I love a little bit of first amendment advocacy. Eugene Volokh points to this online archive of first amendment primary sources, including golden oldies like Eugene Debs’ anti-war speech (PDF) and the Sullivan ad (also PDF).

Via Samizdata, a topic close to my heart. Book publishing.

Next time I’m at a party and I meet someone who works for a publishing company, I’m going to get him in a headlock and push his face into a cake. Then I’ll follow him home and leave a roller skate on his drive, in the hope that when he treads on it he will sail through the air and land on his arse. If there are children living nearby I will buy them drum kits. And then, just when he is least expecting it, I’ll hurl a nest of bees through his window.

If you are going to print a book, and you want ME to buy it, then it has to be on good paper, it has to be attractively designed and typeset. Books, whether they are about quantum computing or written by Aristotle, have to give off the impression that they are timely, that they are relevant. Most book buying, at least in traditional stores, is aesthetic, rather than intellectual - regardless of the actual content of the book.

The same technology that makes instantaneous communication possible enabled authorities to crack the case in a matter of hours and rescue the premature baby.

here.

The first company that outsourced to Russia? Hewlett-Packard in 1991. Capitalism, say whatever else you like about it, but it sure is quick.

Continuing with todays communications theme, The Presurfer points to an antique telephone site. For learnin’.

Lacking a christmas gift for a someone? Well, I have the answer for you.

You need the latest IPA REVIEW! Or you need to at least download my article within it - the tediously named “Revolution in Telecommunications” (PDF) I GUARANTEE your satisfaction.

And then have a nice browse around the new website. I did all the graphics for it, and wrote quite a bit of the text, so admire, my friends.

James Gattuso reports that a recent FCC decision (PDF) makes a few steps toward deregulating the US phone network, but doesn’t go far enough. But, as I’ve said before, the FCCs heart is often in the right place - at least when it comes to the technical and competitive elements of communication. That whole Free Speech thing, however….

Computer assembly technicians in Moldova were blamed.

hohoho. The rest is fascinating:

There was a time when Petrov, now 65 and a widower, was almost larger than life. He was a privileged member of the Soviet Union’s military elite, a lieutenant colonel on the fast track to a generalship. He was educated, squared away and trustworthy, and that’s why he was in the commander’s chair on Sept. 26, 1983, the night the world nearly blew up.

Here. Link via Tim Blair

What happened in Ukraine won’t happen in Cairo next month. But unless Hosni Mubarak and Vladimir Putin can come up with a way to shut down every engineer and programmer in America who is inventing new ways to output/input ideas and tweaking the ones we already have, they’ve got a problem.

“Here’s One Use Of U.S. Power Jacques Can’t Stop” - Daniel Henninger