First tropical storm of the year: Andrea on May 09, 2007. And so begins another year of watching hurricanes…
(with my luck the remnants of a hurricane will blow through Atlantic Canada when we’re supposed to be on the ferry between NS and NF…)
AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: Culture of Fear: Poetry Professor Becomes Terror Suspect
Because of my recycling, the bomb squad came, then the state police. Because of my recycling, buildings were evacuated, classes were canceled, the campus was closed. No. Not because of my recycling. Because of my dark body. No. Not even that. Because of his fear. Because of the way he saw me. Because of the culture of fear, mistrust, hatred and suspicion that is carefully cultivated in the media, by the government, by people who claim to want to keep us “safe.”
Bruce Schneier has been collecting a bunch of these stories lately. His point is less about civil liberties, though. If police and emergency services are kept this busy chasing false alarms, it’s that much easier for the real criminals to slip past unnoticed…
I’ve linked to some of his recent entries:
Now all of the women I know can pee standing up like a man …
What will they think of next?
(In all seriousness, I can see a use for this; many public washrooms are truly disgusting places that I wouldn’t want to park my buttocks in…)
Why the treasure ships from the Americas were allowed to skip Customs: no one inspects the Spanish acquisition!
(Shamelessly stolen from olletho)
As seen in the Pachelbels Canon – CollegeHumor video, it really is everywhere.
Maybe you have to be a bit of a music geek, but I laughed myself silly over this one…
The house of the future: complete computer control.
The House of the Future: Complete Computer Control
As Don Sheppard punches his special code into the electronic keypad at the entryway, a monotone computer voice says, “Welcome-home-Don-come-rightin.’ The front door then glides open.
This is from a 1983 issue of Creative Computing. It amuses me that the “House of the Future” articles haven’t changed all that much since then. The technology has improved (Insteon by SmartLabs is pretty cool) but it’s still to expensive (and too geeky) for the average home buyer. Because retrofits are so hard (and labour intensive == expensive), this stuff is best installed by the homebuilders, but there’s no demand…
After reading Rick Klau’s weblog I installed a couple of useful Wordpress plugins:
They’ve already found a few errors within my website, and a few dangling URLs leftover from the days when I converted my Movable Type URL format. Recommended to my fellow Wordpress users…
Via Ned Batchelder, I am now reading indexed, a collection of tongue-in-cheek venn diagrams and charts by Jessica Hagy.
I laughed myself silly reading the first page, so I thought I’d share…
Why Career Planning Is Time Wasted
One group has to choose which sandwiches they want for an entire week in advance. The other group gets to choose which they want each day. A fascinating thing happens. People who choose their favourite sandwich each day at lunchtime also often choose the same sandwich. This group turns out to be reasonably happy with its choice.
Amazingly, though, people choosing in advance assume that what they’ll want for lunch next week is a variety. And so they choose a turkey sandwich Monday, tuna on Tuesday, egg on Wednesday and so on. It turn out that when next week rolls around they generally don’t like the variety they thought they would. In fact they are significantly less happy with their choices than the group who chose their sandwiches on the day.
you have nothing to lose but your germs!
‘Waving’ Goodbye to a Kitchen Hazard
A team of University of Florida Engineering researchers have come to the conclusion that microwaving plastic scrubbers and kitchen sponges on full power can destroy practically 100% of the bacteria and viruses, parasites or spores collected on them.
(via diane duane)
I remember that from when I was working full time in food industry as something well known. I also remember seeing something on one of the Food Network shows about 2 years ago about how to properly disinfect kitchen sponges/scrubbers, that basically said “Nuke the heck out of them.”
I wonder when the original study did come out.
ConsumerReports.org – Infant car seats 2/07: Safety alert, European models, Ratings
You’d think that in a car crash, infants in their cozy car seats would be the most protected passengers of all. But you’d be wrong, our tests reveal.
Cars and car seats can’t be sold unless they can withstand a 30-mph frontal crash. But most cars are also tested in a 35-mph frontal crash and in a 38-mph side crash. Car seats aren’t.
When we crash-tested infant car seats at the higher speeds vehicles routinely withstand, most failed disastrously. The car seats twisted violently or flew off their bases, in one case hurling a test dummy 30 feet across the lab.
I’ve been trying to write a rant on the topic, but can’t seem to get it organized. The fundamental issue for me is that:
- government officials don’t want to scare consumers, so publicly refuse to admit there are any problems.
- manufacturers slip through the cracks, doing the minimum possible to develop and sell products.
- both parties seem more interested in the appearance of safety than in actual risk analysis.
I do not believe that consumers are served by this process, but I’m at a loss to suggest alternatives…
Update 2007/01/21: The whole point is apparently moot:
CONSUMER REPORTS WITHDRAWS INFANT CAR SEAT REPORT
We withdrew the report immediately upon discovering a substantive issue that may have affected the original test results. The issue came to light based on new information received Tuesday night and Wednesday morning from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) concerning the speed at which our side-impact tests were conducted.
At least part of the problem is that the vast majority of consumers don’t want to have those facts. They want to believe that they’re safe. Hence, the vast overuse of antibiotics and antibiotic soaps, as opposed to working on developing healthy immune systems. shrug Government officials give what they’re demanded of in the populous. If people want the illusion of safety, why wouldn’t they give them that? Until there’s enough groundswell to do something different, there’s no incentive to the government to change the way they behave.
The New Yorker : talk : content
a study of the performance of twenty major American companies over four decades found that the ones putting more emphasis on market share than on profit ended up with lower returns on investment; of the six companies that defined their goal exclusively as market share, four eventually went out of business.
I’ve believed this for decades. It is perfectly reasonable to be a successful “niche” player in a larger market, eg. Apple Computer.
I work for the sixth largest software company in the world. We used to be the seventh largest, after Electronic Arts. I’m not entirely sure why we think this measure is so important; I’d rather we measured our success, not our size…
An analysis of a large collection of passwords gathered in a Myspace phishing attack reveals that passwords are getting better, although:
We used to quip that “password” is the most common password. Now it’s “password1.” Who said users haven’t learned anything about security?
The map itself is cool, but so is the method used to create it; check it out!
(boy, that title is going to make the spammers love me!)
Best Mashup Ever: Caffeinated Viagra Beer (by Jeremy Zawodny)
Schneier on Security: Tracking People by their Sneakers
Researchers at the University of Washington have demonstrated a surveillance system that automatically tracks people through the Nike iPod Sport Kit.
Best Buy experiments with the new “results oriented work environment”.
Absinthetics – Employee Of The Month
They call it protecting their investment; I call it a presumption of criminal intent masquerading as due diligence, and, no, I don’t particularly care for the implication.
from WWdN: In Exile: Seriously. What would Jesus do?
if I were a Christian, I would be profoundly upset that this huge organization, with such a loud voice at the table and such a significant presence in public life, is declaring that stopping gay marriage and telling women whether or not they can make a deeply personal decision are more important issues — and more specifically more important Christian issues — than helping the people among us who have the least and need the most
Hey, at least the USA Today article about the Christian Coalition refers to it as ‘once-powerful’!
Comment by David Brake — 12/4/2006 @ 6:00 am
I was talking on Thursday night about how the Internet is enabling The Long Tail. Disintermediation is allowing small, specialized producers to deal directly with their far-flung customers.
Today I tripped over a perfect example: Mr. McGroovy’s sells “box rivets”. These are small plastic fasteners designed to hold cardboard together in building projects. You know, fire trucks, castles, submarines, etc. for kids to play in :-).
Now this is a specialty market! But his website doesn’t just have the product; he has free plans, and details on how to easily get large cardboard boxes (and how to load them into your car!). Very well done, and an excellent example.
Heck, I even heard that routine while I was riding on the bus a couple of weeks ago — one of the local radio stations rebroadcast it.
(Wandering through from Out of Ambit)
Comment by Garrett Fitzgerald — 2/27/2007 @ 10:03 am