Blog Heap of Links for the day 1 May 2012

It’s time for Republicans to pronounce: Women are smarter than this. How does one convert unyielding and uninformed liberals? With reason and knowledge. To enter into this battle, one must be armed, agile, sharp, and resolute. Here are some tools. When the Democrats start ranting, use the GIRLFRIENDS acronym to forge through the storm.

According to reports from various industry sources, the Chinese government has begun the process of picking a national computer chip instruction set architecture (ISA). This ISA would have to be used for any projects backed with government money — which, in a communist country such as China, is a fairly long list of public and private enterprises and institutions, including China Mobile, the largest wireless carrier in the world. ... developing a brand new ISA — a daunting task, considering you have to create an entire software (compiler, developer, apps) and hardware (CPU, chipset, motherboard) ecosystem from scratch. But, there are benefits to building your own CPU architecture. ...silicon-level monitoring and censorship ...a ubiquitous, always-open backdoor that can be used by Chinese intelligence agencies... DNS and IP address blacklist [built] into the hardware itself ...implement a hardware-level 10pm curfew for video games... code that automatically turns negative mentions of Hu Jintao (the Chinese president) into positives, and inserts a few honorifics at the same time ...a latent botnet of hundreds of millions of computers that can be activated upon the commencement of World War III. Or, or, or… [The word "benefits," as employed here, is not value-oriented.]

There's a cop blog in Chicago, Second City Cop, and let me tell you the cops are plenty worried about the shenannigans about to be unleashed by the OWSers and the May Day commies and of course the NATO summit later in the month. There have been stashes of human waste found in bottles, hundreds of pop bottles, all lined up ready to be hurled at cops.

...plans in place for a mass evacuation of downtown in the event of riots on May 20-21 ... Red Cross memo out of Milwaukee indicates.... Officials there have been asked to make plans to assist residents in the event of a mass exodus. Chicago officials say the plan didn’t come from them. The U.S. Secret Service isn’t talking. There also are reports that a heavily armed security team will start making a very public appearance around federal buildings in the Loop this week. Officials with the Chicago NATO host committee were completely in the dark. They had no reports of any such plans. A source told CBS 2 that security forces in full battle gear would not be seen this week. ...

...In a letter to all residents at 520 South State Street, the property manager is strongly recommending that everyone find alternative places to stay during the summit. The managers point out violence and damage from past protests in other cities could engulf Chicago as well. Besides recommending that residents also not have any guests between May 18th through the 21st, management also says access to the building will be quote "very limited." The building's revolving door will be locked Friday morning and IDs will be checked. ...

The Milwaukee Red Cross is preparing in case people from Chicago need to evacuate the city during the NATO Summit. ... "If a tornado would hit Chicago, we're an evacuation area. If there would be a large scale power outage, we're an evacuation area. This isn't anything out of the normal for us. ... Anytime there are large gatherings of people, Presidential inaugurations, the Super Bowl, the Chicago Marathon, the American Red Cross is asked to have a contingency plan in case there would be an evacuation." The NATO summit happens next month.

WTC 1, the Freedom Tower, which will surpass 1,250 feet today, will taunt the Empire State Building (height: 1,250 feet) by lighting a blue and white color scheme this evening. Those colors were chosen to mock the Empire State Building’s controversial 2010 decision not to light the building in honor of the 100th anniversary of Mother Teresa’s birth. Didn't see that coming.

Update - Andy: As luck would have it, I visited the 9/11 memorial yesterday and took this picture of One WTC [photo]

235 Great pic but it still leaves me feeling v. empty. Nothing will ever replace the Twin Towers.
Posted by: laceyunderalls

239 The worst is when you're watching an old movie or looking at pictures and you see the twin towers in the background. Then you get a wave of "sick" immediately followed by "fury" and then "hopelessness" and then an increased desire to un-elect muslims from office...
Posted by: Dagny, warrior queen

Let me get this straight: If Reagan decides (yes, covertly) to send aid to the Nicaraguan Contras (nominal Christians fighting commies) in the face of a congressional ban, that's high treason requiring endless months of breathless negative commentary from the New York Times, and endless months of outraged committee hearings on Capital Hill.

If Obama decides to overtly send aid to Hamas (nominal Muslims who murder Jews and other nominal Muslims),.that's nothing to worry about and nobody important, except for some morons on a right wing blog even notices and comments on it, before moving on to the next story: Justice for SlayVon!

Got it.

Okay, this is kind of interesting. This story in the Washington Free Beacon talks about the political decision to not sell our gubmint held shares in GM; to do so would mean the amount of loss is made public:

http://tinyurl.com/6wt5dnq

So then I did a little research. We the peeeeple hold 500 million shares of GM. Per a Feb.14, 2012 CNN article, if they were sold at the then current price of $25.40 per share, we would show a loss of $12.7 billion. That is on top of the $7 billion we are already in the hole on the deal. Source:

http://tinyurl.com/7jckre3

So what is the current share price? $23.57

So gee, at 500 million shares that's another $750 million loss. The stock will have to reach $51 per share for us to break even.

Sigh.

For decades, city centers and intercity roads have suffered from heavy traffic congestion and air pollution from car emissions. To diminish these effects, governments have tried to get people out of their cars and onto public transport such as trains, trams, buses and metros, as well was using non-polluting bicycles. Unfortunately, this has mostly proven to be unsuccessful. At least partly to blame here are poor connections between different modes of transport, longer traveling times and delays, as well as a lack of comfort and privacy. Designers and engineers are now exploring new public transport concepts, which are more capable of competing with the car by offering quicker, and in some cases individualized, transportation, as well as introducing a new range of personal city vehicles. [Mostly to blame is that mass transportation is not what people want! That said, there are some nice designs here. And flying cars!]

“It’s time we focused on reality instead of rhetoric.” The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity released this powerful ad recently. The group boldly mocks the #occupy criminal movement in the powerful pro-American ad. [Video]

Nina Rhodes-Hughes wants the world to know that, despite what history says, Sirhan was not the only gunman firing shots when Kennedy was murdered a few feet away from her at a Los Angeles hotel. "What has to come out is that there was another shooter to my right," Rhodes-Hughes said in an exclusive interview with CNN. "The truth has got to be told. No more cover-ups."

Another grim milestone: Over twice as many US soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan under Barack Obama than under George W. Bush.

Tea Partiers and other constitutionally minded Americans for whom "Anyone but Obama" rings hollow, and who still harbor hopes of a third-party challenge to the GOP establishment, may find food for thought in a living example of such a conservative challenge -- namely, that which arose in Canada a quarter-century ago. Americans would benefit from a careful evaluation of their neighbors' success. [Well, maybe. The vast majority of Americans are pretty much totally stuck in the Republicrat-Demican mindset.]