U.S. Soldiers march through a southern English coastal town, en route to board landing ships for the invasion of France, circa late May or early June 1944.

Just a reminder, posting will continue to be quite light for at least the next two weeks. Two exams are this week, and the second will be spent on tying up loose ends here before I head back to America (insert sigh of relief here).

– Debtors’ prison begins to make a return (via Global Guerrillas).

– The size of a New York City block – the subunits of the grid – is rather bizarre compared to other major American cities. No Boston included on the chart though, it would have been nice to see a well-drawn blob.

– ASCAP, the RIAA, and other titans of the music industry set their sights on a villainous group of dastardly ‘copyright infringers’: small coffeshops and library cafes. Because as usual, government is a tool to enforce the will of corporations.

– San Francisco is getting an unprecedented event to beat even Fleet Week: the Russian guided missile cruiser Varyag (not to be confused with the now-Chinese aircraft carrier Varyag) and three ships of the Japanese MSDF will be paying a visit to San Francisco at the end of June.

– Sean Wilkes takes over for Mike Slagh as editor at Secure Nation, and Alex Pedersen realizes that the only thing worse than a non-state actor detonating a nuclear weapon on American soil would be that group not detonating it on say, Pakistani soil.

– If you haven’t seen it already, Jon Stewart had a great interview with Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who seems slightly more for real than I’d imagined. The whole three-part series is online now.

And this past week on Automatic Ballpoint:

– I posted two interesting pictures. This one compares the size of Chinese and other world cities, and this one is an amusing banner from McSweeney’s. It was a light week.

Lessons learned from the Gaza flotilla raid.

Not so much a Sunday edition, I know. My apologies – I’ve come down with something at the worst possible time, but now my head might be starting to clear. Anyways, your links:

– Mike Burleson reveals the “dirty little secret” of the Falklands War: two “small, modestly capable” V/STOL carriers defeated the entire land-based air force of Argentina.

– General Cartwright gets it on cybersecurity and civil liberties, but Michael Tanji says there are still some major contradictions we need to resolve:

1. Is access to the Internet a right? If it is not a right (on par with life and liberty, vice, say freedom from having to hear ‘hate speech’) then stop and move on to the next national security topic. We should spend not one iota of time worrying about defending conveniences. If we are going to consider it a right, then move on to #2.
2. Is cyberspace a domain akin to land, sea and air? Which one? Pick the closest analog and start building your doctrine from there. Make it purple.

– Aliens, the Fermi Paradox, and the likelihood of humanity annihilating itself are all interconnected. But our own demise might be more of a ‘soft’ collapse than a nuclear war…

– Jalopnik has a fantastic article on the notoriously finicky U-2 and the chase cars that help it land. Join the Air Force, drive a Camaro down a runway at 140 MPH.

– Surprise, surprise! China occasionally does something deceptive regarding mass media. Film at eleven.

And this past week on Automatic Ballpoint:

We remember Memorial Day. We also remember how crazy nuclear weapons made our plans for society.

Israeli naval commandos raid a Gaza-bound “aid” flotilla, and everyone disagrees on every noun in that sentence. Especially Turkey, who might bring it up with NATO.

We look at some media including pictures and video of the Libyan anti-Gaddafi protest, maps of deep time, and my own hilariously edited video of a mugging, courtesy CCTV. And speaking of the surveillance state, don’t forget about Stephen Graham tonight at LSE.