Benlog

Richard Dawkins spoke with Bill O’Reilly on Fox News last night. I thought it would be more explosive, but it remained extremely quiet and civilized. That said, the crux of the issue was addressed: O’Reilly: well, it’s true for me, you see I believe… Dawkins: you mean “true for you” is different from “true for [...]

Last Friday, Professor David King presented the results of his review of the Boston Election Department at a meeting of the MIT Voting Technology Project. His work has been mentioned in the press, but this is the first time that David has been able to publicly comment on his recommendations. There are number of interesting [...]

The Call for Papers for the Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society 2007 is out: ACM Workshop on Privacy in Electronic Society (WPES’07) The need for privacy-aware policies, regulations, and techniques has been widely recognized. This workshop discusses the problems related to privacy in the global interconnected society and their possible solutions. The 2007 [...]

My wife is about to start her medical residency, and as she was filling out a survey sent to all graduating medical students by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), she called me over with a chuckle. One question asked her to express her level of agreement with the following statement: I am confident [...]

Google just released Google Desktop for Mac, and that got me thinking again about the Google and Privacy issue I wrote about here and here. I said that Microsoft might have an interesting privacy advantage, because your data lives on your computer, and their software doesn’t need to send much info to the mothership. By [...]

Yesterday, I gave an introductory lecture to high school juniors and seniors in Ms. Reiner‘s AP Computer Science at the Boston Latin School. Ginger (Reiner) is an old friend who became a high school teacher after a fast-paced software engineering career: the world needs more people like her. It was a fantastic experience, in large [...]