“The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.” –Thomas A. Edison

From AP:

When public outcry forced Congress to eliminate funding for the Pentagon’s Total Information Awareness program, which had been developing powerful tools to mine millions of public and private records for information on U.S. citizens, it left undisturbed a separate but similar $64-million research program at DoD’s Advanced Research and Development Activity (ARDA) unit, using some of the same contractors who had worked on the TIA effort. “The whole congressional action looks like a shell game,” says a spokesman for the Federation of American Scientists. “There may be enough of a difference for them to claim TIA was terminated while for all practical purposes the identical work is continuing.” ARDA sponsors corporate and academic research on information technology for U.S. intelligence agencies, and is developing computer software dubbed “Novel Intelligence from Massive Data,” which performs many of the same kinds of data-mining activities rejected by opponents of TIA. The ARDA project is vastly more powerful than other data-mining activities such as the Department of Homeland Security’s CAPPS II program to classify air travelers or the six-state, Matrix data collection system funded by the Justice Department.

On the way into work this morning, I looked up at Highway 90 which curved and splayed right over my head, and thought how beautiful highways really are. While not a lover of asphalt jungles that neglect the natural beauty of the earth, I must admit that freeways with their bends and twists are marvels of creation in concrete and steel. Beauty is beauty whether is it is in the primitive curve of a daisy’s petal or in the manmade constructions around us.

When I voiced my thoughts to D, it came out something like this: “I like highways. I think they’re pretty.” Given that it was a non-sequitur and came out of nowhere, D looked at me funny and said, “Okaaaay.” I explained my rationale to him and he got it.

As I booted up the computers in my virtual reality room today, I found that someone had tacked a fortune from a cookie onto the wall right by my operator’s console. I pulled it off the wall and what did it say but “You find beauty in ordinary things, do not lose that ability.”

For the love of honesty and passion in liberal politics, quit giving Howard Dean such a hard time. Mainstream Democrats suck for turning their spineless backs on someone trying to energize their losing party. Your false sense of propriety will only net you a loser candidate.

Dean’s scream was funny from a frequency modulation standpoint. You’ve probably found and heard these yourself, but just in case, there are some pretty hilarious remixes of “the scream heard ’round Cedar Rapids” (or wherever the hell he was).