Members of the brilliant, highly trained, and dedicated team of elite professionals who work tirelessly behind the scenes to protect our nation and keep its citizens out of harm’s way announced Tuesday that they do not exist. Unfortunately, though, I’m not employed by the US government, I’m not working at all hours to foil terrorist plots, nor am I part of some secret network of sharp, capable agents, because no such network exists.
Month: September 2010
Dating Tropes
If I had to choose overarching themes for white people’s lists, for men, I’d go with “frat house” and for women, “escapism.” Whether one begot the other is a question I’ll leave to the reader.
Federal Accounting
More than $1.3t in federal reporting data from 2009 is broken. These data inaccuracies account for 70% of the total $1.9t in government spending data reported last year. USASpending.gov has not fulfilled its legal requirement of providing the public access to accurate, timely and detailed information on how federal agencies fulfill their spending obligations.
this is what the end of empire looks like
Internet Deceit
A Japanese journalist freed over the weekend by captors in Afghanistan managed to send 2 Twitter messages before his release while teaching a captor how to access the Internet on a new cell phone.
money quote: “The soldier had heard of the Internet, but he didn’t know what it was.”
“waistline” vs actual waistline
vanity sizes come to d00d brands.
Random Number Service
RANDOM.ORG offers true random numbers to anyone on the Internet. The randomness comes from atmospheric noise, which for many purposes is better than the pseudo-random number algorithms typically used in computer programs.
the mongoliad
stephenson’s new epic shared universe. still pretty bare. will need a lot of work before it reaches the scale of orions arm.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 