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The New York Times reports that Pakistan is behind Libya’s nuclear program. I don’t really care about Libya’s nuclear program, but it does concern me that Pakistan seems perfectly willing to trade nuclear technology to anyone with money. Since September 11, certain people have been pointing out that Pakistan is the nexus of nearly all of our problems with what I guess you’d call the Islamic world. Pakistan’s ISI was giving aid and comfort to al-Qaeda for years. They’re major sponsors of terrorism in Kashmir, and they propped up the Taliban for their own benefit. On the other side of things, they’ve built a nuclear program that is not only a source for regional instability but that is patient zero in an epidemic of nuclear proliferation. It seems to me that the question the US has to answer is whether Pervez Musharraf is part of the problem or part of the solution, and what we can do to contain the problems Pakistan is causing. I’m not sure how having invaded and occoupied Iraq helps with any of that. ...

Brock Meeks has officially pulled the plug on his old publication, CyberWire Dispatch. He was long my favorite reporter on the area where technology and government cross paths, but I haven’t seen his byline on anything in a long time.

I’m currently reading a collection of H L Mencken’s essays, The Vintage Mencken. In one essay, “The National Letters,” Mencken describes George W Bush (err, the American plutocracy circa 1920), thusly: It is badly educated, it is stupid, it is full of low-caste superstitions and indignations, it is without decent traditions or informing vision; above all it is extraordinarily lacking in the most elemental independence and courage. Out of this class comes the grotesque fashionable society of our big towns, already described. Imagine a horde of peasants incredibly enriched and with almost infinite power thrust into their hands, and you will have a fair picture of its habitual state of mind. It shows all the stigmata of inferiority--moral certainty, cruelty, suspicion of ideas, fear. Mencken’s argument is that what’s needed is a real aristocracy. I’m not sure I buy into that necessarily, but his description of the American plutocracy then and now is dead on. ...

Anil Dash pointed to this interesting piece on how Tivo ignores its best asset, rabid fans. The lackluster success of Tivo is utterly amazing to me as a Tivo user. I got a Tivo because all the people I knew who had them wouldn’t leave me alone about how great they are. After I bought one, I started bugging everyone I knew about how great they are. Such is the transformational nature of Tivo ownership. I tell everyone I know that the beautiful thing about Tivo isn’t that you’ll watch more TV (which seems to be the great fear non-Tivo users have), but that you’ll watch the same or less TV and watch the shows that you actually care about. I can truthfully say that since buying a Tivo, I have almost never watched a show that I didn’t intend to watch before it aired. Anyway, the point of this entry isn’t to gush about Tivo, but to point you to an article that explains how Tivo squanders most of this good will to its own detriment. ...

William Grimes farewell piece as restaurant reviewer for the New York Times surveys how New York’s culinary scene has changed since he took the job five years ago. As New York goes, so goes America. Even in the culinary dead end where I live, the overall restaurant scene has improved to an incredible degree in the past 6 years or so. Honestly, I think that Food TV has played no small part in this transformation, perhaps not in New York, but elsewhere in the culinary hinterlands where most people dwell. It brought the idea of gourmet food and the idea that good food is more than just a pretentious affectation of snobs to places where the difference between curly parsley and Italian flat leaf parsley was never contemplated, and I think that most people have benefitted. ...

The Decembrist has a fascinating post on how to read a presidential budget. But as this month of strategic leaks begins, it's time for a reminder that presidential budgets are political documents -- they are not actually guides to what the government will really spend in the next fiscal year. And to understand this one as a political document, here is a brief guide to the four different kinds of cuts that will be in play. I’m not going to read the presidential budget, of course, but it feels good to know that I’m not even qualified to do so. This is really why trust is the most important thing when it comes to being a consumer of media. In the new Internet world, you can find the original source documents for just about everything, but interpreting most source documents takes a level of expertise that is out of reach for just about everyone who isn’t a pro in that field. So while you may be able to fact check people, checking their analysis is another thing entirely. It then comes down to deciding who you can trust and then cross checking where you can to make sure your judgement is still valid. Staying informed is a tough job. ...

Hey, I’m not the only person looking for a job. Maybe I should write up a “who should hire me and why” document. It probably wouldn’t actually get me hired anywhere, but it might clarify my own thinking.

I did not know that the Freepers censor dissenting posters outright.

Russell Beattie has posted a list of Series 60 applications that he has running on his Nokia 6600. I’d like to install some of them on my Sony Ericsson T616 but the stupid GPRS service from Cingular still doesn’t work. I’m quickly growing to hate Cingular. The phone itself is great.

Andy Oram has an item discussing the “UN attempts takeover of Internet” news that has been bouncing around lately. Basically it’s a call for more responsible journalism, which is always a good thing.