Ramblings & ephemera
photo credit: 708718
From Annie Karni’s “Gabbing Taxi Drivers Talking on ‘Party Lines’” (The New York Sun: 11 January 2007):
It’s not just wives at home or relatives overseas that keep taxi drivers tied up on their cellular phones during work shifts. Many cabbies say that when they are chatting on duty, it’s often with their [...]
Posted on May 30th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, language & literature, politics, security, tech in changing society | No Comments »
From Glen Johnson’s “Massachusetts may consider a mileage charge” (AP: 17 February 2009):
A tentative plan to overhaul Massachusetts’ transportation system by using GPS chips to charge motorists a quarter-cent for every mile behind the wheel has angered some drivers.
…
But a “Vehicle Miles Traveled” program like the one the governor may unveil this week has already [...]
Posted on March 5th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From a Special Operations officer quoted in Tom Ricks’s Inbox (The Washington Post: 5 October 2008):
One of the most interesting operations was the laundry mat [sic]. Having lost many troops and civilians to bombings, the Brits decided they needed to determine who was making the bombs and where they were being manufactured. One bright fellow [...]
Posted on February 12th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, law, politics, security | No Comments »
From Stephen J. Dubner’s interview with Bruce Schneier in “Bruce Schneier Blazes Through Your Questions” (The New York Times: 4 December 2007):
There’s a huge difference between nosy neighbors and cameras. Cameras are everywhere. Cameras are always on. Cameras have perfect memory. It’s not the surveillance we’ve been used to; it’s wholesale surveillance. I wrote about [...]
Posted on December 17th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
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From Paul Ingrassia’s “How Detroit Drove Into a Ditch” (The Wall Street Journal: 25 October 2008):
This situation doesn’t stem from the recent meltdown in banking and the markets. GM, Ford and Chrysler have been losing billions since 2005, when the U.S. economy was still healthy. The financial crisis does, however, greatly exacerbate Detroit’s woes. As [...]
Posted on November 27th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
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From Brian Ross’ “Fake FedEx Trucks; When the Drugs Absolutely Have to Get There” (ABC News: 18 January 2008):
Savvy criminals are using some of the country’s most credible logos, including FedEx, Wal-Mart, DirecTV and the U.S. Border Patrol, to create fake trucks to smuggle drugs, money and illegal aliens across the border, according to a [...]
Posted on November 22nd, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, security | No Comments »
From Bruce Schneier’s “Getting Free Food at a Fast-Food Drive-In” (Crypto-Gram: 15 September 2007):
It’s easy. Find a fast-food restaurant with two drive-through windows: one where you order and pay, and the other where you receive your food. This won’t work at the more-common U.S. configuration: a microphone where you order, and a single window where [...]
Posted on November 21st, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: security | No Comments »
From Victor Bogado da Silva Lins’ letter in Bruce Schneier’s Crypto-Gram (15 May 2004):
You mentioned in your last crypto-gram newsletter about a cover that makes a license plate impossible to read from certain angles. Brazilian people have thought in another low-tech solution for the same “problem”, they simply tie some ribbons to the plate or [...]
Posted on April 20th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: security | No Comments »
From the email archives:
On Sunday 30 May 2004 11:32 pm, Jerry Hubbard wrote:
> How is everyone? Hope the storms did not harm anyone.
My basement flooded twice, my tenant’s kitchen had water streaming in through the window frame, our backyard fence was blown down, the umbrella on our deck was blown off the deck into the [...]
Posted on November 3rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, true stories | Comments Off
From Farhad Manjoo’s “iPod: I love you, you’re perfect, now change” (Salon: 23 October 2006):
There are very few consumer products about which you’d want to read a whole book — the Google search engine, the first Mac, the Sony Walkman, the VW Beetle. Levy proves that the iPod, which turns five years old today, belongs [...]
Posted on October 23rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Evelyn Nieves’s “Slab City Journal; For Thousands, a Town of Concrete Slabs Is a Winter Retreat” (The New York Times: 18 February 2001):
Every winter, when the Winnebagos and pickups shake the desert off Beal Road like a small earthquake, Ben Morofsky gets wistful for the 120-degree days of summer, and the peace of living [...]
Posted on October 1st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, fiction | Comments Off
From Charlie LeDuff’s “Parked in a Desert, Waiting Out the Winter of Life” (The New York Times: 17 December 2004):
Directions to purgatory are as follows: from Los Angeles drive east past Palm Springs into the bowels of the Mojave Desert. Turn south at the stench of the Salton Sea. Proceed down Highway 111 to the [...]
Posted on October 1st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, fiction | Comments Off
From Robert Sullivan’s “An Impala’s-Eye View of Highway History” (The New York Times: 14 July 2006):
Another traveler, Dwight D. Eisenhower, spent two months in 1919 driving a military convoy across the country; the shoddy roads left a lasting impression on him. After World War II he studied Hitler’s autobahn and concluded that the American military [...]
Posted on July 18th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, history | Comments Off
From PR Newswire’s “OnStar Achieves Another First as Winner of Good Housekeeping’s ‘Good Buy’ Award for Best Servic” (3 December 2004):
Each month on average, OnStar receives about 700 airbag notifications and 11,000 emergency assistance calls, which include 4,000 Good Samaritan calls for a variety of emergency situations. In addition, each month OnStar advisors respond to [...]
Posted on July 13th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, security, tech in changing society, technology | Comments Off
From Charles R. Smith’s “Big Brother on Board: OnStar Bugging Your Car“:
GM cars equipped with OnStar are supposed to be the leading edge of safety and technology. …
However, buried deep inside the OnStar system is a feature few suspected – the ability to eavesdrop on unsuspecting motorists.
The FBI found out about this passive listening feature [...]
Posted on July 11th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, law, security, tech in changing society, technology | Comments Off
From Paul Graham’s “Made in USA” (November 2004):
Americans are good at some things and bad at others. We’re good at making movies and software, and bad at making cars and cities. And I think we may be good at what we’re good at for the same reason we’re bad at what we’re bad at. We’re [...]
Posted on July 7th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, history, tech in changing society, technology | Comments Off
From Jascha Hoffman’s “Crash Course” (Legal Affairs: July/August 2004):
Typically there are two kinds of injuries [in hit-and-run cases], those from the initial impact, and the ones from hitting and sliding on the asphalt, known as “road rash.” To illustrate the different types of impact a pedestrian can suffer, Rich cued up a series of video [...]
Posted on May 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: language & literature, law, science | Comments Off
From Popular Mechanics‘ “How far can you drive on a bushel of corn?“:
It is East Kansas Agri-Energy’s ethanol facility, one of 100 or so such heartland garrisons in America’s slowly gathering battle to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels. The plant processes about 13 million bushels of corn to produce approximately 36 million gal. of [...]
Posted on May 9th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: politics, science, tech in changing society, technology | Comments Off
From "For a G.M. Family, the American Dream Vanishes" in The New York Times:
G.M.’s problem, at least in terms of its costs, is the enormous price of health care benefits for hundreds of thousands of retirees. G.M. is the largest private provider of health care, covering more than a million Americans. …
G.M. plans to cut [...]
Posted on November 20th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business | Comments Off
From "Unwanted at Any Speed", a review of Richard Porter’s Crap Cars in The New York Times Book Review:
The DeLorean DMC-12 of 1981-83, he writes, had an engine “so weak it would struggle to pull a hobo off your sister.” Not since Raymond Chandler have I met a metaphor so much more powerful than would [...]
Posted on November 20th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, on writing | Comments Off
