Links and Minifeatures 01 04 Thursday (46?)

Don Surber:

Hussein's carnage averaged 70 to 125 civilian deaths every day for the 8,000 days he reigned. His 20,000 civilian deaths a year (on average) were considered "peace" while last year, under war, there were 14,298 civilians deaths.

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Nixon vowed to 'ruin Foreign Service'. Except for Bill Clinton, I'm not certain that there's been a president whose foreign policy wouldn't have benefited if he'd been successful. State has become a bureaucracy with a momentum all its own, looking out for its own comfort, and where it hasn't actively worked to frustrate foreign policy aims (our current president) it has definitely worked at cross purposes (Reagan). Mind you, it might have saved us from the worst Carter could do, but when we have had focused, dynamic presidents, it has mostly hurt them or detracted from the message.



Coming from Nixon, the president with strongest foreign policy credentials of any since FDR, this is damning:

Winston Lord, a top aide to Kissinger during the 1970s, said Nixon looked on the Foreign Service as dominated by liberals and as generally "cautious, unimaginative, slow-moving and risk-averse."



He said Nixon was given to hyperbole and his "extreme" comments about dismantling the Foreign Service should be seen in that light.

Kind of lends credence and weight to this story that headlines Negroponte's replacement as National Intelligence Director, but mentions the facts that Negroponte is one of our current president's "go to" folks.

Negroponte, who took over in April 2005 as the nation's first intelligence chief, has held a series of tough posts in the Bush administration and has been at the center of the Iraq debate since before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. He served as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. from 2001 to 2004 and ambassador to Baghdad until March 2005 before becoming intelligence ch

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How to go to MIT for free

By the end of this year, the contents of all 1,800 courses taught at one of the world's most prestigious universities will be available online to anyone in the world, anywhere in the world. Learners won't have to register for the classes, and everyone is accepted.



The cost? It's all free of charge.



The OpenCourseWare movement, begun at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2002 and now spread to some 120 other universities worldwide, aims to disperse knowledge far beyond the ivy-clad walls of elite campuses to anyone who has an Internet connection and a desire to learn.

Online courses for free from MIT! If free time weren't something I just read about once, if I actually had any, that would certainly be a productive use.



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Things that make you go "Hmmm." Google says bought stake in China's Xunlei



Would they have been able to if they hadn't "played ball" with the Chinese censors? Doubt it.



Explicit payoff? Don't think so, but Google certainly got along for going along.

More than 80 million users have installed Shenzhen-based Xunlei's software and its Web sites attract more than 50 million visitors a day, the China Daily said.



Baidu.com Inc. (Nasdaq:BIDU - news) controlled nearly 57 percent of China's search-engine market at the end of June, according to Analysis International, a Beijing-based IT research company.



Sources have said both Baidu and Google, which has only 16 percent of the China market, are exploring options to expand their online video services in the world's fourth-largest economy.

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Warm body: Check, but not at 37 degrees centigrade! Bank issues credit card to cat



Time to revoke the dogs' internet privileges.



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via Tinkerty Tonk, Political Quiz



I'm sceptical of anything that wants to put political leanings on a single scale, but I came out a 33. Questions where there wasn't any kind of a good answer:



More to guarantee competitive elections: Public financing or term limits? Neither of the above. Getting rid of gerrymanders for this purpose or that, or any reason at all other than equal population among districts.



More extreme, Jocelyn Elders or Pat Robertson? They needed a "both", but I'll grudgingly take Pat Robertson, as Jocelyn Elders is occasionally rational. Entirely by accident, I'm certain, but it's a claim Pat Robertson can't make without every adult in the room laughing.



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A quiz on the past year from Bill O'Reilly. I got 10 of 20, mostly from stuff that might be construed as actual news. (Anybody that pays attention to Barbara Streisand's politics obviously has too much of that "free time" I keep hearing about).



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Slow day at work, what can I say?