October 3, 2013

There were 3 posts published on October 3, 2013 (this is page 1 of 1).

The Snowden files: why the British public should be worried about GCHQ | World news | The Guardian

Good stuff from the Guardian.

There is a revealing moment in the most recent piece written for the Guardian by Sir David Omand, former head of GCHQ. He said that “the real debate we should be having … is about what privacy in a cyber-connected world can realistically mean given the volumes of data we hand over to the private sector in return for our everyday convenience, and the continued need for warranted access for security and law enforcement.”

That’s a total non-sequitur: Omand seems to think that just because we hand data over to Google and Facebook the government automatically has the right to access it. It’s as if, thanks to a global shortage of sticky gum, envelopes can no longer be sealed, so as a result the government awards itself a new right to mass-intercept and read everybody’s letters.

via The Snowden files: why the British public should be worried about GCHQ | World news | The Guardian.

Pine tree mystery

Dying_Pine-20131003
Over the past few weeks, I began to notice that nearly all of the pine trees surrounding my office are starting to turn brown. This seemed quite unusual to me. I would expect one or two to occasionally die but for nearly all of them to be suffering made me wonder if there might be something serious going on.

I decided to send the North Carolina Forestry Service an email with some pictures and see what they said. I got a call back this morning from Randolph Harrison, the ranger for Wake County, giving me the scoop.

Harrison told me he had visited the site and checked out the trees. The main problem, he said, was that the pines are too close together and competing for sunlight. He said that being so low near Crabtree Creek probably saturates the soil around the pines’ roots. Pines don’t do well where there’s flooding, he said.

I had wondered if the trees might be under attack by pine beetles but Harrison said he hadn’t seen any evidence of that. “Believe me,” he laughed. “if you’ve got a pine beetle problem you’ll know it!”
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Color Run post attracts attention

I’m overwhelmed. Really. My post about the Color Run has gone viral with over 6,400 page views already, simply from posting a single link on my Facebook timeline. My webserver’s been buzzing ever since. Apparently I’ve struck a chord.

I understand the Color Run company is aware of it, too. Should they reach out to me I’ll be happy to share their perspective, too.