I fly a lot. Back in the 90s, I flew nearly a million miles in one year (mostly round-trips to Singapore and Japan). Some of the flights I’ve been on nearly ended badly – there was a landing in Orlando where the plane jerked to the side violently in a cross-wind and it looked like the wing was going to hit the ground. Then, there was a landing in Pittsburgh where a tire blew on one side, and things got bumpy.
This is another example of credulous/bad reporting about my field. Whenever I see the press utterly fail to “get” something to do with computer security, I assume they’re equally lazy and wrong about every other field that requires more understanding than “who made Kim Kardashian’s shoes?” (because they are labelled)
It was Raid Night (sunday, 9:00pm) for my World of Warcraft raiding guild, and we had a couple of guests along for the quests. Per usual procedure, we were all collected in audio-chat, logged in to WoW, and most of us had a bottle of wine or some beer open, and as the raid continued – as was our wont – we got merry.
To get to Lavecon, I took the midlands train from London/Euston up toward Birmingham, and got off at Northampton. On the way up, I went past Bletchley, the home of Bletchley Park – where the British code-breakers (including Alan Turing) worked during WWII.
“NASA Scientists Baffled by Mysterious Pit Photographed on Mars” – like a trout to a clickbait fly, I rise and bite at the hook. [huff]
We’ve recently been treated to a round of Sokal-style hoax papers that were declared to invalidate (or at least severely damage) parts of a field, because they were accepted by publications within that field. [pharyngula]
If you like numbers and charts and stuff, you’re going to love FredBlog! [fredblog]
There’s some vague stuff in the news about United airlines cockpit door protocol maybe being partially revealed. Short form: don’t worry.
This is just a quick cross-link, I haven’t got much to add, because it’s already weirder than I can make it. [atlas]
There was some discussion of needles over at Caine’s [affinity] about how needles are made. I’m sure you’ll enjoy this!