sball-brau's blog

Amidst the chaos and confusion over the national health care debate, there is a bipartisan commitment to increasing benefits to veterans. Today in front of the VFW national convention in Phoenix, President Obama drew the loudest applause when he called for expanding veteran's health benefits. Many of the President's concerns were indicative of the modern complications of veteran's health care as he paid special attention to mental health.

Imagine: it's right before the 21st amendment is ratified in 1933, so prohibition is still the law of the land. We're in New Hartford, Iowa and a newborn Chuck Grassley is a few thousand cornfields away from a three year old Arlen Specter who is in Kansas. Fast forward to 2009 and these two seventy-somethings had a public altercation: on Twitter.

The Volt has enough volts to go 40 miles, if you are willing to pony up the $40,000 cost for a Volt. Although, because the Volt's use of a single volt is so efficient, the government (which is composed of, us, and who owns a large stake of Chevy) is willing to subsidize your purchase, so it will likely only cost about $32,500.  Are we all confused enough yet?

As reported by the AP, the two captured American journalists have been issued a "special pardon" by North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. The tipping point for the release of the two journalists came from the diplomatic intervention by former President Bill Clinton on behalf of the two American citizens.

Now, the truth is, I have no beef with former President Bill Clinton, but he does deserve a ribbing for his behavior yesterday up in Tenleytown. As reported by the Post, Bubba had quite an order for dinner at Z Burger for dinner. He audaciously ordered onion rings, fries, an apple pie flavored milk shake, and the piece de resistance: a double burger, with no mayo. He must be on a diet.

If the movies are right, the explosion of artificial intelligence will lead us down one of two routes: (1) a violent dystopia with humanity fighting against machines who try and control us or (2) an explosive debate over whether machines who can hurt, feel and empathize can find love. Ok, I know the Matrix vs. A.I.  comparison (or Terminator vs.

Pigs may lack the glands necessary to sweat, but they are sure making health officials world wide wipe perspiration off their collective foreheads as governments everywhere brace for swine flu. Here in the states, as reported by the Associated Press, "The U.S.

Noted statistician and blogger Nathan Silver has asked those critical of climate change to put their money where their mouths are: he has suggested a wager. Silver, who achieved national acclaim following his successful prediction of 49 of 50 states' final results in 2008 presidential election, initially made his mark in the baseball world where his application of economics has changed the way people look at the numbers-dominated game. Silver's caustic wit shines through as he issues his challenge:

The Atlantic Council hosted a talk today entitled, "Hard Lessons: What Iraq can teach the US and our allies about future stability and reconstruction operations", headlined by Inspector General Stuart Bowen. Inspector Bowen argued that most of the problems in rebuilding Iraq were based on the American inability to create integrated solutions. When we had a military success, we had a diplomatic failure. When we had a diplomatic victory, it would be accompanied by a developmental disaster, and so on and so on.

The latest pests to crawl over to our side of the World Wide Web may have come from North Korea several news sources are reporting. While the cyber-spider bite was not that harsh, it did highlight many vulnerabilities our country has to an asymmetric attack on our electronic infrastructure.