Author: Brian

http://bit.ly/lJM2MD

“Woman of the World: In her ninth year as America’s most admired woman, Hillary Clinton is dealing with radical change across the globe, as well as trying to transform U.S. diplomacy on the nuts-and-coffee level. But despite the secretary of state’s punishing pace-half a million miles in her Boeing 757-and the complex relationship between her and President Obama, Clinton seems clear about what she can (and can’t) accomplish, and, as Jonathan Alter reports, her friends are clear about something else: Madam Secretary is in her element”:

“For most of her thousands of hours in the air, Hillary changes out of her trademark pantsuit (yellow is her favorite color for clothes and in the décor of her homes) into a fleece top and sweats. Meals consist largely of fruit and vegetables (she has a special taste for hot peppers) and maybe a scotch or Bloody Mary. ‘Don’t bring me the dessert!’ she loudly tells the flight attendants only moments before sauntering into the staff cabin, brownie already in hand: ‘I know-I’ve been bad.’ Occasional cupcakes with candles are also exempt because Hillary is religious about observing staff birthdays. She resists movies (despite a weakness for anything with Meryl Streep, especially Out of Africa), reads yet more briefing papers than she’s already consumed in Washington, scans news on an iPad, and sometimes manages a few pages of a mystery, but mostly she sleeps, without any pills, often right through landing. ‘If she couldn’t sleep most of the way,’ says Philippe Reines, … ‘she wouldn’t be able to function.’
“When she travels, Hillary manages to be simultaneously remote from the media(joint press conferences with foreign ministers are limited to two questions for each) and accessible to the public. Unless a crisis obliterates her schedule, she routinely subjects herself to what Reines infelicitously calls ‘townterviews,’ a combination of university town meeting and television interview featuring a group of effusive local journalists, students, and faculty. The format allows her to promote civil society and human rights without getting in the face of the country’s leaders. Often a questioner will refer to her in fractured English as ‘President Clinton.’ In Asia, this can be especially mortifying for the shy audience. She’ll cheerfully reply ‘I wish!’ or ‘Almost!’ to disarm the situation, before going on to explain how her serving in the government of the man who defeated her is a sign of democracy’s strength. Almost every trip includes meeting with leading women from local NGOs, many of whom line up to tell Hillary with what little English they can muster how inspirational she has been to their efforts.”

<http://www.womensenews.org/story/commentary/100107/why-michelle-obama-channeling-jackie-o>

Why did Barbara Walters nominate Michelle Obama as the most fascinating person of the year? Lisa Nuss double checked the transcript–and the first lady’s first year–and couldn’t find a reason.

Editor’s Note: The following is a commentary. The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily the views of Women’s eNews.

(WOMENSENEWS)–During Barbara Walters’ interview with Michelle Obama last month, I never heard Walters say why she chose the first lady as the most fascinating person of the year.

I dug up the transcript, watched the video and confirmed that Walters never said why.

Michelle Obama did a lot that was fascinating before 2009.

After bootstrapping her way to an elite college and law school where she was outspoken about racism, she left corporate law for high-profile policy work in politics and health care and won a powerful corporate board position.

All the while she battled her husband to pick up his slack on the parenting and insisted on her own demanding career after his election to the U.S. Senate. She told Vogue in 2007, “The days I stay home with my kids without going out, I start to get ill.” She said she loved her work challenges “that have nothing to do with my husband and children.”

Am I the only one who misses that formidable woman?

She began slipping from public view during the primary when her negative ratings–spurred by media portrayals of her as angry and vehement–threatened Barack’s campaign. She has yet to re-emerge.

She was nowhere to be seen during her national interview with Walters. It was as if the opinionated Michelle has been packed away somewhere in the China Room, a la “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”

Click the link (above) to read more.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/04/stuxnet-201104

All over Europe, smartphones rang in the middle of the night. Rolling over in bed, blinking open their eyes, civilians reached for the little devices and, in the moment of answering, were effectively drafted as soldiers. They shook themselves awake as they listened to hushed descriptions of a looming threat. Over the next few days and nights, in mid-July of last year, the ranks of these sudden draftees grew, as software analysts and experts in industrial-control systems gathered in makeshift war rooms in assorted NATO countries. Government officials at the highest levels monitored their work. They faced a crisis which did not yet have a name, but which seemed, at first, to have the potential to bring industrial society to a halt.

A self-replicating computer virus, called a worm, was making its way through thousands of computers around the world, searching for small gray plastic boxes called programmable-logic controllers—tiny computers about the size of a pack of crayons, which regulate the machinery in factories, power plants, and construction and engineering projects. These controllers, or P.L.C.’s, perform the critical scut work of modern life. They open and shut valves in water pipes, speed and slow the spinning of uranium centrifuges, mete out the dollop of cream in each Oreo cookie, and time the change of traffic lights from red to green.

Although controllers are ubiquitous, knowledge of them is so rare that many top government officials did not even know they existed until that week in July. Several major Western powers initially feared the worm might represent a generalized attack on all controllers. If the factories shut down, if the power plants went dark, how long could social order be maintained? Who would write a program that could potentially do such things? And why?

As long as the lights were still on, though, the geek squads stayed focused on trying to figure out exactly what this worm intended to do. They were joined by a small citizen militia of amateur and professional analysts scattered across several continents, after private mailing lists for experts on malicious software posted copies of the worm’s voluminous, intricate code on the Web. In terms of functionality, this was the largest piece of malicious software that most researchers had ever seen, and orders of magnitude more complex in structure. (Malware’s previous heavyweight champion, the Conficker worm, was only one-twentieth the size of this new threat.) During the next few months, a handful of determined people finally managed to decrypt almost all of the program, which a Microsoft researcher named “Stuxnet.” On first glimpsing what they found there, they were scared as hell.