Joe has kept encouraging me to link to many more of the posts I do on my own blog, but also has asked me to move to a format of short links, rather than the brief excerpts I've done before. I've been hesitant to do too much self-linking up to now, as it might seem a bit too, well, I'll leave possible metaphors to you. However, with a bit of hesitancy, and not wanting to otherwise make too many posts per day here, and following Joe's kind encouragement, herewith a round-up of some recent posts with links I found amusing or informative; no politics included.
The most important:
- Alan Cullison was one of the first reporters in Afghanistan in October, 2001; there he found, and later analyzed, the computer hard drives most used by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden, and many other top al Qaeda leaders. It's a must-read, 5 out of 5 story.
See also:
- The old futures are the best futures. A wonderful site full of drawings and plans for technology the past envisioned for the future.
- The wireless police and wiring of the Democratic convention; no politics, just pure tech about what's involved in dealing with thousands of demands for wireless communication.
- Burt Rutan will launch Spaceship one on September 29th, and again within two weeks to attempt to win the Ansari X Prize.
- Everything you ever wanted to know about payphones.
- The growing cult of do it yourself outdoor mass digital movie theaters.
- The AI biologist doing useful science.
- The robot librarian. I see a date with the robot biologist coming up!
- Saddam is sad! Play rock, scissors, paper with him!
- Ever seen an air shark?
- No chewing on the Metro in D.C.; you won't like the results.
- George Bush's blog.
- Britain is hiring for a new court jester.
- Where is the White Lion? Help find the missing pub!
- Cats & Dogs Dying Together. Emily Yoffe finds amazing and funny pet artifacts and stories at the sales/promotion area of a veterinarian's expo.
- The plot of Revenge of The Sith? You decide.
- Donations to the cause of me would be most welcome right now.
I hope you might find something worth whatever time you've spent here. If not, my apologies.
An instant response to "Inside Al-Qaeda's Hard Drive":
For someone like me, who looks for evidence of Iraqi or Iranian sponsorship of 9/11 and the anthrax letters, this isn't very encouraging. There's just no trace of it, is there? In fact, there's no trace of a relationship with any other state at all, except for Taliban Afghanistan. Even Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are described as adversaries in the July 1999 message to bin Laden (although Musharraf's coup was still in the future at that point). Perhaps there's something hidden in these cryptic messages whose codewords have not yet been deciphered. Perhaps dealings with friendly intelligence services were kept off the record entirely, and/or known only to the top leadership...
Indeed, it is hard to find in these messages the sort of organization, competence, or solidarity one would think essential for mounting an operation like 9/11. Again, it's true that they had to worry about penetration by enemy agents, and perhaps the really crucial stuff was recorded somewhere else entirely. But on the basis of these memos, it seems like a miracle that they ever accomplished anything at all. I am going to have to take a hard look again at the 9/11 Commission's account of the plot, and see if it squares with what's in this article, and with the magnitude of what they accomplished. It just does not feel right. (Keith Idema, the ex-Green Beret who was the star of The Hunt for Bin Laden and who was recently arrested in Afghanistan, said in an interview that Iraqi and Iranian support and influence was obvious and ubiquitous. Again, this is massively in contradiction with what this article is telling us.)
One more thing. In principle, the complete contents of that captured hard drive could have been on the web by early 2002. I think it is a great shame that we are just getting a few snippets now, and almost three years later.