Verizon’s “Can you hear me now” ad, NSA-style
Parody of Verizon’s “Can you hear me now” ads in light of NSA surveillance bombshell. From Slate. Verizon guy: “Can you hear me now?” President Obama: “Yes, we can.”
Category Archives: Data Mining
Verizon and the NSA – a response to five non-arguments justifying surveillance
Today my tweeting was heavily focused on the revelation that Verizon gave up a significant amount of information to the NSA. Among the many interesting pieces I read was an attempt by Slate’s Will Saletan to justify the surveillance. In a nutshell, Saletan argues: It isn’t wiretapping. It’s judicially supervised. It’s congressionally supervised. It expires […]
Is Zoetrope the next-gen Internet Archive?
Although the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine is a great research tool, its utility is hampered but a lack of basic search mechanisms. One can search by URL and archived links, but basic Google-style boolean searching isn’t available. The Archive once offered a beta boolean search tool, but it never worked and it was later withdrawn. […]
Odysseus and tax day
Nature.com reports that several researchers have combined astronomical data with events in Homer’s Odyssey to pinpoint the exact date on which a returning Odysseus executed his wife’s suitors. Marcelo Magnasco and Constantino Baikouzis identified four astronomical events in the epic poem and calculated dates within 100 years of the fall of Troy that would fit […]