Events

Yesterday the President apparently blamed Iran for supplying some of the explosives that are being used in the ongoing Iraqi civil war: "Iraqis have shown the world that they want a future of peace," Bush said. Bush also accused Iran of providing material support to the insurgency in Iraq and vowed to continue to pressure Iraq's neighbor. "Such actions, along with Iran's support for terrorism and its pursuit of nuclear weapons, are increasingly isolating Iran, and America will continue to rally the...

The Census Bureau estimates that as of the last week of February, world population exceeded 6.5 billion. They estimate also that the U.S. population will hit 300 million around November 25th. (Actually, they have a current estimate and a rate, which I used to compute a date. So check back in October to see how close this is.)

We were in Boston on Saturday. The weather was perfect. So naturally I took a photo of the Massachusetts State House:

Very interesting op-ed in today's New York Times: Slavoj Zizek calls athiests "Defenders of the Faith": Fundamentalists do what they perceive as good deeds in order to fulfill God's will and to earn salvation; atheists do them simply because it is the right thing to do. Is this also not our most elementary experience of morality? When I do a good deed, I do so not with an eye toward gaining God's favor; I do it because if I did not, I could not look at myself in the mirror. A moral deed is by definition...

My incredibly brave wife got into a Piper Warrior with me today, and we flew from Nashua to Portsmouth, N.H. I last flew in January 2005, also with Anne, so I was excited to get back into the cockpit. Landing in variable 8-to-12 knot winds—variable, in this context, meaning direct crosswind to tailwind—was not the most fun I've ever had flying. But it was still tons o' fun, and we still got Anne home on time.

I lost my ID case last week here in New Hampshire, and had Anne overnight my passport to me so I could go home. It turns out, I needn't have been so paranoid, as reported on Bruce Schneier's security blog: According to the TSA, in the 9th Circuit Case of John Gilmore, you are allowed to fly without showing ID -- you'll just have to submit yourself to secondary screening. Here's a link to the 9th Circuit decision (pdf).

Frontal systems can be a lot of fun. A warm front passed through Southern New Hampshire today; see if you can spot when that happened: Time Temperature 09:51 ET (14:51 UTC) 3°C (38°F) 10:51 4°C (39°F) 11:28 6°C (43°F) 11:51 9°C (48°F) 11:58 10°C (50°F) 12:51 (18:51 UTC) 17°C (63°F) The cold front following behind won't be quite as dramatic, but it will bring some wind. Gusts are predicted to 81 km/h (45 kts, 54 mph) this afternoon.

I'm not sure what Anne thinks, but as long as I'm commuting to New Hampshire, maybe we should get these Wi-Fi wine glasses: Jackie Lee and Hyemin Chung, experts in human-computer interaction...have incorporated a variety of coloured LEDs, liquid sensors and wireless (GPRS or Wi-Fi) links into a pair of glass tumblers. When either person picks up a glass, red LEDs on their partner's glass glow gently. And when either puts the glass to their lips, sensors make white LEDs on the rim of the other glass glow...

MSNBC is reporting today that thieves have stolen a batch of PINs from a retailer—PINs the retailer shouldn't have stored in the first place: Criminals have stolen bank account data from a third-party company, several banks have said, and then used the data to steal money from related accounts using counterfeit cards at ATM machines. The central question surrounding the new wave of crime is this: How did the thieves managed to foil the PIN code system designed to fend off such crimes? Investigators are...

Here's a hint: the problem is between chair and receiver. Bruce Schneier linked today to this excellent essay on the unseen dangers of mobile phones: About four seats away is a gentleman (on this occasion pronounced 'fool') with a BlackBerry mobile device and a very loud voice. He is obviously intent on selling a customer something and is briefing his team. It seems he is the leader as he defines the strategy and assigns each of his unseen team with specific tasks and roles. Eventually, he starts to...