Lots of Inspiration in Iraq Today

What a great day to read a huge number of blogs about individuals being moved to vote in Iraq today. Amazing that everyone has figured out the power of a dash of color to memorialize events these days (e.g. the dyed-purple finger, the orange scarf, red ribbons, yellow ribbons, pink ribbons). Spongebob would be proud.

My favorite so far... Mohammad and Omar at Iraq The Model:

I walked forward to my station, cast my vote and then headed to the box, where I wanted to stand as long as I could, then I moved to mark my finger with ink, I dipped it deep as if I was poking the eyes of all the world's tyrants. I put the paper in the box and with it, there were tears that I couldn't hold; I was trembling with joy and I felt like I wanted to hug the box but the supervisor smiled at me and said "brother, would you please move ahead, the people are waiting for their turn".

Posted by BradRubenstein at 12:14 PM

RFID - houston, we have a problem

RFID's are the remote sensing devices that are used for inventory control at Walmart, vehicle immobilizers for preventing car theft, and ExxonMobil SpeedPass fuel purchasing system.

A group of students at Johns Hopkins have done a "security analysis" of one of the most popular RFID solutions (the DST tag by Texas Instruments), which is french for saying they cracked it.

They have cool videos of standing next to someone's car key fob in an elevator with their laptop by their side, and then walking up to the person's car and hotwiring it.

The heavens won't fall, but it will probably cut into the 90% reported reduction in auto theft rates among cars using the RFID system. The students speculate that the theft package can be built into an object the size of an Ipod, with a cost of a couple hundred dollars.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 10:36 AM

Here They Is

Sometimes, it's important to have a good reference for the singular use of "they".

Posted by BradRubenstein at 12:25 AM

Deinstitutionalization and the Homeless

I read on Instapundit today a long blog entry on de-institutionalization of the mentally ill. Jeff Jarvis sparked the conversation here.

I thought readers might like to be introduced to another part of the blogosphere where doctors and their patients are blogging about these issues constantly (perhaps obsessively, but I am not sure, since I am not a doctor).

I can think of no better introduction than Dr. James Baker's Mental Notes, which I read almost as often as Instapundit. Loads of pointers to medical policy issues, case analyses, and other amusements. He also has a blog-roll worth a once-through.

I sometimes also read Grumpy Old Man, an ex-homeless fellow in smalltown alabama putting his life together and writing (often eloquently) about the process.

Check them out.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 09:02 PM

What's New In Search

I saw this on Instapundit, and I think it is totally cool.

Google and Yahoo are taking the streams of closed captions from television programs, and indexing them. Think about it. That means you can Google TV shows. And the amount of stuff that is closed captioned is extensive.

This reminds me of arguments for ADA regulations (that mandate accessibility for the disabled in a variety of contexts), when people were talking about how creating curb-cuts for wheelchairs was substantially benefitting package delivery folk, and how closed captions for the deaf were creating a boon in TV-watching in noisy bars. Funny what ends up making us creative, and what the unforeseen impacts of that creativity are.

Those rooms full fo Ph.D.'s hanging out at these places are going to come up with a stream of these good ideas. If you haven't seen it yet, make sure you take a look at what's new out of Google Labs. It provides an ongoing stream of fascinating ideas. Of course, they don't come with business plans attached...

Posted by BradRubenstein at 01:04 PM

Inaugural Dissonance

Apparently I wasn't the only one who was more disturbed by the inaugural music than by the inaugural speech.

Peggy Noonan, in her OpinionJournal column, notes:

There were some surprises, one of which was the thrill of a male voice singing "God Bless America," instead of the hyper-coloratura divas who plague our American civic life. But whoever picked the music for the inaugural ceremony itself--modern megachurch hymns, music that sounds like what they'd use for the quiet middle section of a Pixar animated film--was . . . lame. The downbeat orchestral arrangement that followed the president's speech was no doubt an attempt to avoid charges that the ceremony had a triumphalist air. But I wound up thinking: This is America. We have a lot of good songs. And we watch inaugurals in part to hear them.

