Count Infinity

On September 17th 1787 39 men (including the secretary) gathered in Virginia, not far from where I live, and signed the most important document in American history. George Read signed twice, once for himself, and once as a proxy for John Dickinson. These men plus 15 others who attended the convention are responsible for the single greatest dole of freedoms in human history. The bestowal of these freedoms affected not only the United States, but informed the evolution and revolution of countless later governments worldwide.

Sadly, America, the seat of freedom, is now inhabited by a hoard of barbarians, almost completely ignorant as to what their freedoms are, and sometimes more importantly, clueless about what those freedoms aren’t. Unfortunately, they often take the right side of an argument (pun intended), but make it laughable in their display of stupidity.

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Photo by lovelypetal, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution license

Yesterday Gizmodo posted an article about a new torrent containing information scraped from 100 million Facebook profiles. Yes, your profile is in there.

Today they traced the IP addresses of the people downloading, and identified which corporations were behind those IP addresses. They posted a list of the companies, but it’s hard to say whether you should be more surprised about who is in the list, or by who isn’t.

To start with, there are two very notable entries missing from the list: Google and Microsoft. I don’t think anyone expected Microsoft’s hands to be clean on this one, but they seem to have held their head high. Similarly, Google seems to have lived up to the image that they try to convey, and kept their hands out of the cookie jar. Microsoft and Google are especially notable because of their size. Nobody, authorized or not, used a Google or Microsoft server to download this. No buts. No excuses.

Now, who IS on the list is similarly interesting. (more…)

Gavel photo by jonathunder

Judging by the recent past, we might conclude that it’s impossible to get a supreme court nominee appointed without  fight. We might also conclude that it’s impossible to win the fight if the president’s party doesn’t have a senate majority. Obama’s two most recent appointments have been viciously fought by conservatives (for now I’m ignoring whether there was a good reason). Sotomayor would have failed appointment in a Republican Senate, and Kagan looks like she’ll be the same.

Suppose for a moment that all the Democrats in the Senate die. Perhaps they had poorly prepared puffer-fish. Then suppose that all the seats are filled by Republicans (hang on, stay with me). Obama has an empty seat to fill, but is it possible? Can he select a candidate that will satisfy him and a fully Republican Senate? History may have an answer.
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