The firepower story continues to drag along. Dan’s article updates us on the latest outcomes in the case. It has been an amazing case of lies and deception and gullibility and greed. Everything that is wrong in humanity is summed up in this case.

I was watching the new episode of “City Homicide”* and the photographer who is killed at the beginning of the show is using a Mac, which is not surprising for a creative type, but the cop uses one as well! I can tell you that I have absolutely no doubt that that is completely unlikely.

It now seems that every single show or movie I watch has macs in it** which makes it appear if makes are the only kinds of computers in the world.

I actually find this a little annoying and am wondering if all the movie and TV studios have tied up some kind of contract with Apple.

Notes:
* Which despite being obviously# set in Melbourne, seems to have signage for a ‘State Police” rather than Victoria Police, in some attempt to make the show cityless and stateless. this is either just petty Australian parochialism or an attempt to sell the show on the world market.
# to me
** Bones, they show that I watched last night also had Macs. the other interesting thing about Bones (another forensic pathologist show) is that it appears that forensic pathologist have little programs for providing nifty animations of almost any process they undertake in the lab.

This article is about a company making beer using a yeast recovered from amber 45 million years old.

Well it looks like the honeymoon for Barack Obama may be coming to an end. The Economist Magazine, it is lead this week, said:

If the opinion polls are to be believed, Barack Obama is now, six months into his presidency, no more popular than George Bush or Richard Nixon were at the same stage in theirs. His ratings are sagging particularly badly with electorally vital independent voters: two-thirds of them think he wants to spend too much of their money. Two of the most specific pledges he made to the electorate—to reform health care and to produce a cap-and-trade system to curb greenhouse-gas emissions—are in trouble. And an impression is being formed in Washington of a presidency that is far too ready to hand over the direction of domestic policy to Congress; that is drifting either deliberately or lethargically leftwards; and that is more comfortable with lofty visions than details.

Of course this doesn’t mean anything. All politicians and parties go through a honeymoon period where they can do no wrong. This period inevitably end when suddenly the electorate (and the media) realise that the politician is actually only a normal human being and they have to deal with emerging issues in the normal, human, frail way.

But for Obama, the issue is not whether the media have declared his honeymoon over, it is whether he can deliver on the reforms his presidency set out to do. And despite setbacks and compromises there are bills now on the congress floor to implement a greenhouse gas emission trading scheme and reforms to healthcare to extend insurance. If he can get these through to the presidential signing then he really will have achieved something.

Of course there will be sniping and complaining the the bills do not do enough, they do not punish the coal producers enough, they cost too much, not enough people get insurance, they don’t control health cost enough. Many of these criticisms are true, but politics, of all places is where, as Voltaire said, the perfect is the enemy of the the good. Ultimately achieving something is better than achieving nothing, and these issues are long term issues, we will be debating and regulating greenhouse gas emissions for the next hundred years, the regulations can be improved over time.

Obama is pushing forward with an ambitious policy agenda in a political system with so many ‘checks and balances’ that getting anything done is almost a miracle itself. He is doing fine.