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Wrong, Iraq is more influenced by Iran than the U.S. http://www.randomhouse.com/boo...

Random House lists the price of the hardcover book as $35, but the price of the ebook at $14.99. Guess which one I'll buy.

Given that, it absolutely has to be authorized from the big O himself. Specifically, the content of the article is from a book http://www.randomhouse.com/book/202541/confront-and-conceal-by-david-e-sanger

This entire fucking reveal is nothing but a campaign stunt by Obama. What sort of ratfucking moron admits to intelligence ops just for a campaign boost. Oh wait, it's the chicago politician in the white house.

I think you're being a bit of a troll here, but I actually agree with your take on things. The level of detail in the article is really striking, and suggests that the author talked to people who were closely involved in the decision-making process. To release this kind of information about a classified intelligence project without authorization would be a serious breach of security, if not treason. Given that the Obama Administration hasn't made a huge deal about this article, or gone on a witch-hunt looking for the leaker, it seems safe to say that this story was released with the blessing of the White House, and that this was done for political purposes.

As for the political angle, I can think of two possibilities. One is that taking credit for this (the article goes out of the way to minimize the role of the Israelis) is a way of showing off U.S. power and threatening Iran and other nations who pursue W.M.D. They're saying, "it doesn't matter how clever you are in burying your program, we can still shut it down". That threat could come in handy in future negotiations with Iran and North Korea.

The other angle, as you note, is the election year angle. The article goes out of the way to emphasize Obama's role here. The key line here is "'From his first days in office, he was deep into every step in slowing the Iranian program — the diplomacy, the sanctions, every major decision,' a senior administration official said". Biden is depicted as "fuming", while the president is cool and collected and making tough calls. It paints a very flattering picture, which is hardly surprising given that it's a bunch of Obama Administration guys speaking to a New York Times reporter. However, as the article describes it, the program was actually begun during the Bush Administration and was well underway by the time Obama took office. All Obama did was continue with Bush's program, but it sounds like he's trying to take a lot of the credit, which doesn't quite seem fair. I think Bush was a disaster as a President. But still, you can't have it both ways, and claim that you inherited a bad economy from Bush, but then turn around and take credit for a program that he started and put into action.

Also note that said reporter is trying to sell a new book.

Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power, by David E. Sanger. Hardcover on Sale: June 05, 2012.

Given that, it absolutely has to be authorized from the big O himself. Specifically, the content of the article is from a book
http://www.randomhouse.com/book/202541/confront-and-conceal-by-david-e-sanger

This entire fucking reveal is nothing but a campaign stunt by Obama. What sort of ratfucking moron admits to intelligence ops just for a campaign boost. Oh wait, it's the chicago politician in the white house.

A rendition of the cover, courtesy of Matt Groening pre-Simpsons: http://www.randomhouse.com/pantheon/graphicnovels/workhell_3.html
I think we can all agree our boss-man is a subscriber!

http://www.amazon.com/Ring-Stephen-Baxter/dp/0061056944/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/worldwarz/

http://www.starrigger.net/Downloads.htm#Chaos

Just to name a few that I've enjoyed. My tastes may differ blah blah blah.

• :-) - I'm happy
• :-( - I'm sad
• :-| - meh

If you want deeper nuances, you can always refer to this as well.

Where?

Oh, there.

Yeah...I realized that right as I hit submit...lack of caffeine is not your friend.

Where?

Oh, there.

See Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy. http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=25839 Which also deals with just how wise would it really be to remake a world in our image. These are good books, which I highly recommend.

Steven

It's not bowing to pressure, it's ensuring their survival by making damn sure that some lunatic with deep pockets doesn't put a million dollar death sentence bounty on their head. Salman Rushdie still can't come out of hiding to this day...

Sure he can. In fact I can supply a list of his upcoming public appearances if you like.
http://www.randomhouse.com/rhpg/features/salmanrushdie/appearances.html

He was here in Toronto a couple of weeks back, http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2010/06/01/rushdie-wiesel-toronto.html

Right, because nobody writes about stuff like that any more.

