Ramblings & ephemera
From Alex Bellos’s “Coke. Guns. Booty. Beats.” (Blender: June 2005):
In the slums of Rio De Janeiro, drug lords armed with submachine guns have joined forces with djs armed with massive sound systems and rude, raunchy singles. Welcome to the most excitingâ€â€and dangerousâ€â€underground club scene in the world. …
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is the glamorous city [...]
Posted on July 18th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, law, politics | Comments Off
From Bo Elkjaer and Kenan Seeberg’s “Echelon’S Architect” (Cryptome: 21 May 2002):
After that, [Bruce McIndoe] started to design Echelon II, an enlargement of the original system.
Bruce McIndoe left the inner circle of the enormous espionage network in 1998, a network run by the National Security Agency, the world’s most powerful intelligence agency, in cooperation with [...]
Posted on July 18th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, security, technology | Comments Off
From John Twelve Hawks’s “ How We Live Now” (2005):
The passports contain a radio frequency identification chip (RFID) so that all our personal information can be instantly read by a machine at the airport. However, the State Department has refused to encrypt the information embedded in the chip, because it requires more complicated technology that [...]
Posted on July 6th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, history, law, politics, security | Comments Off
From Brendan I. Koerner’s “Your Cellphone is a Homing Device” (Legal Affairs: July/August 2003):
Law enforcement likewise views privacy laws as an impediment, especially now that it has grown accustomed to accessing location data virtually at will. Take the MetroCard, the only way for New York City commuters to pay their transit fares since the elimination [...]
Posted on June 4th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, business, law, security, technology | Comments Off
From Adam Goodheart’s “The Last Island of the Savages” (The American Scholar, Autumn 2000, 69(4):13-44):
This is how you get to the most isolated human settlement on earth [North Sentinel Island, in the Andaman Islands]: You board an evening flight at JFK for Heathrow, Air India 112, a plane full of elegant sari-clad women, London-bound businessmen, [...]
Posted on June 3rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, cool stuff | Comments Off
From The New York Times‘ “Form Follows Function. Now Go Out and Cut the Grass.“:
Failure, [Henry] Petroski shows, works. Or rather, engineers only learn from things that fail: bridges that collapse, software that crashes, spacecraft that explode. Everything that is designed fails, and everything that fails leads to better design. Next time at least that [...]
Posted on May 16th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, business, history, science | Comments Off
From Bruce Schneier’s “The Silliness of Secrecy“, quoting The Wall Street Journal:
Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, the federal government has advised airplane pilots against flying near 100 nuclear power plants around the country or they will be forced down by fighter jets. But pilots say there’s a hitch in the instructions: aviation security officials refuse [...]
Posted on April 1st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: security, true stories | Comments Off
From MSNBC’s “Very, very frequent flyer hits 1 million goal“:
On his blog “The Great Canadian Mileage Run 2005,†[Marc] Tacchi reported on Wednesday that he had racked up 1,003,625 mileage points and spent 56 of the last 61 days in an airplane. …
The 30-year-old embarked on his venture using Air Canada’s North America Unlimited Pass [...]
Posted on January 28th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, commonplace book, true stories | Comments Off
Man, Jason Statham is a great action star, and The Transporter is a fantastic movie of its type.
Me: Let's see Transporter 3. Robin: I don't know, shouldn't I watch 1 & 2 first so I understand it? Me: Ahahahahahahahahahaha!
JavaScript would be more immediately useful, but it IS programming. XML would be more useful longterm, & would be a nice intro. Make sense?
I wish Mother Nature would decide if she wants to snow or rain or what.
Added a product to their wishlist:
