American.”