Hey man, just cause you're not reading them, doesn't mean they aren't being written. You also seem to think that writing is a zero-sum game: that the more is blogged, the less is published in a more permanent fashion. It just ain't so: today's blog is often just a more sharable and immediate addition to lab notes. The phrase is still "publish or perish", not "post or perish".

I read the book Natural Causes a while back and it opened my eyes to the sham that the supplement industry is. Note I said industry, not supplements. I'm sure some of these things have useful effects, and would love to see more experiments performed to determine what they are. Until then, I won't ever touch them again, including even multivitamins.

That etymology is very questionable. See http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-swe1.htm http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20010214

You laugh, but L. Ron Hubbard has 3 books in Modern Library's top 100 reader list:

3) Battlefield Earth
9) Mission Earth
10) Fear

Anybody (myself included) who's read anything L. Ron Hubbard wrote would question the legitimacy of that list, because LRH writes like a short-bus driver who writes instruction manuals for "special" adults.

aside:
At the bottom of wikipedia's Portrait page is this link...

The reader's list makes me want to bash my skull against a wall.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080303201247AASqeWw
http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20001030
http://languageandgrammar.com/2008/04/19/dont-say-it-any-ways-you-want/

... and where?

It has to stop somewhere.

When does the policymakers (and the public) realise that death from terrorism is negligible compared to other (more or less) avoidable causes.

How many lives could be saved in the USA alone by free flu vaccines? How many are killed from gun-related shootings? Traffic deaths? ... Come on, terrorism is hardly noticeable in the big scheme of deaths.

We do not need much airport security, really. Just think about the time, when you could board a plane without being checked, double checked and then frisked. Do not just take my word for it, Bruce Schneier has mentioned it several times, including here.

Don't forget to direct your ire at Random House for doing this as well as Amazon for rolling over.

Call them and bitch.
http://www.randomhouse.com/about/contact.html

One Party Classroom proves that to be true.

I went to the University of Missouri in the mid 1980's and it was true then, as it is now, that only the liberal point of view is taught and indoctrinated to the students. My Sister-In-Law had the same indoctrination recently, but then later she passed away of a heart attack.

It's ok, according to Misha Glenny, Dubai has taken the place of Switzerland as the preferred place for illicit money storage. In his book, he gives an example where a guy tried to transfer $3000 from a bank in Dubai, and they made him fill out a form. Very good record keeping. Except when he wanted to transfer $2 million euros, he did without any problem. He says, "If they ask too many questions, they won't get sales!"

Dubai of course isn't the only place, there are others, like Lichtenstein, and (at least in the 90s if you were Jewish) Israel. These are popular places for organized crime organizations to launder money. He says, "The only credible reasons for their growth and success is the fact that many corporations in the licit economy use them for the exact same reasons [as the criminals] (especially tax evasion). The government of the United States could force them to lift their banking secrecy codes overnight if they threatened to apply the same sanctions on offshore centers that they do on the onshore banks.......Without offshore banks it would not be only the mobsters finding it onerous to shuffle their money and companies around. Enron would have found it a lot harder too........"

Getting banks to be more open is a good thing in many ways.

I just loved Beyond Numeracy by John Allen Paulos. I found Innumeracy to be a little too slow, but it all depends on where you are in your math studies.

http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl/9780679738077.html

If this isn't something that says get prepared now I don't know what is.

People are wired to see causality everywhere, even where there is none.

Very true. There is an interesting book by Leonard Mlodinow called "The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives" which is all about the way humans misinterpret random events to see patterns that are not there.

http://www.randomhouse.com/pantheon/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780375424045

http://www.amazon.com/Drunkards-Walk-Randomness-Rules-Lives/dp/0375424040

Would this be fun with your new pets?!

1. Wow, classy.

2. I quote: 'Americans refer "burgers" as "sandwiches".. reserving the word "burger" to refer to just the patty...'

3. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006. Link

From the linked text: Scholarly, up-to-date etymologies, including dates to show when terms entered the language, and showing clearly labeled Americanisms. Hmmm...

