About 340 workers at an Omaha plastics factory will lose pay or have to work next Saturday to make up for time lost during a visit by President Bush on Monday to promote his “jobs and growth plan,” their boss said yesterday.

That story that’s circulating about Oregon wanting to hire someone fluent in Klingon? It’s too good to be true.

This only looks like a spoof. The Missile Defense Agency — those guys who are still trying to build a nuclear umbrella despite plenty of evidence it’s doomed to failure — are now going for the hearts and minds of your children. Yes, you too can color a picture of Ronald Reagan in the Missile Defense Agency Coloring Book.

The Register reports that T-Mobile is losing its shirt on wireless Internet access. Not much of a surprise in a new market. I’m posting it here because I was amused by the reference in the article that “the nascent Wi-Fi operators simply can’t muster enough Apple PowerBook-toting bloggers to make the whole business viable”. Guess where I am, what I’m using, and what I’m doing?

The red herring about secret messages being hidden in Internet traffic is being flogged again. As The Register says, in yet another article debunking the whole thing, “the likelihood of Islamic fundamentalists hiding messages in porn is roughly the same as their likelihood of hiding them in pig carcasses.”

The Army team searching for WMD in Iraq is giving up. But the administration continues to make happy talk about finding them.

In an essay against going to war in Iraq, I predicted that one of the ways this would make us less safe is by dispersing dangerous materials, possibly to terrorists or other rogue states. Step one in this process has already happened.

Meanwhile, new efforts are underway for our own development of battlefield nukes, which probably gives us great credibility when we tell other nations that “nukes are bad, mmmmkay?”

The moral evil of gambling has gotten some extra press this week thanks to the outing of Bill Bennett as a major whale. (A whale being an industry term for a schmuck who loses a lot of money gambling.) And, of course, we’ve seen a number of conservatives coming forward to defend their favorite ideologue.

As the argument goes, what Mr. Bennett does with his own money is a private matter, and if he happens to enjoy gambling, then that’s his own business.

Sounds reasonable to most people. But Rep. Jim Leach is not most people. Oh, he’s got no problem with Mr. Bennett, because Bennett drove (or got a limo) to Atlantic City to do his gambling. But Mr. Leach has an issue with people who do their gambling outside of the sanctioned halls of New Jersey, Nevada, or the Indian reservations.

Leach has reintroduced for the umpteenth time a bill that would outlaw Internet gambling. Sort of. Actually, it would pretty much do nothing. But more on that in a minute.

According to Mr. Leach’s press release, Internet gambling serves no legitimate purpose, is a danger to the family, and (naturally) has potential links to terrorism. This last bit apparently due to the idea that you can launder money through Internet gambling.

Starting with the most ludicrous proposition first: it’s true that you can walk into a casino with a suitcase of cash, walk out with a suitcase of different cash, and therefore effectively disguise the source of the original cash. But it’s hard to walk into an online casino, so in order to get money into play, you’ve got to do that with a wire transfer. Wire transfers leave inconvenient records of the original source point for the money.

[Update, 5/11, 8:21 PM: A source at one of the online financial clearing-houses tells me that a) most of their transactions are rather small, and b) there are limits on the size of every transaction. When this company approached their government to ask how they could be of use for government tracing of financial transactions, they were told they were already in compliance; since the company stores its money in banks, all transactions are already traceable.]

But moving on to the general proposition, that gambling is bad for society. Presumably, this is due to the fact that it’s possible to wager away Junior’s college fund — unless you’re subscribing to Puritan theory that wagering on the will of God is in itself bad. Assuming the former, gambling that makes it more likely you’re going to lose the college fund is worse than gambling that makes it less so.

Whoops. We have a problem, then. The way to determine the odds of losing is to check out the casino’s edge on any given bet. At one popular Internet casino, the overall edge for the house was 2.21% in March; this means that for every dollar you bet, you could expect to get back just over 97 cents. This makes this particular site a better bet than most Atlantic City casinos, where the equivalent return on slots averages about 95 cents (and much lower on less expensive machines).

But the worst bet you can make isn’t at an Internet or at a land-based casino. The worst bet is on the government. State lotteries routinely pay off 50 to 60 cents on the dollar.

As an example, let’s review the return from the Iowa lottery, where Mr. Leach hails from. In their standard “Pick 3” game, hit the 1,000-to-1 number, and get paid $600. That’s 60 cents for every buck you wager. Spend $10 on their “All The Marbles” instant ticket, and on average you’ll put $6.60 back in your pocket.

Interestingly, the Iowa lottery says on their web site that “tickets cannot be purchased on the Internet at this time.”

