Benlog

It turns out, there is a gene that predisposes to left-handedness. Fascinating stuff. But this is the kind of article where you wish you could ask more questions:

Australian research published last year found left-handed people can think quicker when carrying out tasks such as playing computer games or playing sport.

interesting!

And French researchers concluded that being [...]

In 2004, I appeared on a panel at Harvard alongside Debra Bowen, who was then a California State Senator. I found her to be extremely sharp, and particularly insightful about voting issues at a time when most of the public debate was thoroughly confused (it’s gotten a little bit better since).
Ms. Bowen has since become [...]

So the iPhone is selling like crazy and web 2.0 developers are jumping on the bandwagon with iphone hacking sessions, an IRC channel, a mailing list, and some really neat tricks to squeeze unexpected features out of the Safari web browser. Apple has set up developer tech talks to fuel the movement. There’s also a [...]

Julie Amero is a substitute teacher who faces the possibility of jail time because the classroom computer displayed pornographic popups to teenage kids. Though she tried to stop it, she was somehow blamed by an incompetent and overreaching school administration. Thankfully, she recently obtained a new trial. I hope this one is a bit less [...]

On June 29th, the day the iPhone launched, I posted the following to a private mailing list:

I suspect there’ll also be an ipod/DRM effect. Once the ipod got super hot, you had folks demanding that Apple “make it compatible with other music stores.” What a riot it was to see even the ex-head of the [...]

The No-Vote-By-Mail blog cites me again, and in so doing points me to a a note by King County in Washington about how they are ensuring that vote-by-mail preserves ballot secrecy.
Okay, let’s say I believe everything they say. The ballot is double-enveloped, there are no traces of who the voter is on the ballot, there [...]

I’ve had a bit too much weird spam lately, so I’ve added a CAPTCHA system where, if you want to post a comment, you have to recognize and type in two deformed words to prove you’re not a robot. I found this specific system, reCAPTCHA on Lessig’s Blog. Here’s how they describe themselves:

reCAPTCHA asks commenters [...]

Facebook launched a platform that lets third-party developers add Facebook applications. This is visionary, and it’s very very cool (though I’m not sure it’s the revolution everyone is talking about.) The problem, of course, is authentication. Take a look at the Zoho Facebook application. Zoho is a separate company. They have their own accounts. So [...]

A few days ago, the Google Healthcare blog carried an entry that criticized Michael Moore’s latest film, Sicko, for not providing a balanced view of the health care world. The reaction in the blogosphere was clearly negative, with folks wondering if Google was shilling for pharmaceutical companies. I haven’t seen the movie, so I won’t [...]