I’ve run across a couple different RFID-related items today: first, the RF-blocking wallet (hmm… I do have a birthday coming up); then, news that RFID tags can be used to spread malicious code.

Might have to make a Costco run tonight.

Sarah adds: there’s another list here, but it seems fairly generic, since it points out the usefulness of having anti-diarrheal medication, but not that you might need way more TP than you might usually have on hand. Sorry for that mental image. Also, check out lots of books from the library so you always have a good flu amount of entertainment.

After Jane pointed her readers at the Jack Benny program scripts on tobaccodocuments.org, I did some browsing. Of many many alarming items, one is a letter from William Randolph Hearst complaining about tobacco companies advertising cigarettes in the comics section of the paper. The tobacco guys assure him that they are advertisting to adults. Who read the funnies.

Also, there was a cigarette brand called “Spud”!

Two especially enjoyable moments from my commute home last night:
1. Just as dusk was falling, a sudden heavy shower starts, but I am warm and dry in my car, with Charles Trenet playing on the car stereo.
2. Driving behind a Subaru Outback with the vanity plate FUBARU

The Grauniad suggests that the use of two stolen satellite phones to run sex and gambling services means that Iraq is on its way to Western-style democracy.

Pretty soon we’ll be able to take off the Iraqi people’s stabilisers and marvel as the line representing their electoral turnout begins its sharp descent, in exact counterpoint to the line representing the number of Temptation Island reruns being watched in the region.

France seems to be seriously considering legalizing the peer-to-peer exchange of copyright-protected material. Wow. No doubt the day after it happens, Hollywood and the record labels will close up shop and we’ll never have another movie or record again.

I was expecting to see a whole bunch of different bingo options for Sunday night’s awards show, but a quick survey reveals only M&Ms and the St Cloud Times have made the effort. I’ll be printing the M&Ms versions later this weekend.

A whole bunch of writers miss the point: the problem is not "Islamism"; the problem is religious fundamentalism of any stripe, whether it’s bombing abortion clinics, referring to fellow believers as Nazis for having the audacity to pray at a holy site, or rioting because somebody made fun of your prophet. And the problem isn’t really even fundamentalism qua fundamentalism; the problem begins when the fundamentalists want anybody outside their clique to have to live by their rules. The Amish, as far as I know, haven’t ever taken to the streets busting heads in response to their culture being misrepresented or treated with a lack of respect.

Some canned beans are being recalled after the discovery of a bird head. As with coughing up roofing nails, this sort of thing happens more than you might think…

Religious fundamentalists in Indonesia have succeeded in getting an artist and his models arrested, even before they’ve gotten their desired anti-porn bill passed into law. Religious fundamentalists here already use "pornography" and "obscenity" interchangeably, implying that porn is not constitutionally protected. I’m interested to note that virtually all the coverage I’ve seen of this issue is from the Australian press, even though the pressure in Indonesia is from the same factions that are so upset about those cartoons.