The "vendor" (it's a blog) isn't telling people to stay away from it, it's literally linked back to that dude's photostream and describes the license which means the vendor thinks they're following the license and doesn't think their blog is commercial use despite the ads. And he probably hasn't gotten a response back from the guy because he emailed him about a blog post that is titled Gone Fishin because the dude literally fucking left to go camping in the woods and included a photo of a hammock. Give me a break.

These are one of the most dangerous tools you can use. Not because they're particularly dangerous themselves, but because people like to cut their thumbs off when they use them.

A chainmail glove reduces the chance of this.

Sadly this is history repeating itself. In WWII German intelligence efforts were grossly ineffective primarily due to the infighting between the SS, Gestapo and the military intelligence agencies. Great Britain's intelligence work on the other hand was extremely effective, for example every single German agent in the UK was either executed or turned. The terrific achievements of British intelligence were largely due to the fact that the intelligence agencies leaders all came from a small ruling class who were closely tied together by bonds of shared educational experiences, family ties and perhaps even homosexual liaisons. Now the US is big country and our intelligence leaders come from a variety of backgrounds so the British approach can never work here. What we need is strong DOD leadership so that the incessant rivalries between the CIA, FBI, NSA and military intelligence agencies are at least made less harmful I am not optimistic however.

They partner because it costs much more to ship a package than it does a letter. Is that really a surprise? UPS/FedEx get to dip into that letter delivery service a little bit to gain volume benefits and USPS can offshoot packages through the parcel services so they don't have to hire the people to process all those packages.

It's much more cost effective when you can shove millions of letters through a sorting machine than it is to have a person physically read a label and pass it down the right slide. How is that surprising to you?

The healthcare bill is so huge and complex that it is difficult to have any intelligent debate over it. People mostly make simple, sound bite sized remarks. Very few people seem to understand the bill. I don't understand it myself. That said, the conventional wisdom states that the bill will be extremely expensive, on the scale of Social Security or Medicare. While I agree the current health care system leaves a lot to be desired, I think the timing is terrible. Our financial house is not in order and the economy seems to be in the middle of a long term case of fatigue. In short, I don't think we can afford it. I'm worried it could be the straw, or bale, that breaks the camel's back.

Post office?