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Police Chief Abruptly Resigns in New Orleans - New York Times

Police Chief Abruptly Resigns in New Orleans - New York Times: “The police superintendent of New Orleans, Edwin P. Compass III, abruptly resigned today, four weeks after Hurricane Katrina put the city under water and into chaos, with people who had stayed behind left for days to fend for themselves amid reports of looting and lawlessness.
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‘I served this department for 26 years and have taken it through some of the toughest times of its history,’ Mr. Compass said today at a news conference. ‘Every man in a leadership position must know when it’s time to hand over the reins. I’ll be going on in another direction that God has for me.’

Neither Mr. Compass nor Mayor C. Ray Nagin would say why the police commissioner was stepping down.

‘It’s a sad day in the city of New Orleans when a hero makes a decision like this,’ said Mr. Nagin, who appointed the chief in 2002, shortly after Mr. Nagin took office. ‘He leaves the department in pretty good shape and with a significant amount of leadership.’”

Reading between the lines, it sounds as if it was made clear to Mayor Nagin that Federal dollars would not be poured into city with demonstrably unsuccessful police leadership.

Tags: Law, SF, Zimmerblog General by wfzimmerman
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Legendary Monster of the Deep, 26-Foot Squid, Captured on Film - New York Times

Legendary Monster of the Deep, 26-Foot Squid, Captured on Film - New York Times: “today two Japanese scientists, Tsunemi Kubodera and Kyoichi Mori, report in a leading British biological journal that they have made the world’s first observations of a giant squid in the wild.

Working about 600 miles south of Tokyo off the Bonin Islands, known in Japan as the Ogasawara Islands, they photographed the creature with a robotic camera at a depth of 3,000 feet. During a struggle lasting more than four hours, the animal, about 26 feet long, took the proffered bait and eventually broke free, leaving behind an 18-foot length of tentacle.”

Incredible news. But there are no pictures on the &^%*(* NY times site!

Tags: Zimmerblog General by wfzimmerman
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Granite Shadow

Early Warning by William M. Arkin - washingtonpost.com: “Granite Shadow is yet another new Top Secret and compartmented operation related to the military’s extra-legal powers regarding weapons of mass destruction. It allows for emergency military operations in the United States without civilian supervision or control.”

Tags: Proliferated by wfzimmerman
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Dan Brown walks the walk at female seminary

Exeter News-Letter Local News: Seminary dedication stirs school memories: “Seminary alumnae, Lincoln Street School, the Spirit and Enrichment Council, Exeter Monument Company, Timberland, the Parent Teacher Organization, Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter Historical Society, local author Dan Brown and many others dedicated hours and financial support to make the dream of the trail and outdoor classroom [at Robinson Female Seminary] a reality.”

Tags: Dan Brown, The Solomon Key and Beyond by wfzimmerman
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[Proliferated] Granite Shadow

Early Warning by William M. Arkin - washingtonpost.com: “Granite Shadow is yet another new Top Secret and compartmented operation related to the military’s extra-legal powers regarding weapons of mass destruction. It allows for emergency military operations in the United States without civilian supervision or control.”

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Posted by wfzimmerman to Proliferated at 9/27/2005 10:32:00 AM

Tags: Proliferated, Zimmerblog General by wfzimmerman
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Amazon.com Widgets

Books I Won’t Be Reading: UNCERTAIN ENDINGS

Publishers Marketpalce reports:

“Otto Penzler’s UNCERTAIN ENDINGS: Riddle and Puzzle Mystery Stories, a collection of classic suspense in which each story’s ending is left cleverly unresolved, with contributions by Ray Bradbury, Roald Dahl, Aldous Huxley, Peter Godfrey, O. Henry, Mark Twain, and Cornell Woolrich among others, to Claiborne Hancock at Pegasus, by Nat Sobel at Sobel Weber Associates (NA).”

I hate unresolved endings.

Tags: Books I Won't Be Reading, Zimmerblog General by wfzimmerman
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Able Danger: Theory v. Reality

Here’s what Able Danger said they were doing:

Early Warning by William M. Arkin - washingtonpost.com: “Starting in 1996, LIWA deployed teams to Bosnia. They were part of a new vanguard of information warriors. They required detailed information on factions and individuals: decision-maker identities, biases and inter-relationships, identification of critical communications and information links and nodes, demographic data, populace biases and pre-dispositions. The goal was to harness this information to determine potential pressure points to leverage decision-maker/populace behaviors…

Back at Ft. Belvoir, VA, the LIWA Advanced Concepts and Analysis division, and later the Army’s Information Dominance Center (IDC) was employing new means for achieving “information dominance.” With the explosion of electronic information and the ability to move vast quantities of data quickly, analysts were increasingly facing the same problem confronting forensic accountants, insurance fraud investigators, and bank examiners: Large amounts of data was increasingly available, but it needed to be put in relational form in order to develop patterns, and then sense needed to be made of the patterns to reveal what had already happened or was about to happen.”

