It was 4AM. MEEEEOOOOOWWWW! Crash! Thump! Thump thump thump! Boom! MEEOW! Bang! *BOOM*! Crash! Pow!

It’s a good thing Tosh and Tegan are so cute. Because I’m not too happy with them waking up the whole neighborhood every night. When I see them curled up like this, I almost feel bad for considering giving them away. Or shooting them with a NERF gun.

Oleg Volk created this TSA checkpoint sign in 2008, which is now getting attention due to recent abuses by the organization.

Interestingly enough, the social location service Loopt is offering 10 iPod touches to people who check in to an airport using the app on November 24th, and tweet about being pat down by the TSA.

As a slight gift to opt-outers out there, Loopt is giving away 10 iPod Touches for TSA touching. Just check into your airport on Loopt* on Wednesday, November 24 (with iPhone, iPod Touch or Android), share a bit about your experience, push it to Twitter with the hashtag #touchedbyTSA, and you can win an iPod Touch. That simple.

Another problem with the TSA? Lack of data collection. A former assistant police chief writes on the potential for passive discrimination, due to the TSA’s lack of data collection:

Over the last fifteen years or so, many police agencies started capturing data on police interactions. The primary purpose was to document what had historically been undocumented: informal street contacts. By capturing specific data, we were able to ask ourselves tough questions about potentially biased-policing. Many agencies are still struggling with the answers to those questions.

Regardless, the data permitted us to detect problematic patterns, commonly referred to as passive discrimination. This is a type of discrimination that occurs when we are not aware of how our own biases affect our decisions. This kind of bias must be called to our attention, and there must be accountability to correct it.

One of the most troubling observations I made, at both Albany and BWI, was that — aside from the likely notation in a log (that no one will ever look at) — there was no information captured and I was asked no questions, aside from whether or not I wanted to change my mind.

Given that TSA interacts with tens if not hundreds of millions of travelers each year, it is incredible to me that we, the stewards of homeland security, have failed to insist that data capturing and analysis should occur in a manner similar to what local police agencies have been doing for many years.

[via Mr. Alan Cooper on Twitter]

NPR’s science and culture blog has an interesting post up about why Pluto isn’t a planet and we should get over it. It’s something that I’ve been arguing about for a long time.

There are an estimated 70,000 KPOs (Kuiper Belt Objects) out there larger than 100 meters. More importantly, at least 3 KPOs are large enough for gravity to work its symmetric magic and pull rock and ice into a sphere. These are the newest class of solar system’s inhabitants the Dwarf Planets: Huamea, Makemake and, yes, Pluto.

With the discovery of the KPOs and, in particular, the KPO Dwarf Planets, Pluto lost any claim to being special. It was just one cinder-block in a field of cinder-blocks left over from building our solar system. It wasn’t even the biggest cinder block. In 2005 the dwarf planet Eris was found orbiting the Sun at distances beyond the Kuiper Belt in yet another new region of the solar system that astronomers call the Scattered Disk.

Face it, Pluto isn’t special.

[via Daily Dish]

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

After only two days of reading, I have just finished the second book in the Hunger Games series, “Catching Fire.” The first book was an equally quick read and provided an interesting story set in a post apocalyptic American future. 

The second story continues where the first left off, with Katniss, the main protagonist, coping with the ramifications of her controversial and seemingly rebellious win in the Hunger Games. This win allowed her and her partner, Peeta (a pathetically sad  example of a man and a generally loathsome character), to survive — something unprecedented since there’s only supposed to be one winner (think of it as a gladiator style competition, but with kids).

Sadly, the first half of the book comprises of a woe-is-me story that wastes the reader’s time with almost nothing that advances the story. There’s hints of a rebellion in other districts and the government seems to know everything that Katniss does (even when she illegally hunts in the wilderness outside her district and kisses a childhood friend).

Which is all the more perplexing when she ventures back out into the woods and encounters refugees from another district talking of rebellion. It’s like she completely forgot about what happened in the opening pages of the story with regard to the President’s warning. 

Halfway through the book, the story takes a predictable turn and forces Katniss and Peeta back into the arena. Fantastic! We basically get to re-read book one all over again. There’s some slight differences. People seem to be more angry with the government and the tributes (gladiators) seem to bond prior to the games.

Once in the arena, the story dissolved into a poor tale of survival as Katniss and others grouped up to survive. She struggles with issues of trust, love, and survival — including trying to escape a fog that acts like a nerve agent, mutant killer monkeys, crazy talking birds, random tsunamis, and other assorted lethal traps. The whole time, Peeta worries over protecting Katniss, who can clearly handle him and anything else that comes her way. Like I said, we’re basically re-reading the first book, word for word.

The ending provides an abrupt, untidy, unsatisfying, yet completely predictable conclusion to the Games. A conspiracy among the other tributes to keep Katniss alive has been carried out all along, without Katniss (or the all knowing government) aware of it. The ending simply serves to setup book three. Great.

Sadly, I have no desire to read book three, yet I feel I must. It’s like how I started feeling about Lost — started off interesting, then get sloppy, but I’ve put all this time into it, so I must see how everything concludes.

View all my reviews

This is one of the many reasons why Vin Scully is the best.

Scully uses crowd noise as his orchestra. When Henry Aaron hit his 715th home run, Scully was there, and he called the home run, and then he took off his headset, walked to the back of the room, and let people listen to the crowd cheer. Like water out of a shower head. “What could I have said that would have told the story any better?”

Listening to Joe Buck and Tim McCarver during the playoffs and World Series was pure torture. Every silence to them is awkward and must be filled with useless anecdotes and mindless banter.

Can you believe Scully has been with the Dodgers for 61 years? Incredible.

This was a screenshot taken from my phone after running a speed test in San Francisco’s Financial District today. Pathetic.

Part 1 – (Fast forward to 1 hour and 39 minutes in the video, that’s when the coverage starts in this particular video):
http://www.justin.tv/twit/b/273782240

Part 2 –
http://www.justin.tv/twit/b/273789393

Part 3-
http://www.justin.tv/twit/b/273796620

gdgt live in SF prep, originally uploaded by Dave Schumaker.

Boxes and boxes of shwag sitting at gdgt HQ in San Francisco prior to tomorrow’s gdgt live in San Francisco event at the SFDC Galleria (from 7pm – 11pm). Make sure to come hang out with us!

Interesting read in Wired about the rise of Ticketmaster: “Everyone Hates Ticketmaster — But No One Can Take It Down”

In 2008, Ticketmaster had made veteran industry shark Irving Azoff—a man so cutthroat (and so short) he is known as the Poison Dwarf—its CEO. Manager of the Eagles since the mid-’70s, Azoff is famously aggressive. He once sent a gift-wrapped boa constrictor to a manager whose wife he considered snakelike, with a note that read “Now you have two!”