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September 2006
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Atom 1.0Stephon Marbury is putting his name on a $15 pair of kicks — He says he's going to wear the shoes when he plays this season, too.
The implications of the housing bubble bursting — From 2003 to 2005 homeowners extracted $1.8 trillion in equity and probably spent it.
Keith Olbermann on Donald Rumsfeld's "new kind of fascism" speech — Everyone should watch this and think about it, even if they don't agree.
How to make food that tastes like Taco Bell with decent ingredients — Pretty cool idea, and the food looks tasty.
Matthew Yglesias on the absurdity of the Iran debate — A good rundown of the spin and distortions that are being applied in the drive to start yet another war.
The downside of zero tolerance — Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker. I find taking human judgement out of the application of rules barbaric.
Why I am not a sartorialist — To me, being able to comfortably button my pants is a feature, not a bug.
What's in Objective C 2.0 — Discovered by examining Apple's branch in the GCC project.
Determining whether someone's level of consciousness is altered — An EMT explains for the layman.
Correlation between squiggly borders and stability — Countries with straight borders tend to be unstable and poor resulting from the fact that they were created arbitrarily.
Holy crap, there's a Deadwood book! — Written by David Milch no less. This makes me very happy.
Spam and dump stock schemes actually work — Wow, people really are that stupid. (via Kottke)
The genocide in Darfur continues — Due to the government of Sudan, the backing of the Arab League, and China's collaboration as a member of the UN Security Council.
Google apps for your domain — Anil Dash explains. If I were starting a business/organization today, I'd adopt this just for the email service.
More on the Chumby — It's going to cost about $150 and is hackable at every level.
The Chumby is a hackable "clock radio" — The functionality is great, but man is it hideously ugly.
IDE to USB converter — A quick, cheap way to access a hard drive without cracking open your computer and installing it.
Iran is very close to having nuclear weapons — And they always have been ...
One on one with the shoe bomber — Attorney Peter Herbert describes his meeting with Richard Reid.
What the terrorists want — Bruce Schneier points out that freaking out is exactly what terrorists want us to do.
Morally classifying the various things you can do to an embryo — I was groping for a pithy comment, but honestly I'm too exhausted.
Unsurprising fact: Muslims do not like the term "Islamofascist" — It's stupid. It's inaccurate. It originated with a bunch of mouth breathing bigots. What's not to hate about it?
Pat Buchanan reprises 250 years of anti-immigration stupidity — He calls Hispanic immigration a unique problem but relies on arguments used by Ben Franklin in 1751.
Why Digg's future is bleak — Everyone has an incentive to game Digg right up until it becomes useless.
Charts illustrating the basis Senators use to vote on bills — It's all economics, not social values. (via Kottke)
Why researchers ought to use the AOL search data — For starters, it's the last they're likely to get.
Hugo Chavez' popularity is growing in Arab countries — Lots of people really don't like the United States, do they?
Donald Rumsfeld is a big wig in the Society for Creative Anachronism — Probably the most surprising thing I've read in the past week. (Update: Due to lack of corroborating data, we must assume this is a joke.)
Scott Rosenberg on the idea of YouTube hurting politics — Honestly the entire premise of the article he critiques is too absurd to describe.
Greedy family tries to gouge North Carolina on sale of national landmark — That headline may be inaccurate, but it seems OK to me right now.
Joe Lieberman was for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation before he was against it — What a clown this guy is. Go away.
How pedophiles use the Internet — The tools we Web developers build, like any other, can and will be used for evil.
Passengers force "suspicious" Arabs off plane in the UK — There are 6.5 billion people in the world, and a vanishing number of them mean you harm. Don't be an idiot.
What right-wingers see when the read the New York Times — Actually funny.
Hezbollah is different — Firing rockets into cities with the intent to murder civilians. Check. Repaying absent shopkeepers whose food they appropriated. Check.
LA Times series: Altered Oceans — Yes, humans have ruined the oceans. Impressive work when you think about it. (via Dangerousmeta)
Why proving the Poincaré conjecture matters — The closest I've seen to a comprehensible explanation.
Why the FBI's $170 million case management system had to be thrown away — The application never even went live. (The fact that it wasn't a Web application is the first clue something was horribly off.)
Eric Umansky's last Today's Papers — Drat! He's really good. I wonder if his blog will suffer now that he won't be required to read several major papers every morning? (He explains where he's headed.)
Apparently the ruling in the NSA wiretapping case is flimsy — Good result, bad route to get there.
Tim Bray is writing a series of posts on writing a validator using JRuby — This post is the first in the series.
Were the recently arrested British terrorists wanna-bes? — Looks like this is another group that had the motive but not the means.
Anil Dash has a couple of suggestions for benighted Windows users — WinZip sucks, but the built in Windows unzip feature is worse. (I'm installing 7-zip tonight.)
