Malaysia seeks to build the world's largest refinery of strategic metals. When completed, the plant will be the first such refinery built outside of China in nearly three decades.

As the Times article states, the $230 million project is an enormous gamble because refining rare earth metals leaves behind thousands of tons of radioactive waste, and its still unsure how that reality will be dealt with. Since environmental political groups are very powerful in the West, we don't build refineries here. So up till now, the world has been content to leave the "dirty work" to China which operates many barely regulated refineries and has created vast toxic waste sites in its own territory. In return for this sacrifice, they now control around 97% of the world's supply of strategic materials crucial for almost every high-tech gadget imaginable, including smartphones, electric cars and the U.S. military ...

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The practice of dictators rushing out the door with all the money might be coming to an end. Switzerland has frozen the assets of now former Egyptian strongman Mubarak, as well as those belonging to Tunisia's former president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. Switzerland has been trying to distance itself from its long-earned reputation being a haven for ill-gotten wealth. And of course, the billion dollar question is...what's going to happen to all that money? 

AOL has just purchased The Huffington Post for 300 million in cash and $15 million in stock. This is an interesting gamble, particularly for AOL, since non-news businesses that sell services/products directly to the public usually try to cultivate an image of political neutrality. Arianna Huffington will stay on the site as its president and editor-in-chief. The Huffington Post is a well-known celebrity blog haven and news aggregator for the liberal point of view.

The deal positions Ms. Huffington in charge of a new AOL division called Huffington Post Media Group which will include all of AOL's content properties.

EDIT: Business Insider has posted AOL's blueprint for making good their $315 million dollar investment

Using new technology, the U.S. government has found a way to bust through China's Internet censorship to deliver unfiltered information to the local population. The technology was developed by Sho Ho, an IT specialist, and sponsored by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an independent agency of the federal government responsible for all non-military and international broadcasts by the U.S.  Called "Feed Over E-mail", the technology compresses data below the ability of scanning software to screen out forbidden words.  

The BBG operates Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (such as Al-Hurrah).

Image by Cox & Forkum

Nope, says The Daily. According to the Apple/News Corp. brainchild, most other countries get their Internet access via their governments. Since the Internet was born in the U.S. it benefits from a decentralized structure.  No one company or organization carries the responsibility for maintaining the Internet. So, no red buttons currently exist that can give the president the power to shutdown the Internet, not unless we pass this current proposed legislation which would require some kind of logistical overhaul.

I stumbled across this interesting article on DoDBuzz and Wall Street Journal about how the Egyptian government (and other authoritarian regimes) hijack the networks of communication companies in order to rally government supporters against freedom protesters. Internet shutdowns are selective, not total. The governments in question allow supporters to organize while forcing communication companies to serve as their messengers and rallying points. Like a weapon, technology is a source for good depending on who is wielding it.

Needless to say, everyone except the government hates it. This Ars Technica article's title captures it all, so I kept it.  They're pretty thorough, so there's very little I can add other than to wonder if this change will in effect cut-off Canada from the visual/video Internet which (until now) had fast been becoming the norm. Consumption patterns will likely change in a huge way.

Ars Technica has a better version of the chart below. I can only fit so large into these columns. It shows the drastic increase in cost versus service delivered to TekSavvy's subscribers. 

Just heart-breaking.

In addition to those photos, Associated Press reports that looters ripped the heads off two ancient mummies. Inspiringly enough, the Egyptian protesters attempted to form a human shield to protect the museum until the military could arrive. 

Photo by Al-Jazeera

I haven't been covering the Egyptian protests because I feel so many others are doing it better than I could. I prefer exploring peripheral questions around it.

For example, how do you keep in touch after the government takes down the Internet? PC Magazine asked exactly that question recently. As it turns out, getting access to the Internet might be fairly simple. You just go back to basics.

"In the land of no Internet connection, the man with dial-up is king."

Dial-up modems using basic land lines were the original method for connecting to the Internet. And it's harder to shut down the entire phone system than the Internet. More than a few of you probably have old computers lying around with dial-ups or you could buy an external USB dial-up modem for ~$20-30. 

Protestors have been able to get online through various creative methods including fax and ...

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Aiming to merge most of their manufacturing heartland into one united municipality, China plans to combine 9 cities into one.  The sprawling super-city will be 26 times the size of Greater London, twice the size of Wales, house 42 million people and will account for 10% of China's economy.

This enormous urbanization project is only one of several the Chinese government has in the works, some of which are plans to create urban areas with 50 to 100 million people in residence.

China is considering passing a law requiring young people to visit their parents regularly. As we've discussed a few times here on Logic-cool, China's rise to superpower status will be tempered by one major policy choice their government made long ago. And its a doozy.  The infamous One-Child Policy is aging their society fairly quickly and it's arguable that they might grow old faster than they grow rich. In addition, the tendency to abort female babies, so that a family's one child can be male, is leading to huge gender imbalances in Chinese society. One can imagine the kind of social upheavals down the road when tens of millions of poor Chinese men can't find brides over the course of their entire lives. 

This draft legislation under consideration also spotlights the vast powers that a government assumes when it can regulate an individual's "non-activity ...

