This is a pretty great video, featuring a high speed camera on a train, looking at a passenger platform as it passes by. More info here.
It could be one of the coolest visual examples of special relativity that I’ve seen!
[Via Kottke]
👋🏻 Hello!
Thanks for visiting! You'll find a bunch of musings I've been writing around these parts since the early 2000's.
Lately, I've been reviewing a lot of books.
But I also write about code and my experiments using generative AI.
But really, you're just here to see pictures of Benson.
Blog Posts
WTF is this?
How soccer almost became a major American sport
Saw this posted a few months ago, but I am finally getting around to reading it now. It’s an interesting piece by Slate on how soccer nearly became a popular American sport in the 1920s.
In the 1920s, soccer was big in America. Not big in the way that baseball was big (this was the era of Ruth and Gehrig) or college football was big (these were the days when Ivy League rivalries played out as violent eruptions in the mud), but at its height, the top American soccer league had tens of thousands of fans, featured some of the world’s best players, and looked set to challenge the fledgling NFL in the competition to supply the nation with a post-October pastime.
(via Instapaper)
My feelings toward Android
Yum!
The most boring day in history?
April 11, 1954 was the most uneventful and boring day of the 20th century. Every day something of significance occurs, but nothing remarkable had happened on the said day in 1954, according to experts who inserted over 300 million important events of the century into a computer search programme to calculate.
This is kind of amazing. I’d love to see this parsed based on specific dates — for example, what was the most boring day (according to this algorithm) during my life? I’m sure there are a few dates in high school or college that come to mind.
[Via Daily Dish]
Money Origami
Choo choo!
We were supposed to take the Amtrak Coast Starlight train down to Southern California, but it was severely delayed due to bad weather in Oregon and Washington. Changed trains, taking San Joaquin to Bakersfield and then a bus to Los Angeles.
Here we go!
Man, wouldn’t it be nice to have a high speed rail system in California?
Sneak attack!
We’re 3/4 the way through a bottle of wine when we hear over the intercom, “Remember folks, you’re not allowed to drink your own alcohol on the train, or we’ll remove you and your alcohol from this train.” Crap!
On another note — the Central Valley is a lot more fun to look at when you aren’t driving through it.
Lucky for them, they’re cute
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.
TSA Checkpoint Sign
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 TSA problem? Data collection
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.