Just when you think youÂ’ve got the intertubes figured out, they are going to replace it.

BeholdÂ….The Grid

The Internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds.

At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.

The latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.

David Britton, professor of physics at Glasgow University and a leading figure in the grid project, believes grid technologies could “revolutionise” society. “With this kind of computing power, future generations will have the ability to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine,” he said.

Yeah maybe so, but 90% of The Grid is still going to be pr0n.

Posted by: DrewM at 10:21 AM | Comments (69)
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McCain's campaign staff has to be pulling their hair out. Yesterday he conceded that Obama is "absolutely" qualified to be president:

But, he said, "I believe that my talent and my background and my experience, which has led to my judgment, ... qualifies me more."

In his first Sunday talk show appearance since locking up the GOP nomination last month, McCain criticized Obama and others for making too much of his comment that the United States could remain in Iraq for 100 years, or a period similar to the length of the U.S. presence in Germany and South Korea.

McCain's Mr. Rogers impression is exactly the wrong strategy. When asked if Obama is qualified to be president, the correct answer goes something like this:

"I respect Senator Obama's leadership and how much work he's put into this race, but his positions make him unfit for the presidency--especially his stance on Iraq. Our mission in Iraq and against terrorism around the world is fundamental to our own security and to our obligations as a democratic society. Obama's withdrawal policy puts us all in danger and that makes him unqualified to be president."

God-willing he'd have a stack of other Obama policies he can disagree with and discuss. Otherwise, it looks like his whole argument is simply "I'm older; it's my turn." That's not an inspiring message.

The transcript of McCain's appearance on Fox News Sunday is here.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:24 AM | Comments (58)
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Finally an affirmative action plan that makes sense to me!

But a gender gap has reopened: if girls were once excluded because they somehow weren't good enough, they now are rejected because they're too good. Or at least they are so good, compared with boys, that admissions committees at some private colleges have problems managing a balanced freshman class. Roughly 58% of undergraduates nationally are female, and the girl-boy ratio will probably tip past 60-40 in a few years. The divide is even worse for black males, who are outnumbered on campus by black females 2 to 1.

...

But when it comes to private-college admissions, the law is murky, the process opaque, the needs of the institution primary. This includes ensuring that the freshman class is not 70-30 female, because that makes the school less attractive to male and female applicants alike. U.S. News & World Report found that the admissions rate of men at the College of William and Mary, for example, was an average of 12 percentage points higher than that of women--because, as the admissions director memorably told the magazine, "even women who enroll ... expect to see men on campus. It's not the College of Mary and Mary; it's the College of William and Mary."

Thanks to Krakatoa.

Posted by: Ace at 07:23 AM | Comments (118)
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Hmm... Seems like a decent face-saving way to do it, a nice escape hatch allowing him to comply with government orders while claiming he's just following religious edicts.

But check, alas, who he's going to ask for a ruling.

Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr will consult senior religious leaders and disband his Mehdi Army militia if they instruct him to, a senior aide said on Monday.

The surprise announcement came on the day Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, in a television interview, ordered the Mehdi Army to disband or Sadr's followers would be excluded from Iraqi political life.

It was the first time Sadr has offered to disband the Mehdi Army, whose black-masked fighters are principle actors in Iraq's five-year-old war and the main foes of U.S. and Iraqi forces in a recent upsurge in fighting.

Senior aide Hassan Zargani said Sadr would seek rulings from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most senior Shi'ite cleric, as well as senior Shi'ite clergy based in Iran, on whether to dissolve the Mehdi Army, and would obey their orders.

That effectively puts the militia's fate in the hands of the reclusive Sistani, 77, a cleric revered by all of Iraq's Shi'ite factions and whose edicts carry the force of Islamic law, but who almost never intervenes in politics.

"Moqtada al-Sadr has ordered his offices in Najaf and Qom to form a delegation to visit Sistani in Najaf and (other leaders) in Qom to discuss disbanding the Mehdi Army," Zargani said.

"If they order the Mehdi Army to disband, Moqtada al-Sadr and the Sadr movement will obey the orders of the religious leaders," he told Reuters. Najaf in Iraq, where Sistani is based, and Qom in Iran are the main seats of Shi'ite authority.

Posted by: Ace at 07:10 AM | Comments (20)
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And that's no compliment.

Fresh off having to backtrack from here tale of heroism in the Battle of Tuzla, Clinton is forced to promise to stop telling another whopper on the trail.

Hillary ClintonÂ’s campaign has said the Democratic presidential candidate is going to stop using a story about an uninsured pregnant woman in Ohio who died because a hospital turned her away.

Clinton has been telling the tale for about five weeks, and first heard it from Meigs County, Ohio, sheriffÂ’s deputy Bryan Holman, who was taped relaying the account to the New York senator.

