Glimpse Of The Contractor Life
NYT –
While waiting to be confirmed by the White House for a top civilian post at the Air Force last year, Charles D. Riechers was out of work and wanted a paycheck. So the Air Force helped arrange a job through an intelligence contractor that required him to do no work for the company, according to documents and interviews.
For two months, Riechers held the title of senior technical adviser and received about $13,400 a month at Commonwealth Research Institute, or CRI, a nonprofit firm in Johnstown, Pa., according to his r¿sum¿. But during that time he actually worked for Sue C. Payton, assistant Air Force secretary for acquisition, on projects that had nothing to do with CRI, he said.
Freedom Watch
Sure to inspire Syriana-esque moments – This $15 million backed fund is shooting for a cool $200 million –
Next month, Freedom’s Watch will sponsor a private forum of 20 experts on radical Islam that is expected to make the case that Iran poses a direct threat to the security of the United States, according to several benefactors of the group.
Wasted Time: SMS Based Information Distribution
We know text based information systems work, they have done well in every major resiliency problem faced in the past five years or so; but no one is thinking big enough –
Dr. Pellow lobbied for a change he had long been considering: a text-messaging system that could send information about an unfolding crisis to individual cellphones.
Yesterday the technique was praised by everyone from Gov. Eliot Spitzer to Assemblyman Rory I. Lancman of Queens, who presented legislation requiring text-messaging systems at college and university campuses across the state.
If these colleges were able to look past the specific threat of on-campus violence, the thousands of dollars that were wasted by each to bring in what is basically a Twitter-hack could have boosted the open global app that is Twitter into a platform.
The ideal result: entire generations networked with the ability to react to scalar threats.
Instead, as it stands, silos of information are shooting up at every center of higher education.
But the cause is not wholly lost – here’s an opportunity for a fun non-profit – leverage the security imperative and force the companies involved to open up their apps. Build the interfaces and get each of these to talk to one another.
Solve one big problem instead of 2,474 possible problems.
Cell Phone Jamming Takes Off
Cell phone jammers, which scramble the signal of any incoming or outgoing cell phone call within a certain range, are illegal in the U.S. But that doesn’t stop dozens of online catalogs from selling them to American buyers.
Although available for years, cell phone jammers are rare. You probably have never had your phone jammed. The reason is that, historically, jammers have been expensive, large and generally conspicuous looking.
Suddenly, all that has changed.
Moving Riyal Away From The Dollar
Van Der Galien has the story:
The Telegraph focsues on a very serious threat to the Saudi and US Economy. Saudi Arabia seems poised to re-peg (currently 1 USD = 3.75 Riyal) its currency to avoid inflationary pressure caused by the weakening American Dollar. This move would have serious effects on the United States.
Any change in the Riyal to the Dollar would significantly impact the cost of oil. By increasing the value of the Riyal relative to the value of the dollar, the cost to produce and transport oil within Saudi Arabia would increase (from the US perspective) overnight. Nearly all of the oil traded in the Middle East is done so using the Riyal pegged to the dollar. Naturally when the cost of production increase we can anticipate significant market movement.
The second consequence is that Saudi Arabia, our close friend and ally, holds a significant number of US Bonds and other public and private securities. As the dollar weakens against other international markets, investing in the United States becomes less attractive. The only way to make US Treasuries more attractive is to increase the interest rate, the anthisis of the Fed’s recent decision to cut interest rates to spur the stagnating economy.