Tyler Cowen on getting started with philosophy — Bottom line: read what works for you at the time.
Thinking of experiences like movies — With user experiences, like movies, the ending is the most important part. I need to think about this with regard to vacations.
Google hits Atlanta — When are they opening an office in RTP, I wonder?
First hand account of fighting in Lebanon from an Israeli reservist — War is hell.
Ned Lamont's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal — Everyone else is talking about him, we may as well see what he has to say for himself.
How the liquid explosives plot would work (in theory) — Just mix up highly concentrated sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide (producing a highly exothermic reaction) and then add in nail polish remover. Yep, sounds plausible to me.
Fox News and the Daily Show use the same guests — You've seen Bo Dietl look like an idiot on the Daily Show, now watch him appear on the "not fake" Fox News.
Popular acceptance of evolution by country — The US, second only to Turkey.
Google does a damn good job of adapting based on user activity — The "glacier bay" thing surprised me.
Ze Frank says "don't be afraid" — I agree with everything in the video.
Bruce Schneier counsels that we not go about in fear — It's pointless and it's what both the terrorists and the White House want.
Roundup of the reaction to Dick Cheney's "wholesale retreat" comments — Honestly I have so come to expect such behavior that the comments barely registered with me.
Antilock brakes considered harmful — The fact that they may actually increase the likelihood of certain fata accidents is news to me.
Iranian president, having persecuted bloggers, starts one himself — I have no idea what to make of this.
A Daily Show bit that blew me away — It's nice to be reminded that you're not yet beyond suprise.
Michael Tomasky on Joe Lieberman's defeat — This was about Lieberman, not about some kind of leftward lurch among Democrats (not that I'd have a problem with that).
Mark Schmitt hammers Jacob Weisberg's ahistoric punditry — And so provides a service to us all.
Alarming results in polls of British Muslims — The oft maligned "melting pot" is vastly underrated.
Bruce Schneier on doping in sports — The prisoner's dilemna aspect is the root of the problem. Everybody loses.
Conservatism is no longer conservatism — Conservatism as it exists today pursues an agenda of radical change.
Ruby on Rails team learning about release management — Rails is great but is still in its infancy. Not releasing a point release for 1.0 users was a mistake.
The capital punishment map — The US is really in good company, no?
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's speech on the rule of law — MP3 format.
Dahlia Lithwick reports on Justice Anthony Kennedy's speech at the ABA convention — The law can save us all.
Greg Costikyan's obit for Computer Gaming World — Oh how I loved this magazine back in the day.
Guy Kawasaki interviews Seth Godin — Godin explains why he doesn't pay attention to his Technorati rating.
Why online polls are worthless — They are built to be gamed. That doesn't stop news networks like MSNBC from citing them constantly on air.
How Malcolm Gladwell's father uses geothermal heat and air conditioning — In this case geothermal means something completely different than I thought it did.
The Value of Simplicity — Interesting introduction to the use of statistics in sports, and an explanation of why scientists favor parsimony.
Ruby on Rails will be bundled with OS X 10.5 — I'll probably still use Locomotive.
What Craig Newmark is doing regarding journalism — Mainly listening right now, which is probably smart.
Josh Marshall's switch to the Mac was a success — I can't wait til he switches to Ubuntu later this year.
Sports columnist Gregg Doyel on Warren Moon and racism in the NFL — When I was a kid, the idea that black people weren't mentally capable of playing quarterback was taken as an indisputable truth.
The oft-cited CHAOS Report from the Standish Group may be bogus — The creators of the report, which describes an astronomical failure rate for software projects, won't respond to queries about their methodology.
The waiter from Waiter Rant has a book deal — Inevitable and well deserved.
Jacob Weisberg: sanctions don't work — A painful truth.
Conservatives in Pennsylvania fund green party candidate — Odd how they claim to want democracy in the Middle East but prefer pissing on it here in America.
Heckuva job, General Miller — The guy who introduced torture at Gitmo and then exported it to Iraq got a nice shiny medal at his retirement ceremony on Monday.
Killing civilians is illegal — Courtesy of Fred Clark.
Killing civilians is wrong — Courtesy of Tim Bray.
Tim Bray says alt-tab in OS X is wrong — I couldn't agree more.
Sam Ruby on the future of the Internet — Great presentation on where the Web and Internet are headed.
Tracing oil from the ground to the pump — A lengthy special feature in the Chicago Tribune.
More on checklist liberalism and pandering — Politicians can go this route, but as voters we don't have to follow them.
Sistani's warning to the United States — The Grand Ayotollah doesn't like countries that are against a cease fire in Lebanon.
Rasha Salti's third dispatch from Beirut — "But the droves of displaced who arrive here every day have transformed the space of the city. Their wretchedness is the poignant marker of the war."
Mark Schmitt on checklist liberalism — Pushing for a philosophy rather than a list of pet issues that enable politicians to selectively pander.