Entries from June 2006The Posts You Asked For

How screwed up is this? A photographer named Jill Greenberg torments kids to get them to cry, photographs them and calls it art. Her defense? The kids’ parents were there, and one of the kids was her own, and, in her husband’s words, “they don’t seem any worse for wear.”
Here’s the logic: Because these kids [...]

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If you read the Constitution, you’ll notice something about what it does: It lays out the powers and (to some extent) the procedures of our government. It assigns certain powers to certain branches, and it explicitly guarantees certain rights for the people.
In other words, the Constitution defines and limits the powers of government. No where [...]

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Lesson learned today: If you need to send a package overnight, stick with FedEx and avoid the US Postal Service.
The USPS offers a thing called “Click-N-Ship,” where you can supposedly go online and, using your credit card, print out Priority Mail or Express Mail labels and ship them yourself, without a trip to the Post [...]

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Winners of Webbys, one of the biggest awards given to Internet-related people and ventures, are limited to five-word acceptance speeches. (When Al Gore won the Lifetime Achievement Award last year, his speech was, “Please don’t recount this vote.”)
This year, National Geographic won the award for Best Science site for its Genographic Project. The acceptance speech? [...]

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In the movies, the Good Guys can the location of someone’s cell phone just by punching their number into a computer. Up pops a map with a blinking dot.
You’re expecting me to say that “In the real world it doesn’t work like that.”
Actually, it does.
I was chatting with John Johnson, director of corporate communications for [...]

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I usually prefer to link directly to a news story I want to tell you about, but that isn’t possible in this case; the Mail on Sunday’s report isn’t available online.
But Macworld in the UK wrote a summary of the story, so that’s the best I can do for now.
The Mail got to visit the [...]

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I was sitting in a conference the other day about applying game theory to networking. The idea, in a nutshell, is to teach computers (and other network nodes) to treat the network as a cooperative game. If they’re competitive, the network as a whole suffers, but if they work together it’s good for everyone’s traffic.
Anyway, [...]

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This is interesting. Back in March 2004 1994, NBC News reported how the Bush Administration turned down two opportunities to kill Abu Musab Zarqawi in 2002 — it was more interested in the impending war in Iraq than in the war on terrorism.
The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again [...]

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…on a planet much like our own, but where the rules of reason don’t apply, the US military says that the suicides of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay (prisoners whose names we’re not allowed to know, and who are being held without indictment or trial), was an act of war against America.
Yes, you read that [...]

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Many of us know how Diet Coke + Mentos = geyser. But what if you rigged a setup with 100 two-liter bottles, 500 Mentos, and timers to drop them in?
Answer: Bellagio Lite — one heck of an impressive fountain display.
(I also note that the page is “dcm1,” presumably “Diet Coke and Mentos 1.” Which has [...]

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Raise your hands in excitement during graduation, get kicked out.
The school district handbook also states that “students who raise their hands above their waists for any reasons other than receiving the diplomas or shaking hands may be removed from the graduation ceremony.”
Thanks, Eric!

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You know you’re getting significant work done in your yard when your wife sends you a note that reads, “The front lawn is being unloaded from a truck right now.”

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The headline reads “South Alabama Man Facing Bestiality Charge.” But the story gets even better — it has to, when PETA gets involved.

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I love Photoshop, but I also know that it can be overkill for a lot of people — and the menus and options can be intimidating. (Photoshop Elements, also a great program, can be a bit condescending in its menus.)
For the kind of basic fixes that most people need, Picasa is a good choice, although [...]

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Guess what? If you’re angry on the road and take it out on other drivers, you’re not an inconsiderate jerk with a road-rage problem.
No no — you have a gen-u-ine disorder — intermittent explosive disorder, to be specific. So it’s not your fault!
Heck, wait long enough and every kind of annoying or stupid behavior [...]

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When zero tolerance gets stupid:
Example 1.
Example 2.

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Curious about the Army’s official guide to interrogations (the Army Field Manual 34-52, “Intelligence Interrogation”). Get your copy here (14 MB PDF).

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A new study from GMAC found that one out of 11 people who took a test similar to a written driver’s test would fail, i.e., they don’t know the rules of the road.
Okey doke, whatever. But the study also pointed out this alarming tidbit:
The study also found nearly one-quarter of U.S. drivers believe there are [...]

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Nothing more to say.

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In Albany, N.Y.’s Crossgates Mall, there’s a memorial to the Karner Blue butterfly under a staircase. It’s there because, in building the mall, one of the Karner Blue’s rare habitats was virtually wiped out. So instead of the butterflies, the people of Albany have a steel and glass reminder of them.
In New York, N.Y., there’s [...]

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