Homerun by Schneier!

Bruce Schneier: What the Terrorists Want

I'd like everyone to take a deep breath and listen for a minute.

The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.

And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want.

What a ridiculously good post!

Farecast Adds Denver

Farecast.com is probably the coolest travel site I've seen yet. It tells you when airfare is going to be cheapest and whether you should go ahead and buy your tickets now for that trip to Las Vegas in November or if you should wait a while for optimum pricing. It can also tell you which departure days (or which destination) will get you the best prices, if your schedule is flexible. When the beta first launched they only had Seattle and Boston as departure cities, so it wasn't really useful yet. Now they've just added Denver, so they have 55 or so cities. All the destinations I've cared about recently are in there.

Check it out if you might be travelling anytime soon.

Geeks in a Theater

Today the software team took off early to go see Snakes on a Plane. (It's quite the phenomenon on teh internets, y'know...) Much to our surprise, the movie had a 73% on Rotten Tomatoes before we left. (It's down to 63% now, which is stull hugely high for this particular motion picture.) It really is a fun, campy pic. Don't get me wrong, it's bad. It's tremendously stupid, and it certainly isn't art, but it's a good time if you want to go get rowdy in a movie theater.

More than anything, I can't get over how much fun Sam Jackson has had being part of SoaP. Good for him.

DSC00032

Weeds

McCollum: For smart comedy, find a way to watch Showtime's 'Weeds'

In its second season, which begins tonight at 10, the show really begins to dig into emotional and social issues, from single motherhood and suburban morality to parenting in the modern world and the culture wars. In its first, very good season, it only scratched the surface of such things. There's a depth, a richness to the series now that was only suggested then.

I love this show, and enthusastically second the recommendation. The article has a recap of the first season, should you need it.

Derby Night, Aug 5th

Tonight we were fortunate enough to witness the Red Ridin' Hoods of the Rocky Mountain Rollergirls put on a clinic versus the always game (but outmatched this night) Sugar Kill Gang. The stars of the night were She Who Cannot Be Named (aka SHEEEE-WHOOOOO!!!), jammer extraordinaire; Peaches & Scream (PEEEEEEACHES!!!), who was on loan from the Pikes Peak Derby Dames league and put on a show both offensively and defensively; and my new secret sweetheart: Pinky 500 (PINKEEEEEEE!!!! - I know she heard me at least one time.) with her Mighty Ass of Defense and her Jammer Whip power move. (That's her in the striped stockings below.)

Good times.

Hoods Vistory Lap 2 Originally uploaded by Jake Sutton.

Update: John Eisel is much better at taking roller derby action shots than I am:

Photo by John Eisel

Yet Another Tattoo Blog

This one is really cool:

David Allen is a tattoo apprentice. He's also a reasonably handsome graphic designer.

...

Currently, his illustration experience has brought him into the world of tattooing. This site, allentattoo.com, is used to detail and chart the progress of his learning experience.

Not only do you get great insight into the art of tattooing, but you get fun Photoshop tips, too! It's a very young site, but it's off to a killer start.

(Props to Marisa @ Needled)

Throw Monkey from the Train

India Tries to Chase Monkeys From Trains

The langur handler is being paid a retainer of India rupees 6,900 ($160) a month, and ''he will be called whenever there is a monkey problem,'' Anuj Dayal, the spokesman for the Delhi Metro Rail Corp., was quoted as saying.

On June 9, a monkey reportedly crawled through some pipes and ended up aboard a train, scowling at passengers and jumping around a car.

Simianista commandos are crawling through pipes onto trains to terrorize the human race... And we find this on a site called "Happy News"?

I beg to differ!

Jarhead

Matt stopped by the office this morning. He graduated Marine Corps boot camp on Friday. Oddly his hair is longer than it was before he joined the Corps. And for a guy who started out pretty tiny, he trimmed down a lot. He also has no voice -- being a Marine is hard on the old voice box, I guess. ;)

Mittsy in Oz

So, suppose you're trying to get back in touch with a high school ex with whom you had remained friends but had lost contact since she got married and moved to Australia. You hit Google, right? Right. If you're lucky, you find something like this year-old article from her local Aussie paper: Wilson hams it up at Mitzy’s puppy school

Even animal behavioural trainer Mitzy Voiles thought there was more chance of pigs flying than attending one of her classes.

Man, Australia is awesome!

That said, I found a couple of email addresses for Mittsy (I don't remember if she ever actually used the 'z' spelling...). Bless the intarhiweb and all its glories.

WTF, MySpace?!

For the past week or so, MySpace has been flakier than your pain pill-addicted cousin. They blamed a power outage in LA, but the errors I saw didn't really jibe with that excuse. Anyway, after the weekend it was mostly back up. Until now... Now When I log in, I get this message:

Invalid Friend ID. This user has either cancelled their membership, or their account has been deleted.

Holy crap! They've flat-out lost accounts?! What the hell is going on over there? Hardly the kind of behavior I'd expect from the #1 site in the country. (Hmm... I wonder if they got all those extra hits because people were refreshing error pages hoping to finally get logged in...)

Cheeky Squirrel Monkeys!

Squirrel Monkey troop escapes London Zoo

"The squirrel monkeys have managed to gain access to some of the taller trees in their enclosure and from there, have leapt into the higher branches of a tree in Regents Park," a London Zoo spokeswoman said.

They go on to say that the squirrel monkeys pose no threat, but then they mention this bit:

She said they were a very intelligent set of monkeys and staff had previously had to train them to stop stealing visitor's mobile phones.

Thievery and jailbreaking?! These critters are obviously immune to rehabilitation.

Update: As expected, Betty, the last of the bunch to still be roaming around, finally came back on her own.