Today I Learned

Appointing incompetent loyalists, via Wikimedia Commons I’d really like to describe the Trump administration as an example of Weaponized Incompetence, but I really can’t. Intuitively, the term seems to fit, but it already has a definition in the psychological literature. Setting Trump aside for the moment, the term refers to strategically avoiding responsibility by pretending to be incapable so that someone else helps, takes over, or stops delegating tasks. Over time, the per

“Beware of the Leopard”, from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, via Wikimedia Commons In the classic scene from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (I refer, of course, to the 1981 TV version), Arthur Dent confronts the person trying to bulldoze his house, who explains that the plans for the demolition had been placed on display. “On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar.” “That’s the display department.” “With a torch.” “The lights had probably gone.” “So had t

Da Vinci sketch of the human brain and skull (c. 1510), via Wikimedia.org NOTE: An edited version of this article appeared on The Skeptic (UK). “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Winston Churchill, 11-Nov-1947 The term “neurodiversity” has been used in recent years to describe the natural variations in human neurolo

Bubbles, from Finding Nemo, via YouTube.com Finding Nemo was a great film, filled with endless references, sight-gags, and characters, making it the sort of movie you can watch again and again. Among the wonderful scenes is one with Bubbles (voiced by Stephen Root), who gets a bit... excited when he sees bubbles. As Gill says, “Fish aren’t meant to be in a box, kid. It does things to you.” But why would people be thinking so much about bubbles? It’s not as if we’re in the mid

Bronze coin of Pontius Pilate, Procurator of Judaea © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence. dixit itaque ei Pilatus ergo rex es tu respondit Iesus tu dicis quia rex sum ego ego in hoc natus sum et ad hoc veni in mundum ut testimonium perhibeam veritati omnis qui est ex veritate audit meam vocem dicit ei Pilatus quid est veritas et cum hoc dixisset iterum exivit ad I

Alan Turing, 1951, via Wikipedia.org It’s been over seventy-five years since Alan Turing came up with the Imitation Game in his 1950 paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, and I have previously written written about the Turing Test. After so many years, and so much work on Artificial Intelligence, there is a lot of criticism of the test, and discussion of how to beat it, and systems which can now “beat” it, but not much on what comes next. Does beating the Turing test m

Phrack, via https://phrack.org/ Language is constantly evolving, not only by time and location, but also because of usage and changing cultural associations. When I think of the word “manifesto”, the example which leaps to mind is the Communist Manifesto, obviously due to the title, but also because it is short and clearly laid out. Manifesto is defined as “a written statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its issuer”, and such statements are general

Principles behind the Agile Manifesto Experience is learning the hard way that something won’t work, is harder than it looks, or will come back to haunt you. Learning from history is where you find that something didn’t work, was harder than it looked, or came back to haunt someone... and then you go ahead and do it again. The well-known quote that “history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes” is, of course, attributed to Mark Twain. Quotes like this can be very hard to tra

Cover of The Alan Parsons Project album, Pyramid, via Wikipedia.org The Alan Parsons Project is one of those acts where many people don’t “know the band”, but will recognize several songs, such as Eye in the Sky , or Prime Time . Those familiar with progressive rock from the 1970’s and 1980’s, on the other hand, likely know them well. The only official members were Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson , augmented by a large group of session musicians who worked in various capacit

Fallen Caryatid Carrying Her Stone, Auguste Rodin, via Cleveland Museum of Art When I first read Stranger in a Strange Land , I was too young to fully understand much of it. Of course I only realized that when I read it again, several years later. Over the years, I have read the book a dozen or so times, and picked up a bit more each time. This is the nature of good books – you can read them again, and pick up something new. Sometimes, you pick up some subtlety in the story o

“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

Mumble, from Happy Feet, via YouTube.com It seems obvious in retrospect. Look at the way penguins walk, then watch Happy Feet , and tap seems like the inevitable style for a dancing penguin. But maybe that’s just because of the masterful dancing (via motion capture) by the amazingly talented Savion Glover (who was also co-choreographer). For any not familiar with him, Glover got his start on Broadway at age 11, appeared on Sesame Street in his teens, and was called “possibly

Cartoon by Tom Gauld, 11 th April 2013, for @newscientist One letter can make a big difference. Or one number. I’ve mentioned You Are Not So Smart (YANSS) before. It’s a podcast created by David McRaney , who is a science journalist, author, and speaker who is fascinated by brains, minds, and culture. I’ve been listening to YANSS for years, and it’s well worth the time. On episode 313 , David McRaney and his guest, Erica Chenoweth , discussed the work done by Chenoweth and

Bernie Sanders doll, via Wikimedia Commons People often call Bernie Sanders a (gasp!) socialist! But then, many people on the “right” call anyone who disagrees with them a socialist, communist, anti-American, traitorous, or a variety of other terms which they (apparently) don’t understand and (often) can’t even coherently define. My suggestion would be to ask anyone who uses a term like “socialist” as a knee-jerk response to define it – if they can, respond appropriately. If

Wartime picture of a Bletchley Park Bombe, via Wikipedia.org I’m mentioned Alan Turing and (some of) his contributions to computer technology, and still managed to not even mention the work which probably had the greatest influence on the world at the time. For a bit of background, the Enigma machine was a cipher device that was developed in the years after World War I. To simplify dramatically, it used three rotors (four, in some models) which turned in sequence after each

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

Charlie Chaplin, in The Great Dictator, 1940, via Wikimedia Commons Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about fascism. While I already had a fair degree of familiarity and understanding of the big picture, I’ve been picking up (and often blogging about) items which are new to me. Predictably, most are disturbing, but I occasionally come across something wonderful. Charlie Chaplin was an immensely influential figure in the history of cinema, and his “Tramp” character has been an

Cover of "Living Next Door to Alice" single by Smokie, via Wikipedia Living with the name “Alice” was not always easy in the 1970s and 1980s. For those not aware, the name of the song is actually “ Living Next Door to Alice ”, and was originally released by an Australian band called New World in 1972. The rest of us generally associate the song with the band Smokie , and think of it as “ Alice! Who the F^ck is Alice? ”. The song is about a man’s unadmitted love for his next-d

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