Boeing edges toward launching an enlarged 747 to compete with the Airbus 380:

EVERETT - Package carrier UPS has ordered eight 747-400 freighters from the Boeing Co., a deal that further solidifies the future of the 747 line in Everett.

It's the largest 747 order for Boeing since China Airlines of Taiwan ordered 13 jumbo jets in August 1999.

The UPS deal, combined with a six-jet deal announced in July, "pretty much seals the deal for the 747 Advanced, I'd think," said Teal Group analyst Richard Aboulafia.

Biologists want to kinda, sorta recreate the Pleistocene era in North America:

Today, Africa's large mammals are dying while the human population of the Great Plains is declining, they write. So why not restock with the cousins many-times removed of the very same animals our ancestors hunted into extinction so long ago?

This is an exceedingly silly idea. They'll probably do it.

via Fark.

Let simmer until well done:

Karl Marx wasn't right about much. But one thing he did get right is the social dynamic leading to political revolution. Genuine revolutions, Marx noted, do not take place in a friendly environment amenable to gradual and piecemeal reform. They are the result of widespread dissatisfaction so strongly suppressed that it eventually erupts, like an overblown balloon, in acts of revolutionary violence and fervor.

In a wonderful historical twist, this piece of Marxist-Leninist wisdom may be the key to the undoing of the Iranian theocracy. But to make it so, the US must play it clever and ignore the Iranian government's repeated provocations.

Because provocations they are. The Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his cohorts know full well that the only way to maintain and tighten their grip on the Iranian populace is to provoke the US and its Western allies into confrontation. Once that happens, wide support for the new national cause drowns domestic concerns about the totalitarian regime.

The Iranian people are by and large friendly to -- to some extent even admiring of -- the United States. Iran has a large and well educated middle class with an unabashed entrepreneurial spirit and economic vested interest in a stable middle east. This is why Iran does not produce terrorism so much as sponsor it abroad: although Hezbollah and its likes get much of their financial and organizational support from Tehran, Iranian citizens are rarely involved in terrorist acts.

This might work, until such time as Iran actually tests a nuclear bomb. Then it will be too late.

National Review reports an exchange on The Today Show where Matt Lauer gets slapped upside the head:

LAUER: Don't get me wrong, I think you're probably telling the truth, but there might be a lot of people at home wondering how that might be possible with the conditions you're facing and with the insurgent attacks you're facing... What would you say to people who doubt that morale could be that high?

CAPTAIN SHERMAN POWELL: Well sir, I'd tell you, if I got my news from the newspapers I'd be pretty depressed as well.

Emphasis mine.

Via Instapundit.

Survey finds many Mexicans would move to the U.S. if they could:

In the survey of 1,200 Mexican adults, conducted in May by the Washington-based Pew Hispanic Center, 46 percent said they would like to live in the United States if they had the opportunity. Among college graduates, 35 percent said they would head north.
. . . According to the (Mexican Government's) Population Council, 400,000 Mexicans, or less than 0.4 percent of the population, migrate to the United States every year. About 75 percent of these people enter the United States illegally, the council says. In July, the CIA estimated Mexico's population at 106 million.
. . . Many Mexican politicians hoped NAFTA, which went into effect in 1994, would raise wages.

But stiff competition from China, and a long-running depression in the Mexican agriculture sector, have kept unemployment high and wages low, said Monica Gambrill, an expert on the agreement at Mexico's National Autonomous University.

Once again, the question comes up: What is so special about the American model that half of the population of a neighboring country would up and move if they had the opportunity? I think the answer is in the combination of political and economic freedom which is unique in the world's history. The two feed off of each other to create the dynamic American way of life. Other countries, other systems restrict political or economic freedoms in a way which is corrosive to those countries' success. Even such "advanced" European countries like France and Germany have overlayed a stifling welfare state over their economies leading to their relative undesirability. No other country in the world was started with the premise that it is the government which must be restrained, not the people.

This is why issues like the Kelo decision are so important. Government Must Be Restrained.

Kansas 15-year-old girl kills herself with a bicycle chain:

Tami Radohl, a Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center counselor at Southwest Junior High School in Lawrence, said the behavior is not uncommon.

