… except that they’re not in Iraq, but in « North Korea »:

‘North Korea is likely to be producing nuclear bombs even as it conducts negotiations with the United States and four other countries on ending its weapons programs, the senior U.S. official responsible for those talks told Congress yesterday. “Time is certainly a valid factor in this,” said James A. Kelly, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, during testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “We don’t know the details, but it’s quite possible that North Korea is proceeding along, developing additional fissionable material and possibly additional nuclear weapons.” Although North Korea has asserted that it has produced weapons-grade plutonium since the crisis over Pyongyang’s nuclear programs began 20 months ago—and though U.S. intelligence analysts broadly believe that the number of nuclear weapons held by North Korea has increased from two to at least eight during this period—it is highly unusual for a senior administration official to concede publicly that North Korea’s stockpile may be growing.
…
“The bottom line is that we now confront a much more dangerous adversary than we did in 2001,” said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), the ranking Democrat on the panel. He accused the administration of adopting a policy of “benign neglect” even after learning that Pyongyang had a clandestine nuclear effort, and then taking “more than two years to resolve its internal divisions and settle on an approach for dealing with North Korea.”’

Gosh, I feel so much safer with the Boy Emperor’s adults in charge.

I see that Amazon.com has now adopted something called a “plog®.” The “plog” is apparently yet another marketing scheme, although Amazon touts it as:

a diary of events that will enhance your shopping experience, helping you discover products that have just been released, track changes to your orders, and many other things. Just like a blog, your Plog is sorted in reverse chronological order. When we think we have something interesting or important to tell you, we’ll post it to your Plog.

This sort of thing, while inevitable (proving once again the truth that the blog is not going away, though it may mutate into innumerable obnoxious forms and hybrids), is undeniably annoying. For one thing, while the website invites you to go to Your Account to “change Plog settings,” the only option actually available to you is to “hide purchase details” (which doesn’t really seem to “hide” anything at all), not to remove the “plog” from your front page. For another thing, who’s writing this “diary of events,” and what kind of “events” are they? And what does “plog” even stand for? Yuck.

We took a very nice five-mile roundtrip to the library today, the first time we had done a double ride together.

The M30 is rougher and tougher on me than the Bobcat, but performed fine, wonky crank and all. I need to raise the seat. But it’s not bad for a garage sale bike.

The Bobcat performed just fine for Frank. He may need to use it to commute to campus this week, what with Art Fair completely gumming up the works around Ann Arbor. It’ll be easier than dealing with the altered bus routes.

I rode to campus on the Bobcat Friday to meet with a client. That trip was rather nice. Nobody ran me down and the weather was hot, but okay. I changed shirts when I got there. I’m enjoying the biking life.