Wednesday--

I didn't watch the Democratic debates but I gather that the affair went off in a civil manner and they actually discussed issues without hurling personal insults at either each other or the moderator.  Grist had a piece focused on a subject that got 0 mention on the early morning news: climate change.  I will make only a couple of points here. First, Jim Webb just lost my vote.  Blaming China isn't a solution to the problem it is simply a way to absolve us and ensure we don't do anything ourselves.  And I love the summation in the last paragraph.

Thursday--

Hamburg, Germany, plans to eliminate most car traffic in the city within 20 years.

Ah, what a tangled mess.  It reminds me of the problem of tracing hacking to specific countries and people.  Difficult, very difficult.  Environmentalists have been saying for years that where waste is concerned there is no "away" to which it can be thrown.  In this case the Philippines is pissed with Canada because a shipment which supposedly contained plastics for recycling actually contained a lot of really gross waste which is not recyclable.  The shipment was supposedly from a company in Vancouver who claims they either got it from some unnamed company in Vancouver or not because it may have actually been from a similarly named company in Ontario.  Everyone is pointing fingers at everyone else and no one can do anything about it anyway because the laws don't cover the case since the waste is simply gross not toxic.

This author makes a lot of sense and, unfortunately, what the implications say about U.S. aims and policy is nasty--very nasty.

I heard this last night on the news and said "Oh, shit, not again."  I can agree that Boko Haram is a collective piece of shit as smelly as IS but I don't think it is our job to stomp on every piece of shit in the world.  Think about how well that has worked with IS and with al Qaeda before.  All we did is splatter it to contaminate new areas.  If that is our real intention (though obviously unspoken) we have done a bang up job.

The U.S. Navy decided they needed a backup incase their computers are hacked so they are bringing celestial navigation back to the Academy.  Given how many computer failures (hack or otherwise) that sounds like a good idea.  Low tech backups are always good.  Damn, where did I put my slide rule.

Cruel and unusual punishment for the crime of co-signing on student loans for his kids.