Friday Roundup

No posts this week, guess it was a busy one.

Well, on to today's roundup:

• More here on how the wannabe terrorist boobs the feds keep busting (and the administration keeps hyping) are little more than schmucks with more pipe dreams than pipe bombs (yea, I used that phrase last week, I like it). This time security technology expert Bruce Schneier shines the light of reason on what is never presented to the American public without a heavy dose of frothy fear-mongering. Sez he, "There is a real threat of terrorism. And while I'm all in favor of the terrorists' continuing incompetence, I know that some will prove more capable. We need real security that doesn't require us to guess the tactic or the target: intelligence and investigation -- the very things that caught all these terrorist wannabes -- and emergency response. But the "war on terror" rhetoric is more politics than rationality. We shouldn't let the politics of fear make us less safe."
• The legendary and notorious Yes Men have struck again with typically insightful and hilarious results. This time at Calgary's Gas and Oil Exposition. (If you hasn't seen the film on these guys... rent it now!)
• And on a slightly more depressing note, ever wonder how all that outsourcing of labor and manufacturing is gonna affect the American economy over the long haul? I mean, of course, how it will affect normal plebeians like you or I, not our corporate masters or the guy passed out at the bus stop in a puddle of his own (hopefully) vomit. Well, economists aren't too keen on the way things have played out and warn that, basically, China's got America's proverbial balls in the proverbial vice. And they could turn the crank anytime they please. Global Research's Richard C. Cook has the run-down.
• And if that isn't depressing enough for you, try this website. Apparently there are a good number of people who believe the Earth is flat. It's not a joke, sadly enough. So, maybe this isn't so much depressing as it is hilarious. But the Q&A page employs a rationale so akin to the modern anti-Darwin, creationist movement's rationale, that it's guaranteed to depress you again once you remember just how big and just how stupid the Creationist movement in America is.
• And finally, not one to leave you on too depressing a note, I got blogger and friend Patrick Hughes' new book, Diary of Indignities, in the mail this week. If you've enjoyed his blog, Bad News Hughes, well, you won't find a whole lot particularly new here. But you will revisit a multitude of painful humiliations anew and find that, even though you know the stories this time around, they're still awfully goddamned funny.