I became fascinated yesterday of a relatively-unsung North Carolina hero, Malcom McLean. It’s not much of a stretch to say McLean more or less revolutionized world trade with his invention of the standardized shipping container. Not bad for a truck driver from Maxton, NC who only had a high school education.
Someone ought to tell his story.
I sent this to the N&O regarding Rep. Paul “Skip” Stam’s apparent reversal of support for redistricting reform.
It is disappointing to see Rep. Paul “Skip” Stam, once a champion of redistricting reform, backing a bill that quite plainly gerrymanders the Wake County Commission. We the voters lose again.
My original version called Stam “long a champion,” but it appears his days of championing redistricting reform are over. I hope one version or another makes it to print.
I’m thrilled authorities caught this sick bastard who allegedly committed this heinous crime. I only hope, though, that the innocent man they first arrested can put his life back together. He spent 105 days in jail and lost his house and job. How can this be fixed?
A wildfire of social media helped federal authorities find and arrest a Raleigh man accused of sexually abusing an eight-year-old girl as part of a suspected child pornography ring in Harnett County.
On Wednesday, federal agents asked for the public’s help in locating “John Doe,” a man they described as a “child predator.” They provided a photo of the man and said he might be using the name Peter Gilbert.
via Media helped feds arrest suspected ‘child predator’ in Raleigh | News & Observer News & Observer.
Found in the attic a few weeks ago is this letter from the late Garner mayor F. Don Rohrbaugh, thanking me for my service on Garner’s Land Use Ordinance rewrite committee. It was my very first public service (outside of the military).
Thanks, Don (wherever you are), for getting me started!
Daylight saving time strikes again Sunday at 2 a.m., at least for every state outside Hawaii and Arizona. Though DST has been part of life in the United States since World War I, its origin and effects remain misunderstood, even by some of the lawmakers responsible for it. Here are some common myths.
via 5 myths about daylight saving time – The Washington Post.
Most Americans will "spring forward" this weekend and lose an hour to daylight saving time. But daylight savings is hardly standardized in the United States, much less the world: Both Hawaii and Arizona will stick with standard time on Sunday, and Europe won’t spring forward until March 30th. Few other countries practice daylight savings at all.
Michael Downing, a lecturer at Tufts University and author of the book "Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time," started wondering about the history and purpose of daylight savings a few years ago. He began to research the phenomenon and realized that most of the justifications for the practice that he remembered had very little to do with its existence.
via Who Really Benefits from Daylight Saving Time? – The Takeaway.
Here’s a good, in-depth look at the perils Hillary faced when she opted to run her own mailserver.
The private email address for Hillary Clinton, which became the talk of Washington this week and created her first major speed bump on her road to the White House, has actually been freely available on the Internet for a year, thanks to a colorful Romanian hacker known as Guccifer.
On March 14, 2013, Guccifer—his real name is Marcel-Lehel Lazar—broke into the AOL account of Sidney Blumenthal, a journalist, former White House aide to Bill Clinton, and personal confidante of Hillary Clinton. Lazar crowed about his exploits to journalists, disclosing a set of memos Blumenthal had written to Clinton in 2012, as well as the personal email address and domain she’s now known to have used exclusively for her personal and official correspondence.
Few journalists noticed that at the time, and it caused no ruckus in Washington. But the fact that Clinton’s private email was now public means she was not just putting her own information at risk, but potentially those in the circle of people who knew her private address.
via Hillary’s Secret Email Was a Cyberspy’s Dream Weapon – The Daily Beast.
At a follow-up trip to my neurologist I mentioned catching myself not breathing occasionally at night, at which point he ordered up a sleep study. Unlike the previous sleep studies I’d done several years ago, this was a home sleep study. FedEx delivered a sleep study kit to my door Wednesday with instructions on how to use it.
ResMed ApneaLink Air
We went to the kids’ wonderful Pieces of Gold presentation and got home late. I was in little mood to dig through the paperwork and assemble this thing, and yet I was also tired of being tired all the time. I fumbled through setting up this ResMed ApneaLink Air device that was about the size of a pack of cigarettes and had tiny hoses and wires poking out of it. Surprisingly, it was more comfortable than I thought and soon I was snoozing away.
My directions said to wear it two consecutive nights, so after the second night (last night), I prepared the kit for shipping back. As I wrapped the cables up, I noticed the USB port on the box.
Hmm, I thought. I bet this acts as a USB drive if I plug it into my laptop.
Continue reading
No, it’s not always a room filled with wires and glowing blue lights. It’s probably not even the size of your furnace. The personal email server used by Hillary Rodham Clinton during her time as secretary of state was probably about the size of your office desktop computer and could have been tucked quietly in a corner somewhere.
She’s come a long way since 1997, when Clinton’s staff bought the then-first lady a copy of the book "E-Mail for Dummies."
Setting up your own email server is something only the geekiest of tech geeks do because of the serious hassles involved, including spending every waking hour fending off spam. Like brewing your own beer, it’s typically done just for fun — a way to challenge your smarts and fill the time. It also appeals to those who fear the government is sniffing around and could compel companies like Google or Yahoo to release customer data.
via 'Homebrew' email servers: Genius as well as sneaky? :: WRAL.com.
This is a fascinating read about the oil market that took me a while to really get, but it finally makes sense.
Tl;dr The Saudis are selling all the oil they can now because they’re worried that oil is quickly becoming obsolete. They’d rather sell at a drastic discount than be left with oceans of oil but no buyers.
Most analysts believe Saudi Arabia refuses to cut production because it wants to shake out its higher-cost competitors or because it wants to punish Iran and Russia. There may be some truth in those theories, writes Elias Hinckley, strategic advisor and head of the energy practice with international law firm Sullivan and Worcester, but they miss the deeper motivation of the Saudis. Saudi Arabia, he says, sees the end of the Oil Age on the horizon and understands that a great deal of global fossil fuel reserves will have to stay underground to avoid catastrophic global warming. “That’s why it has opened the valves on the carbon asset bubble.”
