Monthly Archives: July 2003

…but who’s counting?

When questioned by Congress, Donald Rumsfeld today upped his estimate of the cost of Iraqi occupation to $3.9 billion per month, double the previous estimates. To put that in perspective, $4 billion dollars would pay the monthly salaries of one million teachers.

Oh, and that doesn’t include reconstruction costs. Of course not.

Stuffing the Genie Back In the Bottle

The Washington Post has a well-written article on suppressing the work of a grad student because it might compromise national security. The twist here is that the student is reorganizing publicly-available data using mapping techniques. Nothing proprietary, no espionage involved. So where’s the risk? Only that it makes government and corporations nervous.

More commentary on this in a moment. I need to have breakfast.

UPDATE: I’ve included my thoughts in the extended entry below.
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