Our popular culture, our dirt-ball street culture teaches us from childhood that the CIA is listening to *all* of our telephone calls and reading *all* of our email anyway.

I keep seeing that in the lower discourse of the Internet, people saying, "Oh, they're doing it anyway." In some way our culture believes that, and it's a real problem, because evidently they haven't been doing it anyway, and now that they've started, we really need to pay attention and muster some kind of viable political response.

Boing Boing: William Gibson on NSA wiretapping

Apparently there's a different way to lace your shoes if you're cycling, moto-crossing, just plain looking weird....

Many different ways to lace your shoes

Jeremiah Ransom, a sophomore from Macon, was leaving a Wesley Foundation pirate vs. ninja event when he was detained.

After being held in investigative detention, he was found to have violated no criminal laws and was not arrested.

“It was surreal,” Ransom said. “I was jogging from Wesley to Snelling when I heard someone yell ‘freeze.’”

Ransom said he thought a friend was playing a joke before he realized officers had guns drawn and pointed at him.
...
“Seeing someone with something across the face, from a federal standpoint — that’s not right,” McLemore said, explaining why agents believed something to be amiss.

Basically some ATF agents that were here for training tackled a kid because he had a bandana over his face. The picture in the article really shows the excessive force the agents used.

redandblack.com - ATF rids Univ. of ninja threat

Savanna Samson, star of "The New Devil in Miss Jones," has gone further than simply slapping a steamy label on some cheesy chardonnay. Her Italian red wine has received a score of 90 to 91 out of 100 by wine guru Robert Parker.

Porn star's wine passion gets plaudits

That, in the end, is the most striking thing about Playboy’s centerfolds: how old-fashioned they seem. This whole “bachelor” world, with the brandy snifters and the attractive guest arriving for the night: did it ever exist? Yes, as a fantasy. Now, however, it is the property of homosexuals. (A more modern-looking avatar of the Playmates’ pneumatic breasts is Robert Mapplethorpe’s Mr. 10 ½.) Today, if you try to present yourself as a suave middle-aged bachelor, people will assume you’re gay. But though times have changed, Hefner hasn’t. He has described Playboy as a projection of “the wonderful world I dig,” and he has gone on innocently digging it no matter what.

The Heff.

The Girls Next Door

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to toll free America..

Sprint + Asterisk = unlimited domestic phone calls for $68 a month

This is a video of a guy answering a question with what he believes is a correct answer, but Trebek gives him shit over it. (Safe for Work)

I think that should have been an acceptable answer. BTW the guy is Ken Jennings, the current record holder for longest winning streak on Jeopardy.

Jeopardy Goof

I mention this one in particular because Strongbad mentions Linux.

Probably the funniest of the Homestarrunner cartoons.

Strongbad gets a nasty email virus

Did you know that Douglas Hofstadter had a new book on the way?

Douglas R. Hofstadter's long-awaited return to the themes of Godel, Escher, Bach -- an original and controversial view of the nature of consciousness and identity.

What do we mean when we say "I"?

Can thought arise out of matter? Can a self, a soul, a consciousness, an "I" arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be here?

I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the "strange loop" -- a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. Deep down, a human brain is a chaotic seething soup of particles, on a higher level it is a jungle of neurons, and on a yet higher level it is a network of abstractions that we call "symbols." The most central and complex symbol in your brain or mine is the one we both call "I." The "I" is the nexus in our brain where the levels feed back into each other and flip causality upside down, with symbols seeming to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse.

For each human being, this "I" seems to be the realest thing in the world. But how can such a mysterious abstraction be real--or is our "I" merely a convenient fiction? Does an "I" exert genuine power over the particles in our brain, or is it helplessly pushed around by the all-powerful laws of physics?

These are the mysteries tackled in I Am a Strange Loop, Douglas R. Hofstadter's first book-length journey into philosophy since Godel, Escher, Bach.

Compulsively readable and endlessly thought-provoking, this is the book Hofstadter's many readers have long been waiting for.

I Am a Strange Loop, by Douglas Hofstadter

"Whitedust is running a very interesting article with the DEF CON speaker and cryptographer Elonka Dunin. The article covers her career and specifically her involvement with the CIA and other US Military agencies."

Slashdot | Interview With Cryptographer Elonka Dunin