There’s no question that there are people playing online who have no business being there; the same goes for any casino, and it’s fairly easy to spot who’s who. But if you’re going to play, you’re best off where you’ve got the best odds, and the free market seems to make online casinos pay off a hell of a lot better than their land-based equivalents.

Leach’s bill makes it illegal to transfer funds directly from a US institution to an Internet casino. But it’s only illegal for the casino; players and the wire-transfer institutions are exempted. Amusingly, it’ll still be legal to buy any registered security, so if you want to buy stock in one of the UK-based casinos, that’s just fine. And since all Internet casinos are already illegal in the US, what this will essentially do is force players to move money first into an international clearing house, and then move it into the casino.

Note to Mr. Leach: you already need a service like this if you want to pick up your winnings from the casino, in most cases. Most online players already have these accounts.

Essentially, this bill should be called, “The Cessation of Protections for Internet Gamblers Act”, because that’s what the bill will perpetuate. Since all of the casinos and most of the clearing-houses are international, if your money gets “lost” somewhere, you’re pretty much screwed. There are web sites which tell players which places to avoid, but that information isn’t widely distributed. A bill that licenses or regulates Internet casinos, rather than attempts an ineffectual ban, would be far more likely to protect the rent money from being lost on Internet red 22. [Update: John Conyers has proposed a commission to do exactly this.]

From Honda UK, a TV commercial featuring a Rube Goldberg machine made from Honda parts. More impressively, it’s all real.

A computer security researcher moved all of his research offshore—and has his legal status in some jeopardy—after the state of Michigan made all of his work illegal.

David Filippi reports on Macintouch today that his iBook was broken by security: “[I]nstead of pressing the button to unlatch it, [they] had taken a screwdriver and pried the two halves apart until the latch broke off. I guess, technically… it’s ‘locked’ and they’re entitled to break it.”

Just heard on CNN. Anchor Aaron Brown is referring to two opinions offered earlier about whether the chemicals found near Karbala were weapons or just industrial chemicals. “We’ve heard two opinions tonight, one more optimistic than the other that these are chemical weapons.”

Optimistic? I thought that chemical weapons were a horrible scourge. Who exactly is cheering for Saddam to have chemical weapons—unless, of course, you’re hoping to retroactively justify an invasion.

An interesting choice of words from a journalist.

Update, 1:43 AM:

CNN showing images from Abu Dhabi TV. When the Abu Dhabi journalist says that it looks like the Iraqis are successfully defending a bridge, Aaron rushes to tell us, several times, that this is only the opinion of the Abu Dhabi reporter. When the image shows two American tanks on the bridge, Aaron tells us that there may very well be more American firepower in the area, but that we just can’t see it.

Might as well watch Fox.

Given the administration’s urge to defend large corporations’ right to profit, perhaps the BBC has inadvertently shown us the real reason for the invasion of Iraq: blatant copyright theft. Part of a series of photos taken in Basra.

“To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.” Theodore Roosevelt, 1918

Spotted at my client site on Friday: an advertising circular from Au Bon Pain, with the headline “celebrating 25 years as an American company.”
Hey, if we’re willing to boycott French toast—named after Joseph French, a New Yorker—no wonder they’re worried.

“Ironically, the only abused party not to have sought some form of payback yet are the Democrats, whose own views on national security are so incoherent that they have shunned debate entirely and preferred to cower meekly on the sidelines, hoping the whole storm will somehow pass them by.” Gideon Rose

Slate’s Julia Turner reports that in this week’s New Republic, “Jonathan Chait tackles the administration’s ludicrous argument that Congress should pass Bush’s tax cut so returning troops will have jobs to come back to. It’s a volunteer Army, Chait points out. When the war’s over, troops will still have jobs, as soldiers.”

Is it really George W. Bush, or just a clever duplicate?

Also in the Guardian, something completely different: a delightful history of Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

This is just mind-boggling. “The Justice Department lifted a requirement Monday that the FBI ensure the accuracy and timeliness of information… before adding it to the country’s most comprehensive law enforcement database.”

Halliburton has won a contract for emergency repairs to Iraqi oil wells. Value of the contract? Unknown, because it’s “cost-plus”: the more Halliburton manages to rack up in expenses, the more money it makes. Time to start flying the interns first class.

Yes, that’s the same Halliburton as in, “Dick Cheney, former CEO of.” And the same Halliburton as in, “under investigation for shady dealings with terrorist-supporting nations.”

“Naturally the common people don’t want war… but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.” Hermann Goering
Note from Jeff: I have a fortune cookie program on my computer. This was today’s, chosen at random.