Welcome, gang. You have Angus to thank for this, hence the name. I'll post up all the little tidbits I'd normally send out in a cumbersome, old-fashioned email, and you can peruse it at your leisure. Also send me more stuff to post -- time to clean out that "Saved" file and watch the little e-mailbox gauge flutter down to 9% or so. ;-)

I will kick things off with the Outrage du Jour, the emerging debacle over at the Pentagon around a DARPA program scheduled to go live this week wherein a futures market would be established *by the federal government* on "policy analysis" of future instability in the Middle East. what does that mean in plain English? well, let's ask Darth Wolfowitz, shall we? essentially, investors would bet on whether and how much events in the Mid-East would affect the region, and make money if their predictions were correct, i.e. if Israel *was* bombed with chemical weapons or if King Abdullah *was* assassinated. in other words, it's Who Wants To Be A Federally Funded War Profiteer? yep, this is real life, not The Onion. :o

The silver (or possibly just chrome) lining to all this, it appears the Democratic leadership has awakened from its slumber and succeeded in blowing the whistle, shutting the program down. seems like cold comfort to me, though -- if this passed unnoticed for this long, what the hell else are they cooking up over there? i say again, let's move to the moon.