smokerings

[ from Desk to Dawn ]

Hubbin' Birmingistan (kin to Hub Pk, who was with us until a few months ago) is a huge fan of Cristopher Hitchens, with good reason.
"In the 1980s, Pakistan got a blank check from the U.S. to combat the Russians, and spent much of the check in building up the Taliban. Now it is getting another check and a brand-new interest-free mortgage in order to pretend that the Taliban are its enemy. It just doesn't get any better than this."
Read article: >

Does our reputation as smarmy opportunist bastards precede us? Well, it should.

Stephen Levitt has always struck me as a man who pushes that 11th percent of brain matter, unlike most people in the world. Here's two excellent articles that are brilliant because they engage us in the simplest of questions, one which anyone with a grain of sense would have asked themselves already: if i were a terrorist, how would i attack?
also see Terrorism II

"The alternative interpretation is that the terror risk just isn’t that high and we are greatly overspending on fighting it, or at least appearing to fight it. For most government officials, there is much more pressure to look like you are trying to stop terrorism than there is to actually stop it."

Yes, I have a secret weakness for economists.