- What good is living in a corrupt, dishonest world if you don’t take time to enjoy a good espionage scandal every now and then? As long as it’s not your state secrets being stolen and sold, then you should be able to sit back, relax and enjoy the saga. That’s how I’m approaching Taiwan’s decision to detain a major general on charges of providing military secrets to China, which its defense ministry announced Wednesday. The alleged spy in question is Lo Hsieh-che, who headed the army command's communications and information office. Defense Ministry spokesman Yu Sy-tue said Lo was recruited by the Chinese as a spy in 2004 when he was a military attaché based overseas. Taiwanese officials believe he may have compromised a vital military communications network that uses U.S. technology. To put the situation in perspective, the case is widely considered the most serious Taiwanese spy scandal in decades and could make the U.S. reluctant to share military technology with Taiwan in the future. What? Now we’re being selfish with espionage scandals? Lo’s story is, as most espionage cases are, interesting and much more exciting than your daily life, so listen up. Sources claim Lo passed classified information to his Chinese contact about an air defense system designed to help Taiwan defend itself against a possible Chinese attack. Asian-based U.S. intelligence officials intercepted communications about the Bo Sheng — which means "broad victory" – system and realized Lo's position would have given him access to Bo Sheng information. He also may have had access to the military's optical fiber-based communication system — a critical part of its command network. Stealing that information could allow China to disrupt the Bo Sheng system. Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the relationship between China and Taiwan knows that espionage of this magnitude could cause major fallout. The two nations split amid civil war in 1949 and China claims the self-ruled island as part of its own territory. Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou has tried to mend fences economically since taking office in 2008, but Lo’s actions could rip the still-healing scabs off those many wounds…………
- Going into politics is a unique endeavor for many reasons, not the least of which is that you can fail abysmally as a politician, leave and return to your former occupation and not be tarnished for trying and failing as a governor, senator, representative or government official. Everyone fails at politics because everyone promises far too much, more than they can possibly deliver within the confines of our busted system, and getting re-elected typically means not sucking quite as much as your peers instead of actually doing some good. Thus, it makes perfect sense that after seven years in the California Governor's mansion, Arnold Schwarzenegger is officially ready to revive his acting career. Like any good public figure worth his or her salt and with access to a laptop or BlackBerry, the Gover-nator broke the news on Twitter. On his official Twitter page, Schwarzenegger wrote, "Exciting news. My friends at CAA have been asking me for 7 years when they can take offers seriously. Gave them the green light today." Nice. This piece of good news comes just in time for Sylvester Stallone and the producers of The Expendables II to slot Ah-nold in alongside all of the other has-been, washed-up action star butchering bad dialogue and blowing sh*t up in some remote jungle for no real reason. Armed with seven years’ experience acting like he had a clue what he was doing as governor while the state of California slid off a cliff financially and devolved into an even bigger morass of plastic people with bloated mortgages, overpriced luxury cars, Botox-ed foreheads and Rodeo Drive shopping habits than it was before he came along, Schwarzenegger should be even better equipped to deliver stilted, wooden dialogue in poorly-written action movies than he was prior to stepping away from the thespian game for political office. And I’m sure that Hollywood is breathing a major sigh of relief knowing that with movie earnings plummeting on a weekly basis, Ah-nold is riding to the rescue……….
- Times are not good at Nokia. The firmest proof of that fact came Friday when the struggling world leader in mobile phones announced that it would discard its own cellphone operating system and begin using software made by Microsoft. On the surface, it seems like an alliance to shore up the faltering smartphone efforts of two market leaders and once you examine it more deeply……that’s still what it is. The announcement came from Stephen Elop, the former Microsoft executive hired by Nokia in September as the company’s first non-Finnish chief executive. And no, you’re not the only one who thinks it sounds fishy that a former Microsoft executive throws some major business his former employer’s way courtesy of his new employer. The decision is a blatant admission of failure by Nokia, which was an early leader in the smartphone market but has since fallen behind the pack. It’s also a desperate play for the two tech giants in a world where Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android software are leading the way. “Nokia is at a critical juncture, where significant change is necessary and inevitable in our journey forward,” said Elop, a Canadian who led Microsoft’s business software division before moving to Nokia, in a statement. “Today, we are accelerating that change through a new path, aimed at regaining our smartphone leadership, reinforcing our mobile device platform and realizing our investments in the future.” Of course, Microsoft’s operating system is known for being the world’s worst computer OS, so anytime you can partner without someone like that, you definitely have to do it. With smartphones expected to surpass desktop and laptop computers this year as the main way access to the Internet, Nokia is willing to take a gamble on that subpar OS even though Microsoft has only 2 percent of the global market for phone software. To understand how big the gap is between Microsoft and the market leaders, realize that the Microsoft Windows Phone 7 operating system has about 8,000 applications, while more than 350,000 