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We avoid political topics here at Logic-cool, but occasionally we'll dare dip our toes in the water briefly (after most of the emotionality has hopefully toned down). I watched this video of Jon Stewart on the Daily Show and found myself in agreement. I don't envy Stewart's task here. You can literally feel the emotionally-charged minefield around him, with the potential that any mis-spoken word, any at all, will blow up in his face. Apparently, most of the country also agrees with him.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
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This blog commenter also hits the nail on the head:

"Anyone else find it creepy that the new standard what we may and may not say is: How will it affect the behavior of ...

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The Obama Administration has expressed a desire to assign each American an identity online. Participation in the program will be voluntary for now. Those who wish to stay anonymous may do so. The administration is currently assigning this task to the U.S. Commerce Department, as opposed to say the FBI, Homeland Security, the Department of Justice or the National Security Agency.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke says:

"We are not talking about a national ID card," Locke said at the Stanford event. "We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities." 

To be honest, I don't see any need for this program. My credit card companies are quite satisfied they know who I am.  But ...

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Coming to a screen near you, the new federal ruling opens the way for television networks to show bare butts in particular, as well as other incremental titillations such as "sexual pleasure or showing a little more violent content".  The ruling was made by the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in favor of ABC against the FCC. 

As many people see it, the only way to change government is to compete with it.  Unfortunately, start-up countries require a far more intensive financial commitment than a start-up business. More importantly, they need territory. There's only one large area of unclaimed territory on Earth. The Oceans. So, a start-up country would need to exist in floating cities...also called seasteading.

As the article/video aptly states it, in reality the first "start-up country" will likely be the first multi-national corporation whose net value exceeds 1 trillion dollars. 

This article makes for an interesting morning read though I personally think many of these sociological predictions will be trumped by the technological ones. 

 

1) Geopolitics: 'Rivals will take greater risks against the US'

2) The UK economy: 'The popular revolt against bankers will become impossible to resist'

3) Global development: 'A vaccine will rid the world of Aids'

4) Energy: 'Returning to a world that relies on muscle power is not an option'

5) Advertising: 'All sorts of things will just be sold in plain packages'

6) Neuroscience: 'We'll be able to plug information streams directly into the cortex'

7) Physics: 'Within a decade, we'll know what dark matter is'

8) Food: 'Russia will become a global food superpower'

9) Nanotechnology: 'Privacy will be a quaint obsession'

10) Gaming: 'We'll play games to solve problems'

11) Web/internet: 'Quantum computing is the future'

12) Fashion: 'Technology ...

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A large storm is brewing on the internet over a book publisher's decision to politically correct and edit Mark Twain's seminal work "Huckleberry Finn" by removing all references to the dreaded N-word, as well as the term "Injun". Probably, a group of moronic parents are responsible for complaining to school boards, who in turn complained to the book publisher.  

Now, this may sound like a big deal, but it actually isn't.  You see, "Huckleberry Finn" was published in the United States in 1885. This places Mark Twain's work squarely in the public domain.  

This means EVERYONE, including you and I, holds the right to publish "Huckleberry Finn" in any way we desire. I could publish the entire Huck Finn text right now in the next Logic-cool blog post, replacing the N-word with "poopy-head!" or "cotten-headed ninny-muggins!", or place the setting in outerspace on the Planet Douche-Goo ...

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We're filing this sad article under our brand new "Law of Unintended Consequences" category, where idealists act in ways that result in the complete opposite of what they intended. The dictator Robert Mugabe has been trying to kill his main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai for quite some time.

To summarize the linked article, Mugabe has had Tsvangirai tortured and arrested on several occasions. The last assassination attempt wounded Tsvangirai but managed to murder his wife. Now, thanks to Wikileaks, secret communications between Tsvangirai and sympathetic Western officials have been exposed. This windfall is now providing Mugabe with the legal pretense to execute Tsvangirai on the grounds of treason, a goal he had been long trying to accomplish in secret.  20 years of real suffering, struggle and martyrdom by the Zimbabwe opposition, flushed down the toilet, all in the name of "transparency."

Make no mistake, if the execution happens, the ...

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In general, boys like running these kinds of fantasy military scenarios in their heads.  Over at Popular Mechanics, they decided to publish their musings.  The most likely flashpoint between China and the U.S. is over the fate of Taiwan.  The name of the game for China would be to deny American forces access to launch points around the island long enough for them to storm it.  Once Taiwan has been conquered, America would have to launch its own all-out invasion to recover the island, which would be extremely costly.  So, the initial defense of Taiwan will be of critical importance.  In particular, the Popular Mechanics article believes the survival of the two U.S. aircraft carriers will determine the outcome of the entire battle.   

Current projections by most think tanks have the U.S. losing an air war over Taiwan, due to China's bolstered aerial fleet, their new ...

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Slate has an article exploring a "what if" scenario detailing how much slower Internet evolution would be had the FCC regulated it in the same manner as it did FM/AM radio.  Like many things, I think the FCC is trying to regulate the Internet, not because it needs to, but because it wants to.