Don't trust anyone online

Researcher says TRUSTe-certified sites more likely to be deceptive
Harvard economics researcher Ben Edelman conducted a study (PDF) to determine if sites certified by TRUSTe, a nonprofit organization that analyzes privacy policies, really respect user privacy. Using MacAfee's SiteAdvisor tool to compare almost 1,000 TRUSTe certified sites with over 500,000 non-certified web sites, Edelman discovered that 'TRUSTe-certified sites are more than twice as likely to be untrustworthy as uncertified sites.'
The moral is, never trust anybody online.

Liquids!

I never thought that a TSA announcement would make me so happy. Travel-size liquids are now allowed on flights. You may now bring liquids as long as they are in travel-size containers (3 oz. or less), and all the containers can fit in a single, quart-size Ziploc. 3 oz. doesn't seem like much, but it's actually pretty big.

Yay!!!

Rabid Turtle



OK, not really rabid. Turtles are just messy consumers of baby food. Especially when they're being force-fed by syringe and they'd rather not eat. Posted by Picasa

Gross!

Gross, yet kind of cool A python ate a pregnant sheep, but was so full that it got stuck in the middle of the road.

Freedom!

I love the smell of nothing to do in the morning!

Just what I've always wanted!

I've always dreamt that one day I would be able to give a turtle multiple injections in one day for several weeks. And the thought of force-feeding a turtle baby food with a syringe, well it's almost too much. And spending hundreds of dollars on turtle blood tests and x-rays, well that would just be icing on the cake. Too bad turtles can't eat cake.

Although the turtle x-ray was awesome. I wonder if I can get a copy.

There!

I got the last signature on Monday evening, around 10pm at McDonald's. I couldn't go to HP because the gates were already locked, so we met at the nearby Mickey D's. Now I have to print it out and turn it in.

Zee score, boss, zee score!

This one's from The Washington Monthly. There a new meta-study out about political science papers. They looked at the z-scores of results in many papers. These are measures of how significant results are. The paper says that a z-score of 1.96 is the boundary between significance and insignificance. They found that there are three times more papers with z-scores slightly above 1.96 than papers with z-scores slightly below 1.96. Meaning that there are lots of political scientists fudging their studies to make the results seem significant.

Almost there...

I have two of the three signatures I need for my thesis, and I'm done (I think) with all the technical aspects of it. I still want to add a couple of references and clean up some of the charts, but it's pretty much done.

I spent the last week staying up into the wee hours of the morning, trying to finish a proof. I eventually realized that I couldn't, because of a relatively small mistake in one of my advisor's papers. I was a little scared to say anything because I didn't want to do anything to jeopardize my graduation, but I was confident that the problem was in that paper and not my thesis. Good thing for me I was right.

mmmmmmmmm

Mrs. Turtle made some delicious bread soup for dinner the other day. It's amazingly filling. I've been adding raisins when I heat the leftovers.

Hummingbird Hawkmoth


Hummingbird Hawkmoths are neither hummingbirds nor hawks, but moths. According to Wikipedia, "they hover in midair while they feed on nectar from flowers ... This hovering capability has evolved only three times in nectar feeders: in hummingbirds, certain bats, and these sphingids [hawkmoths]."

Sloppy Joe Day!

Woohoo!

The Crocodile Hunter Dead

Steve Irwin dead. 04/09/2006. ABC News Online. Very sad. :(

Balkinization

Balkinization (quoting the New York Times):
He earned the enmity of local Communist Party leaders in Shandong Province, in eastern China, when he sought to organize a class-action lawsuit against forced abortions and sterilizations there....

Though central government investigators later found that abuses had occurred in enforcing population policies there, local authorities put Mr. Chen under house arrest for months, and then charged him with destroying property and blocking traffic.

A team of top rights lawyers in the country came to Mr. Chen's aid. They argued that the charges against him were fabrications. The crimes would have been difficult for him to commit, they said, given that he cannot see and was under constant police guard at the time.

But the Beijing lawyers were harassed, beaten and prevented from gathering evidence to support Mr. Chen in court, numerous people involved in his defense said.

On the eve of Mr. Chen's trial last week, three of his lawyers were accused by local thugs of stealing property. The lawyers were then detained by the local police and one of them was held until after Mr. Chen's trial had ended.

When his other lawyers complained to the court that the harassment made a mockery of the legal proceedings and called for a delay, the court appointed new lawyers.

The appointed defense lawyers did not contest any of the charges against Mr. Chen and did not call any witnesses on his behalf.
I don't have any good lines relating this to our base in Cuba.