4. Did I mention; classy?

Etymology? That's what we're talking about!

Herman Melville is probably the most responsible to popularizing this term. So what?

Read books about cons. Watch movies about cons. Study where this word started and how it has evolved as part of the language and culture.

William Thompson Melville

"Con" means "confidence", and no one is really arguing that it means something else. I am suggesting that "cons" are a proper subset of "tricks" or "scams". If you want to treat them as synonyms, no one is stopping you. The actual con artists and authors on the subject use this word differently than you, does that count as etymology, or are you just going to look up the dictionary definition of "confidence?"

This interview should give you the line of thought I'm following.

Q: What does it take to be a successful con man, besides good luck? Who is the most successful con man you've personally known?

A: I think I could write a book answering your question. But here's a short version. Luck rarely comes into a play with a con. Being a con man requires a thorough understanding of human nature and human greed. W. C. Fields's expression "You can't cheat an honest man" is at the core of any good con. And a con man must be willing to spend long hours (sometimes weeks or even months) to execute a successful con. Planning is everything. The most successful con man I've ever met must remain anonymous. He got out of the rackets and now runs a successful business.

If you are seriously interested, just read through these cons on wiki: list of cons

My "argument" is that it is pointless to call everything deceptive or sneaky a "con." Waiting till you leave your house and breaking in to stealing your TV is not a "con." Fixing you up with an ugly girl so I can date her friend is not a "con". Cheating on a test is not a "con."

Do you call the lottery a "con?" Why or why not? Because the dictionary says so? Read through the most common "cons" and see if you see a pattern. My argument holds plenty of water.

Greed is the primary element in the "classic cons." I didn't make this up. What are you smoking?

etymology : The origin and historical development of a linguistic form as shown by determining its basic elements, earliest known use, and changes in form and meaning, tracing its transmission from one language to another, identifying its cognates in other languages, and reconstructing its ancestral form where possible.

Oh really?

http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html

#13 1984 George Orwell, all time according to this list.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2008-01-16-top-100-books_N.htm

If you split up sci-fi and fantasy, then the first on this list is #16 Eclipse, a modern-day sci-fi story about vampires. If you keep them together, then Harry Potter would come in at #11; or for a "pure" sci-fi novel, I Am Legend comes in at #72 due to its re-release for the movie.

http://home.comcast.net/~antaylor1/waterstones100.html

Waterstone took a survey to find what people considered to be the 100 best novels of the past century; #1 is Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, #2 is Orwell's 1984 and #3 is Orwell's Animal Farm.

Finally, the current Amazon top 100:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books

As of this writing, the current #1 in book sis Brisingr, a fantasy novel by Christopher Paulini; again, if you consider fantasy and sci-fi to be the same. If you don't, then #5 is Twilight is another vampire novel set in the modern day or #52 Anathem, is a "pure" sci-fi book.

So...which lists of best books or novels were you looking at?

Dan Gilbert did this experiment - its described his book Stumbling on Happiness. Here is the NYtimes article. In this video, he describes the theory of Choice Paralysis

The theory in short means we all think that "Breasts of my wife GREAT! All others suck! " (except Tina Fey.. and Natalie Portman and.. Penelope Cruz)

In the book "Super Crunchers", one of the fields they covered was the movie industry, and discussed firms that would be able to predict the success of a movie by reading its script? One example of this was a script that was going to be filmed at too many locations, was predicted to be unprofitable because its filming cost was too high, and the number of locations would confuse the viewer. Have you looked into any of these ideas of using statistics and data mining to predict the popularity/profit of your scripts, and if so, any success/failure stories, and if not, why not?

http://www.randomhouse.com/bantamdell/supercrunchers/

I dug up an excerpt after my previous post. Bradbury doesn't mention speed, although he does use the phrase 'jet cars'. My gut impression is that he had a decent idea of how fast it would take for a billboard to be blurred.

