Events

Via Sullivan, the Pew Research Center recently published an alarming survey of Americans' grasp of current events: Nearly eight-in-ten (77%) say correctly that the federal budget deficit is larger than it was in the 1990s and 64% know that in recent years the United States has bought more foreign goods than it has sold overseas. As in recent knowledge surveys, about half (53%) estimate the current unemployment rate at about 10%. But the public continues to struggle with questions about the Troubled...

Because they write things that would never get past a typically-craven American news editor, like this: Substantial rivals for [Rahm] Emanuel['s mayoral candidacy] are surprisingly few. Jesse Jackson junior, a congressman, says he will not run. He has been criticised for ties to a blonde and to Rod Blagojevich, the disgraced ex-governor, thankfully in separate incidents.

My reading list occupies two and a quarter shelves in my living room. No matter. I have another 60 or 70 years left, and I'm on airplanes a lot. I'll admit to a little twinge when I buy a Kindle edition of a print book I already own, but, hey, I'm supporting the arts. Just added today: from a piece on this morning's Weekend Edition Saturday, Hint Fiction, edited by Robert Swartwood. Start with the Ernest Hemingway original ("For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.") and continue to infra-compact modern...

Via James Fallows. Simply put, our military occupation of Afghanistan—the police state we've imposed there—has limits on the indignities they'll inflict on the public: A US Army staff sergeant, now serving in Afghanistan, writes about the new enhanced pat-down procedure from the TSA. Summary of his very powerful message: to avoid giving gross offense to the Afghan public, and to prevent the appearance of an uncontrolled security state, the US military forbids use on Afghan civilians of the very...

Security guru Bruce Schneier has great advice about when to change your passwords: The primary reason to give an authentication credential -- not just a password, but any authentication credential -- an expiration date is to limit the amount of time a lost, stolen, or forged credential can be used by someone else. If a membership card expires after a year, then if someone steals that card he can at most get a year's worth of benefit out of it. After that, it's useless. ... An attacker who gets the...

First, I'm starting this at 11:11 on 11-10-10, which is 943 in binary (except in Europe where it's 10-11-10 11:11, or 751 decimal). This bit of randomness was brought to you by the letter "geek" and the number "nerd." Now, my real post. Just last night I finished, after two and a half years, the 38 novels in Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, with I Shall Wear Midnight. Sir Terry is still alive and writing, but sadly he has a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's called posterior cortical atrophy...

Anyone catch this Daily Show bit last week? The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c Look Who's Stalking www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full EpisodesPolitical HumorRally to Restore Sanity Well, the dude got fired today: A hearing that was supposed to be held Tuesday was moved up to this afternoon. Philip Thomas, Shirvell's attorney, said he showed up for the meeting and was read one sentence. “They said essentially that as a result of Andrew’s conduct, it’s become impossible for him to...

I want to be rich enough someday to afford to live in a mews, like this one by the Brompton Oratory: That one is even conveniently located near Hyde Park, which looks great this time of year: Later in the day, I got to the Chelsea Embankment around sunset. This is the Battersea Power Station, which I imagine made Chelsea (and Kensington and much of south-central London) uninhabitable when it was operational:

It's getting on toward 7:30 in Chicago, and the sun still hasn't risen yet. We return to standard time tonight, meaning the sun will rise at 6:30 tomorrow. Today, however, will be the latest sunrise in Chicago (and in the rest of those parts of the U.S. that observe daylight saving time) until 2021. What's wrong with the last weekend in October? Or, as they do in parts of Europe, the last weekend in September? The "extra" hour of daylight in the evening has to come from somewhere. I, for one, prefer...

For no reason I can describe, on Monday night I absently browsed through aa.com thinking about being somewhere else. I didn't really have any specific destination in mind, other than one that didn't require changing planes (which, living in Chicago, and flying American Airlines, encompasses a lot of them). It turned out, there were frequent-flier miles seats available for this weekend to my second-favorite city in the world. Amazing. So, I have now arrived, a little fuzzy on the date and time, but quite...