Now This is a Cold Winter!

In Russia, of course.  Brrrrr!

Click to enlarge (and make your room feel colder).

San Diego looks very warm by comparison, even when we have a frost...

A Christmas Carol...

The kind you might hear around our house:

Freaky-Deaky Wireless Technology...

Via my mom:

Excellent Article on the TSA's Security Theatre...

From John Wohlstetter at NRO.  His conclusion:

Does anyone really believe that Americans, if given a choice between intimate patdowns and Israel-style interviews, would choose being groped?

The bottom line is that Israel’s methods work. Instead of having ill-trained TSA agents search for bad things, have well-trained agents search for bad people. Profile by behavior and circumstance (cash ticket, one-way trip, etc.), and leave most of us alone. Compile accurate no-fly lists. Heed credible warnings. Ignore political correctness.

Instead, Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano reportedly has two more Bright Ideas: unionizing TSA employees and special reduced screening for Muslims in traditional garb. The former, rejected when the Department of Homeland Security was established, would make it harder to fire incompetent employees. The latter would have the unintended impact of so enraging most Americans that they will insist lawmakers make TSA apply uniform rules.

Israel’s skies have been friendly for 42 years. Not a bad record. We should learn from it.

Go read the whole thing.

More Handy-Dandy Linux Commands...

Some of these were completely new to me, and useful to know.  Example:

man ascii

Can you guess what that does?

MathJax...

Interesting new JavaScript library.  Interesting, that is, if you want to display equations and formulae on your web site...