From James Bamford’s “Big Brother Is Listening” (The Atlantic: April 2006):
This legislation, the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, established the FISA court—made up of eleven judges handpicked by the chief justice of the United States—as a secret part of the federal judiciary. The court’s job is to decide whether to grant warrants requested by [...]
Posted on November 27th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, history, law, politics, security, technology | No Comments »
From Sam Anderson’s “A History of Hooch“, a review of Iain Gately’s Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol (6 July 2008):
Elizabethan England had a pub for every 187 people. (By 2004, the country was down to one for every 529 people.) The Pilgrims’ Mayflower was actually “a claret ship from the Bordeaux wine [...]
Posted on November 27th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history | No Comments »
From Mark Townsend and Anushka Asthana’s “Put young children on DNA list, urge police” (The Guardian: 16 March 2008):
Primary school children should be eligible for the DNA database if they exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life, according to Britain’s most senior police forensics expert.
Gary Pugh, director of forensic sciences at Scotland [...]
Posted on November 22nd, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, education, law, politics, science, security | No Comments »
From BBC News’ “CCTV boom ‘failing to cut crime’” (6 May 2008):
Huge investment in closed-circuit TV technology has failed to cut UK crime, a senior police officer has warned.
Det Ch Insp Mick Neville said the system was an “utter fiasco” - with only 3% of London’s street robberies being solved using security cameras.
Although Britain had [...]
Posted on November 20th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, security, technology | No Comments »
From BBC News’ “Council admits spying on family” (10 April 2008):
A council has admitted spying on a family using laws to track criminals and terrorists to find out if they were really living in a school catchment.
A couple and their three children were put under surveillance without their knowledge by Poole Borough Council [...]
Posted on November 20th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Webster U: infosec management, security, technology | No Comments »
From William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, part 1 (I: 5):
TALBOT:
My thoughts are whirled like a potter’s wheel;
I know not where I am, nor what I do;
A witch, by fear, not force, like Hannibal,
Drives back our troops and conquers as she lists:
So bees with smoke and doves with noisome stench
Are from their hives and houses driven away.
They [...]
Posted on January 13th, 2007 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, history, language & literature, on writing, word of the day | Comments Off
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.”
Related posts
Ulysses Grant [...]
Posted on November 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, language & literature, politics | Comments Off
From Tom Reiss’s “Imagining the Worst: How a literary genre anticipated the modern world” (The New Yorker [28 November 2005]: 112):
The [British] army was given responsibility for domestic intelligence, which became MI5; the Navy was put in charge of a new foreign espionage service, which became MI6.
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The NSA and threats to privacy
The Chinese Internet [...]
Posted on October 1st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, politics | Comments Off
From Thomas Babington Macaulay’s “A Speech Delivered In The House Of Commons On The 5th Of February 1841” (Prime Palaver #4: 1 September 2001):
The principle of copyright is this. It is a tax on readers for the purpose of giving a bounty to writers. The tax is an exceedingly bad one; it is a tax [...]
Posted on July 28th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, business, history, law, politics | Comments Off
From Thomas Babington Macaulay’s “A Speech Delivered In The House Of Commons On The 5th Of February 1841” (Prime Palaver #4: 1 September 2001):
The question of copyright, Sir, like most questions of civil prudence, is neither black nor white, but grey. The system of copyright has great advantages and great disadvantages; and it is our [...]
Posted on July 28th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, art, history, law, on writing, politics | Comments Off
From Adam Goodheart’s “The Last Island of the Savages” (The American Scholar, Autumn 2000, 69(4):13-44):
Then [in the 1860s], suddenly, the hostilities [by the Andaman Islanders] ceased almost entirely. There was one cataclysmic battle - fifteen hundred naked warriors came charging out of the jungle, straight up against the guns of a British warship, with predictably [...]
Posted on June 3rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, language & literature, politics | Comments Off
From Patrick Keefe’s “Camera Shy” (Legal Affairs: July/August 2003):
In London, a city even more intensively scrutinized by closed-circuit television cameras than New York, citizens can at least retrieve copies of footage taken of them through a provision in Britain’s Data Protection Act. Americans have no such legal recourse. …
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The NSA and threats to privacy
Surveillance [...]
Posted on May 31st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, business, law, politics, security, technology | Comments Off
From Wikipedia’s “Dante Gabriel Rossetti“:
[Dante Gabriel Rossetti's wife Elizabeth Siddal] had taken an overdose of laudanum shortly after giving birth to a dead child. Rossetti became increasingly depressed, and buried the bulk of his unpublished poems in her grave at Highgate Cemetery. … During these years, Rossetti was prevailed upon by friends to exhume his [...]
Posted on May 29th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, language & literature | Comments Off
From Technology Review’s “Big Brother Logs On“:
In many ways, the drama of pervasive surveillance is being played out first in Orwell’s native land, the United Kingdom, which operates more closed-circuit cameras per capita than any other country in the world. This very public surveillance began in 1986 on an industrial estate near the town of [...]
Posted on May 11th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, law, security, technology | Comments Off
From R. W. Kostal’s Law and English Railway Capitalism, 1825-1875 (quoted in Andrew Odlyzko’s “Pricing and Architecture of the Internet: Historical Perspectives from Telecommunications and Transportation“):
In Britain in 1889, postal officials reprimanded a Leicester subscriber for using his phone to notify the fire brigade of a nearby conflagration. The fire was not on his premises, [...]
Posted on April 21st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: social software, Wash U: tech in changing society, business, history, technology | Comments Off
From Andrew Odlyzko’s “Pricing and Architecture of the Internet: Historical Perspectives from Telecommunications and Transportation“:
British turnpikes were a controversial response to a serious problem. Traditionally, the King’s Highway was open to all. The problem was how to keep it in good condition. As commerce grew, the need to maintain roads became acute. At first, in [...]
Posted on April 21st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, business, history, politics | Comments Off
From Andrew Odlyzko’s “Pricing and Architecture of the Internet: Historical Perspectives from Telecommunications and Transportation“:
The modern canal era can be said to start with the Duke of Bridgewater’s Canal in England. Originally it was just a means of connecting the Duke’s colliery to Manchester. The parliamentary charter (which enabled him to take over private property, [...]
Posted on April 21st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, business, history, technology | Comments Off
Scotland’s worst poet, William Topaz McGonagall: From “The Tay Bridge Disaster”:
Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time. …
Or here’s a few lines from “Glasgow”:
And as for the statue of [...]
Posted on November 27th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, on writing | Comments Off
Welsh village with the longest name in the UK:
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
Longest domain name in the world:
http://llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.co.uk
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Another awful poet
Somehow I don’t think she had
Best entertainment news headline ever
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The strictest of teachers
Posted on November 15th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: technology | Comments Off
In 1698, Peter the Great worked as a common laborer while in England so that he could learn the art of shipbuilding.
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The importance of booze to the Pilgrims
What patents on life has wrought
Turnpikes, roads, & tolls
Tracking children who might commit a crime later
The real purposes of the American school
Posted on May 21st, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book | Comments Off