Yesterday the LA Times reported that the Israelis have submarines capable of firing the nuclear weapons that they won’t admit to having. (Note to readers: the Israelis have had nukes since the mid-60s, according to Sy Hersh, but they won’t admit it and none of the other members of the nuclear club have ever pressed them on it.) If this report were true, it would mean that Israel had a proper strategic triad, subs being the delivery system most difficult for an opponent to pre-emptively attack.
The LA Times report says that Israel modified Harpoons to carry nuclear warheads, which is a little odd. Harpoons are normally anti-shipping missiles, with a relatively small payload (220Kg) and short range (120Km). Of course, the Israelis promptly issued a denial of sorts, in which a former defense minister said that it was “impossible” to re-engineer the Harpoon to carry a nuclear warhead.
However, this statement doesn’t say a think about the homegrown Israeli Popeye SLCM, which is almost certainly the primary delivery system for those subs. The FAS has some other interesting reading, but I note that most of their cited sources are 2-3 years old.
Israeli submarines
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Dead cats and pep rallies don’t mix
Presented for those of you who think that Perrysburg is boring, this story from the 10/11 Blade:
A pep rally at Perrysburg High School yesterday prompted complaints from students who were upset that a teacher displayed a dead cat at the event.
Two parents called the school district to complain about the dead cat on behalf of their children, who are students at the school, Perrysburg Superintendent Michael Cline said.
“We will be doing a thorough investigation on Monday,” he said.
“The teacher is willing to talk to those students who were upset by the situation and will make an apology to them sometime Monday.”
The pep rally, held during the end of the school day, preceded a football game between Perrysburg and Maumee high schools. The schools are longtime rivals.
The cat symbolized the Maumee mascot, which is a panther, Mr. [He’s a Ph.D, folks — Ed] Cline said.
The teacher, who Mr. Cline declined to identify while the district is investigating the incident, got the dead cat from the biology lab. The cat was a dissection specimen.
The teacher tied the dead cat to a rod and waved it around at the rally.
“That was a bad idea, and not a humane example to kids as an educator,” said Susan Maxwell, spokesman for the Toledo Area Humane Society. [But I s’pose it’s OK to torture participles, huh?]
Oddly, searching the Blade’s page for “perrysburg dead cat” didn’t turn this up, but Google News did.
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More Exchange blogs
Turns out that Exchange-related blogs are popping up like housepainters at a beer giveaway. Andy Webb has one (named, of course, “webb log”), and so do the dynamic duo of KC and David Lemson, who just happen to be program managers on the Exchange team. Welcome, y’all!
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Your tax dollars at work
So, I got a letter from the IRS asking me to resubmit a page (yes, one page, except they wrote “on page” in the letter, but I digress…) Here’s the best part: it was signed by one Robert L. Williams, Manager, Document Perfection. I feel just grand knowing that the IRS has a department dedicated to document perfection (I’m not the only one, either). That reminds me of part of the LDS Church‘s three-fold mission (see footnote 7), except with a government slant.
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Bayou Farewell (Tidwell)
I admit to some bias; having grown up in south Louisiana, and with a name like Robichaux, I expected this book (subtitled “Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana’s Cajun Coast”) to be patronizing and smug. It was neither. Instead, Tidwell has written a powerful narrative that clearly explains the beauty and wonder of the Louisiana coastal ecosystem, the rich life of the Cajuns who live there, and the impending threat to both caused by the artificial levees built to provide flood control along the lower Mississippi. Along the way, I learned about the BTNEP project to document land loss and the <a href="http://www.restoreorretreat.org/solution.htmlThird Delta Conveyance Channel (TDCC), an ambitious project to divert a portion of the Mississippi’s flow to restore silt deposition– and thus wetlands– in the Barataria-Terrebone Bay areas. One of Tidwell’s major points is the seeming complacency of Louisiana residents toward this problem; I’m happy to say that in the recent election, a majority of voters chose to support three amendments that will help clear the path for obtaining funding for the TDCC.
Tidwell makes another, really telling, point: the fact that Louisiana is losing thousands of acres of wetlands each year is largely unknown in most of the environmental community. He’s too polite to say so, but it helps reinforce my suspicion that many “environmentalists” are really just “NIMBY-ists” trying to dress themselves up in more appropriate clothing. His book has done a great deal to get the word out, though, and it’s a fine read besides. Highly recommended.