"This is going on in every junior high in Lawrence," Radohl said.

Usually, the game involves one person causing another to pass out and, seconds later, reviving the unconscious peer.

The behavior is not uncommon?!? I realize that all teenagers are stupid, but this . . . words fail me.

Virginia shoppers go bonkers for four-year-old Apple laptops on sale for $50/each:

"It's rather strange that we would have such a tremendous response for the purchase of a laptop computer -- and laptop computers that probably have less-than-desirable attributes," said Paul Proto, director of general services for Henrico County. "But I think that people tend to get caught up in the excitement of the event -- it almost has an entertainment value."

Blandine Alexander, 33, said one woman standing in front of her was so desperate to retain her place in line that she urinated on herself.

Had I been processing information properly this past weekend, I'd have noticed that SANS had moved their "Infocon" threat level to Yellow from the normal "Green" due to the MS05-039 (PnP) vulnerability:

We moved to 'Yellow' on Friday, after we did see a number of exploits released for last weeks Microsoft Windows vulnerabilities, in particular MS05-039 (PnP) which is exploitable remotely.

As expected, we did see various bots, in particular 'Zotob' take advantage of this vulnerability. At this point, the situation is however static. New bot variations keep getting developed, but they do not add any fundamental new variation of the exploit. We expect that most exploitable systems have been compromised at this point.

The last week showed once more that there is no more patch window. Defense in depth is your only chance to survive the early release of malware. In this particular case, three distinct best practices can mitigate the vulnerability:
- close port 445 at least at the perimeter.
- patch systems quickly.
- eliminate NULL sessions.

Neither one of these measures is perfect, and some may not be applicable to your network (e.g. you may require NULL sessions in some circumstances).

Another development brought to conclusion in this event is the lesser importance of 'worms' with respect to more sophisticated 'bots'. We received a number of bots using the PnP vulnerability. Antivirus scanners did not identify most of them. In many cases, the same bot was packed differently or some function where added to evade detection.

Malware can only develop as fast as it is developing in this case because of extensive code sharing in the underground. The only way we can keep up with this development is by sharing information as efficiently. Being able to do so openly will make it only easier to do this sharing. Please join our effort, and share future observations with us. We will continue to turn them over quickly and make them available via out diaries for everybody to read and to learn from.

I would like to thank in particular handlers Lorna and Tom for their extensive analysis of all the malware submitted.

Yes, the Internet is still "broken", but it was never working all that well to begin with. The Infocon is intended to measure change. We can't stay on yellow for ever.

(Emphasis added)

Adjusted for inflation, gas was more expensive at the end of the Carter Energy Crisis than it is today. Eidelblog goes into more detail:

I've before touched on Ludwig von Mises' explanation of what the price system really does: not only does it promote equilibrium when prices are high, it allocates resources to those who value them the most. Obviously the trucker filling up his rig felt that it was worth $500 (actually slightly more), otherwise he wouldn't have done it. Meanwhile, I might cut back on my leisure driving because of higher gasoline prices, and that's perfectly fine. It means that petroleum has become more scarce, and the trucker values it more than I do. He will use it for a more productive endeavor than I will, which seems logical, but how can we determine that? No person should ever have the power to decide which activities are worth more than others, so instead we have the price system. As Mises said, it is how we can make rational economic decisions.

Now, does this mean that gas prices aren't darn high? No, but all the hype about "record prices" is just that--hype.

ABC News reports:

"Al Qaeda recruits in prisons. They really do," said Edward Caden, a retired prison administrator in California. "Prisons are a prime, prime target for terrorist recruiting. It is a ripe population."

The plot, which called for dozens of casualties as part of a holy war against the United States, was foiled after Levar Washington, a former inmate at the Folsom Prison, and his accomplice were arrested for a string of gas station robberies.

Washington had entered prison a convicted thief and left as a militant black Muslim who had sworn allegiance to a violent jihad, according to law enforcement authorities.

We as a society do not need to tolerate this. We need to start trying these thugs for advocating the violent overthrow of the government or treason, and if the latter, lining them up and shooting them.

Hat tip: www.tom-hanna.org.