Two notes of note:

• Apple has recalled the Ultracompact (sic) USB Power Adapter that they provided with the iPhone 3G. It is not that the device will burst into flame or do anything so catastrophic; The problem is simply that the metal prongs aren’t perfectly anchored in that delicious little white plastic cube, and “under certain conditions” the prongs break off and remain in the electrical outlet when the adapter is unplugged. As anyone who has ever before seen two shiny and arcing bits of metal sticking out of an electrical socket can tell you, it is humanly impossible to resist immediately grabbing barehandedly at such conductors. Y’all iPhone cult members can get your USB Power Adapters exchanged for free from Apple.
• Some (insult deleted as I don’t want to be hacked) college student cracked open Alaska Governor, Republican Vice Presidential candidate, and former Miss Wasilla Sarah Palin’s yahoo email account¹ and posted its contents online.
  
  3/o2d399Jp says "arrf"
  According to the cracker’s 1st person account, he simply reset her yahoo email password by guessing his way through the security questions that are part of the “I forgot my password” process on Yahoo and on many other sites. I long ago realized the vulnerability of such identity verification processes which use simplistic questions like “What is your pet’s name?”. This is why for years I’ve been using a “strong password generator” application to make sure my pets’ names all are of sufficient length and contain enough symbols and numbers to be difficult to guess. You should do the same.

That is all .

1. Yes, I think there ought to be a law restricting public servants from using private email servers for government business simply to evade scrutiny, and yes I think it sounds like possible evidence tampering that her emails have conveniently been deleted given that there are ongoing investigations that have subpoenaed Gov. Palin’s email messages, but I still think it is sick and wrong that someone has cracked her account and posted the information online. [↩]

People have written me today to remind me that it’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day. The most basic way to celebrate this recently-created holiday is to randomly scatter the word “arr” into one’s utterances. Arr. People here in the U.S. think this is “fun”, but they only get to do this one day a year.

One of the characteristics of the Beijing dialect is the addition of a “retroflex ‘r’” to the end of many a word. When I lived in Beijing, I liked to imagine that every day was “Talk Like a Pirate Day”, arr.

Given the fact that modern piracy is more likely to involve someone holding an RPG while shouting commands in Indonesian or Somali than anything resembling Captain Jack Sparrow and friends, and given the fact that Beijingers today say ‘arr’ more frequently than has any pirate in the history of piracy and piracy-related entertainment, I’d like to propose that this international holiday be renamed to “Talk Like a Beijinger Day”. Who’s with me? Arr.

The wonder of modern Beijing. No tilt-shift action here, just a photo taken in the Beijing Urban Planning Museum

Tokyo Police Club played The Music Box last night, and I and a friend who likes to go nameless attended. I thought the show was great, and found the band’s amped-up shoegazer style refreshing, he had the opposite reaction, and left early. I think it helps to hear their music and know some lyrics beforehand –it’s deceptively non-accessible stuff despite the driving beat. The acoustics in the club were such that it was difficult to pick out the different layers of sound.

I shot a few photos with my digital point-and-shoot, they can be accessed by clicking the photos in this post.

Article that made me laugh this morning:

Obama Deletes Another Unread MoveOn.org E-Mail

“They already know I’m going to vote for Obama,” Obama added. “The only people who sign up for this thing are Democrats anyway. They’re just preaching to the choir.”

…

“I know this election is important and everything,” Obama added. “But these people seriously need to relax.”

Love the Onion.

A remarkable headline?

I took a look at Google News this afternoon and noticed the following remarkable headline, “Palin Misleads: Accuses Obama of Supporting Tax Hikes”. That headline is not remarkable on its face, but what took me by surprise was that it was apparently the headline of an article on FOXNews.com (slogan “We Report. You Decide.”). I decided long ago that Fox News is partisan in the general direction of the current Republican party, so I did a double-take when noting that they’d published an article with a headline so sharply critical of the GOP Vice Presidential candidate.

Click image to see screenshot at full size.

I clicked through and read the article. Though it wasn’t the attack-dog piece on Palin that the headline had led me to expect, it did include some salient criticisms of her recent statements –and was more balanced than I’ve come to expect from Fox. Then I noticed that the article’s headline had been defanged from the original, and now reads,”Palin Accuses Obama of Supporting Tax Hikes”. My guess is that when the article was first posted, the headline included the word “Misleads”, and this is the headline that was present when the Google News bot crawled the Fox News site, indexed the article, and built the database that is used to auto-generate Google News pages. Sometime in the 10 minutes that elapsed from the moment I loaded the Google News front page and clicked the Fox News article, the editors at Fox News changed the article’s headline to change the focus from the fact that Palin made misleading statements to the simple fact that she made accusations. I wonder if the contents of the article were similarly adjusted.

Click image to see screenshot at full size.

As an aside, I’d encourage anyone who is curious about the respective Obama and McCain tax plans to take a look at the infographic and discussion on this page. That infographic is an attempt by some statistically-minded bloggers to bring some clarity to the table and correct the distortions and mistakes made by many such graphics recently published in print media. Rathergate proved that blogs and internet forums can make up a powerful “5th estate” to keep tabs on and correct the media’s failings. I think it’s interesting to see that this netizen watchdog role encompasses even infographics.

Technorati Tags: Fifth Estate, Fourth Estate, Fox News, McCain, Media, Obama, Palin, Politics

Every few days I get one of these cheery emails from Facebook’s “Compare People app”, telling me that I’m falling in various rankings amongst my friends. I never seem to go up, ever. I’m not sure how that’s possible. This isn’t a complaint, I think it’s interesting. I’m curious what happens when I hit bottom.

Fuel consumption during my 20-minute drive to work this morning along the semi-clogged 101 freeway. The y-axis at right is miles-per-gallon. After years of wasteful, 28mpg LA driving, it’s refreshing to do wasteful, 50mpg LA driving.

Technorati Tags: auto-eroticism, driving, environment, environmentalism, fuel economy, graphs, infographics, my miles-per-gallon is bigger than your miles-per-gallon, petroleum, prius, commuting

I, my Dad, my new car, and a couple of coffee mugs, all arrived back to LA safe and sound.

Posted by email from Zachary’s posterous

Having some pea soup for breakfast at “Pea Soup Andersen’s” in Santa Nella. This restaurant has been a pioneer in the use of non-petroleum- based energy sources for marketing purposes –I don’t think their iconic windmill generates power, but it does bring in customers.

Posted by email from Zachary’s posterous

Timing a shot is difficult with this iPhone camera. I like some of the resulting compositions.

We’ve been listening to many film scores, and I got it into my head that I’d like to pick up a copy of Bear McCreary’s score for Battlestar Galactica. So I brought up the google maps app to find the nearest zip code, then brought up safari and checked the stock of all the nearest borders bookstores. No luck, the CD is out of stock out here. It’s fun putting this phone through its paces though.

Sent from an iPhone

Posted by email from Zachary’s posterous