01/14 Insightful article about education — An insightful article about higher education in the USA: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education. Here are some interesting quotes. It’s a long article and all of it was quite interesting. > “Students at places li...

01/05 Sifteo vs. Scrabble Flash — Scott Kirsner tweets: > “Invented at MIT, Sifteo cubes (tiny displays that talk to each other) are almost ready: http://bit.ly/eXsCQU / http://bit.ly/ehhZ1Q” Sifteo cubes are similar (except much more expensive and presumably programmable) to Scrabble Flash, that have been around since last year. Interesting.

01/05 [GEEKY] Nicer way to run Ruby tests — Just came across this handy-dandy tool to run tests for Ruby and Rails, and produce much nicer and readable traces so you have a prayer to sort out what is going on when stuff fails. [Test::Unit Reporter — A new look and feel for Test::Unit output](https://github.com/TwP/turn?utm_source=feedburner&...

01/02 commonplace, ordinary, usual, common — I just came across an excellent speech given by William Deresiewics (I didn’t know who he was either) to the plebe class at the United States Military Academy at West Point. The title of the speech is Solitude and Leadership. I had a har...

12/31 [SILLY] Beards and Facial Hair — I was amused by these two, maybe because I myself am unable to achieve any of them: Beard Type Chart The Quest for Every Beard Type

12/24 Path to nowhere? I don’t get it either… — I’ve seen Path, the new "un social" network (limit 50 friends) plugged by pundits and journalists. I tried it and just didn’t get it. Didn’t know what it was for, who it was for, and why it was getting attention. So I am glad finally to come across a commentator who seems to agree with m...

12/17 Stuxnet apparently as effective as a military strike — Check out Stuxnet apparently as effective as a military strike(from [Ars Technica](http://arstechnica.com/members/318783044fd511917d3bc9765d8...

12/16 Interesting article about Architecture of the Certificate Authority Trust Model — Check out The Flawed Legal Architecture of the Certificate Authority Trust Model(from Freedom to Tinker: ** "The bottom line is that the CA Trust Model’...

12/14 [GEEKY] Resfulie GEM for Rails and RESˇ — This is really nice: Restfulie – Rest from Scratch. It’s a package of code for creating REST clients and servers with built in content type negotiation and other goodies. Watch the fun tour-do-force video too: http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=11294789&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0 “Rest from scratch” with Rails and Restfulie – part 1 from Caelum on Vimeo.

12/14 Wikileaks, continued — I continue to be fascinated by this. Is WikiLeaks a good guy or a bad guy? I don’t know how I feel yet, so I continue to read. Here are more articles that have impressed me: From Jeremy Wagstaff’s Loose Wire Blog: > “Asked why he chose to work with three major news o...

12/14 Wikileaks — Like many, I don’t know yet whether I support or condemn the Wikileaks action that has been discussed and debated at length on all fora. You have to agree that it has yielded some interesting insights about the way the world works. First of all: as far as a diplomat making *snide comments...

12/12 Space Geeks: Fantastic slow motion video of Shuttle Launch — I’ve always been a major space travel fan and geek. This video linked from Engadget incredibly had me glued to my seat for almost 40 minutes. Some fantastic super slow motion footage of the launch. Note especially how the two narrators just love the shuttle and love their jobs. They can’t get enough of it, even after having seen this stuff a million times over.

12/10 Do you need to keep your cell phone in a protective case? — Check out this really interesting Pogue article in the New York Times: “Gorilla Glass, the Smartphone’s Unsung Hero”. Here’s a tidbit: > “It’s the screen of every touchscreen phone, like th...

12/09 Followup: Upgraded my iPhone from 3GS to 4 for MINUS $40.00 — Following up from yesterday’s post, in fact, I was able to get $300 for my mint condition iPhone 3GS on Craig’s list, and was able to buy a new iPhone 4 from Radioshack for $260 after tax! So, if you have an iPhone 3GS in good condition, and your AT&T contract is up, then you should upgrade to an iPhone 4 and make $40 in the process. Cool!

12/07 Free iPhone 3GS upgrade to iPhone 4? — So Radioshack is offering $50 off the price of an iPhone 4 for the next several days. As far as I can tell, the difference between the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 3GS is not that great, so I’ve not really been that interested. But it got...

12/06 Finance Funny — [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTUY16CkS-k&w=427&h=260]

12/06 Wikileaks: Truth or Truthy or something entirely different? — David Weinberger has, as usual, an interesting take, and some interesting links relevant to our perception and the defense or offense of Wikileaks. From his post: > “I here just want to comment on a particular theory of truth that many are using to justify Wikilea...

12/06 Photo sharing thoughts — I just returned from my mother’s birthday party with about 300 photos – I would say 70% of them are no good, so I selected about 40 of the best ones and then had to decide how to share them with everyone who cared. A little bit of research produced the following options which I am sharing with YOU ...

12/04 Bubble Bubble Sign Of Trouble — The thing about a bubble is that while people worry about it, no one is actually sure whether they are in one, and especially when it will be over. The other thing about bubbles is that they keep happening because they are the result of human nature (greed and self-deception): > “Less than a decad...

12/03 Why we need new election technology — I work at the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation, where we are creating new, modern, open source, and publicly owned  technology for operating all aspects of voting in the US. By the way, do not assume this means ‘internet voting’ — it does not. There is a lot of old techn...