Joseph Wilson’s book is out. If you won’t be reading it anytime soon, at least read this interview with him by Joe Conason:

“Q: It doesn’t seem like a partisan issue.

A: It isn’t a partisan issue. It’s a truth issue.” — Salon

An excellent post from Kevin Drum:

Bush styles himself a “CEO president,” but the world is full to bursting with CEOs who have goals they would dearly love to attain but who lack either the skill or the fortitude to make them happen. They assign tasks to subordinates without making sure the subordinates are capable of doing them — but then consider the job done anyway because they’ve “delegated” it. They insist they want a realistic plan, but they’re unwilling to do the hard work of creating one — all those market research reports are just a bunch of ivory tower nonsense anyway. They work hard — but only on subjects in their comfort zone. If they like dealing with people they can’t bring themselves to read all those tedious analyst’s reports, and if they like numbers they can’t bring themselves to spend time chattering with distributors about their latest prospect.

And most important of all, weak CEOs are unwilling to recognize bad news and perform unpleasant tasks to fix it — tasks like like confronting poorly performing subordinates or firing people. Good CEOs suck in their guts and do it anyway.

George Bush is, fundamentally, a mediocre CEO, the kind of insulated leader who’s convinced that his instincts are all he needs. Unfortunately, like many failed CEOs before him, he’s about to learn that being sure you’re right isn’t the same thing as actually being right.

So sure: George Bush is genuinely committed to winning in Iraq. He just doesn’t know how to do it and doesn’t have the skills, experience, or personality to look beyond his own instincts in order to figure it out. America is about to pay a heavy price for that. — The Washington Monthly

“Our analysis shows that this voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts… We conclude that, as a society, we must carefully consider the risks inherent in electronic voting, as it places our very democracy at risk.”

A New York Times portrait of Johns Hopkins computer scientist Aviel Rubin, who has been called “the most important figure in the United States in articulating the security problems with electronic and Internet voting”, although of course not by anyone in the corporate hierarchy of Diebold.

A rock recording for Lynn or a country ‘White Stripes’?? Van Lear Rose comes out today, with 13 Loretta Lynn originals produced and backed by White. You can find legal downloads of some of the cuts at your favorite mp3blog.

This interactive java tutorial is a version of the renowned Powers of Ten film I first saw at the Smithsonian decades ago. In successive jumps of an order of magnitude apiece, you travel between a 10^-16-meter view of the quark-texture of subatomic matter and a view of our galaxy from 10²³-meters (10 million light years). Show it to your scale-challenged friends.

They could go further out. At least three further order-of-magnitude steps up are possible, as current thinking suggests the furthest objects are quasars somewhere over 10 billion light years distant. Are these extra steps not included because there is nothing interesting to be revealed at views of those scales? Recent discoveries suggest that there is a ‘coarse structure’ to the clumping of galaxies in the universe as a whole. Is that as far as you can go? Beyond 10-15 billion light years, by current estimation, you exceed the distance light could have travelled since the origin of the universe; given that speed limit, you run out of size there. Step out further and you arrive at…what? The face of God, most likely. Which, by the way, is waiting for you at the other end of the spectrum in the smiling visage of each quark as well, right? as you run out of size at the bottom end? [thanks, nathalie]

The disingenuous regulations the dysadministration finalized last month under the guise of worker-friendliness will actually be a giveaway to business by disallowing millions of hours of overtime pay to workers annually. This is of particular concern to me as a physician, since my nurse colleagues stand to be particularly severely affected, their professional associations predict (and nurses are compelled to work many many hours of overtime in the current healthcare climate).

This AFL-CIO petition you can sign with one click will tell your senators to support the Harkin amendment opposing the Bush plan. The Senate vote is tomorrow, Tuesday, so click on the link now. The campaign is being spread by word of mouth only, so spread the word. Bush has threatened to veto legislation that would compromise his plan; forcing a high-profile veto will expose his worker-unfriendliness within months of the election. — Working Families e-Activist Network, AFL-CIO