Here’s what they were actually doing. An illustration from the same article by William Arkin.

Translation: they were bombing the “Bosniacs” (!?) to death with press releases.

Tags: CTR, Uncategorized, Zimmerblog General by wfzimmerman
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M. Scott Peck Takes The Road Everyone Travels

Newsday.com: ”Road Less Traveled” author dies at 69.: “OS ANGELES — Author M. Scott Peck, who wrote the best-seller ‘The Road Less Traveled’ and other novels, has died. He was 69.

Peck died Sunday at his home in Connecticut, longtime friend and Los Angeles publicist Michael Levine said. He had suffered from pancreatic and liver duct cancer.”

His books meant a lot to Cheryl and me.

Tags: Zimmerblog General by wfzimmerman
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Switch to the Mac with Ease–O’Reilly’s Latest Release

For Immediate Release
For more information, a review copy, cover art, or an interview with the author, contact:
Theresa Pulido (707) 827-7118 or theresa@oreilly.com

Switch to the Mac With Ease
O’Reilly Releases “Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition”

Sebastopol, CA–Tired of fighting spyware? Frustrated by the constant barrage of ever-more-persistant viruses? For these reasons and others, both neophytes and die-hard Windows PC users are turning to the Mac in increasing numbers. Some have security concerns, others are simply beguiled by the undeniable “cool” factor of a computer that operates, looks, and feels as slick as your iPod. And with the advent of the $500 Mac mini, price is no longer an obstacle for those considering making the switch to these elegantly designed, reliable, and user-friendly computers.

While warning that a Mac isn’t just a Windows machine in a spiffier box, the authors of “Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition”
(Pogue & Goldstein, O’Reilly, US $24.95) simplify the switch and accelerate the learning curve with a guide that delivers what Apple doesn’t–everything you need to know to move painlessly to the Mac.

Authors David Pogue (creator of the Missing Manual Series) and Adam Goldstein (17-year-old whiz kid founder of GoldfishSoft) admit that switching to the Mac is not “all sunshine and bunnies.” The Mac is, as they say, “a different machine, running a different operating system, built by a company with a different philosophy–a fanatical perfectionistic/artistic zeal. When it comes to their missions and ideals, Apple and Microsoft have about as much in common as a melon and a shoehorn.”

Pogue and Goldstein’s guide to the Mac OS X “Tiger” operating system confronts the similarities and differences head-on, with straightforward explanations and more than a little humor. “Windows refugees” will quickly become comfortable with the new features and capabilities of their Macs.
For those who are adding a Mac to their computer repertoire, they’ll show you how to get the two computers talking over a network, sharing an Internet connection, and working with each other’s files.

“Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition” begins with a crash course in Mac essentials, including all the nifty features you see when you turn the machine on, and continues with sections on making the transition to the Mac as smooth as possible:

-Moving In: how to haul your software, settings, and even peripherals
(like printers and monitors) across the chasm from the PC to the Mac. It
covers the easy parts (copying over documents, pictures, and music files)
and the harder ones (transferring email, address books, buddy lists,
etc.).

-Making Connections: where to find your Internet settings on the old
Windows machine and where to plug them in on the Macintosh. It demystifies
Apple’s Internet software suite–Mail, Address Book, Safari, and iChat.

-Putting Down Roots: how to become a Macintosh power user. You’ll learn
how to set up private accounts for people who share a Mac, navigate the
System Preferences program, and operate the 50 free bonus programs that
come with Mac OS X.

-Two appendixes cover troubleshooting and installation and provide a
“Where’d It Go?” dictionary of where to find familiar controls in the new
Macintosh environment. A third appendix explains standard Mac keystrokes.

Tackling their subject with evident relish and good humor, Pogue and Goldstein explain the hundreds of innovative features of the Mac OS in a clear, down-to-earth and funny fashion, so you too can enjoy “Switching to the Mac.”

Additional Resources:

For more information about the book and the authors, see:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/switchmacmm2/

For a cover graphic in JPEG format, go to:
ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/graphics/book_covers/hi-res/0596006608.jpg

Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition David Pogue and Adam Goldstein
ISBN: 0-596006608, 520 pages, $24.95 US, $34.95 CAN order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938
1-707-827-7000
http://www.oreilly.com
1005 Gravenstein Highway North
Sebastopol, CA 95472

Tags: SF, Zimmerblog General by wfzimmerman
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