In the old testament there are numerous prophecy's to the messiah, and Jesus filled EACH one, not 1 of them,
not a few of them, not even most of them, 100% of them.

* The Sanhedrin will be re-established (Isaiah 1:26)

* The whole world will worship the One God of Israel (Isaiah 2:17)

* Death will be swallowed up forever (Isaiah 25:8)
        * There will be no more hunger or illness, and death will cease (Isaiah 25:8)

* All of the dead will rise again (Isaiah 26:19)

* The Temple will be rebuilt (Ezekiel 40) resuming many of the suspended mitzvot

As one author who's name I forget, but it's something French, puts it, they never had to kill their King;

Clotaire Rapaille.

This idea is discussed in the book, The Body Has a Mind of Its Own. It talks about all the different brain maps for the body, including how the map is stretched to include a tool that we're using. I haven't actually read the book, but I heard an interview on Science Friday.

don't you think this brings us a step closer to the "pigoons" of Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake ?

Now there are 2 kinds of zombie overlords?

It's time to prepare for the invasion:
    http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/4/18/153047/155
    http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/zombiesurvivalguide/

CIA=sharp???

Uhh, go read "Legacy of Ashes" and weep. http://www.randomhouse.com/doubleday/legacyofashes/

Yes, there are smart people who have worked for the CIA, but they've been lead by clueless frat boys drunk on power and prodigious quantities of booze.

Suffice it to say that anything the CIA as an agency has done right it's been entirely by accident.

What this experiment will ostensibly prove is the EPR Paradox (if I recall my college Q physics), but I'm betting it won't work. It's always sounded great, but I've always strongly suspected it is based upon faulty math...

http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=2 0010430

It's a rather old expression, and one used in The Wizard of Oz, among other places. Learn something new, and quit complaining :)

"Body of Secrets", by James Bamford, is a great book about the NSA.

http://www.randomhouse.com/features/bamford/home.h tml

Well worth reading by anyone interested in knowing about the origins, goals, methods and funding of the NSA.

Ya know, while I've always wanted to believe in the efficacy of the EPR paradox, Seth Lloyd, quantum mech prof at MIT, states in his book, Programming The Universe that it actually has never been proven. Interesting concept though....

http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=2 0000317

In a letter...I started to write lo and behold and realized that I was unsure of the spelling. Is it lo and behold or low and behold? I asked a few people and we can't seem to agree.

From your link:

No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Print this page

Now I've seen this type of thing on a street corner. Right next to the stop sign was a sign that says "No Stopping". I thought only the IRS did this kind of stuff.

MMS' sentient alarm clock.

I was in a bar in Ensenada, drinking a warm beer quickly and trying to remind myself that I hadn't murdered anyone, when my alarm clock caught up with me. Little bastard.

More

http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=1 9970731

"putz" not "puts" you "schmuck".

Dodge, as in Dodge City. As in this.

It's two words and a malformed ( possessive | contraction ) using an initialism.

So say the neurobiologists:

"Scientific Background
We draw on the latest discoveries in the neural sciences, linguistics, psychology and anthropology and apply them in the world of business.
Recent discoveries in the field of the neural sciences teach us that:

  Emotion is the trigger to action
  The rational system follows the emotional system
  Present actions are driven by past experiences
  Present experiences dictate our emerging needs

The Imprint analysis incorporates this knowledge of the human mind to determine people's emerging needs and 'entry-points' for effective communication."

From:

http://www.culturalimprint.com/about.html

Who have a fascinating (and scary, since the marketin world is actively using this theory) article:

http://www.culturalimprint.com/emerging%20needs.pd f

The question is, what kind of cultural imprinting are kids getting these days?

Further references are Rapaille's book "The Culture Code"

http://www.randomhouse.com/broadway/culturecode/

And LeDoux's book "The Emotional Brain":

http://www.cns.nyu.edu/home/ledoux/the_emotional_b rain/book_newsci.htm