Aug. 27 2011

(via NOAA GOES East DATA - EASTERN US IR)

e-mail from my mom:

What kind of time does the US government use?

Give up? It is Zulu time! No joke.

Went on NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is a federal agency focused on the condition of the oceans and the atmosphere) website to get official hurricane info. Noted the time stamp on the satellite photo did not seem to correlate with EDT or GMT and was followed by a Z. Turns out the Z stands for Zulu time and there is a conversion chart to see what Zulu time is in your time. The conversion is really weird not a simple subtract 4 hours from Zulu time to get EDT. Take a look at the chart http://hurricanes.noaa.gov/zulu-utc.html. Here is the satellite image, the top is stamped with the month, day, year and the Zulu time followed by a Z. http://www.goes.noaa.gov/ECIR4.html
Love,
Mama

May. 20 2011

pieto:

NSA Headquarters at Fort Meade.

While most of the N.S.A. was reeling on September 11th, inside SARC the horror unfolded “almost like an ‘I-told-you-so’ moment,” according to J. Kirk Wiebe, an intelligence analyst who worked there. “We knew we weren’t keeping up.” SARC was led by a crypto-mathematician named Bill Binney, whom Wiebe describes as “one of the best analysts in history.” Binney and a team of some twenty others believed that they had pinpointed the N.S.A.’s biggest problem—data overload—and then solved it. But the agency’s management hadn’t agreed.

Binney, who is six feet three, is a bespectacled sixty-seven-year-old man with wisps of dark hair; he has the quiet, tense air of a preoccupied intellectual. Now retired and suffering gravely from diabetes, which has already claimed his left leg, he agreed recently to speak publicly for the first time about the Drake case. When we met, at a restaurant near N.S.A. headquarters, he leaned crutches against an extra chair. “This is too serious not to talk about,” he said.

…

Binney, for his part, believes that the agency now stores copies of all e-mails transmitted in America, in case the government wants to retrieve the details later. In the past few years, the N.S.A. has built enormous electronic-storage facilities in Texas and Utah. Binney says that an N.S.A. e-mail database can be searched with “dictionary selection,” in the manner of Google. After 9/11, he says, “General Hayden reassured everyone that the N.S.A. didn’t put out dragnets, and that was true. It had no need—it was getting every fish in the sea.”

via

the brother, it is big.

Jan. 31 2011

The Times's Dealings With Julian Assange

I’m a little puzzled by the complaint that most of the embassy traffic we disclosed did not profoundly change our understanding of how the world works. Ninety-nine percent of what we read or hear on the news does not profoundly change our understanding of how the world works. News mostly advances by inches and feet, not in great leaps. The value of these documents — and I believe they have immense value — is not that they expose some deep, unsuspected perfidy in high places or that they upend your whole view of the world. For those who pay close attention to foreign policy, these documents provide texture, nuance and drama. They deepen and correct your understanding of how things unfold; they raise or lower your estimation of world leaders. For those who do not follow these subjects as closely, the stories are an opportunity to learn more. If a project like this makes readers pay attention, think harder, understand more clearly what is being done in their name, then we have performed a public service.

pretty fun read overall.  especially the insight to the negotiations between assange & the publications.  the context is most important though.  how bill keller & the times maneuvered this opportunity within the realm of journalism and, as he puts it, “public service.”

please note that last sentence.  yes, there is opinion & fact about the leaks themselves in this piece but the pull quote is the real idea.

knowledge is power.  or, secrets, so hot right now?

Apr. 14 2009

Marketplace: Why you want to cheat on your taxes

a good look at basic behavioral economics.

i’ve enjoyed the luxury of two members in my immediate family being world-class accountants but finally filing on my own this year, from start to finish, was a much more satisfying experience.

Nov. 04 2008

Civics Lesson 101: Who really elects the President

ratcliffe-lee:

It is the Electoral College, not the popular vote, that elects the next president of the United States. Here are some facts about the Electoral College:

* There are 538 members of the Electoral College, allotted to the 50 states and District of Columbia based on their representation in the U.S. Congress. The smallest states have three members, while the most populous state, California, has 55. Washington, D.C., which has no voting representation in Congress, has three, the same as the smallest state.

* It takes 270 electoral votes to win. The electors are pledged to one candidate or the other, but there is no federal law requiring them to vote that way. In the course of U.S. history, there have been several incidents in which so-called faithless electors voted for someone other than the candidate to whom they were pledged.

* In 48 states and Washington, D.C., the candidate who wins the popular vote wins all of a state’s electors. Nebraska and Maine have a proportional system of awarding them.

* Electors, who are picked by the respective political parties, make two selections — president and vice president. They may not vote for two candidates from their own state.

* Because a candidate could run up a big vote count in some states but lose others by narrow margins, the winner of the popular vote might not have the most electoral votes. The Electoral College has three times picked the candidate who lost the popular vote — Republicans Rutherford Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1888 and George W. Bush in 2000.

* The Electoral College meets in each state to cast its votes on a Monday early in December. The votes are then tallied in a joint session of Congress on January 6 of the following year.

* If no candidate receives a majority of the electoral votes, the House of Representatives chooses among the top three candidates, with each state having only one vote. If no vice presidential candidate receives a majority, the Senate decides between the top two candidates.

* The House has twice decided the outcome of the presidential race — in the 1800 and 1824 elections. The Senate decided the vice presidency once, in the 1836 election.

* This unique system was the result of a compromise by the writers of the U.S. Constitution in the 18th century between those who wanted direct popular election and those who wanted state legislatures to decide. One fear was that, at a time before U.S. political parties, the popular vote would be diluted by voting for an unwieldy amount of candidates.

(Writing by David Wiessler; editing by Stacey Joyce)

if you’re curious. today seems like a great day to learn.