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Calling CIA charter violations the Family Jewels was a big mistake

Perspective on the Jewels From the C.I.A.s Chief Historian - Washington - News - New York Times Blog

For more than 30 years, the Family Jewels have clouded the C.I.A.’s reputation, even though most of their contents have long been known from official reports and ad hoc disclosures. William Colby — who oversaw the compilation of the Jewels while serving as the agency’s operations chief and director-designate — is the source of some durable misconceptions about them.

Calling a list of possible violations of the CIA Charter “the Family Jewels” was a huge mistake which should not be perpetuated. They are “family jewels” only in the sense in which a vulnerable man is held by “the family jewels.” Why not just release them as what they are?

“A List of Possible Charter Violations Committed Thirty or More Years Ago.”

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RINGWORLD’S CHILDREN: Niven at his best

Rating: 5
Review of: Ringworld’s children by Niven, Larry

Amazing and gratifying that Larry Niven has returned to his top form late in his career. RINGWORLD’S CHILDREN brings the series of four RINGWORLD novels to a surprising and profoundly surprising conclusion.

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Must reading if you are interested in North Korea

Rating: 5
Review of: Pyongyang : a journey in North Korea by Delisle, Guy

And you should be interested in North Korea, because its roughly 22 million people suffer under the most frightful authoritarian regime. It is hard to know what is more devastating, their poverty or their isolation.

Beautifully observed and narrated.

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Boing-boing’s Fireproof Hobbit Home in the Woods

Boing Boing: Photos of cozy woodland home construction

the brilliant thing about this is that it’s fire-proof. The New York Times just had a great article about how stupid it is to build homes in fire-prone woods. (On Fringe of Forests, Homes and Fires Meet)

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TripIt> the technology is in the wrong place.

O’Reilly Radar > TripIt Looking for Beta Testers

With TripIt, you simply email us your travel confirmation emails and we do the rest.

Bzzt. The technology is in the wrong place. I want TripIt to be on the browser so it keeps track as I make the reservations. Adding an extra step to every reservation is the wrong way to go.

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Mitt Romney not prone to second-guessing self

Journeys of a shared life - The Boston Globe

As the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. ”Dad!” he yelled. ”Gross!” A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who’d been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.
As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, [Mitt] Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.

And veritably Bush 43-like powers of self-criticism and error correction.

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Google Gadget Ventures: I hate Google Gadgets

Google Code - Updates: Google Gadget Ventures

Good news for Gadget developers. We’ve just launched Gadget Ventures, a new pilot program for distributing grants and seed investments to gadget developers and gadget-related businesses. We’re excited about the opportunity this will give developers to build even richer, more useful gadgets and get recognized for doing it.

For the life of me I cannot fathom why is so excited about these Gadgets. I hate the customized home page. I much prefer the clean, original default. If I want a customized gadget page, I go to Yahoo! ;-)
The Gadgets must make money somehow, but I don’t get it.

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Google Search: Not Much New Under the Sun

Google’s Marissa Mayer on The Future of Search

I saw this article where Marissa Meyer of gave a speech on the future of search. I was struck that not much of it was truly new from my days at LexisNexis working on the web search engine.

1. Automated Translation –ok, if they can do this, that would be pretty new!
2. Book Search — My former employer, LexisNexis, has had all the important books in its domain (treatises) online for ages
3. Images and Video — friends at LN were working with image search partners five years ago
4. 1-800-GOOG-411 — I had a phone query of LN working five years ago
5. Universal Search — LexisNexis was designing Universal Search for its 33,000 password-controlled premium sources five years ago.
6. Maps and Local Search — I still go to the Yellow Pages at least half the time
7. Client Software ( Gears, Gadgets) — LexisNexis Mobile for the Pocket PC did offline search and retrieve (using AvantGo — remember them? syncing is not new …)
8. iGoogle — I cannot fathom why they are so excited about this. I hate the customized home page, I just want the clean default.

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