Here's a rather interesting/worrisome piece of hacking. Apparently, some folks went along and created a forged passport of the King, complete with RFID technology, that was accepted in a Dutch airport.
Wasn't the Canada-US border supposed to move towards RFID technology?
In case you're wondering why things have been so quiet on this site in the last few months, this figure shows the mood of your average PhD student as a function of time. It was generated by a friend of mine who just completed his degree in December after a long and courageous battle. The gray dot indicates my present location -- at least on the time axis.
But dammit it will all be over soon. And I hope that it will end on the "Woo!" side...
This is a real ad:
SURVIVAL SYSTEMS LTD.
Research Subjects Wanted!!! EC
Dartmouth, NS, CA
1/19/2008 12:00:00 AM
Research Subjects Wanted!!! "ECG responses to Helicopter Underwater Escape Training"
We are looking for 30 healthy men to participate in an experiment in our helicopter underwater escape trainer at Survival Systems Ltd in Dartmouth to be arranged between March 25th and April 6th, 2008.
If you are in a helicopter accident over water you will be flipped upside down and submerged. Therefore, we want to see what your heart rate and response is when you are inverted in our helicopter underwater escape trainer. You will be compensated for your time with $100 cash! For more details about the study please e-mail us at some@email.address
Originally published in The Daily News, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Sent to me by the U.S. Department of Commerce:
ATTENTION
Greetings billfish anglers! Please complete the attached Billfish Angler Survey for 2006 and return as soon as possible. The results will be summarized for the next issue of the Billfish Newsletter which is currently being compiled.
[yada yada yada this is how you fill out a form butthead yada yada yada]
Thank you for your support.
Smooth seas and good fishing,
Jane Doe, Fisheries Biologist
John Doe, Computer Specialist
My supervisor is someone who labours over coming up with good titles for things. Papers, theses, email subjects, you name it. He always wants to get the point across as accurately as possible in as few words as possible. And he's taught me to follow that model to some extent, though admitedly I don't labour over titles of posts here all that much. Anyway, coming up with good titles can be quite the art and at times it can become an obsession. It is in this context that this headline is either terrible or amazing:
Why is it that when I find this site funny it happens to be mirroring the most unusual events in my life, like the challenge involved in getting a computer to give you a truly random number. Which is why today's xkcd comic is so fitting:
What makes this even weirder is that this is C code. I almost never program in C. But I happen to be for my random number application.
Really, this shouldn't be that funny. Today, however, it is.
This is too funny. An emeritus scientist at the Geological Survey of Canada was apparently dismissed (but quickly reinstated) because he felt it was stupid that "Canada’s New Government" should replace "Government of Canada" in official correspondence. Somewhat embarrassing that something this ridiculous has been published in Harper's.
(Via Rick Mercer's Blog.)
So it appears as though currupt police officers in Tijuana have forced a rather unusual situation:
President Felipe Calderon sent 3,300 soldiers and federal police to Tijuana last week to hunt down drug gangs. The soldiers swept police stations and took officers' guns for inspection on Thursday amid allegations that some officers supported smugglers who traffic drugs into the U.S.That was 3 weeks ago, and the officers still have not had their guns returned. One effect of this move has been that police have been receiving death threats from local thugs. They've been travelling either with the army as their escorts or in large numbers for protection. In search of a reasonable solution, it seems that the Tijuana police department, some 2,000 strong, have issued a total of 60 slingshots to their officers...
This offer comes from the same company that brings you Ivana Trump's La Residence in downtown Beirut, which, by the way, looks like this:
All you need to do is buy property in Dubai.
(via rampurple)
So, maybe everyone already knows this, but I just found out. I was thinking a little about climate change, and the common perceptions and misperceptions about it. With that in mind, I thought I'd see what information is immediately available...and entered "climate change" in google.ca, then hit "I feel lucky". The top hit is the Government of Canada site which I've copied and pasted in its entirety right here:
Classy, eh? The best part, if you look at the fine print at the bottom, is that this page has been like this since June! I guess we should just avoid talking about the elephant in the room.
