Links of the Day...

The Doom report.  Morningstar recently released a research report detailing the (mostly sorry) condition of the 50 state-run pension plans.  The total of unfunded liabilities was over $1.2 trillion in 2011.  The good news is that some of these state pension plans are in great shape (the bluish states).  The bad news is that most of them are not (the orange states).  I'm surprised by some of these states (New York, Montana, Alaska).  The report is full of great (though depressing) information...

Clear thinking alert!  Bruce Schneier is the best source for calm, clear analysis of security issues that I know of.  His blog is consistently interesting and informative (and on my daily read list), as evidenced by this recent post on the NSA's huge security problem, and on one blood price we're paying for the TSA's security theater...

What the hell is happening to my country?  A co-founder of the Sooner Tea Party (Oklahoma) is going to be tried on charges of blackmail and computer crimes – for sending an email demanding that his state representative do his job...

Low solar irradiance continues...  The NOAA has updated its solar cycle data, and it shows that the unexpectedly low number of sunspots in this cycle continues.  The red line is the NOAA's official prediction, which they've been revising downwards regularly.  Reminder: solar irradiance (brightness) decreases as the number and size of sunspots declines – the opposite of what you might think.  If those scientists who believe global temperatures are quite sensitive to solar irradiance are right, then we're in for a cooler period for at least the next 20 years.  The warmists think this is a lot of hooey...

Let me get this straight...  Kerry says something stupid that the State Department quickly backpedals from, then Putin says “What a great idea!”, Obama says “Yeah, baby!”, and Assad says “Sure, we'll give away all our chemical weapons!”  If someone wrote a novel with that plot, I'd call it implausible.  As I will the idea that Assad will actually give away his weapons, acquired with much expense and effort.  I think he's playing precisely the same game Sadaam did: let the foreigners in, delaying any military action against him, and then evading and hiding like crazy.  Bet you anything that Obama claims victory...

They don't understand business.  In fact, they detest business.  Obama thought he could pay for part of Obamacare simply by taxing the crap out of medical companies.  Now we're all paying the price: those companies, faced with hundreds of millions of dollars in new tax obligations, are laying off employees, abandoning promising research, and relocating to other countries.  The Obamanoids say this is “unexpected” – I call bullshit on that...

Ok, that's weird!  Does the photo of a lotus seed (at right) make you uncomfortable?  If so, you may have trypophobia, which may just be the strangest phobia I've ever heard of...

Stomp the stupid!  How should you respond to a petition asking you to do something technically stupid?  If you're Linus Torvalds, you do it like this:

Where do I start a petition to raise the IQ and kernel knowledge of people? Guys, go read drivers/char/random.c. Then, learn about cryptography. Finally, come back here and admit to the world that you were wrong. Short answer: we actually know what we are doing. You don't. Long answer: we use rdrand as _one_ of many inputs into the random pool, and we use it as a way to _improve_ that random pool. So even if rdrand were to be back-doored by the NSA, our use of rdrand actually improves the quality of the random numbers you get from /dev/random. Really short answer: you're ignorant.

The first computer bug.  Found 66 years ago by Grace Hopper, whom I've written about before...

Where can I buy some of these?  Gut bacteria that let you eat and be skinny...

Bomb Obamacare.  Instead of Syria.  So says Sarah Palin, whose PAC recently released the “death panel” ad at right...