Onion: Cost of Living Now Outweighs Benefits
Following on Tuesday’s post about a decline in real incomes for Americans, The Onion runs an article announcing that Cost of Living Now Outweighs Benefits. WASHINGTON, DC–A report released Monday by the Federal Consumer Quality-Of-Life Control Board indicates that the cost of living now outstrips life’s benefits for many Americans.“This […]
Posted on April 15th, 2005
Drip, Drip Drip: Worker Pay Drops
The story’s number three on Blogdex: “Wages Lagging Behind Prices“. Worker pay raises trail inflation but the numbers obscure the severity, suggesting the problem is worse than it appears. The base of the LA Times the story is this: “For the first time in 14 years… growth in wages in […]
Posted on April 12th, 2005
Live Blog Mapping
Mikel Maron’s World as a Blog page pulls feeds of geocoded weblogs and places them on a world map in real time. kudos: headmap What? Real time & updating display of weblog postings, around the world How? Weblogs.com + geocoding + RSS + Flash + Earth Is it really real-time? […]
Posted on April 12th, 2005
GeoKos Proposal
While playing with web mapping applications and reading about Geographic Information Systems (GIS) developments online I came across the concept of geoblogging and started thinking about how it could be put to serious use for good causes. Naturally, it came around to DailyKos. In retrospect, I first encountered geoblogging at […]
Posted on April 12th, 2005
First GIS Application
I just installed the First GIS Application on OpenDNA. It’s a cool little tool I can probably pull a project out of it after I dust off my Intro to GIS notes. giMapper: The geographical information web Mapper [was] developed as an alternative to the well established open source project […]
Posted on April 12th, 2005
NASA Warns of “Semian Threat”
In a surprise announcement today NASA introduced an initiative to exterminate monkeys world-wide. “The simian threat to human domination for near-space calls for drastic measures,” said one top official. “If we don’t stop them now they’ll be smearing bananas all over our orbiting telescopes within a decade.” The US President […]
Posted on April 1st, 2005
RE: I Miss Republicans
Rogers at Kung Fu Monkey busts out a rant that I think many of us can appreciate. In fact, it’s so good i’m going to quote more than I really should and then add the ATOM feed (as should you). I Miss Republicans… No, seriously. Remember Republicans? Sober men in […]
Posted on March 24th, 2005
CSS Reboot
Nuclear Moose points me to CSS eboot: The May 1st Reboot is a community project that brings together web professionals from all over and encourages them to collectively launch redesigns of their sites on May 1st. The only problem is the entries are all extremely Flash heavy. Sure, Flash has […]
Posted on March 23rd, 2005
Patriot Act vs Comment Spam
Blogs Canada suggests an interesting way to use the Patriot Act against blog comment spam: Dear System Administrator, One of your clients is defacing my website. It appears they are using an automated instrument to place ads on my site without my permission. This is hacking and that contravenes the […]
Posted on March 21st, 2005
DHS Program Puts Radio Locators on High Risk Aliens
Stephenson points me to news that DHS is forcing some asylum seekers and other high-risk aliens to wear electronic tracking bracelets. The frame presented by immigration-rights advocates is that this is creeping totalitarianism and an unacceptable attack on civil liberties by a security-obsessed Administration. While I’m (like many Democrats) am […]
Posted on March 7th, 2005
Theory: teen sex and homeland security
From David Stephenson’s blog: [T]here’s an important new study on networking behavior from the Ohio State Research Foundation with implications for a many strategies, including my “smart mobs for homeland security” one. As reported in the American Journal of Sociology. a team of sociologists […] mapped the romantic and sexual […]
Posted on February 23rd, 2005
HUNTER THOMPSON IS NOT DEAD
“Don’t believe their filthy lies. Giblets saw the Good Doctor with his own two eyes just a few hours ago, heading north in the White Whale. He said he was headed up to heaven to shoot God. “The great bastard’s in season and it’s long overdue,” the Godfather of Gonzo […]
Posted on February 22nd, 2005
RE Canadian Military Diplomatic Theory
The post Diplomacy, Bush style discusses President Bush’s diplomatic gaffe in Canada when he veered off the agreed agenda and pushed for Prime Minister Martin to sign on to the Missile Defense Shield.Launching off that discussion, I submit to you three cornerstones (IMHO) of Canadian Military Diplomacy, in reverse order […]
Posted on January 24th, 2005
Minty MP3 Player
Limor of ladyada.net, an engineer from MIT, put out a HOW-TO make an MP3 player from a box of Altoids. The Minty MP3 player can be built from parts that are sold at Ye Olde Traditional electronics distributor (digikey/mouser/newark). Half of the parts can be sampled for free, for a […]
Posted on January 17th, 2005
On Chinese Muslims at Guantanmo
I just heard a report on NPR about a group of Chinese Muslim s who have been in Guantanmo. We’ve decided that they’re no longer a threat. The Chinese government wants us to hand them over so they can try them on terrorism charges. We don’t want to hand them […]
Posted on November 14th, 2004