More than 54 percent of single-family homes in Atlanta are worth less than their owners owe on them.

WABE: Atlanta Homes Values Fall Back to 1990s Level (2011-02-10)

It is “offensive,” blogged Tim Calkins, clinical professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston. “Many people on the Kellogg panel thought the ad was in poor taste,” he said, referring to a student group that assessed the Super Bowl ads Sunday.

I knew this ad was going to get a negative reaction.

Groupon fumbles with its Tibet Super Bowl commercial

When it was announced that the Nexus S would have a built-in NFC radio, I immediately started thinking about the potential of using cell phones with RFID public transit fare systems. The day the Gingerbread source code was released, I picked up a Nexus S and began working on a proof-of-concept application that can read data from transit cards. Though a vacation got in the way, today I’m happy to announce FareBot!

Neat! Man I wish I new about that RFID reader before I bought my new phone last month!

FareBot: Read data from public transit cards with your NFC-equipped Android phone - codebutler

Remember how Egyptian Muslims served has human shields for Egyptian Christians during this year's Coptic Christmas Mass? Here's a photo of Egyptian Christians returning the favor, protecting praying Muslims during a protest this week.

How to: Counteract religious strife - Boing Boing

high school student Lyndon Baty from Knox City, Texas is now using one to particularly great effect. He has a weakened immune system that prevents him from actually attending school, so he's using a remotely-controlled Vgo telepresence "robot" that allows him to move from class to class and interact with teachers and other students using nothing more than his laptop and webcam at home.

Which is all well and good until some bully takes the robot and locks it in a locker. :)

The bot itself is four-feet tall, self-balancing, and simply packs a basic video conferencing system up top that allows its operator to interact with their surroundings -- at $5,000, it's also considerably cheaper than some other similar options.

Click on the words "similar options" for a picture of the creepy thing that will be keeping an eye on you at work in the near future.

Texas student sends robot to school in his place, can't get it to do his homework -- Engadget

The least likely thing to happen is a long-term reformist democratic government.

Agenda: With George Friedman on Egypt | STRATFOR

Confirming what a few have reported this evening: in an action unprecedented in Internet history, the Egyptian government appears to have ordered service providers to shut down all international connections to the Internet.

Egypt Leaves the Internet - Renesys Blog

Probably the most important thing going on right now is a series of popular uprisings in North Africa.

In one respect its sort of like the Rodney King riots. An act of police brutality resulted in a self immolation that prompted a mass protest. But what are the root causes of the underlying tension? Police brutality, and poverty, but also corruption, illuminated by Wikileaks:

I asked our experts at Human Rights Watch to canvass their sources in the country, and the consensus was that while Tunisians didn't need American diplomats to tell them how bad their government was, the cables did have an impact.

What does the future hold? Will the government of Egypt topple? If so, will other governments follow?

The wild card here is that all this chaos presents long term opportunities for islamists. I think the rise of radical islamist power sources is far more likely than the rise of a more benevolent government that polices corruption and engages in genuine efforts at long term economic development. A certain enlightened self interest is required to achieve the later. Perhaps they ought to try using religion.

Wikileaks Real Impact in Tunisia - Alexis Madrigal - Technology - The Atlantic

Rep. Sanchez has introduced a very modest bill -- H.R. 216 -- requiring Homeland Security to issue rules governing these searches and seizures so that they are no longer able to operate completely in the dark and without standards.

Homeland Security's laptop seizures: Interview with Rep. Sanchez - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

In either case, the rainbow-like coloring system is ending come April. (As you might infer from the title of this blog, we’re more than a little sad to report the death of the silly system.)

Color-Coded Terrorism ‘Threat Level’ Advisory System Ending | Threat Level | Wired.com