Category Archives: Uncategorized

Taxi Confidential

Newsweek:

Among the most eye-grabbing of those claims came in an official British government “ white paper” released in late September 2002 after Blair had returned from a meeting at Camp David with George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney claiming Saddam had chemical or biological weapons that could be deployed “within 45 minutes of an order to use them.” Blair said this, and other claims in the white paper based on secret intelligence, demonstrated that Saddam was a “current and serious threat to the U.K. national interest.”

“Brits 45 Mins from Doom” screamed the headline in The Sun, Britain’s largest-selling daily newspaper, after the white paper was released.

But according to Holloway, the 45 minute claim should have been regarded as questionable from the outset. According to Holloway’s paper, the claim “had originated from an émigré taxi driver on the Iraqi-Jordanian border, who had remembered an overheard … conversation in the back of his cab a full two years earlier.” According to the MP, in a footnote to the original intelligence report, a U.K. intelligence analyst had “flagged up” that specific portion of the report, which supposedly related to the readiness of Iraqi missiles, as “demonstrably untrue.” It was provably false, Holloway says, because the missiles in question, according to the MP’s information, “did not exist …The footnote said it in black and white ink.” According to Holloway, while “the truth of the matter was that the intelligence services simply did not know whether Saddam Hussein had WMD, it was equally probable that he was bluffing to maintain a credible threat against Iran.” But Holloway says a senior U.K.intelligence official told him: “There was no appetite in government to hear that.”

Bombs away.

Two iPhones

Another interview question:

You are in a 100 story building. You have two iPhones. Assume the iPhones are identical and will break when dropped out the window (ie. they fall all the way to the street below) from floor X or higher, but they will not break if dropped from below floor X. If an iPhone doesn't break, it doesn't grow weaker (ie. you can safely drop it from floor X - 1 an infinite number of times, if you have the time).

X can be 1, it can be 100, or any number in between.

What is the fewest number of drops you need to find X?

Winning Logic

The Medium Lobster wrote this:

Let us never forget just what's at stake in the war in Afghanistan: nothing less than the success of the war in Afghanistan. This war may be a mistake, a blood-soaked blunder, an unholy charnel house mindlessly consuming the bodies and souls of untold thousands, an open sore on the pockmarked face of history and an abomination before the sight of God and men, but it is first and foremost a war, and wars must be won. If the United States doesn't win this war, then will it not lose it? And if the United States loses this war, then won't the Unites States have lost it? And if the United States has lost this war, will that not then make the United States a kind of thing that loses wars? And then where would we be?

Because it's true.

My Proudest Moment

The guy who sprinkles fertilizer and weed killer on my lawn every 3 months came by today, cast his magic dust about our .09 acres, then left a little note on the invoice:

Weed control very good. Maintenance is excellent.
Good Job!

I swelled with pride. No, really. I did.

After 10 years of trying, this is the first year our lawn has looked like one of those lush, verdant carpets of grass like you'd see on the cover of Lawn Care Weekly. And it's all because there was finally enough rain that it didn't die in mid-July. All I do is mow it. Regardless, I will take the credit.

I am The Suburbanite !

Neighbors! Gaze upon my glorious turf, ye envious tenders of weed-specked sand-scapes, and despair!