Monthly Archives: August 2007
Three Weeks Wasted for Every Year of Work in LA
The Courage Campaign has posted an interesting chart of productive time wasted due to traffic congestion in Los Angeles:
They contend that for every year of work a person does in the office, three weeks worth of time is wasted in a car.
Availability also must be a worry, especially in cases of regional disasters, as congestion can only get worse when everyone has to act at the same time (in response) rather than with the intent to keep their own schedule.
Poetry like Bread
Poetry, like bread, is for everyone, according to the poem “Like You” by Roque Dalton
I like, just like you
love, life and the sweet enchantment
of things, the heavenly landscape
of these days in January.My blood also flows
and I laugh with eyes
which have known the welling up of tears.I think that the world is beautiful,
that poetry is like bread, for everyone.And my veins do not end in me
but in the unanimous blood
of those who fight for life,
for love,
for things,
the landscape and bread
poetry for everyone.
Doesn’t have the same ring if you say “Security, like bread…”.
CIA launches a ‘Spy-book’
The BBC reports that the FT reports that the CIA is launching a site modeled after social networking sites:
A-Space, due to launch in December, will feature web-based email and software recommending issues of interest to the user said Mike Wertheimer, a senior official at the Department for National Intelligence (DNI).
He told the FT that the new infrastructures would help break down some of the physical communications problems in the intelligence community.
“I am unable to send email, and even make secure phone calls, to a good portion of the community from my desktop because of firewalls,” he said.
Firewalls blocking email and phone calls at the CIA? Somehow I doubt it.
Imagine what Cheney and Scooter could do to their political foes with this kind of database.
Mr Wertheimer added that while it had looked for collaboration from overseas, foreign intelligence agencies had been “the folks most virulently against” sharing information through an “intelligence library”.
I suspect they were opposed to having the US dictate the terms of the libarary and sharing, rather than opposed to the idea of sharing information. It is the habit of conservative US politicians to try and strong-arm allies in one-sided deals and then bash them for being “uncooperative”.