apps have been developed for the iPhone. Before settling on Microsoft, Nokia also a held meetings with Google and considered Android, Elop admitted. The decision to go with Microsoft stemmed from the belief that Google, not Nokia, would benefit from a alliance. When Microsoft offered generous support than Google in paying for engineering assistance, revenue-sharing terms on mobile advertisements, search and map services, that sealed the deal. That leaves Symbian, Nokia’s operating system, on the scrap heap. About 200 million phones around the world use Symbian and the company expects to sell another 150 million more before halting its development and switching to Windows, although one has to imagine that buying a Symbian-based phone would be much less appealing to customers who know that even the company manufacturing it has no confidence in it. Personally, I get amusement out of hearing delusional corporate executives trying to talk us and themselves into something that is obviously destined to fail. “Objectively, is today a better day or a worse day for Microsoft?” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer asked rhetorically. “Objectively, is today a better day or a worse day for Nokia? Ding! It’s a better day for both. So whatever people thought yesterday, they should think something a lot more positive today.” Keep telling yourself that, Steve-O, keep telling yourself that…………
-Like many of you, I’m firmly of the opinion that there are too damn many handicapped spots in public parking lot. What are the odds that 25 handicapped people will be at your average suburban grocery store at the same time, ever? In fact, I feel confident in saying that never, in the history of handicapped parking spaces, that all of the handicapped spots in any lot have all been used by handicapped drivers at the same time. Having said that, I do not include in my methods of protesting this injustice the practice of parking illegally in those handicapped spaces. Racking up thousands of dollars in fines and having my vehicle regularly towed just don’t fit into my budget, so I limit myself to sneering defiantly at the many empty handicapped spaces or finding a stray shopping cart and wheeling it into one of those spaces as a means of protest. But there are plenty of jerks out there willing to park in a handicapped space and accept the consequences. People who truly are handicapped, like Mario Damiani of Washington, D.C., see this happen often but typically there are plenty of open handicapped spaces nearby. However, there is that rare occasion when there is only one open handicapped spot in the exact location where a person in need of it is going. On Wednesday night, Damiani encountered just such a scene at the Rock Creek shopping center. He was headed to the Parkway Deli to pick up a to-go order but some tool had parked in the handicapped spot right in front of the deli. That tool? None other than a police officer who had deposited his or her cruiser arrogantly in the spot, preventing the wheelchair-bound Damiani from parking his handicapped-outfitted van and picking up his order. “I was honestly surprised that of all the cars, you had a cruiser there,” Damiani said. Put in an impossible position, he waited in the lot for 20 minutes but never saw the officer return to the police car. “It didn't look like they were on official business,” he said. “There was no one in the vehicle. The car was off. The lights were off. It just seemed like there was just another person parked there and it did bother me.” Had it been a doughnut shop, the officer definitely would have been there on official business, but it seems a bit unlikely here. Police later admitted that the driver of the vehicle has been identified and the matter is being investigated. At the end of the day, the crucial lesson here is this: When even those enforcing the laws (who tend to get away with breaking them) cannot get away with parking in a handicapped spot, then what hope do the rest of us have…………
- Baseball has clearly fallen farther in the American sports hierarchy than we realized. The NFL has without a doubt blown right by baseball in terms of popularity and among most demographics, basketball has outstripped America’s supposed pastime as well. But the most damning evidence of baseball’s fall is currently emanating from Berkeley, California, home of the University of California. Although UC will always be known as one of Ted Kaczynski’s stops before moving to the woods of Montana and sending mail bombs to unsuspecting people, it is now known as a university that has chosen men's rugby, women's lacrosse and women's gymnastics over baseball. Back in the fall, university officials announced plans to cut those three sports along with baseball and men’s gymnastics. Women’s lacrosse and gymnastics had been slated for elimination in September, while men's rugby was going to be reclassified as a "varsity club sport." As so often happens in cases when a team or sport is about to be eliminated, those involved in it or who support it rally to its defense. They go before the people making the decision to cut the sport and plead for a change of heart, sometimes coupled with frantic fundraising efforts to keep the team in question alive. That’s exactly what happened at Cal, where university officials say they received between $12 million and $13 million in pledges from the group "Save Cal Sports" to retain the programs. That’s an impressive amount and to the untrained observer, $13 million might seem like enough to save five non-major sports. Unfortunately, the money doesn’t stretch quite as far as you might think and officials ultimately decided they could save only three sports. They believe $8 million will be available for the three sports that were retained, with the money covering their costs for seven to 10 years. Vice chancellor Frank Yeary delivered the death blow to baseball and men's gymnastics, saying pledges were insufficient to cover their operating costs. That’s right, baseball is out but gymnastics, lacrosse and rugby are in. Somewhere, Abner Doubleday and anyone who truly loves baseball and believes it is still America’s national past time are weeping openly…………
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