An edifying article on surveillance trends in China.
“What is most disconcerting about China’s surveillance state is how familiar it all feels. When I check into the Sheraton in Shenzhen, for instance, it looks like any other high-end hotel chain

It’s been pretty clear from recent quotes that Davies is on his way out of Doctor Who. Steven Moffat has just been tipped to replace him. He wrote “The Empty Child”, “The Girl in the Fireplace”, and “Blink”, so we may see a yet spookier vision moving forward. Or maybe The Doctor will start travelling with a girlfriend and his and her exes and best friends.

There’s so much to love about this story: A Chess champion, a flying penis, Russians, entertaining comments. It’s delightful.

Partly dyslexia, partly Scrabble, I think led to my noticing this clause in a BBC story about new Barry Bonds perjury indictments:

Making it into the record books as the man who had hit more home runs than anyone else in baseball history should have been the crowning achievement of Mr Bonds’ storied career

'cause, y&#39know, ‘storied’ anagrams to ‘steroid’. What with their being Brits and all, you know the writer did it on purpose.

“[Regulatory Agency] has not approved or disapproved of [product] or determined whether this [description] is accurate or complete. Anyone who tells you otherwise is committing a crime.”
(emphasis mine)

Got a lovely note from someone who wants me to help him launder a huge sum of money, with this appended:
“En finir avec le spam? Yahoo! Mail vous offre la meilleure protection possible contre les messages non sollicités”

Oui! A thousand times oui!

Highlights from an article about procedure changes to assist Federal Air Marshals (important: not made for your convenience or safety):

“the mix-ups, in which marshals are mistaken for terrorism suspects who share the same names, have gone on for years—just as they have for thousands of members of the traveling public.”
“one major air carrier reports roughly 9,000 false positive hits on the watch list every day”
“The Terrorist Screening Center announced April 10 it will automatically review nearly 500,000 names on its watch list that are frequently matched during airport screenings and other law-enforcement encounters with the general public, and remove those names that don’t belong to actual suspects.” (emphasis added)
“Additionally, Mr. Chertoff announced Monday that each airline can now create a system of limited biographical data including a passenger’s date of birth to clear up watch list misidentifications.” (but will they?)

A wonderful family portrait (of the family of Jerry Shores, in Nebraska), including whippet.

In a half-asleep state last night, it seemed vitally important that I let local restaurants know that it was OK to serve me pasta, potatoes, or bread instead of rice during the rice shortage*.

*Actually seems to not necessarily be a shortage (domestically, anyway), but there may be some sales limits in reaction to hoarding. But other starches are still OK with me.