Today I Learned

“Martha Root”, dressed as Pink Ranger, Chaos Computer Club, 2025 I feel conflicted. On the one hand, it was illegal. On the other hand, they were bad people and it was very cool. I once attempted to describe the “ hacker mindset ”, which is less about technology, and more about trying to find innovative ways to do things – for many “old-school” hackers, it was far more about solving puzzles. Over the years, the word “hacker” has become more and more difficult to define. Depen

Linus and Sally in class, from Peanuts, via YouTube.com Far too often, if you ask an InfoSec professional how to be more secure, your answer will be similar to that of Charlie Brown’s teacher, as you hear a bunch of technical jargon and details of specific vulnerabilities or attacks. This is not really specific to InfoSec, but more a general issue with experts - an occupational hazard, where people understand their field of expertise, but don’t yet understand it well enough t

Wile E Coyote and Roadrunner, via Wikipedia.org Wile E Coyote  is one of my favourite Looney Tunes characters. I love the wonderfully absurd plans he comes up with in order to catch the Roadrunner. These range from such simple things as pulling the pin from a hand grenade, then throwing the pin, to ridiculously complicated, Rube Goldberg-like  plans (often with blueprints) that fail spectacularly. A common element of many of these plans is some product from Acme Corporation .

Cover Art, Astounding Science Fiction, October 1941, via Wikipedia.org One of my favourite stories by Robert A Heinlein , was actually written by Anson MacDonald. Early in his career, Heinlein wrote under several pseudonyms , but only one of them was “obvious”. I’m not aware of any way to link the names Lyle Monroe, John Riverside, Caleb Saunders, or Simon York to Heinlein. In contrast, knowing that Robert Anson Heinlein was, at that time, married to Leslyn MacDonald made “An

Pac-Man Fever, by Buckner & Garcia, via Wikipedia A Pac-Man song? I should not have found that surprising, but I did. Originally called...

Tai Chi Single Whip – sculpture by Ju Ming, via Wikipedia.org Even though I’ve written several times about martial arts training,...

42 and Douglas Adams – Numberphile, via YouTube I suppose it’s not surprising that I’ve mentioned The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy...

The Knife performing at Melt! Festival in 2013 Connections are fun, and humans are very good at making them. Let’s start at the end, and...

Stg Schultz, Hogan’s Heroes, via YouTube For those who don’t immediately hear the words “I know nothing. NOTHING!”, this is Sgt Schultz ,...

Tux, the Linux Mascot, via Wikipedia This is Tux . He is a penguin. He’s also the official mascot of the Linux kernel , which is the...

Tuwiuwok Bluff, via Haven, Maine fan wiki When I thought about the TV series Haven , I remembered vague details, and thought it must have...

Let’s talk about the end of the world, shall we? Or maybe not. Fortunately, some stories of impending doom are overestimated, and some...

It’s been more than two years since I last posted, so I’m trying to remember which buttons to press to make this happen. Life has a...

When the COVID-19 pandemic began (need to be specific here, to avoid confusion ...), I recall a lot of people emphasizing the need to...

“Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth” “δῶς μοι πᾶ στῶ καὶ τὰν γᾶν κινάσω” Archimedes is described as a...

“Why can’t we all just get along?” This was the question asked by the incomparable Jack Nicholson in Mars Attacks! Nicholson’s...

M. C. Escher has always been one of my favourite artists. From the moment I first saw his work (I think it might have been Waterfall ),...

#TIL that the iconic image of the album cover for the famous album The Wall was not actually the original cover. In fact, the text “Pink...

A farmer asked a physicist to help him figure out how to increase milk production. After gathering data and studying the problem, the...

Recently, I was listening to an old episode of The Skeptics Guide to the Universe , (actually, episode 803, dated 28-Nov-2020 ), in which...