brett's logjam

• Freedom to Tinker > Economics of Eavesdropping For Pay
  On how to make money in a commodities market, or, why spy with your little eye.
  (tags: spying telcoms economics)
• Airline Secrets Could Land Flyers In First Class
  On YUPP fliers. No, it’s not what you think.
  (tags: travel upgrades)
• Motorhead Messiah
  On how to get 100 mpg out of a Lincoln Continental, cut emissions by 80%, and double the horsepower. (Too bad no one listens?)
  (tags: auto efficiency)
• ‘Unwelcoming’ US sees sharp fall in visitors since 9/11
  $94 billion in lost revenue. $16 billion in lost taxes? I’m only surprised it’s not worse.
  (tags: travel)
• Pencils down
  On the WGA strike.
  (tags: writing economics)

• LRB — Jim Holt: It’s the Oil
  Via Conor: “Still, there is reason to be sceptical of the picture I have drawn: it implies that a secret and highly ambitious plan turned out just the way its devisers foresaw…”
  (tags: iraq oil)

Paper spam sucks. It’s a waste of time and resources (both yours and the planet’s.)

Do something about it.

• Catalog Choice is a non-profit who gets you off of catalog lists. Free, and they do it well.

• OptOutPrescreen.com gets you off of firm offers for credit and insurance for 5 years if you do it online, permanently if you mail in the form they make up for you.

• Register for the Direct Marketing Association’s Mail Preference Service to get out of most everything else.

Okay? Go to it.

• Encrypted E-Mail Company Hushmail Spills to Feds | Threat Level from Wired.com
  Unsurprising, really.
  (tags: dont trust others to encrypt for you)
• How to Win at Monopoly (r) — a Surefire Strategy
  Always get railroads, never utilities.
  (tags: games)

• iphonelogd - Google Code
  “A Ruby script that will read your iPhone’s call log and will copy the calls into an iCal calendar of your choosing, with a description and the caller’s name, if available.”
  (tags: iphone scrapers)
• Jeff Russell’s STARSHIP DIMENSIONS
  Oh my, yes.
  (tags: scifi reference)
• SEMP: How the Dutch Protect Themselves from the North Sea
  Interesting overview of the entire Delta system.
  (tags: dikes storms flooding godspeed)
• “Pakistan’s Political Crisis and State of Emergency”
  CRS report on the current situation for the US Congress.
  (tags: CRS)

• Extra Pepperoni > Time Machine: Exclude All System Files
  Hidden Leopard Time Machine feature. (Hidden on the client OS, that is.)
  (tags: macosx leopard backup)
• Prince Fucking Slays at FISTFULAYEN
  “The best part is Tom Petty looking like he’s thinking, “Jesus get this guy off the stage,” while George Harrison’s son is giving the ‘Dude! It’s Prince! This is so rad!” face. I’m with George Jr..”
  (tags: Harrison Beatles Prince VH1)

• Verizon Violates Net Neutrality with DNS Deviations
  “This is a clear violation of net neutrality: Verizon is interfering with the behavior of the DNS protocol, in order to drive traffic to its own search site.”
  (tags: ISP DNS Redirects)
• Extra Pepperoni — Oracle VM: Funniest thing I read all day
  “(S)o we’ll support Xen, and Oracle on Linux, but not Oracle on Xen. Please don’t think too hard about that one. It makes our heads hurt!”
  (tags: oracle RHEL xen linux)
• Why Apple Spaces is broken
  It groups by app, not task. Oops.
  (tags: Apple macosx Spaces Leopard)
• Fast Food Restaurants & Nutrition Facts Compared
  Table of various fast food stuffs.
  (tags: fast food comparison data)
• Due process too much hassle for DC dept. of motor vehicles
  Take the metro, people.
  (tags: DC Traffic Tickets)
• Colbert ties for spot on soils board — dailypress.com
  “Colbert won’t be one of the names in the hat, they said. He’s not a registered voter in the city.”
  (tags: colbert soil election)

• Real Geek Heart Beats in Xkcd’s Stick Figures
  Good (albeit short) interview with Randall Munroe of xkcd.
  (tags: xkcd comics romance sarcasm programming mathematics)
• Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog: 95 Theses on the Religious Right
  “The received view is that the conservative christians have taken over the Republican Party. I think the reverse happened. The right wing of the Republican Party has taken over the church.”
  (tags: philosophy politics religion society)

• Did NSA Put a Secret Backdoor in New Encryption Standard?
  Avoid Dual_EC_DRBG at all costs.
  (tags: cryptography)

• Annals of Letters: Age of Reason: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
  Interview with Jacques Barzun, 100 years old.
  (tags: interviews culture history)
• ipfw Rules | securosis.com
  Strengthening Leopard’s firewall with ipfw.
  (tags: ipfw firewall macosx)
• Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything - Telegraph
  It’s called “An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything,” based on E8 math. Sweet!
  (tags: mathematics nature physics)
• [0711.0770] An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything
  Lisi’s publication.
  (tags: physics mathematics)

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Via Blackfriar’s Marketing.

• The Reference Frame: Garrett Lisi: An exceptionally simple theory of everything
  Eh, nevermind. Bunkum. This is why peer review is important.

Each year, the Ronald McDonald House of Dallas puts on a holiday display of trains for charity.

It is, honestly, pretty darn cool.

More photos are available in the Flickr Set.

• StrangeHarvest.com::Military Deceptions
  Interesting look at WWII camouflage efforts to trick the Nazis. (Oooh! Godwin’s law on my own blog!)
  (tags: camouflage WWII photography war architecture)