May 2004
Monday, 31 May 2004
Making Votes Count: Who Tests Voting Machines?: “Dr. David Dill, a professor of computer science at Stanford University, calls it ‘basically an impossible task,’ and doubts it is occurring.”
Would Shakespeare Get Into Swarthmore?: “To receive a high score a student should write a long essay of three or more paragraphs, with each paragraph containing topic and concluding sentences and at least one sentence that includes the words ‘for example.’ Whenever possible the student should use polysyllabic words where shorter, clearer words would suffice.”
‘Detectives’ get into war on spam: “‘Initially you start to work backwards from the e-mail and find that to be a very frustrating route,’ said Daniel Larkin, chief of the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, the unit that is coordinating Project Slam Spam. ‘That doesn’t lead to a live body. We have collectively realized you have to go the other way and follow the money trail.’”
Tuesday, 25 May 2004
Airport security tricky in court: “Amy Von Walter, a spokeswoman for the TSA based in Washington, estimated that about a quarter of the agency’s actions are marked ‘SSI,’ but she could not quantify that figure because the agency deals with ‘billions of documents.’”
Clinton says she could support Republican McCain as Kerry’s vice president
How Could Americans Do Such Things?: “Even if Rumsfeld never said words like the ones I speculated about, it’s almost certain that he did not say: Getting information from these prisoners is not worth losing our national soul. And it is our national soul that’s on the line.”
Thursday, 20 May 2004
Report Finds Some Road Construction Projects Not Worth the Wait: “In the case of the Springfield Interchange reconstruction outside of Washington DC, commuters are projected to never make up the time that they will lose during the eight years of construction.”
We see no mobile data killer app: IDC: “Voice sold itself, he says, whereas data needs to be marketed.”
Jon Stewart’s (‘84) Commencement Address: “College is something you complete. Life is something you experience.”
Tuesday, 18 May 2004
Can “Star Wars: Episode III” be saved?: “In many ways, 'Phantom’ and ‘Clones’ were the answer to the unasked question ‘What would the director of 'Plan 9 From Outer Space’ have done with a talented effects crew and a $200 million budget?‘ Well then, why not bring Ed Wood back from the grave to direct Episode III? Sure, it’s a farfetched idea, but it’s easier to swallow than 'midichlorians.’” - predictably, I vote for Stephen Soderbergh and Christopher McQuarie.
Monday, 17 May 2004
Golfing drives deals, relationships: “‘A person’s innate character comes out over the course of 18 holes,’ Marcus Waterman said as he prepared to tee off on the first hole at City Park. ‘You get to see how they deal with stress, how they deal with disappointment, how they deal with success.’”
Placebos effect revealed in calmed brain cells
Quick flip of Earth’s magnetic field revealed: “But the many models put forward to explain the phenomenon are ‘a long way from being realistic’, says Clement. ‘The theory gets very complicated very quickly, and there are so many models it’s hard to figure out what’s what.’”
Saturday, 15 May 2004
Doolittle changes tune on song copying
Nielsen Rating System At Odds With RIAA’s Claim Of “Lost Sales”: “So, I asked the Soundscan rep, who would only speak to me if I didn’t use his name, ‘Would you disagree with what the RIAA is implying?’ ‘I would NEVER disagree with the RIAA,’ he said.”
Friday, 14 May 2004
Designer Virus Stalks HIV: “‘If I can do it, anyone can do it,’ Arkin said. ‘That’s going to be a problem.’”
Parasitic invasion credited with evolution of sex: “Mitochondria do some weird and complicated things in the production of sperm and egg cells that they don’t do anywhere else in the body”
Molecular rings could shelter Venus bugs: “Dirk Schulze-Makuch of the University of Texas at El Paso and his colleagues have argued that the chemistry of the atmosphere is hard to explain unless microbes are influencing its composition”
Thursday, 13 May 2004
Japanese Find a Forum to Vent Most-Secret Feelings: “On Friday, Mr. Nishimura said he paid $20,000 a month to a company in Palo Alto, Calif., to provide a host for the Web site. With the advertisements, Mr. Nishimura said he managed to break even. In keeping with his detachment, Mr. Nishimura said he was bored with his Web site and did not believe it was worth enough to attract buyers.”
Saturday, 8 May 2004
Look Who’s Going Offshore: “Although the tech sector accounts for about 5% of U.S. payrolls, or 6.5 million workers, it generated 13% of the new jobs created from 1996 to 2001. Over the next five years, Mark M. Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com Inc., expects tech to contribute 7% of the country’s new jobs. ‘Entire occupational groups can be outsourced at the flick of a computer key,’ says former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich, now a professor at Brandeis University.”
Thursday, 6 May 2004
2-for-1 Voting: “But the court has never allowed any state to impose sanctions on an elector who later chooses to vote independently. Indeed, its leading decision recognizes that any promise an elector makes to his party may well be legally unenforceable because it would violate ‘an assumed constitutional freedom of the elector.’”
Monday, 3 May 2004
Cells From Adult Bone Marrow Can Be Converted Into Brain Stem Cells For Transplantation: “use of cells from bone marrow that would be converted and transplanted into the same person’s brain eliminates ethical issues and immune-system problems that can arise when the body rejects cells from an outside source”
India’s secret army of online ad ‘clickers’: “Here’s how it works: online advertisers in developed markets agree to pay hosting website each time an ad is clicked. With performance-based deals becoming dominant on the Internet, intermediaries have sprung up to ‘do the needful.’ Why, type in ‘earn rupees clicking ads’ in Google – you get 25,000 results. ”