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Maintenance
One thing I learned from my dear mother: always clean up when you’re expecting company. The Toledo Blade is supposed to be running Karin Kowalski’s story on area bloggers tomorrow, and I want to be ready for the ten or fifteen visitors I expect to drop by– thus the new layout. Expect some bugs; I probably won’t get it all fixed before the paper hits tomorrow.
Update: I would be remiss in not acknowledging that my layout mostly came from PVRblog, and that Doug hooked me up with the initial template.
Filed under General Tech Stuff
Good news for Julie
Julie, according to this article, you’re not a spacker. The term has been hijacked to mean a “new breed of computer crackers who earn a living in cahoots with spammers.” Of course, the article’s author is a bit of a spacker himself. Perhaps WordPirates should get involved…
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Jobs I’d like to have
I can’t decide which job I’d prefer:
- Working for the French government’s publicity verification service (see this AP story on ads for thong underwear)
- the International Earth Rotation Service. (Didn’t know there was such a thing? Well, now you do.) I can just see the business cards now…
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Book progress
I’ve just turned in the first 10 chapters of Secure Messaging with Exchange 2003. That means I’m halfway done. The current milestone date for 100% completion is 12/15, which would put the book on store shelves in late February, just about a year after the first book.
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If a Panther calls…
Despite what Ogden Nash has to say, I just preordered my copy of Mac OS X 10.3, code-named Panther.
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test
For some reason, Pair doesn’t make backups of user directories. Ooops.
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Retention policy? What retention policy?
This is what happens when you don’t have an appropriate retention policy:
A little browsing and up pops a piece of e-mail from an Enron employee complaining about a mother-in-law: “the most selfish person on Earth.” Another contains decades-old photos of former chief executive Jeffrey K. Skilling, sent him by his Beta Theta Pi fraternity brothers. A piece of e-mail written by a woman in Portland, Ore., asks an Enron energy trader, “So … you were looking for a one night stand after all …?”
The complete database is here. Don’t let this happen to you!
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Aesthetics and Apple
On the one hand, the charming Kasia says she loves her new Powerbook’s packaging and the aesthetics of the OOBE (out-of-box experience). Then on the other (sort of), we have this column from the San Francisco Chronicle, which I guess is intending to praise the same thing but takes a slightly different tack:
Oh right like you even care.
Like careful sexy product design even matters and as if you give a twit for packaging and aesthetics and user experience anymore in this overly plastic bloatedly excessive landfill wasteland Wal-Mart dystopia we call proud capitalist gimme gimme gimme America.
And OK maybe every now and then you sigh and give in and buy yourself a new tech gadget, because you’re just that kind of consumer lackey and not really expecting much anyway but who the hell cares it’s just one more hunk of tech landfill but what can you do.
Me, I think my Powerbook would be much more aesthetically pleasing if it would boot.
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The only kind of sushi I’d eat
Some years ago, I’d gone to San Francisco for Macworld, and I was invited to a party that happened to be at a sushi bar. I decided to go; my New Year’s resolution that year was to try more new foods, so I tried a couple of kinds of sushi. It was just as gross as I’d always expected it to be, but at least I tried it. Now there’s something that looks like sushi but is made of Rice Krispies and candy. I’m all about that.
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New IPsec white paper
Microsoft has a cool new IPsec white paper, cowritten with Foundstone, describing how IPsec is used to harden Microsoft’s own internal network: “Using Microsoft Windows IPSec to Help Secure an Internal Corporate Network Server.” From the abstract:
This paper describes how to configure Microsoft® Windows® 2000 IPSec and Windows XP IPSec to help secure an internal corporate network server against network-based attacks from untrusted computers. You can significantly enhance the ability of a server to defend against such attacks by requiring IPSec-authenticated, signed, and encrypted communication between computers. This paper describes the security threats to, and the benefits of using IPSec on, an internal corporate network server and uses a scenario to describe the process of IPSec policy design for an internal corporate network. Although the focus of this paper is Windows 2000 and Windows XP IPSec, it also provides information about IPSec functionality enhancements in Windows 2000 service packs and in the Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 family.
When you combine it with the material in the Windows 2003 hardening and threats/countermeasures guides, you can really do some nifty stuff to harden your network.
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