The Senate Judiciary Committee spent the day looking into recent data thefts at Target and Neiman Marcus. Lawmakers know there is a big problem, but they are struggling with what role the federal government should play is creating new standards to safeguard consumer data.
~ Jim Zarroli from, Senate Steps Into The Data Breach Controversy
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Yeah. I said this before.
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Come to the edge.
~ Christopher Logue
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It’s too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came,
and he pushed,
and they flew.
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Other people are recognizing that we work in an important intersection of knowledge and responsibility, too. I came across a presentation from this year’s Chaos Communication Congress in Germany. It was a talk by Jacob Appelbaum and Julian Assange, who were introduced by Sarah Harrison. The name of the talk was SysAdmins of the World Unite.
~ Matt Simmons from, «http://www.standalone-sysadmin.com/blog/2013/12/knowledge-workers-as-a-political-class/»
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Be a good person, but don’t waste time trying to prove it.
~ unknown
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The spate of new NSA disclosures substantially raises the stakes of this debate. We now know that the intelligence establishment systematically undermines oversight by lying to both Congress and the courts. We know that the NSA infiltrates internet standard-setting processes to security protocols that make surveillance harder. We know that the NSA uses persuasion, subterfuge, and legal coercion to distort software and hardware product design by commercial companies.
~ Yochai Benkler, from Time to tame the NSA behemoth trampling our rights
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Because of more energy-efficient housing, appliances and gadgets, power usage is on track to decline in 2013 for the third year in a row, to its lowest point since 2001, even though our lives are more electrified.
~ Jonathan Fahey, from Home electricity use in US falling to 2001 levels
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“Parkour is a movement discipline based on using only the body to interact with the environment and navigate one’s surroundings.”
It’s sort of long winded and it isn’t the kind of sentence that is going to sell parkour to an onlooker immediately, but I think that real philosophical grounding comes from strongly defined terms. Whether one’s style of parkour is efficient (fast), superfluous (flashy), direct (a to b), meandering (flow), applied (real situations), or supplemental (conditioning), I think that the above definition manages to cover the things that traceurs do.
~ Albert Kong, from «http://www.lethalbeef.com/blog/?p=193»
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Our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us, because our destiny lies above us.
~ Teaser Trailer for Nolan’s ‘Interstellar’ Starring Matthew McConaughey
Interstellar. November.
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Here is a list of fearful things:
~ Clive Barker
The jaws of sharks, a vulture’s wings,
The rabid bite of the dog’s of war,
The voice of one who went before.
But most of all the mirror’s gaze,
which counts us out our numbered days.
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Government researchers have tagged 338 sharks with acoustic transmitters that monitor where the animals are. When a tagged shark is about half a mile away from a beach, it triggers a computer alert, which tweets out a message on the Surf Life Saving Western Australia Twitter feed. The tweet notes the shark’s size, breed and approximate location.
~ Alan Yu, from More Than 300 Sharks In Australia Are Now On Twitter
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I certainly don’t doubt for a minute that O Sensei could have devastated his training partners. Their ukemi demonstrate their respect for that potential. But I’m told that Saito Sensei opined that without mercy, ukemi is impossible. Certainly that is not to imply that practicing severe forms and injuring people has a place in the dojo. Practicing the severe forms short of injury, however, may be fundamental. Without that, how can you personally claim to be merciful? You, whatever your mental state or intentions, would be constrained by your limited technical knowledge.
~ Charles Warren, from «http://blog.aikidojournal.com/2012/07/15/on-mercy-by-charles-warren/»
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Cinnamon comes from the bark of trees. It has long been considered a medicinal plant. There are several varieties, harvested from southern China to Southeast Asia. For years, there have been hints that adding cinnamon to your diet can help control blood sugar. And a recent spate of studies adds to the evidence that the effect is real.
~ Allison Aubrey, from Cinnamon Can Help Lower Blood Sugar, But One Variety May Be Best
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Too many possessions is clutter, visual stress, cleaning, maintenance, debt, less happiness. Too many tasks makes it harder to focus on any one thing or get anything done. Too many things we want to learn means we never learn anything well.
~ Leo Babauta, from The Necessary Art of Subtraction
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First they will laugh.
~ unknown
Then they will copy.
Don’t. Give. Up.
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As we approach the 100 year anniversary of the creation of the Federal Reserve, it is absolutely imperative that we get the American people to understand that the Fed is at the very heart of our economic problems. It is a system of money that was created by the bankers and that operates for the benefit of the bankers. The American people like to think that we have a “democratic system”, but there is nothing “democratic” about the Federal Reserve.
~ Michael Snyder, from «http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines/25-fast-facts-about-the-federal-reserve-please-share-with-everyone-you-know»
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And so we get to the so-called “OK Plateau” — the point at which our autopilot of expertise confines us to a sort of comfort zone, where we perform the task in question in efficient enough a way that we cease caring for improvement. We reach this OK Plateau in pursuing just about every goal, from learning to drive to mastering a foreign language to dieting, where after an initial stage of rapid improvement, we find ourselves in that place at once comforting in its good-enoughness and demotivating in its sudden dip in positive reinforcement via palpable betterment.
~ Maria Popova, from The Psychology of Getting Unstuck
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Odds that a word I type will start with some weird symbol.
~ Randall Munroe, from Sigil Cycle
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