I have a weakness for weekly newsletters. The LDP has started a new one covering goings on in the world of Linux documentation.

The New York Times has the scoop on Survivor II’s outback chef Keith Famie. It seems he’s an annoying publicity hound — what a shock.

Perhaps I’m just being silly, but I find the $150,000,000 marketing deal signed between Coca-Cola and Warner Bros. for the Harry Potter movie to be pretty dispiriting. The fact that a movie of the first Harry Potter book is being made is bad enough, now they’ve got a deal with Coke. I realize nothing’s sacred in the commercial world, but still.

How embarrassing is the collision of the USS Greeneville and Ehime Maru going to end up being? The latest reports are that the submarine detected the fishing vessel in the area an hour before rising to the surface and sending the Japanese boat down to Davey Jones’ locker, and that the sub’s sonar officer admits to not finishing his sonar plots because one of the 16 civilians packed into the sub distracted him.

Looks like Bush and his Republican cronies are interested in monkeying around with the way we deliver foreign aid. The bottom line: more money only if it’s given to churches. What a joke.

A Harvard math professor and one of his doctoral student have come up with a provably unbreakable crypto system. The practical applications of the system are up for debate, but it’s a cool accomplishment nonetheless.

Rob Neyer’s latest column is ostensibly about baseball, but in fact reveals a weakness common to nearly every human being — the inability to get past one’s preconceived notions and think in a systematic, rational manner. It’s one of the key reasons why we have bad government and bad companies. Rather than looking at the numbers and seeing what they reveal, people come up with a notion and look for numbers to back it up. The classic real life example is crime, few people look at crime statistics and draw conclusions based on them. Rather they come up with some conclusions and then mine for statistics that seem to substantiate their position. It’s lazy, sloppy, and counterproductive. That said, I’m probably as guilty of it as anyone.

Check out www.whithouse.org, a bizarre site obviously run by enraged Cubans living in America. www.whitehouse.org is a spoof of the real White House web site.

Clinton explained his reasons for the Marc Rich pardon in a New York Times op-ed over the weekend. The question that remains for me is why, if Rich’s case for innocence was so strong, did he flee the country? He could have hired a legal dream team and gone before a jury like most other innocent people do. Needless to say, critics of the pardon are having their say today.

Microsoft is really turning up the anti-Linux rhetoric, which must mean that they’re legitimately worried about the threat Linux poses. Their latest PR gaffe involves Jim Allchin describing Linux as, of all things, un-American. I wish that he just meant that it was created by a Swedish Finn, but he’s actually using the term in the “truth, justice, and the American way” sense.