Admiral Mullen and Guantanamo

Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen was on ABC News This Week when the topic came around to Guantanamo. Here’s one snippet from the transcript that caught my eye (my emphasis):

STEPHANOPOULOS: The Republican leader of the Senate was quoted in The New York Times today saying there’s actually a very slim possibility now that the Congress will allow Guantanamo to close. If he’s right, and Guantanamo doesn’t close, what would that mean for your military mission?

MULLEN: Well, the concern I’ve had about Guantanamo in these wars is it has been a symbol, and one which has been a recruiting symbol for those extremists and jihadists who would fight us. So and I think that centers — you know, that’s the heart of the concern for Guantanamo’s continued existence, in which I spoke to a few years ago, the need to close it.

Admiral Mullen makes it sounds like that his only concern about Guantanamo is that it’s a jihadist recruiting symbol. While that’s certainly a concern, I would hope his bigger concern is that we are imprisoning people without habeas corpus, trial, or often any solid evidence. Admiral Mullen’s remarks seem to imply that what we’re doing at Guantanamo would be okay as long as it is done in secret. I hope that’s not the case.

America’s justice system is strong enough to handle terrorist trials. What remains to be seen is whether our cases against these individuals are as strong.

Apple tax incentives

I’ve been following the proposed state tax incentives the General Assembly is considering providing to a mystery company widely considered to be Apple. The list of incentives appear to be pretty hefty, considering Apple’s proposed facility will employ 50 full-time employees at the most.

I know of a datacenter in RTP capable of hosting 84,000 computers that is managed by about 20 people. An Apple iTunes Store datacenter could run very comfortably with a staff of 20. So anyone expecting lots of jobs from this company is fooling himself.

The incentives bill intends to lure this company to an area of the state with high unemployment. This would typically mean a rural area of the state, and thus not an area likely to be wired for high-speed Internet access. An area without high-speed Internet access makes an iTunes Store datacenter a non-starter. Let’s hope the lawmakers keep that in mind as they attempt to keep affordable broadband out of our cities and rural areas.

MT.Net recovers from another hack

MT.Net has been down for about 28 hours due to my WordPress installation being hacked. Fortunately, I had a copy of the database from the day before (yay, backups!). I am still not sure how it happened as my code was all up-to-date but the WordPress folks are now checking into it. I suspect an xmlrpc.php attack but do not know for sure.

Yesterday morning, my friend Scott reported that my comments links were simply refreshing the main page rather than taking him to the comments. I studied the links my WP site was now spitting out:

http://www.markturner.net/2009/05/?y%/credit-cards/#more-6422
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Zydecopious

After we returned from the dinner party, we put the kids to bed and Kelly stayed put while I went out to join the Dolls and friends for a show by Zydecopious at the Blue Martini. I’m not used to heading out at 10PM but I soon caught up with the crew at the Peace Street R-Line stop and we rode the bus over to Glenwood South.

It didn’t take long for that zydeco music to get our feet moving! We took over the dance floor and had an amazing time! I got the chance to play tambourine on a few songs and even joined the band onstage to play the frottoir (the rubboard) on Mystery Train.

Hopefully there’ll be some pictures on the Zydecopious site that I can point to. In the meantime, make plans to see Zydecopious when they play at Seaboard Music June 12th. And bring your dancing shoes!

[Update: 9:37 PM] Here’s a link to the photos from the show.

Penny wise and pound foolish with napkins

I met some friends for lunch at the farmers’ market’s N.C. Seafood Restaurant last week. My friends were running late so I sat down with my $8 plate of grouper and people-watched while I ate.

I started noticing that diners were often finishing their meals and leaving large stacks of unused napkins, some of which were an inch thick. If the diners didn’t throw these out themselves, the bus staff would later come along and pitch them all into the trash. It seemed pretty wasteful.
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Dinner party

We spent the evening with our friends Lisa and Craig’s home, joining some of their friends for drinks and dinner while the associated kids played in the yard. I had been dragging most of today, with the heat and humidity (and, er, the beer I drank last night while still suffering from a cold) sapping my energy, but I perked up considerably from the socializing.

One of the couples were teachers and they had quite a bit to say about Governor Perdue swiping a huge chunk out of their paychecks without warning in her effort to balance the budget. It wasn’t the first time I’ve heard this complaint. As our friends said, teachers paved Perdue’s way into the Executive Mansion and it will be teachers who will show her the door.
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