Blog Heap of Links for the day 1 March 2009

An Internet security company claims that Iran has taken advantage of a computer security breach to obtain engineering and communications information about Marine One

Paul Harvey, the news commentator and talk-radio pioneer whose staccato style made him one of the nation's most familiar voices, died Saturday in Arizona, according to ABC Radio Networks. He was 90. Harvey died surrounded by family at a hospital in Phoenix, where he had a winter home, said Louis Adams, a spokesman for ABC Radio Networks, where Harvey worked for more than 50 years. No cause of death was immediately available.

BARTLESVILLE — Charles Roy "Chuck" Spears, owner of Spears Travel, died Thursday. He was 82.

"Bartlesville does something right," Inhofe said during a visit to the Bartlesville Regional Chamber of Commerce. "Bartlesville, the city, thinks things out. They've raised (water) rates for three consecutive years." He said community support goes a long way in achieving solutions to the city's issues. "There are a lot of elements that lead me to believe that we'll be able to do a little better job on the rates that the Corps (of Engineers) is charging," Inhofe said.

Printing presses normally used to make Australian dollar bills produced solar power cells in a trial near Melbourne last week. The giant machines arranged and stamped flexible solar panels onto plastic film.

The long-awaited 'Watchmen' movie takes loyalty to new limits. And that's exactly what's wrong with it.

Director Zack Snyder needed a superhero's fortitude to finish the controversial comic-book saga. We'll find out if that was enough after Friday.

Who watches the "Watchmen"? Or maybe the question is: How closely will lovers of "Watchmen" be watching? If you don't think the answer is "very," you're living in an alternate universe. The Warner Bros. superhero action-drama arrives Friday with more than 20 years of heavy expectations. For the comic-book set, this is the Holy Grail of graphic novels. And director Zack Snyder and the rest of the team behind the film knew all the pitfalls and perils that such a notorious pop-culture work would bring.

In response to user feedback, Microsoft has made numerous changes to the Windows 7 user interface as it readies the operating system -- viewed by many as a make-or-break product for the software maker -- for formal launch later this year or early next year.

A Seattle-area PC seller will offer free Windows 7 upgrades to customers who buy new Vista-powered machines starting next week, beating Microsoft Corp. and its biggest hardware partners to the punch by months.

Notes from CPAC, the national conservative conference, where this week youth has been served.

As I stated in The New Evangelicalism And Its Bohemian-Style Emergent Church, it's just a matter of time before those in the Emergence against Sola Scriptura that are hitting the bong finally 'fess up like the man in the following story "testifies" for the Lord. Within that post I also pointed out that, from my days in a reggae band with two Rastas from Kingston, I personally can tell you for a fact that the spiritual seekers known as the Rastafarians beat both of them to the shtick that God supposedly gave us this herb for "wisdom."

Mitt Romney returned yesterday to a conservative gathering where his 2008 presidential campaign was both birthed and buried, helping to establish the onetime moderate Massachusetts governor as a movement favorite, de-facto leader of an out-of-power party, and an early, default front-runner for the 2012 nomination.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) addressed the recently approved stimulus, the Guantanamo Bay prison and troop withdrawal from Iraq while in Bartlesville on Friday to discuss local water issues. Inhofe, who opposed passage of the $787 billion federal stimulus bill, referred to stimulus funds as "welfare" during his visit, and said Oklahoma will get $1.9 billion in stimulus funds. "It's 7 percent stimulus and 93 percent welfare, that's essentially what we have and it is huge..."