Never be defensive in your choice of music.

My friend Mark and I thought it rather odd that Trent Lott insisted so pointedly that everyone join in for the national anthem, and then a tenor (AF Tech. Sgt. Bradley Bennett) began singing, and Mark and I immediately looked at each other aghast: we couldn't believe they were forcing the audience to sing it in the key of C. That forces us up to a high G at the end, which is most unkind to the majority of us who are not tenor sergeants or hyper-coloratura divas. Thank goodness they turned Mr. Lott's mike off.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 10:17 PM

Building Furniture While Snow Falls

Well, we are in the middle of a blizzard, and I got two big packages from Crate and Barrel this afternoon, so it was the perfect time to build bedroom furniture. You can see I put together the Pacific Floor Mirror, and the Pacific 4-drawer chest (in "espresso"), and with a Cos chair (Russian Red, by Josep Llusca for Cassina) and the Sleepy Working Bed (by Phillipe Stark, also from Cassina), with its Archimoon lamp (also by Stark, for Flos, visible in the mirror), it all makes a pretty nice ensemble. Don't you think?

The picture was taken with my new Dimage X50 digital camera, which also arrived in today's mail.

Not bad for a snow day.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 06:07 PM

Let's Play Tsunami!

Catch this one quick! It is in such questionable taste, that it probably won't stay up long. FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency, now part of Homeland Security, has blessed us with a tsunami game for kids.

Of course, we know that kids love things in questionable taste. I'm just not sure I want to pay the government to encourage them.

UPDATE: Well, I told you you had to be fast. As of 2:45 PM EST today, the link reports "file not found" (though its cover picture is in this index). Too bad. The games bright colors and simple-yet-strange themes so close to the sea reminded me of Spongebob Squarepants.

Speaking of which, BBC reports that one in four Spongebob viewers is between 18 and 49. I just have to presume they are mostly gay. Or parents. Or both.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 10:49 AM

Moving Tsunami Reports

Two extraordinary days of diary writing by a volunteer corpse identifier in Phuket, named Paul. Day 1 and day 2.

I took a moment took look up the website for the International School Bangkok, where I went to middle school. They have a page dedicated to their tsunami relief program. Letters from the head of ISB as well as my high school, Jakarta International School, reporting their various circumstances, are posted at the European Council of International Schools.

James Baker MD points me to, among other things, a New Zealand Herald article about supplying mental health services to the huge number (the article quotes 650,000) of people who are at risk for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Add that to tetanus, dysentery, and cholera...

Posted by BradRubenstein at 09:48 AM

Randomness Sucks Sometimes

From the latest issue of The Risks Digest:

The Cabbage Patch doll, known to legions of kids from the 80s on, comes with "adoption paperwork" including a unique, randomly-generated serial number. However, apparently the company's random number generator was, from a certain point of view, a little too random.

As they mention, people forget that a random string generator is just as likely to generated "bradbites" as "gqhxfp2nw". If you are gonna generate a lot of them (2 million cabbage patch dolls are sold each year), you can be nearly certain some of them won't look "random".

Posted by BradRubenstein at 01:50 PM

They care like Mom

Adam reminded me that FreshDirect now delivers to my area in Brooklyn.

On their site, if you click on Hangover Cures, they point you here.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 09:35 PM

For Every Pot, A Lid

While wandering around the web, I happened upon ConservativeMatch.com. I thought I'd give it a try...

Elizabeth-5402
Age: 45
Location: JENKINTOWN, PA
Active: In the last year

I'm a single conservative republican who is looking to meet a like minded man. I've never signed up for a dating service and so am reluctant to reveal much. I left all of the optionals blank for that reason. I was surprised when one question asked...

Hmm. Not obvious. What else? I don't see any responses from men... Where are all the gay conservatives?

Not here, nor on REPUBLICANPeopleMeet®. This one looks a bit more, um, racy. Even arch-conservative Ann Coulter is hosting a dating service, looking at the pictures, some of the guys there are hot. But that's way too kinky for me.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 09:39 AM