Did anybody really think Dubya wasn’t going to pay off his benefactors in the energy industry when he became President by softening up environmental regulations? He’s not even 60 days into his Presidency, and he’s already reversed his campaign position on carbon dioxide emissions. Like I said during the campaign — forget the man’s speeches, look at his record in Texas. It’s only going to get worse.

Eazel celebrated the release of Nautilus 1.0 by laying off more than half its employees. The days of ramping up the head count in hopes of someday achieving revenue appear to be over, at least for now.

I’m not sure what to make of this: How to Good-Bye Depression : If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way? by Hiroyuki Nishigaki.

Japanese Engrish … now that’s funny. It seems to me that “Engrish” is probably an offensive term, but the shots of some of these Japanese packages are hilarious.

Today Salon’s cover story is about the grim job market. Apparently, in the Bay Area, even programmers and sys admins are having a tough time finding work. I don’t like the sound of that.

According to The Register, Nautilus 1.0 has hit the streets. Now I just need to figure out somewhere to install it.

Most Americans have heard of the famous feud between the Hatfields and McCoys, but don’t really know all that much about it. BlueRidge Country Online has a short history of the long feud. It’s an interesting read as long as you can keep track of all of the characters.

Lawrence J Korb takes on military myths propagated by Dubya for political gain:

“Military people are not overworked and underpaid and, despite campaign rhetoric, most aren’t on food stamps. During the 1990s, an average of 40,000 military people were deployed in various “operations other than war.” This represents less than 3% of the active force and less than 2% of the total force, counting reserves. A greater percentage of the active force was stationed in the United States than during the 1980s … As for pay, most men and women in the armed services make more than 75% of their civilian counterparts. And, if the compensation levels of military people were adjusted to reflect the fair market value of their housing allowances, fewer than 1% would be eligible for food stamps.”

IBM developerWorks has an article on the NSA’s release of SE Linux to the open source community.

Scott Rosenberg steps up to defend Yahoo in his latest column. He makes an important point — Yahoo is only doing poorly based on its own standards, it’s still way better off than just about any other Internet company. I’m inclined to believe that Yahoo is still fundamentally sound, although the fact that much of the revenue that they “generated” this quarter was deferred revenue from previous quarters is troubling. I’m not enough of a financial analyst to know what that means, but I believe it’s a pretty common form of book cooking.