Check It Out

Links to cool places or things.

There are 1,524 posts filed in Check It Out (this is page 69 of 153).

I Saw Firsthand How Nuts Airlines Are Getting With Ebola Fear

USAirways flight attendants had a full-fledged freakout Sunday at RDU Airport over a passenger they suspected of having Ebola, according to one local blogger. How did these superhero flight attendants, presumably not experts in infectious diseases, diagnose Ebola you ask? The woman had an African accent and asked for a club soda.

Yesterday I took a US Airways flight from Raleigh-Durham to Washington, DC to drive some Hellcats. So far so good, right? Across the aisle from me was a woman, from Boston, who was feeling a bit queasy. She asked the flight attendant for some club soda. They responded by trying to kick her off the plane. Any idea why?

If we’re absolutely being honest, there were two very simple reasons why: the woman was black, and had an African accent. In the popular culture of panic, those two factors seem to be enough to turn an entire plane full of people around and return to the gate to attempt to kick a paying traveler off a plane.

via I Saw Firsthand How Nuts Airlines Are Getting With Ebola Fear.

Thomas Crowder

Thomas Crowder wrote the first “What I’ve Learned” column for NCModernist in 2008. Here it is again with some of his words of wisdom.

Raleigh native Thomas Crowder began his career as a draftsman with Holloway and Reeves Architects in 1973. In 1976 he moved to Bartholomew and Wakeham Architects until forming his own firm ARCHITEKTUR in 1993.

Crowder was one, if not the last, of North Carolina’s architects to become registered without formal architecture education, grandfathered under NCARB’s apprenticeship program which was abolished in 1984.

In the early 1980s he worked with Harwell Hamilton Harris on additions and renovations to a house for Kathy and Norman Bartholomew, which Harris originally designed for NCSU Professor Duncan Stuart.Crowder served multiple terms on the Raleigh Planning Commission and the Raleigh City Council.

Crowder wrote the very first article in NCMH’s What I’ve Learned series in March 2008:

via Thomas Crowder.

BBC News – Caesium: A brief history of timekeeping

This is a fascinating account of the modern tools we use to keep track of time, and the growing problems we face as our drive towards time accuracy conflicts increasingly with the imperfections of our terrestrial and celestrial home.

The frequency of the transition of strontium, for example, is 444,779,044,095,486.71 Hz. A strontium clock developed in the US would only have lost a second since the earth began: it is accurate to a second in five billion years.

The scientists at NPL reckon optical clocks that keep time to within one second in 14 billion years are on the horizon – that’s longer than the universe has been around.

via BBC News – Caesium: A brief history of timekeeping.

Your Ancestors Didn’t Sleep Like You – Are We Doing It Wrong? | Collective-Evolution

Very interesting. I’d like to try a segmented sleep pattern for a while to see how it makes me feel.

It makes one wonder what lighting up the night has cost us from an evolutionary perspective.

Evidence continues to emerge, both scientific and historical, suggesting that the way in which the majority of us currently sleep may not actually be good for us.

In 2001, historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech published a paper that included over 15 years of research. It revealed an overwhelming amount of historical evidence that humans used to in fact sleep in two different chunks.

via Your Ancestors Didn’t Sleep Like You – Are We Doing It Wrong? | Collective-Evolution.

This New Card Skimmer Is Almost As Thin As A Credit Card | TechCrunch

Credit card fraudsters are winning.

Good old Brian Krebs has the scoop on a new card skimmer found in Europe. How is it different? It literally fits right into the card slot of any ATM, essentially allowing unfettered access to cards as they slide through. Add in a tiny camera and you’ve got a complete card cloning system.

via This New Card Skimmer Is Almost As Thin As A Credit Card | TechCrunch.

Little fraud — but reason to worry — after major credit card hacks – Business – The Boston Globe

Credit card fraud news story.

For American consumers, some specialists say data breaches are the new normal. More than 500 data breaches — not just of financial information, but of passwords, e-mail addresses, and personal information — occurred in the United States in the first half of 2014 alone, roughly on par with 2013 and 2012, according to Risk Based Security, a Virginia consulting firm. Worldwide, there were 76 breaches that exposed credit card numbers over that same period.

via Little fraud — but reason to worry — after major credit card hacks – Business – The Boston Globe.

Hands down, people without kids have better lives—except for this one major thing – Quartz

Despite all of the negatives in their lives—the stress, the unhealthy lifestyle, the meager social life, the financial challenges, the pop culture oblivion, and the longing for younger days—parents still find themselves happier. We can’t prove exactly what drives these numbers. I have good friends who are physically unable to have kids, which no doubt affects their happiness. Some people choose not to have kids because of other hardships in their lives. And, surely, lots of unhappy parents only say they’re happy because they think they’re supposed to.

But maybe joy indeed doesn’t just have to come from extrinsic things and fabulous social lives—it can come from the adventure of raising a family, from teaching and nurturing others, from sacrifice, and from unconditional love.

via Hands down, people without kids have better lives—except for this one major thing – Quartz.

My fellow Americans, please stop being idiots

I agree.

Look, I’ve said it before and I still believe every word. ISIS represents no threat to the United States. None.

Are there terrorists in this world who would like to give us a bloody nose? Absolutely. You know what? You’ve already surrendered an astounding amount of your personal privacy in the name of enabling agencies to reduce that threat. Stop being so eager to bend over and give the little that remains. You’re already going through ridiculous rituals at airports and government offices and museums and bus stations and football stadiums and probably at the local Gymboree, all designed to give you the illusion of safety at an immense cost in both time and money. You’ve already given up everything from the privacy of your phone calls and emails to the ability to take some shampoo on the road. Don’t get out the checkbook to buy more nonsense.

via My fellow Americans, please stop being idiots.

John A. Walker Jr who spied for Soviet Union dies in prison | Mail Online

John Walker happily sold out the United States to the Soviets for a few bucks. Had there been a conflict with the USSR, we would have been toast, with all of our forces exposed thanks to his treason.

I’m a peace-loving guy but if John Walker had gotten shanked while in prison you wouldn’t have seen my cry. He was the worst shipmate you can imagine, a buddy-fucker who gleefully stabbed his shipmates in the back all for a few bucks.

And, yes, I see a huge difference in the actions of Walker and Snowden. I believe Snowden loves his country and rightfully called it out for training its sights on ordinary Americans. [Update 23 Apr 2019: Snowden is a tool of Russia.] Walker, on the other hand, was a cheap intelligence whore with no apparent morals whatsoever. Prison was too good for him.

A former American sailor convicted during the Cold War of leading a family spy ring for the Soviet Union has died in a prison hospital in North Carolina.Retired Navy Warrant Officer John A. Walker Jr. died Thursday at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesman Chris Burke said.The cause of death was not immediately released. He was 77.

via John A. Walker Jr who spied for Soviet Union dies in prison | Mail Online.