Events

Some rules of flying: Schedule your outbound flights so that delays are inconvenient but not fatal to the purpose of your trip.  Know that the atmosphere is immense, and airplanes are small. Ground holds happen for very good reasons, all of them about you surviving the flight.  Charge your phone.  So, yeah, we're on a hold pad for another half hour... 

For the next 52 hours, I'll be traveling, for a really horrible reason. I'm not traveling for work, nor really for vacation, though I will admit to enjoying it (in a way my friends don't really understand). No, I'm trying to keep my American Airlines elite status for another year, because so far in 2015 I have traveled less than in any year of the past 10. So tonight I'm flying to New York, tomorrow to Los Angeles, then back to Chicago on Saturday evening, about 5,500 miles total. The routing provided...

Scott Hanselman has a good rant today about how software developers increasingly use their own customers to do quality-assurance (QA) testing: Technology companies are outsourcing QA to the customer and we're doing it using frequent updates as an excuse. This statement isn't specific to Apple, Google, Microsoft or any one organization. It's specific to ALL organizations. The App Store make it easy to update apps. Web Sites are even worse. How often have you been told "clear your cache" which is the 2015...

By "secrets" I mean any data you don't want known to the public. In a recent incident (via Schneier), that should include posting a selfie of yourself holding a winning betting ticket: A woman has lost $825 she won betting on the 2015 Melbourne Cup after she posted a photo of herself holding the winning ticket on Facebook. According to The Daily Mail, a woman named Chantelle placed a $20 bet on the 100-to-1 shot Prince of Penzance at this year’s Melbourne Cup, Australia’s most prestigious Thoroughbred...

Via James Fallows, the story of a marine hit by an IED; something to think about on this anniversary of another war's end: Some now call it the Forever War, and every day that name grows more appropriate. Soldiers are dying again in Iraq. President Obama extended the mission in Afghanistan through 2017 after the city of Kunduz fell to the Taliban in October. Leaked classified documents reveal a barely acknowledged drone war in Somalia and East Africa. Plus strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, direct action...

More things I haven't read yet: Josh Marshall compares Ben Carson to Mr Magoo The Daily WTF describes a fate worthy of Brazil CityLab explains the slow demise of London's Garden Bridge James Fallows hails a young journalist for standing his ground professionally and politely Iraq War veteran Will Bardenwerper slams the NFL for trivializing patriotism And a customer technician spent 90 minutes over two days worth of conference calls denying that something obviously his responsibility was not, in fact...

I'm totally swamped today, so here are the things I haven't read yet: How smart people can believe crazy things (e.g., Ben Carson's crazy) What Miami is doing about rising sea levels Richard Florida explains how people choose where they live The agony of Lake Shore Drive will get worse before Thanksgiving ReSharper 10 has some bugs, including one that is getting in my way big time USCIS is no better at managing IT projects than anyone else How does American Airlines set its prices? Veterans react to the...

I'll have more on this when I digest it further. This week, U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ) released a report showing that the Department of Defense has spent $7m sponsoring patriotic displays at sports events. I am horrified. James Fallows is gobsmacked, saying: "I wasn't cynical enough." The title of this post comes from a circa-1900 essay by Mark Twain. And, of course, we should all re-read Sinclair Lewis. And Edward Gibbon. The end is not near. We still have hundreds of years...

Thank you, Dr. L:

TPM's Josh Marshall isn't saying so exactly, but there does seem to be something off about the good doctor's campaign: Hucksters and cheats can be found everywhere. But particularly on the right there is a significant layer of people in the business of fleecing outraged and/or low-information conservatives of their money. Some of it you see with those advertisements for buying gold on Fox News. ... But the big thing on the right are various fundraising groups that exist largely to fundraise. So for...