When are we going to stop joking around and admit that the NMD program is nothing more than a multibillion-dollar make work program for the disadvantaged aerospace industry? The New York Times reports today that the very missiles our missile defense system is supposed to stop (those launched by backward rogue states that have it in for us) are, in fact, the hardest to destroy, because their flight path is erratic and they tumble through the air. Apparently it’s difficult to tell these warhead-equipped flying pieces of junk from any other flying piece of junk, and it’s hard to keep them on radar. Anyway, the fact that we won’t even be able to test the system against these types of targets for years (never mind the fact that we haven’t conducted a test that we haven’t cheated on in some way in the first place) hasn’t prevented the Pentagon from starting to clear real estate for our missile base in Alaska. Remember, such a defense system is only worthwhile if our enemies believe it will work. Fat chance of that.

The unannounced, brief but still too long hiatus over at Ethel the Blog is ovah! It’s about time.

Something bad has happened to my Windows XP RC1 install. I think I may have to roll back to Windows 98, much as I hate to do so.

The Atlantic has a profile of Joe Clark. You’ll find it interesting if you’ve encountered Joe Clark online, as I have.

Probably 90% of you won’t care about this, but Derek Zumsteg has written a great guest essay on Rob Neyer’s site on statistical analysis of sports, gambling on sports, and how the latter could precipitate a war on the former. The essay is wide ranging and provides tons of interesting background information in making its predictions. He even draws on the DMCA as an example of how baseball could attack entities that provide detailed statistical information on baseball.

I watched a couple of interesting television programs last night. The first was CNN Presents Beneath the Veil, which featured illegally captured footage from Afghanistan, taken by an incredibly brave journalist named Saira Shah. She travelled to Afghanistan and either took or obtained film of an illegal school (it teaches girls over age 12), an illegal beauty salon, and public executions being held at a soccer stadium paid for with international aid. She also travelled to the front lines of the civil war between the Taliban and other groups in the country that have not yet been subjugated to Taliban rule to get first hand accounts of the Taliban’s summary execution of enemy soldiers and civilians. I’m sure the show will be rebroadcast — you should watch it. I also watched The Human Face, hosted by John Cleese. Much lighter than the Afghanistan news report, but equally fascinating.

For future reference: Processing XSLT with Java.

For some reason I find it amazingly cool that Jack Kerouac devised his own fantasy baseball league featuring not only real baseball players but other people from history and even imaginary characters.

Did anybody else watch the Gary Condit interview last night? What was his reasoning for agreeing to give that interview? Truly one of the worst performances I’ve ever seen — his strategy seemed to boil down to asserting that everybody else (Chandra Levy’s mother and aunt, the flight attendant, and the chief of police of Washington DC for starters) is lying about him, and he’s telling the truth. Of course, he offered no specifics whatsoever to back up his assertions. I haven’t paid much attention at all to the ongoing story (I don’t watch the 24 hour news channels much), but I watched the Condit interview to see what he’d say. What a train wreck.

It looks like Buy.com might be the next big online retailer to bite the dust. I actually liked buying things from them, so this one hits closer to home than some.