So I was reading about Seagate’s new perpendicular hard drive and, like you, thought to myself “I wonder what a perpendicular hard drive is…” I hopped over to google, typed in perpendicular hard drive, and got this site.
Wow.
Since it’s the first hit on google I assume a lot of people have seen it, but if you haven’t, you should. It’s hilarious.
This article over on the New York Times OP-ED page was really interesting. It basically outlines the side affects of encouraging so many women to go to college. In a nutshell, so many more women apply for college than men that the standards for women are higher. The end result is that women with outstanding GPA’s are turned down, and men with the same (or lower) scores are admitted easily.
We have told today’s young women that the world is their oyster; the problem is, so many of them believed us that the standards for admission to today’s most selective colleges are stiffer for women than men. How’s that for an unintended consequence of the women’s liberation movement?
It turns my ideas about the admissions process upside-down…
Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) has a remarkably funny post on his blog about religion. Here’s a choice tidbit.
I also wonder if showing respect for all beliefs is causing more problems than it’s avoiding. The only thing that keeps most people from acting on their absurd beliefs is the fear that other people will treat them like frickin’ retards. Mockery is an important social tool for squelching stupidity. At least that’s what I tell people after I mock them.
Funny stuff.
Well, for a while now I’ve been seeking out ways I can combine my IR degree with my technical experiance. I’ve had it said to me that corporations, especially highly globalized tech corporations, need diplomats just as much as governments do.
Today I read about how true that statement really is. Chinese President Hu Jintao’s first visit to the U.S. will not be to Washington D.C., but instead to the state of Washington. C-net is reporting that he will be attending a dinner at Bill Gates’ house, along with other top pacific economic players.
This comes on the heels of the Chineese government requiring all PC makers to ship their product with a “licensed” operating system. Someone should tell them that Linux is both free and licensed. 
So… when do you think Microsoft will get a seat at the U.N.?
Posted in All, Int'l Relations, Tech
An entry posted on Foreign Policy’s “Passport” blog yesterday cited the BBC’s in depth report on prison life. Specifically, a chart on this page.
I’m still reading the BBC’s articles on this topic, which are great, but what I have issue with is the tone of the comment on the Passport blog. To quote:
Seven tenths of a percent of America is behind bars. That doesn’t sound like much, right? Well, that is actually more than 2 million people. And get this: prisoners in China are only .118 percent of the total population, while Brazil locks up only .183 percent of its citizens.
The implication is that there are a LOT of people in US prisons. While it may be true that perhaps there are too many people in US prisons, I’d like to take a moment to clarify the disparity between US and, say, Chinese prisons.
We like to think of the Chinese government as having an iron-clad grip on its citizens, but this is a half-truth. First off, China has 1.3 billion people, and most live in rural areas. Families and communities take care of crime, not a legislature and police force, and one can imagine that crimes like stealing and rape are handled much differently than in a large city.
Other factors, such as the “disappearance” of enemies of the state, China’s extradition policy, their execution policy, as well as corruption within law enforcement all influence this statistic. Be careful when comparing things, prison rates in Brazil or China are very different from those in most developed countries for many reasons.
Not that I don’t think that we may be a bit over-zealous with our drug possession policy 
Posted in All, Int'l Relations, Main
This site has a really neat graphical way of representing population and area sizes (based on cia world factbook). You can change a ton of different views and filters, and also view by continent. Pretty neat stuff.
The notes are also amusing, and underline the difficulties that map-makers run into, even if they are demonstrating a proof-of-concept relational map. “How do we represent Palestine or Taiwan” are obvious problems, but less obvious ones include “do we count Greenland when representing Denmark’s population density?”
Posted in All, Int'l Relations