The Museum of Wisconsin Art

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a long article about the new Museum of Wisconsin Art building.

The last director, Tom Lidtke, took the museum from utter nonentity to what I consider an exemplar of what a relatively small museum can be.

It will be interesting to see the direction in which Laurie Winters, the new director, takes the museum. She curated some great exhibits while at the Milwaukee Art Museum, including one on art from Polish collections which included a portrait by Leonardo da Vinciwhich I think is more beautiful than the Mona Lisa.

Three Pinocchios for Honest Ob

The Washington Post has the story.

Hint: It has to do with his statements about gun control.

Chinese Cyber Warfare

They have been telling us the rules of New War for some time:

...as Chinese Gen. Dai Qingmin wrote in his 2002 book, "Direct Information Warfare": "Computer network reconnaissance is the prerequisite for seizing victory in warfare. It helps to choose opportune moments, places and measures for attack." Says Mr. Thomas: "He's telling you right there—10 years ago—that if we're going to win, we have to do recon."

A 1999 book by two Chinese colonels put it more aggressively (albeit in a sentence as verbose as it is apocalyptic): "If the attacking side secretly musters large amounts of capital without the enemy nations being aware of this at all and launches a sneak attack against its financial markets," wrote Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, "then, after causing a financial crisis, buries a computer virus and hacker detachment in the opponent's computer system in advance, while at the same time carrying out a network attack against the enemy so that the civilian electricity network, traffic dispatching network, financial transaction network, telephone communications network, and mass media network are completely paralyzed, this will cause the enemy nation to fall into social panic, street riots, and a political crisis." No kidding.

So maybe the concerns of the Preppers aren't so crazy after all. If we get into a hi test cyber war with China, or anyone else for that matter, all things important could screetch to a halt very suddenly.

More here.