“She was pregnant and worked for minimum wage. She went to the hospital, and the hospital told her she needs a hundred dollars up front, which she didn’t have. So they billed her a couple of times for it, and she went back again, she didn’t have a hundred dollars so they refused to see her,” Holman said to an attentive Clinton.

Turns out that while the woman did have complications and die, she had insurance and was receiving pre-natal care.

So in the midst of a hotly contested campaign Hillary hears a story from a guy at an event and proceeds to retell it several times without bothering to check it out. Maybe she was tired.

Hillary Clinton....Smartest. Woman. In. America.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:29 AM | Comments (41)
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The Olympic Torch passed through London yesterday in what was supposed to be "a journey of harmony." Residents and visitors should be applauded for taking the opportunity to denounce China's actions in Tibet. The relay turned into a major circus, with the torch itself invisible behind a wall of police, violent clashes between Chinese nationals and pro-Tibet demonstrators, and a government crack-down on pro-Tibet speech:

Before the torch arrived police circulated among Tibetan demonstrators ordering them to remove T-shirts and confiscating Tibetan flags in an apparent breach of a promise from Met commanders that police would not intervene to prevent embarrassment to Beijing.

Yonten Ngama, a Tibetan who has been resident in the UK for four years, was ordered to remove a T-shirt scrawled with three slogans, 'China Stop the Killing', 'No Torch in Tibet' and 'Talk to the Dalai Lama'. "They didn't tell me why, they just said I couldn't wear it," he said. Police on the ground declined to comment on the reasons for confiscating the T-shirt.

Whereas the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics relay--which started triumphantly at Wimbledon--was marked by huge, cheering crowds, yesterday's torch passing was attended mostly by Chinese nationals, demonstrators, a £1 million police force, and hovering media helicopters. The plans called for 80,000 spectators, but only a fraction showed up. Several torch-bearers pulled out in protest.

The British government (not to mention President Bush) has declined to support a boycott of the opening ceremony, officially preferring a policy of engagement with China. Commendably, other Western leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, and Czech President Václav Klaus have announced that they will not be attending the event. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has had the most constructive response, laying down three conditions for his participation.

British Minister for the Olympics Tessa Jowell said that the torch had brought an atmosphere of "threat and menace" to London. Meanwhile, outside observers claimed that eight more people were killed in Tibet this weekend after security forces fired into marching protesters. Independent confirmation was not possible, since China isn't releasing information on the unrest and journalists have been banned from the region.

I enjoy the Olympics as much as the next person, and I want to see the Games go forward this year, but I think Sarkozy has the right idea. China wanted the attention (and the money) that comes with hosting the Games. We shouldn't pass up the opportunity to tell them what they're doing wrong.

MORNING UPDATE: The Torch only made it 200 meters in Paris this morning before it had to be put out and placed on a bus for safety.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 10:31 PM | Comments (55)
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Bugler, Faye Kinnitt & TheEJS are ignoring their hobo-hunting duties to read TIME online.

Apparently, and only until the KOS Kids wake up to the insistent tones of another Urgent Action Alert, AoS is Number One with a hammer in the TIME.com First Annual Blog Index.

Vote your conscience, if you can focus your Val-u-Rite bleared eyes on the screen and pull your mouse away from the porn links you all click on with the feverish and suicidal intensity of lab rats fitted with electrodes tickling the pleasure sensors in their brains.

UPDATE: Here's the link to the AoS voter/description. The first link just shows a tally. Move the slide at the top of the page and click 'submit' to vote. Whatever you do, don't read the fine print about first born children and the fealty pledge to Cthulu.

Posted by: Open Blog at 09:21 PM | Comments (77)
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"I think it's outrageous that someone who is the head of Bear Stearns cashes in millions and millions of dollars in stocks. And I think it's unconscionable when the guy who apparently is the head of Countrywide and his co-conspirators [how very Murtha-esque - ed]make huge amounts of money while Americans are facing the threat of losing their own homes..."

Posted by: Open Blog at 08:08 PM | Comments (54)
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In what is likely to be viewed as a milestone in the lives of those who have embraced the AoSHQ lifestyle, Pabst Brewing Company this week announced the return of its original formula for Schlitz beer. Once the best selling beer brand in the world and second most popular in the US as late as 1976, Schlitz changed their brewing process in the 70Â’s with disastrous results. As sales plummeted, Schlitz ran an ad campaign that went over as well as Reverend Wright giving the commencement speech at a West Point graduation ceremony.
more...

Posted by: Open Blog at 04:05 PM | Comments (94)
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Just over the wire.

Penn got in trouble for having his lobbying firm represent Colombia in support of a proposed free trade agreement that Clinton opposes. Ooops.

When Penn came out and said representing Colombia was a mistake, they fired him.

Mark Penn...0-2 this week.

Update: He's out as a the top strategist but his company will still do polling for the campaign.

Posted by: DrewM at 02:45 PM | Comments (37)
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