The BBC reports: Mouse brain simulated on computer

Actually is was about half of the brain on the BlueGeneL supercomputer using 4096 processors and a Terabyte of memory [256MB/processor]. It ran at 10% of the speed of a mouse brain and they could only sustain it for 10 seconds, but it’s a start.

They should have started with something less complex, like the Shrubbery, who based on press conference footage, can’t pass the Turing Test.

Rook wants to know: How many #2 men are there in al-Qaida?

If you capture someone who is possibly a Muslim and isn’t named Osama bin Laden, he’s a #2. The current US government view of the al Qaeda organizational chart is Osama and then everyone else.

Pierre Tristam thinks it’s odd that a man who entered the US illegally and is being extradited by another country for blowing up civilian airliners is released on bail.

Really, Pierre, he’s an anti-Castro Cuban, so, of course he was released.

Xan wonders why none of the MSM is interested in the seizure of a massive arsenal of explosives, weapons, and ammunition.

Come on, Xan, they are white Christian NASCAR fans, not real terrorists. They were just a little over zealous in embracing their rights under the Second Amendment.

Remember: the only people who can protect you from another 9/11 are the guys who were in charge on 9/11. [There’s something wrong there, but don’t analyze it.] They probably won’t screw up that badly again. [Nobody got fired and most of them are still in charge of something vital.]

Update: I left this off by accident.

Ellroon thinks that Sen. Frank Lautenberg [D-NJ] is correct in believing that people on terrorist watch lists shouldn’t be able to buy guns.

Not buy guns? Wait a minute, I don’t think we want to get carried away with this security business. Maybe the GOP is right to have blocked this when they controlled Congress.

I have been listening to recordings of him playing the Duport Stradivarius cello all day.

Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich [Мстислав Леопольдович Ростропович] was a student of Shostakovich and Prokofiev, a cellist, composer, conductor, and political activist. He was born in the oil town of Baku on the Caspian Sea in what is now Azerbaijan and became a musical phenomenon.

The BBC has his obituary.

He taught his cello to sing.

Suck it up you sniveling wuss. You made your bed with the hyenas, so don’t complain about getting bitten by them or their fleas.

George Tenet is out hustling his book with complaints that the Shrubbery doesn’t play fair.

George, your complaint about your reputation is garbage:

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; ’t is something, nothing;
’T was mine, ’t is his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.

Iago speaking to Othello in Act III, Scene III of Othello

You are just as big a creep as Iago. You were free to resign; you didn’t have to accept the Medal of Freedom; you didn’t have to wait until you were selling a book to speak out. You made no real effort to combat the misinformation campaign, so don’t come around sucking up to the people who were right. You were the Director of Central Intelligence. If you had cried foul, you would have been listened to. You couldn’t make the effort to stop the insanity, so live with your guilt for what your silence has wrought.

Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling has an article in Armed Forces Journal, A failure in generalship, that looks at the performance of general officers in the preparation for and execution of the war in Iraq. The Colonel is, for the moment, still on active duty, and is a veteran of the Iraq war. You need to read this to understand how unhappy he is with the lack of leadership and honesty from the flag officers in the United States military.

My personal favorite sentence among many good points: “As matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war.”

Swopa, Kevin Hayden, Laura Rozen, Juan Cole, and the Washington Post‘s Tom Ricks all think you should read it.

Kittening Is Hard Work

Yawwwnnn….

[Editor: Property wakes from a nap and prepares to takes another. Their eyes are slightly open when they crawl around.]

Friday Ark