Bioterror

Gene-splicing technology is moving fast, making it ever easier to develop a killer virus. For a million dollars or so, a reasonably talented grad student could set up a lab in a basement and cook up a batch of
smallpox. Or worse. It's only a question of how soon.

Boston Globe subscribers credit card numbers published

If you happen to subscribe to the Boston Globe or its sister paper, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, you might want to check your credit card statement extra carefully this month.

The Globe sends its papers out with packing slips. To save money, they print the slips on the back of computer printouts. This weekend, some of the printouts were found to contain the names and credit card numbers of about 240,000 Globe and Telegram subscribers. Oops.

Student spies paid to monitor professors

A conservative alumni organization is offering to pay UCLA students to monitor the activities of leftist professors such as the notorious Dirty Thirty, who are systematically brainwashing their students. The ultimate goal is to get complete tape recordings and class notes for every class these professors teach.

Ten million

...is the estimated number of Indian girls aborted after an ultrasound gender check in the past twenty years, according to a study in The Lancet.

Population censuses in India show that the number of girls has fallen steadily. In 1981 there were 962 girls for every 1,000 boys up to the age of 6. In 2001 there were only 927.

Cheney emergency hospital visit

The smartest guy in the White House was rushed to the hospital around 3 A.M. last night after experiencing shortness of breath. Doctors found that he had been retaining “fluids” due to medication he's taking for some sort of foot ailment.

When I think of the web of technology keeping this guy alive, my internal organs twitch.

Democracy, yes. Freedom, not so much.

People are funny. Give them a little bit of agency in their own lives, and you just never know what http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifthey'll do with it. Take Iraq, for example, where early results in the much-touted elections show religious hardliners with a significant lead. I'm sure this will turn out well.

NSA spies on Americans without warrants

The New York Times revealed yesterday that President Bush secretly authorized the NSA to eavesdrop on phone calls without court-approved warrants. “While many details about the program remain secret, officials familiar with it say the N.S.A. eavesdrops without warrants on up to 500 people in the United States at any given time.”

North Korea has been printing fake US$100 bills for 25 years

According to the Los Angeles Times:

The counterfeiting operation began a quarter of a century ago, he recalled, at a government mint built into a mountain in the North Korean capital.

Using equipment from Japan, paper from Hong Kong and ink from France, a team of experts was ordered to make fake U.S. $100 bills, said a former North Korean chemist who said his job was to draw the design.

...

By 1989, millions of dollars' worth of high-quality fakes were showing up around the world. U.S. investigators dubbed them "supernotes" because they were virtually indistinguishable from American currency. The flow of forged bills has continued ever since, U.S. officials say, despite a redesign intended to make the cash harder to replicate.

U.S. officials called the operation an economic act of war.