Ramblings & ephemera
From Timothy Noah’s “Bush’s Fart-Joke Legacy” (Slate: 2 October 2006):
Legend has it that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, once farted in the presence of Queen Elizabeth I, whereupon he went into exile for seven years. On his return, the queen reputedly greeted, “My lord, we had quite forgot the fart.”
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Ulysses Grant [...]
Posted on November 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, history, politics | Comments Off
From Christian Seifert’s “Analyzing malicious SSH login attempts” (SecurityFocus: 11 September 2006):
First, we analyzed the login names that were used on the login attempts. During the sample period, there were 2741 unique account names ranging from common first names, system account names, and common accounts to short alphabetical strings captured by the system logger. Of [...]
Posted on November 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Webster U: InfoSec Management, security | Comments Off
From D. Ghirlandaio’s “Comment to Stephen Griffin’s ‘Torture and the Ticking Time Bomb’” (10 October 2006):
The Syrians had a technique for the ticking bomb scenario. Give the man who knows where the bomb is a cell phone. “Call your mother.” At the mother’s house, a man picks up the phone.
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Why the US toppled Iran’s [...]
Posted on November 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, law, politics | Comments Off
From Mary A. Dempsey’s “Fordlandia” (Michigan History: July/August 1994):
Screens were just one of the Yankee customs transported to Fordlandia and Belterra. Detroit physician L. S. Fallis, Sr., the first doctor sent from Henry Ford Hospital to run the Fordlandia medical center, attempted to eradicate malaria and hookworm among Brazilian seringueiros (rubber gatherers) by distributing [...]
Posted on November 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, business, history, politics | Comments Off
From Alan Bellows’s “The Ruins of Fordlândia” (Damn Interesting: 3 August 2006):
On Villares’ advice, [Henry] Ford purchased a 25,000 square kilometer tract of land along the Amazon river, and immediately began to develop the area. …
Scores of Ford employees were relocated to the site, and over the first few months an American-as-apple-pie community sprung up [...]
Posted on November 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, business, history, politics, weird | Comments Off
From Wikipedia’s “Clarke’s three laws” (2 November 2006):
Arthur C. Clarke formulated the following three “laws” of prediction:
1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible [...]
Posted on November 3rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society | Comments Off
On Saturday 17 April 2004, I received the following email from someone I didn’t know:
> Hello,
>
> I am not sure who you are but our security detected a Netsky virus in an
> email that you sent. Whether a personal message or a spam, please make
> attention to the fact that you are spreading viruses and [...]
Posted on November 3rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, Webster U: InfoSec Management, security | Comments Off
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”
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Word of the day: Froschmäusekrieg
The final moment of tragedy
The escape of Mr. Flitcraft
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Neal [...]
Posted on November 3rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, art | Comments Off
From the email archives:
On Sunday 30 May 2004 11:32 pm, Jerry Hubbard wrote:
> How is everyone? Hope the storms did not harm anyone.
My basement flooded twice, my tenant’s kitchen had water streaming in through the window frame, our backyard fence was blown down, the umbrella on our deck was blown off the deck into the [...]
Posted on November 3rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, True Stories | Comments Off
From Roger Ebert:
“Because the movie all takes place during one day and Roxy is being chased by a truant officer, it compares itself to “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” It might as reasonably compare itself to “The Third Man” because they wade through sewers.”
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Best entertainment news headline ever
Why so many Google projects & betas?
The strictest [...]
Posted on November 3rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, art, business | Comments Off
From Entertainment News, 21 March 2004:
“Zombies Push Jesus from Top of North American Box Office”
(About Dawn of the Dead and The Passion of the Christ)
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Transcendence, described by the East & West
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Robin-ism #6
Now that is one good insult
Posted on November 3rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, overheard | Comments Off
Saw this in an email sig:
Microsoft: Where do you want to go today?
Mac OS X: Where do you want to go tomorrow?
Linux: Are you coming or what?
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My reply to those “You sent a virus to me!” emails
I for one welcome our new OS overlords: Google Chrome
Virtual-machine based rootkits
Unpatched Linux, 3 months; unpatched Windows, 20 [...]
Posted on November 3rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology | Comments Off
We went to see Troy last week. At the end of the movie, the Trojans drag the Trojan Horse into the city. They party, celebrating what they think is the abandonment of the war by the Greeks, and everyone collapses into a drunken stupor. Cut to the waiting Greek ships, hidden a few miles away, [...]
Posted on November 3rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: overheard | Comments Off
Joe (my cousin from England): I just read somewhere that the average house in Missouri has 65 brown recluse spiders in it.
Mom: Really? I wonder why we never see them if there’s so many?
Scott: Hel-loo?! Because they’re re-clu-sive! They’re not called “brown friendlies”!
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Scottism #43
Jans on vagueness
Conversation with Robert
The strictest of teachers
That poor polish sausage
Posted on November 3rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: overheard | Comments Off