theo|digital

My random information bucket of things I found interesting today:

• Toyota will start selling a Prius hybrid with built in solar panels on the roof that power the air-conditioning. Only in Japan, though.
• A political story from Australia about a child posing nude for a magazine cover highlights the idea that any kind of standard societal sexual morality is out the window as soon as some of the older generations die. I’ve been predicting for a number of years that things like the legal age of consent will drop much lower, and acceptance of some child p-rnography will become mainstream. This isn’t scary as much as sad, and I believe rather inevitable. But Christians work best as as compassionate counter-cultural agents, anyway.
• Who knew that Mark Zuckerberg‘s college roommate Chris Hughes is the social architect behind Barak Obama’s social networking website: my.barackobama.org? It has almost 1 million members. The NY Times did a story.
• Related: Rolling Stone just published a bio of Zuckerberg during his Harvard-dorm days (not that long ago) that paints him as a calculating jerk who stole the Facebook idea from other students. Whether or not he’s a jerk, he’s clearly a genius programmer. Obama’s Chris Hughes wasn’t mentioned as one of the belligerents.
• Meanwhile, employees of Google are, interestingly, big contributers to Obama’s campaign. Though David Brooks points out that Obama’s fundraising, while significant with small donors, is hardly the grass-roots-only system that Obama’s campaign implies.
• Today’s younger college faculty are more likely to politically moderate than politically liberal.
• The Anglican church has now had the closest thing to a real split between conservatives and liberals. The former met in Jerusalem for GAFCON (Global Anglican Future Conference) and drew up fourteen evangelically-worded statements of orthodoxy. Suprisingly, liberal archbishop of Cantebury Rowan Williams was “positive and encouraging.”

Just some random quick news. For instance, have you seen that Starbucks is dropping T-Mobile as it’s wi-fi provider? The old $6 hourly pricing was obviously aimed at business expense accounts – I never used it. The new deal is with Wayport (ATT), and will offer two free hours of wi-fi if you use a Starbucks Card to pay. Smart business for them, free wi-fi for me.

And here’s the NY Times:

Black voters are heavily represented in the 94th Election District in Harlem’s 70th Assembly District. Yet according to the unofficial results from the New York Democratic primary last week, not a single vote in the district was cast for Senator Barack Obama.

Zero votes? And if it only happened once, it would be simple mistake. But it didn’t. Read more.

I returned to Chicago (DCA to ORD – UA625) on a unexpectedly delayed flight last night. Why? Because a woman refused to get off the plane. Seriously. We didn’t understand why the boarding process hadn’t begun until the third cop showed up (on a Segway). They would all hurry through the closed door to jet-way, apparently down there trying to coax her off the plane. Who knew that was a thing?

The wisdom of crowds: “w00t!” voted word of the year.

On the list of things I like to think about when I’m bored thinking of other things, this is in the top 50. Classic question: should English dictionaries adapt to what is spoken, or should English speakers adapt to what is written (in those dang dictionaries)?

hint: the evolution of language happens (you mean you don’t breeze through Early Modern English e.g. KJV 1611?) , so practicals and nuanced answers are a must. Historical linguistics, w00t!

I’m surrounded by corrugated cardboard (which incidentally, although invented around the turn of the century, was made popular in part by Herman Krannert, the businessman who’s money financed Illinois’ Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, Krannert Art Museum, and the Krannert School of Management at Purdue). It smells like cardboard always does… and the the sound the tape really confirms that I’m moving.

Less emotions today and yesterday, although the sadness was at it’s peak near the beginning of the week. But these days it’s business-busy mode to get stuff done.

Tonight’s my last night in the DawgHaus.

I’m disappointed. As much as I want to roll my eyes when the flight attendant requires me to shut off my Treo, it turns out that reputable sources are actually viewing cell phones on planes as dangerous. This article, from earlier this year, was published by the IEEE Spectrum (read: “eye-triple-eee”), the same respected electronics journal that arrives at my house monthly for my roommate working as an electrical engineer.

While they remain reserved on saying your iPod or DVD player could actually cause a crash, they used hidden on-board testing equipment to discover that 1 to 4 people a flight are ignoring the rules and making live cell phone calls while airborne – and it’s the phones they say can cause real trouble:

In March 2004, acting on a number of reports from general aviation pilots that Samsung SPH-N300 cellphones had caused their GPS receivers to lose satellite lock, NASA issued a technical memorandum that described emissions from this popular phone. It reported that there were emissions in the GPS band capable of causing interference. Disturbingly, though, they were low enough to comply with FCC emissions standards.

Our data and the NASA studies suggest to us that there is a clear and present danger: cellphones can render GPS instrument useless for landings.

read the whole article: “Unsafe At Any Airspeed?” By Bill Strauss, M. Granger Morgan, Jay Apt, and Daniel D. Stancil

This morning I woke up, grabbed my coffee, and tried to stare out the window and wake up. Instead, I thought of things I want to look up. Look up. Like, research. Internet style.

This happens to me every day. The scary part is, I’ll actually look them up. And remember.

• Why doesn’t the fan in the microwave ever seem to get going until 5 seconds into the cooking time (you can hear it), and does that initial time do any good? Would doing just five seconds of cooking time make anything warmer? Maybe the fan has no related effect to the magnetron. I dunno.

• Is there a way to learn snowboarding that doesn’t make the first day as hard as everyone says it is? Or maybe I can just learn it via internet diagrams? Like with a pivot foot or something?

• How true-to-fact were the news clips I watched last night in Good Night, and Good Luck?

• Does rain and lightning inherently move with a kind of weather front that raises the temperature? It’s probably not just a matter of randomly the temperature choosing not to drop below freezing and give us pretty snow instead of pouring rain…

• Who gets paid if you purchase Vince Guaraldi’s Charlie Brown Christmas off iTunes? If he’s dead (heart attack in the 70s), does a portion of the earnings go to a family member? Did they fight over which one? Does the payment amount to anything?

• What cash value does CVS place on the coupons that print out on the back of the receipt when you buy something, giving you money back on the next generic CVS brand beauty product you purchase? What percentage of coupons are actually used (very low?)? What GAAP principles apply?

Yesterday Ash teased me for researching the taco bell disease-food thing. People at her apartment were convinced I shouldn’t go: reports of e coli, salmonella (really?), and probably breast cancer worldwide. Turns out it was only in 4 northeastern states (NY, PA, NJ, DE) states, and 64 people felt sick, but nobody got hurt, and the last case was on Dec 2nd, from a produce supplier that Taco Bell immediately dumped.

Good to know.

The End-User-License-Agreement is as much ubiquitous as it is ignored. Who doesn’t throw the An Important Change to Your Credit Card Agreement mailing in the can, or just hit the [Agree] button?

Trouble is that Sony says that if your house burns down, you’re legally required to delete the music they own. You agreed. And it’s important not to operate nuclear facilities while using the Yahoo Toolbar. huh.

The Small Print Project. Someone is having fun in grad school.