The Guardian's latest
quiz
asks you to identify which of a dozen silly-season news
stories are real, and which they made up. (I scored 50 percent.)
Please bookmark this page as http://www.redbird.org/yawl.html.
The Guardian's latest
quiz
asks you to identify which of a dozen silly-season news
stories are real, and which they made up. (I scored 50 percent.)
Privacy note: several companies are
collecting
personal data and forwarding it to Coremetrics,
a company that does demographic
analysis, despite privacy policies on their Web sites claiming
that they do not share this information
with third parties. So much for self-regulation and
voluntary disclosure.
[via Rebecca's Pocket]
Interhack has a more detailed description of what Coremetrics is doing, and where the risks lie. Among other things, they point out that Coremetrics has chosen to use a tiny, invisible "Web bug" to pass the information along, making it less likely that users will be aware of it and consider opting out. They do state what Coremetrics is doing right, but they add that it's insufficient.
The Ontario Court of Appeals has ruled that Canada's
current law against the possession of marijuana is
unconstitutional because it doesn't contain an appropriate
exemption for medical use. The court has given Parliament
12 months to come up with a revised law; if Parliament doesn't
act, possession of marijuana will be legal in Ontario at the end
of that time. This doesn't mean it's legal today, however, and
applies only to Ontario (though any change in the federal law
by Parliament would, of course, apply throughout Canada).
The
Keo
project is intended as a message to the future:
after 50,000 years in orbit, it will fall back to Earth.
The satellite is designed to survive impact on rock, or
to float if it hits the ocean: this story doesn't even consider
whether the people it falls on will survive, only the difficulty
they may have in reading the DVDs it carries.
The Exploding
Dictionary is a dictionary with everything
hyperlinked. Literally. Every word in a definition is linked to
its own definition.
[via LarkFarm]
The
breakup
of comet LINEAR. This detailed description is by an
astronomer who has been observing the comet nightly.
In the fine tradition of war memorials, the town of
Woking has erected a number of attractive
statues
commemorating the defeat of the Martian invaders.
Is this the
crisis
of masculinity?
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute have
discovered a new,
strong
greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. The chemical,
SF5CF3,
is made by industry, or is produced during certain process involving industrial gases, but its exact source remains a mystery.Its probable precursor, SF6, is also a strong greenhouse gas, and thus banned under the Kyoto Protocol.
This discovery once again shows that we have to be careful with our atmosphere, and that research is much needed indeed. Without even knowing it, we have been releasing a very potent greenhouse gas for almost 50 years. We have to find the source of this gas and to try to stop its increase. Even though the concentrations are very small, and its implication in climate change is for practical reasons no grave concern, this type of global pollution is unwanted, and most likely unnecessary.
The hot topic of the week appears to be donation buttons
and ad banners on Web diaries and Weblogs. I've been thinking
of adding a donation button--money isn't the sincerest
form of flattery, but it's kind of nice--but I don't want to upset
you folks, since there's not much point in a Weblog nobody
looks at. Hence, my first-ever
poll.
For the record: this Weblog is costing me nothing but time, and I
don't need donations to keep it going.
You won't find
this Website
via Google, for tolerably obvious reasons. This is
a shame, since it
contains both MP3s of The The's recent work and an explanation
of why an artist who dislikes Napster is
making them available free:
Although the range and diversity of music being created and performed has never been wider the traditional outlets for music have never been more restrictive.In the blue corner: the threat (real and perceived) of MP3/Napster, digital piracy and the subsequent debates about copyright laws and intellectual property rights.
Deep in the red corner: the rampant corporate greed of the media conglomerates, major labels and radio stations which is marginalising more and more artists by the week and forcing them to look at alternative ways of distributing their music.
Google search on
"untimely
assassination," a phrase I would have thought redundant.
("Timely assassination" produces twice as many hits, but few are to
the phrase itself, rather than to phrases like "timely public
disclosure of records relating to the assassination.")
The
hippogriff,
famously,
is two dollars and fifty cents in gold, but Adrienne Mayor
argues that the griffin is
another
name for
Protoceratops.
The
Mark Twain for
President Web site has better-than-average polls. I
particularly like the choices in the
defense
poll.
Does the Internet bring us together or separate us? Marylaine
Block's answer is
yes.
Like the printing press, radio, and television before it, the Internet
is being used both to make connections and to divide people,
because both impulses are real and enduring.
The Channel Islands--that's Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney,
and Sark--are
refusing
to give money to ICANN because ICANN does not
look after their domain names:
Icann has signed no contracts with European country code registrars and given no guarantees about the standards of service they can expect.Despite this, it has sent invoices to country code registrars asking them to pay towards its running costs.
I am not exactly reassured by the statement that
the
first-ever Concorde crash has nothing to
do with the cracks in the wings.
This collection of
foreign
languages for travelers won't make you fluent, but it
will enable you to order, and pay for,
breakfast in anything from Asturian to Xhosa.
The hot entertainment in the slums of Rio
de Janeiro is
organized,
sometimes lethal, gang fighting, to music. The only
thing separating this
from the Roman gladiatorial games is the absence of a rich audience.
[via Robot Wisdom]
If you're going to Amsterdam: the police department
has just issued a guide to safety and good manners in the
red
light district, including a reminder that parking is
not free, and why it's a bad idea to buy hard drugs on the street.
Next
Friday is
Sysadmin
Appreciation Day. Chocolate is always welcome.
Quote
of the day:
Life is short.
Make fun of it.
A thorough analysis of how to sort the letter
þ,
and why, includes a summary of the history of the Latin alphabet,
from its proto-Semitic origins to the present.
Copyright 1999, 2000 Vicki Rosenzweig. Comments welcome at vr@redbird.org.
If you like this, you might also like my home page.