Recently Lex and Mrs. Lex went out to dinner with some friends. First, we went to the live band karaoke at the Hideout, which got a rave review from me on the blog. One of our companions was a transplanted Englishman, whom I promised to send a list of recommended reading to educate him about Chicago and America. The ungrateful chap has never responded. The other person was a Chicago area author and lawyer of some repute. The email I ended up sending was essentially as follows. It may be of some interest to our readers. (Any suggestions of your own, in a comment, of books in the general subject areas of American political and economic history, especially Chicago and the Midwest, would be appreciated.)
New Lisa Marr Record — American Jitters
Heads up. Take a break from worrying about China. Happy news.
Lisa Marr’s new cd is out.
But you’d almost have to be psychic to notice.
There is nothing on her website –or almost nothing. If you happen to look at “shows” and happen to notice that the last one listed says “release party” you’ll get a hint there’s a new record. But there’s nothing on the merch page on the website, so you can’t buy it there even if you managed to figure out that it existed. This is a mysterious approach. But there is a blurb about it on the Sympathy for the Record Industry site, which is where I found out about it, totally by accident, while looking for something else. And, sure enough, you can get it on Amazon. But there is no picture and there are no samples … .
This is an eccentric marketing blitz. More like an anti-blitz. Like a stealth attack or something. Maybe it is a zen approach where less is more, or one hand is clapping or a butterfly is dreaming of being a person.
But. I see that you can go to this site and hear samples or do some kind of pay-to-download thing I haven’t figured out yet.
The samples sound anywhere from good to damn good to breathtaking (“The Boy With the Lou Reed Eyes”).
My disk is already on order. I will provide a full review in due time.
Another Security Risk from China?
Bruce Schneier writes:
China is getting a copy of the Windows source code. I’ve already written about the security risks of open-source versus proprietary software. One of the problems with open source is that the bad guys get to look at the code. One of the good things about open source is that the good guys get to look at the code, too. If I were the Chinese government, I’d turn that code upside down looking for vulnerabilities, and then not tell anyone about them. This seems like a huge security risk to me, even though Microsoft might consider it a smart business move.
Good point. Microsoft probably sees China as just another customer, but from a security standpoint we should be wary. If there is any advantage to be gained here, the Chinese government will take it. The fact that we habitually view a technology as benign does not preclude someone else from using that technology as a weapon. (See, in this regard, Lex’s recent post about China’s space program.)
Israeli submarines with nuclear missiles?
This should be taken with a shaker of salt, but I think it is interesting enough to post about it. Call it a tribute to the National Enquirer if you think it is too improbable.
According to reports originally coming from the Los Angeles Times Israel can now can launch nuclear-tipped cruise missiles from German-built submarines that were delivered in the late 90s. After its smear-campaign against Schwarzenegger I have doubts about the paper’s credibility, but if true this would be good news. Due to its small size Israel has no room for error so it has to keep track of what its enemies are up to. If they knew that it can retaliate even in the unlikely case of a successful surprise attack would be a quite effective deterrent.
Der Spiegel, also not the most credible source I can think of, reports that the diesel-powered submarines can stay out of port for over four weeks and can sail over 15,000 kilometers (not quite 10,000 miles) in that time; their armament consists of ten torpedoes and Harpoon cruise missiles. The magazine also says that experts had warned years ago that Israel was planning to use the subs as platforms for nuclear weapons. Some members of the German parliament allegedly asked the government if the installation of over-sized torpedo-tubes in the three submarines of the “Delphin” class (with a diameter of 650 instead of 533 millimeters, that’s respectively about 26 and 21.5 inches) indicated such intentions. According to Der Spiegel the German defense-ministry answered that “at the end of the day the federal government can’t exclude any kind of armament”. If the reports are indeed true they were right and Israel has successfully redesigned the “Harpoon” anti-ship missile to carry a small nuclear warhead for use against ground-targets.
According to some experts Haaretz quotes these claims are bogus, which might be right – leaking false information like this and denying it afterwards is still going to keep Israel’s enemies wondering and make them think twice before they try anything. And even if it’s true a boilerplate denial is almost obligatory, to keep them wondering anyway.
And finally, this website claims, in an article that seems to be from a while back, that two of the three submarines had been paid for by the usual German financial support for Israeli defense and the third jointly by Germany and Israel. The website also claims that German and Israeli firms cooperated in the construction of the boats and blithely mentions that these specific boats also could also be used for launching nuclear weapons. Taken together with the defense-ministry’s response quoted above this would mean that the German government knew about the plans Israel had with the subs, should it turn out that there really is something to this story. A caveat: The homepage of the site has been hacked (I know this because all you can find there is “hacked…”). I don’t think that the material I quote has been maliciously put up by the hacker in question, military-themed websites get hacked on principle around here, but it’s one more reason to be skeptical.