Dowbrigade

Sorry, you won’t be able to buy shares in Usama Bin Laden
anytime soon, as
reported here this morning. Reacting to immediate intense
pressure, Paul Wolfowitz killed the project

"I couldn’t believe that we would actually commit $8 million to
create a Web site that would encourage investors to bet on futures involving
terrorist attacks and public assassinations," said Senate Minority
Leader Tom Daschle. "There is something very sick about it," added
Barbara Boxer. from CNN

The first
Flash Mob in the Boston area is set for Thursday in Harvard
Square.  Over 500 mobsters have signed up for the event, and today
received an email from the shadowy organizers.  The event will take
place "sometime after 7:03pm." We have been told where to hitch up near
the square, according to birth month. We have been told how to synchronize
our watches.
We
have NOT been told what actions we will be taking; that’s the whole point
of a flash mob. I am interested but not excited – having experienced
the "Days of Rage" in the square in the 70′s. The techo-weenies will
have to seriously gear up to surpass that "Mob"…..

A: Walk him and pitch to the Rhino

Q: What do you get when you combine Vermont wool from recycled
sweaters, a Holstien cow from upstate New York, ground cork from Mississippi,
various secret potions, silt from a secret slice of the Delaware River
and a bunch of Tico boleros? A: Why, a baseball, of course!

Well-written looong article about what’s inside a baseball, how they
are put together, where all the ingredients come from, and who the
people are who do all the work.
From Boston Globe Sports section

The Defense Department’s research wing, DARPA, usually involved in
more mundane projects like inventing the Internet and Robot
Races, may
soon be selling
shares in Usama Bin Laden. The idea is an extension of the proven
power of free markets to predict non-marketplace behavior, like the selling
of futures in the varying presidential candidates as a menthod of
predicting their chances to win.

This particular bright idea involves setting up a commodity-style
market to use real investors — putting down real money — to help its
generals predict terrorist attacks, coups d’etat, and other turmoil around
the globe. It is the brainchild of a virtual who’s who of anti-terrorism
braniacs: sponsored by the Defense Department, uder the aegis of the
Information Awareness Office, whose director is retired Admiral John
Poindexter, the former Iran-Contra figure, and the Economist Intelligence
Unit, research arm of the publishers of The Economist magazine.

The idea is simple; use investors’ saavy and the proven predictive power
of an open market to track and anticipate the chances of world events. The
market would be a tool for combining, or ”aggregating,” the informed
opinions of many people into a single assessment. If
this sounds like a wacky boondogle, you are not alone. ”Spending taxpayer
dollars to create terrorism betting parlors is as wasteful as it is repugnant,”
Democratic Sens. Wyden and Dorgan said yesterday in a letter to the Pentagon.
”The American people want the federal government to use its resources
enhancing
our security,
not gambling on it.”

from the Boston Globe