October 2003

"The white-flight gated suburbs insist on impossible standards of fire protection, but refuse to pay either higher insurance premiums or higher property taxes."

charged with "misuse of a telephone" for sending an e-mail to the US Embassy objecting to the war on Iraq

"The 29th [family] is represented by a single, decidedly odd-looking species described for the first time this month."

management "called on staff to phone their local newspaper to stem criticism about the firm's activities in Iraq"

"the powerful movement to reduce privacy that is coming from the private sector is motivated by the incentives to price discriminate, to charge different prices to various customers for the same goods or services."

I don't read that as even remotely anti-Semitic; it's very much "look what they've managed to do, why can't we do that?"

"before 9/11, the FBI had only 40 Arabic and 25 Farsi speakers to listen to national-security intercepts"

"The Prime Minister is a political figure, and in the great Australian tradition will always be booed."

"restrictive EULAs, proprietary file formats, and digital rights management technologies were not popular with pre-adolescent females"

"I don't need to swallow shit from a twenty-something drone in a corporate office churning out propaganda"

"soldiers driving bulldozers have uprooted ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and lemon trees as part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers who do not give information about guerrillas"

"[Thatcher] knew when the Americans were going wrong and was not scared to tell them. The contrast with Blair is sad."

"If they are to open up to each other economically, ASEAN's members may have to open up to each other politically as well"

"at the time of the Marshall Plan, Americans were very concerned about profiteering in the name of patriotism"