Why is it that I get the sense that Los Alamos National Lab is the worst place to work in the world?

Update: I heard from a local source in the area that things are not quite as they’re being reported at DefenseTech. So read with skepticism.

You don’t think America has its own version of the Taliban, and more importantly, that they are making and enforcing laws? Just read this.

It’s a strange day when the Supreme Court Justice I most agree with is Clarence Thomas, but he nailed it in his dissent in the medical marijuana decision issued yesterday. The case isn’t so much about medical marijuana as it is about the degree to which the Constitution limits the power of the federal government. The Supreme Court voted 6-3 for no limits. Hopefully a subsequent court will reverse that decision down the road. (Special spinelessness points to Justice Scalia, who is only a strict constructionist when he feels like it.)

It’s obvious to me why John Bolton is an awful, offensively stupid choice for ambassador to the United Nations. That said, for other people it may not be. Slate’s Robert Wright (whose writing I’ve not seen enough of lately) makes a nuanced and wise argument against the nomination that people ought to read.

I’ve read speculation in a number of places that the real reason that Apple is moving to Intel is that Intel chips will soon have DRM baked in that enables media companies to bind songs, movies, or software to a particular CPU. The theory is that Hollywood is demanding that Apple provide this sort of DRM before they will license certain content to Apple. Ed Felten believes that the DRM reason is improbable.

It looks like the Eclipse world takeover is continuing. Now Macromedia has announced that their next Flash development tool will be built on the Eclipse platform. I still think that the number one reason Eclipse has been so successful is that it looks pretty on computers running Windows.

ZDNet blogger Paul Murphy says that Apple should have started buying CPUs from Sun instead of Intel if they were making a transition, to which I say, put down the crack pipe. The fundamental problem with Apple staying on the PowerPC platform was that Apple makes the only personal computers that use that chip. So IBM is working on building PowerPCs for servers, and consoles, and probably other things that don’t really help out Apple all that much, along with CPUs for Macs. We see how that worked out. And IBM’s primary business isn’t even making chips. Compare that to Intel, who lives and dies by providing ever improving CPUs for personal computers. Then add in AMD, who Apple can always turn to down the road if Intel falters, once the x86 transition is complete. If Intel and AMD fail to continue to deliver increasing performance, the entire PC hardware industry falls flat on its face, and they go out of business. Sun isn’t even in the business of making CPUs for personal computers — what bet seems smarter to you?

Update: I think the most valid concern about Apple’s future is the one discussing Osbourization — that the promise of new hardware to come will kill hardware sales today. I have a feeling that Apple saw Powerbook sales falling off anyway due to the ongoing lack of newer, better models. Lots of people were waiting for the next generation Powerbook, and it sounds like there wasn’t any next generation Powerbook in the pipeline due to the lack of a better CPU for them. That’s probably one of the big things that forced Apple to act. Secondly, Classic applications (those written for Mac OS 8 and 9) aren’t going to run on x86 Macs at all. That’s going to maintain a market of some size for PowerPC based hardware for some time to come.

The speculation on Apple and Intel will be over soon, but I wanted to comment on one of the big questions I’ve seen floating around this weekend, “Why not AMD?” Here’s one example of what I’m talking about. I think that money is one factor people are leaving out of the argument, which generally centers around AMD’s current superiority and pace of innovation. Intel could win this fight simply by cutting Apple an incredible deal on parts. I’ve found that it’s almost impossible to think about any business decision without at least considering the money side of the equation, and it’s one most people seem to be ignoring.

Update: Apple is moving to Intel as it turns out. Steve Jobs reported that every release of Mac OS X has been built on both PowerPC and x86, and that developers will need to migrate to XCode 2.1.

Another update: I’m not surprised (or disappointed) to read that while Apple computers will have Intel processors, Apple has no plans to let you run their operating system on non-Apple computers.

So yesterday I’m driving in my car, and I hear an ad from this church on the local rock station making a specious argument attempting to refute evolution in 30 seconds, and basically saying that people who don’t believe in creation are a sign of the end times. For an example of their anti-science propaganda, visit their media player. Track 991 explains that “evolution is not science.” Number 54 offers a mathematic justification for human life on earth going back only 4000 years. Number 63 argues that evolution is impossible because the Sun isn’t as old as it’s claimed to be. Number 67 argues that the discovery of a living Coelacanth verifies the Genesis account of creation. And number 73 is the ad I heard on the radio. Number 42, “Twin Towers Hell” also has a lot to offer in terms of sheer offensiveness, although not on the subject of evolution. If I run into pastor Henry Vandegriff on the street, I believe we might have to fight.

Tim Bray posted an interesting anecdote in reference to the rumors that Apple will announce that it’s migrating to x86 on Monday. Such a migration seems like a natural move to me. Living on PowerPC has kept the Mac behind the Windows platform in terms of bang for the buck forever.