MemeStreams users seemed concerned about a new and apparently randomly enforced TSA policy. It appears that the TSA is listening.

A Win for the Blogesphere

Posters on this blog have had their first official impact on our operations. That’s right, less than one week since we began the blog and already you’re affecting security in a very positive way.

On Monday afternoon we began receiving questions about airports that were requiring ALL electronics to be removed from carry-on bags (everything, including blackberrys, iPods and even cords). This practice was also mentioned on several other blogs and left us scratching our heads.

So…we checked with our security operations team to figure out what was going on. After some calls to our airports, we learned that this exercise was set up by local TSA offices and was not part of any grand plan across the country. These practices were stopped on Monday afternoon and blackberrys, cords and iPods began to flow through checkpoints like the booze was flowing on Bourbon Street Tuesday night. (Fat Tuesday of course).

The way this post was written reminds me of a t-shirt that I really wish I had purchased while it was still available. At least they are paying attention.

TSA credits bloggers with ending new electronics policy.

When you use a system often, you tend to fall into set usage patterns. Sometimes, you do not start the habit of doing things in the best possible way. Sometimes, you even pick up bad practices that lead to clutter and clumsiness. One of the best ways to correct such inadequacies is to conscientiously pick up good habits that counteract them. This article suggests 10 UNIX command-line habits worth picking up -- good habits that help you break many common usage foibles and make you more productive at the command line in the process. Each habit is described in more detail following the list of good habits.

More here.
I only knew three of these.

UNIX tips: Learn 10 good UNIX usage habits

McCain likes to make common cause with politicians across the aisle from him. They can’t stand this. They prefer someone who fights Democrats to someone who makes deals with Democrats... Perhaps, having engaged with a real enemy who broke his arms and tortured him and sought to destroy him body and mind and soul, he doesn’t see an enemy when he sees a Democrat but rather just another American whose ideas on many things differ from his but with whom he might share some common ground.

Said another way, Conservatives see most of the people in this country as their enemies. 4 years ago the right wing was jumping up and down about a permanent conservative majority. Now they are talking about their party being destroyed... The end of an era... Amazing...

The fact, I think, is that the loudest members of the Republican Party aren't actually in control of it.

Commentary » Blog Archive » Why They Hate McCain

Now I can finally tell my non-technical friends and family what my company does.

New Unit of Reviewed Code Quality

possibly noteworthy wrote:

Our annual snapshot of the emerging shape of business.

What is all this crap about MMORPG's? In spite of several articles about the subject in this HBR I still don't get it. Yes, games probably have better meritocracies than real life, but that doesn't explain why you'd want to have a meeting in one. I get the impression of a bunch of corporate executives who are just as hooked on this crap as the average MMORPG geek and have somehow rationalized that its constructive. They are involved in a very sophisticated system that is specifically designed to manipulate their instinct to seek positive re-enforcement. Its a drug, and the executive class is becoming addicted. Perhaps its not the only drug that gets passed around the executive bathroom, but frankly, people should not be spending multi-million dollar salaries on hours of video gaming. Its a mockery of the meritocracy these games supposedly teach.

RE: The HBR List: Breakthrough Ideas for 2008

The wet 20th century, the wettest of the past millennium, the century when Americans built an incredible civilization in the desert, is over. Trees in the West are adjusting to the change, and not just in the width of their annual rings: In the recent drought they have been dying off and burning in wildfires at an unprecedented rate. For most people in the region, the news hasn't quite sunk in. Between 2000 and 2006 the seven states of the Colorado basin added five million people, a 10 percent population increase. Subdivisions continue to sprout in the desert, farther and farther from the cities whose own water supply is uncertain.

"What we have come to consider normal is profoundly wet," Stine said. "We're kidding ourselves if we think that's going to continue, with or without global warming."

This is extremely important. The skyrocketing cost of fresh water is going to have a huge impact on the Southwest over the coming decades, with reverberations felt across North America.

Drying of the West - National Geographic Magazine Online

Authorities in Afghanistan have sentenced a 23-year-old journalism student to death for having downloaded and shared copies of a report criticizing the oppressive treatment of women in some Islamic societies.

Afghanistan: death sentence for downloading, distributing report on oppression of women - Boing Boing

Like much of the nation, New Hampshire is in a frenzy over illegal immigration. In 2005, a police chief from New Ipswich, a sleepy small town near the Massachusetts border, arrested an illegal immigrant, who had pulled over on the side of the road, on the grounds that he was trespassing in New Hampshire. "We're applying a state law to illegal aliens, instead of federal law, because the federal government refuses to enforce its own laws. Someone needed to bring it, so I brought it," the chief told the Concord Monitor. The courts threw out the case, but the police chief became a statewide celebrity.

Phantom Menace: The Pyschology Behind America's Immigration Hysteria

MemeStreams: Its just like having real friends!

This site has some awesome housing bubble charts. Think there is no bubble in Atlanta or Nashville? Well, its certainly not as bad as a lot of areas in the country, such as Northern California:

Housing Bubble Data Porn