This is a total time suck, the story of the Stuxnet computer virus and its attempt to disable the Iranian nuclear centrifuges:

How Digital Detectives Deciphered Stuxnet, the Most Menacing Malware in History

It's just too bad Stuxnet wasn't able to complete its mission.

Economic Genius

It's a good thing we have an economic giant like Barack Obama representing us at the G8 summit. What would we do without this sort of leadership:

"Hopefully we'll get some stuff done," Obama told Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti as he and other summit participants arrived for Friday evening dinner at a lodge at the secluded presidential retreat.

How can we go wrong with Captain Obvious running the show. Tell me again how this is the brightest bulb around?

Mike Hendrix analyzes the current state of the left:

Okay, let me see if I have all this straight. Bill Clinton, a white Southerner, was the first black president. Obama, an apparently straight guy, is the first gay president. George Zimmerman, a Hispanic, is a white guy. Elizabeth Warren, the whitest white woman anybody ever saw, is an Injun. [...]

Families of four who make a combined 250k a year are “the rich,” and the top one percent of income earners who actually pay the overwhelming majority of taxes aren’t paying “their fair share” and “have no skin in the game.” Hollywood rich people worth bajillions perfectly comprehend the travails of workaday Americans and portray them with unfailing accuracy in movies and on TV, but Romney, who actually has done useful work and created lots of jobs in his life, is “out of touch.” And those same rich Hollywood pigs squeal “tax me more!” but never, ever avail themselves of an existing IRS program that affords them the opportunity to pay as much as they like, anytime they feel like taking advantage of it.

Read the whole thing, it's great stuff.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder:

Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)

Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love

Believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)

Requires excessive admiration

Has a very strong sense of entitlement, e.g., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations

Is exploitative of others, e.g., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends

Lacks empathy, e.g., is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others

Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her

Regularly shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

With that in mind, witness this tidbit:

The Heritage Foundation’s Rory Cooper tweeted that Obama had casually dropped his own name into Ronald Reagan’s official biography on www.whitehouse.gov, claiming credit for taking up the mantle of Reagan’s tax reform advocacy with his “Buffett Rule” gimmick. My first thought was, he must be joking. But he wasn’t — it turns out Obama has added bullet points bragging about his own accomplishments to the biographical sketches of every single U.S. president since Calvin Coolidge (except, for some reason, Gerald Ford).

Chilling.

Here's what happens when the president of the United States publicly targets a private citizen for the crime of supporting his opponent.

Set Phasers to Dance

Check out this YouTube parody... Trekkies and We Know It...

Bank Scandal!

Kevin Williamson at NRO:

It’s a scandal when banks make profits, and it’s a scandal when they make losses. The only thing financial firms do that Democrats do not object to is write checks to Barack Obama. (Nearly a million bundled by Jon Corzine of MF Global? Yep.)

Nanny State Nonsense

Via Wizbang, there's an emergency in Arkansas. And the only solution is government. Government regulations, bureaucrats, and taxes. The emergency must be dealt with. It seems people aren't washing their dishes in a way that satisfies the government.

State Rep. Kathy Webb is seeking to have Arkansas declare a state of emergency due to people failing to scrape grease from their dishes or trap the grease in special grease collectors before washing the dishes in dishwashers or the kitchen sink.

Webb has submitted Interim Study Proposal 2011-201, an act “to declare an emergency” over the alleged crisis.

Webb’s bill claims food grease presents an emergency risk of sewer overflows that threatens the environment. “It is in the public interest to establish a Fat, Oil, and Grease Advisory Committee to study the recommended measures to better ensure that the collection, transportation, disposal, and recycling of fat, oil, and grease are done in a manner that is protective of the environment,” reads the bill.

As if "Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms" wasn't ridiculous enough in its own right, now we are told the government needs a "Fat, Oil, and Grease Advisory Committee." And what might this committee look like?

According to the bill, the state will appoint a 14 (!) member committee “with adequate staff and facilities” to study the frying-pan-grease emergency and recommend legislation, enforcement, and other emergency government action to fight food grease. Even after such action, the committee and its “adequate staff and facilities” will perpetually exist, convene, and soak up taxpayer resources.

Fourteen people, plus staff and facilities. It could become its own Little Rock office park, sucking up taxpayers money while advising on fat, oil, and grease in perpetuity.

Blog Recommendation

Over in the sidebar is a link to a blog called One Cosmos. It is a great and stimulating read, full of human observation, philosophy, theology, psychology, and anything else that pops into Bob's inspired head. I thought I would bring forward a little piece (very little indeed) to perhaps inspire anybody reading my blog to click on through for some more thoughtful writing than I can offer.

If human beings are not free to know truth, then neither freedom nor truth can be said to exist. In other words -- no, the identical words, only italicized for added oomphasis: if human beings are not free to know truth, then neither freedom nor truth can be said to exist.

These two categories -- freedom and truth -- are so fundamentally intertwined, that any diminution of one leads to a negation of the other. Therefore, it should be no surprise that a philosophy such as leftism, which does not value liberty, should be permeated with so many lies.

And it is not just that these lies represent bad or faulty information, subject to correction. Rather, these are vital lies which one is compelled to believe, often in spite of common sense and hundreds and even thousands of years of collective experience. In other words, one is not free to believe otherwise.

Perhaps you remember the seemingly mundane but illustrative example of the high school cheerleaders who were compelled by law to root equally for both boys' and girls' teams. As Dennis Prager wrote at the time, "almost no one directly involved wants this -- not the cheerleaders, not the fans, not the boys' teams, and not even the girls' teams. But it doesn't matter: The law coerces cheerleaders to cheer at girls' games."

And it all begins with a vital lie of the left, that men and women are identical. Since no normal person believes this, it must be mandated and pressured into us by forcePut another way, the state -- and this is just one of dozens of examples -- makes it against the law to be normal. (Other examples that come readily to mind: in California it is against the law to "discriminate" against a cross-dressing employee, and in our public school textbooks it is forbidden to depict any culture in a negative light.)

Once a vital lie such as this is accepted, freedom must be constrained in a thousand ways -- not just for men, but obviously for woman as well, since a normal girl has no spontaneous interest in being a cheerleader at a girls' softball game.

Seven years ago, my first wife Suzy was still alive. Heck, we didn't even know she was sick. And seven years ago, this picture was first published. Both still make me cry.