December 2007
39 posts
The Airport Security Follies →
It’s tacky to reblog a reblog of yourself, but squashed’s words deserve a look. He’s speaking with regard to the article I linked to about Columbus police arresting a man after having a woman tell him to reveal himself to her.
This is another example of an absurd tactic. There’s some question of whether this is, legally speaking, entrapment. That aside, there is a question of...
Cluster Bombs: It's still not OK →
Glad to see this is getting some MSM attention again. I remember being appalled to hear that Israel clusterbombed the f*** out of Lebanon during the closing three days of the war/conflict between the countries. What makes this especially objectionable is that it was obvious that the conflict was coming to a close and then Israel started bombing more. The bomblets from these bombs linger like...
Why you should never show your penis to a woman in... →
This stuff pisses me off. A woman working for the police is topless in a park, touches a guy, and then asks him to show her his genitals. Then he’s arrested for public indecency. Article also mentions the ridiculous operation lucky bag in NY. I find it hard to believe that this is actually effective—you are not catching criminals and perverts with this, just normal people at the wrong...
New study concludes that airport security isn't... →
The always smart and lucid Bruce Schneier explains why airport security does not work: because the TSA is excited it has stopped 13 million prohibited items (mostly cigarette lighters).
Money quote:
The goal isn’t to confiscate prohibited items. The goal is to prevent terrorism on airplanes. When the TSA confiscates millions of lighters from innocent people, that’s a security...
Sad = (
After upgrading my 12” Powerbook’s memory in October, buying a new hard drive for it after Fry’s refused to replace mine two weeks ago, and then finding that the combo drive was broken, it looks like my laptop is crapping out.
I left the room today to return and see it frozen in a weird pixellated manner on my screen saver. Upon reboot, the pixels flashed from red to green to...
On Subtle Details: Paging
One thing that subtly sucks about most paging systems on the web can be seen on frequently updated sites.
Consider this scenario: You get to page 2 on The Hype Machine, your Tumblr dashboard, or search results in a service like Terraminds. Then you go and do something else for a bit, or you read the page for a little while.
When you click to go to page 3, you often see stuff you’ve just...
Dog Lovers and Dog Fighting - Marco.org →
Carolyn’s thoughtful piece on why dogfighting might appeal to somebody who proclaims himself an “animal lover” and on less cruel directions to send such dog related machismo. — squashed
Leopard comes with firewall disabled
WTF, Apple?
Leopard’s nice, but Apple has made what seem to be a number of large mistakes with it. Plus, it kills battery life—my 12” Powerbook lasts half as long as it did pre-Leopard.
See TidBITS on the Firewall for more info
GammaSlamma 1.1 →
If you’ve ever had to deal with the nightmare that is PNG color management, this app is a godsend. Dropping your PNGs on the app’s icon will output another PNG file with the gamma info stripped, so that PNG colors match browser colors. I’ve tested it in every major browser for both Macs and Windows.
National Geographic's Desktop Wallpapers →
via Photojojo
I have two papers due Friday at 4pm so I set up my fraternity house’s router to block me from Tumblr and Facebook. I still have TumblrBot though! I’ve never been a big Facebook addict, but Tumblr’s proving to be quite the drug.
“so how do i link the image of me without the big yellow border appearing around...”
– —Sam Reich, responding to me.
Hey Sam, putting this in the CSS for your template should fix it:
#description a img { border: 0; }
Also, while not as good, you can also give the <img> element an attribute of border="0"
P.S. I “reblogged’ the “same” quote...
“i like tumblr because it’s like reading live autobiographies.”
– Sam motherfuckin’ Reich — jakoblodwick
I like tumblr for the voyeuristic aspect as well. This guy’s page has absolutely NO link back to the front page, though, which is horribly frustrating. Trust me, I even checked the source to make sure I wasn’t missing clicking on...
The Official List: The Complete List Of Players... →
Disappointed to see Troy Glaus on here, but not surprised. There are plenty of big names listed. Glaus lettered at UCLA, captured a bronze medal with the US team in Atlanta ‘96, and won the World Series with the Anaheim Angels.
“There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, and a verb...”
– Joseph Biden, on Rudy Giuliani
Wolf Blitzer just interviewed Biden on The Situation Room and I was very impressed.
“[One could] see the schematic drawing of a cube as a plane figure consisting of...”
– Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations §74
Feed readers, especially NetNewsWire, should integrate with my browsers and indicate when I am already subscribed to a feed. It’s easy to tell with tumblr because the +Follow button is missing when you are already following a user. For Safari, a faded out RSS button in the address line would be most excellent.
Muslim helps Jews attacked on New York subway -... →
More religion-based violence. I love the holidays.
Friends: Dead teen refused hijab - CNN.com →
It appears this 16yo girl’s father strangled her because she would not wear her headscarf at school. An example of the things to which religion can lead. Sure, this is partly a cultural thing but such a culture would not exist without religion.
“…you can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves...”
– Bad Astronomy Blog, via AATW
Stacks Overlays
I’m trying to figure out how to get the Stacks overlay icons altair posted working in a desirable manner. He explains how to use touch via the Terminal to change the modified date for the file, but for the Downloads stack the default sort option is “Date Added.” I prefer how this setting behaves, so any insight into how to trick Leopard to think the overlay was the most recently...
Computer’s finally up and running, but my Combo Drive is broken, so I had to install Leopard from someone else’s Macbook (via Target Disk Mode). Leopard’s okay, the Dock is way too reflective and busy, and my menu bar isn’t transparent because my computer’s old. This seems strange, but Safari 3 felt quicker on my old Tiger install than it does on this clean Leopard...
“Do you need to flush twice. No turd left behind.”
– Men’s Bathroom Stall, 3rd Floor, Dodd Hall (UCLA)
Fry's Electronics Sucks at Life
Tonight I made my second visit to Fry’s. This time traffic made it a 45 min drive. I’m trying to replace my laptop hard drive, which I have a “instant replacement on uninstalled drive” warranty. Instant replacement, my ass. They wanted to “verify” that the drive was physically damaged, so, after I waited 30 minutes, they began to scan EVERY sector for physical...
“There are two types of people in the world—those who back up, and those...”
– Not sure where I heard this first. So true, though. My 12” PB’s drive just failed for the third time on Monday, hence the limited posting. So tomorrow I’ll go to Fry’s and get my fourth (and final?) HDD. 