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Monthly Archives: July 2007

Safest Seats

Common sense would direct you to sit in the back of the plane if you were trying to increase your chance of surviving an albeit unlikely crash. Turns out that statistical analysis indicates that this is true, that is, your likelihood of survival seems to increase if you sit further back in the cabin. Nevertheless, […]

Meth Check

ABC news has a story about another breach of privacy – police officers checking up on your decongestant purchases.

Cell Phone Tracking

Your privacy is being eroded in a number of ways. One of which is that almost everybody these days is carrying around a tracking device, that is, a cell phone. While it’s helpful tool in criminal investigations, the potential for misuse is considerable. “Bluejacking” is an example of one of the more mischievous attacks. This […]

Blogsnow is back

Sometime in the recent past, Blogsnow was resurrected. Hooray!

The “Homeland”

Something about referring to the United State of America as the “Homeland” has always sounded a little odd, perhaps even a tad fascist. I’m not alone in this apparently. Wired’s Threat Level blog has a post today, There’s No Such Thing as the Homeland that helps put a point on it: People who write and […]

Greatest Video Game Scandals

Not terribly in depth, but here’s a list of the “Gaming’s 10 Biggest Scandals.” In other news, video games are good for you.

Why impeachment could be a non-partisan issue

Opinion polls indicate that public support for impeachment is at a high point. But whether this idea runs along partisan lines is to miss the point. Bush & Cheney are the architects of a massive increase in executive powers and they achieved it long before the latest outrages, namely Cheney’s assertion that the Office of […]

I still love Beware of the Blog

WFMU revives an obscure bit of Velvet Underground lore. Lou Reed got his start writing music for a pseudo-Brill Building outfit and wrote and recorded a novelty single titled “The Ostrich.” The band recorded as “The Primitives” and also featured John Cale. It basically sounds like one of VU’s goofier singles. You can listen to […]

Debt Therapy

Are you a compulsive debtor? Check the warning signs. And get help.

The Black Swan

I’m in the midst of reading The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. So far I’m finding it a fun read, it touches on the same themes he introduced in Fooled By Randomness, (including the reappearance of Taleb dopperganger Nero Tulip) but explores in particular the rare event and […]