Track Me Not

“TrackMeNot is a browser extension that protects web-searchers
against surveillance and
data-profiling. It does so not by means of concealment or encryption (i.e.
covering one’s trail), but instead, paradoxically, by the opposite strategy: noise and obfuscation. With
TrackMeNot, actual web searches, lost in a cloud of false leads, are
essentially hidden in
plain view. User-installed TrackMeNot works with the Firefox Browser and popular search engines, e.g. AOL, Yahoo!, Google, and MSN. “

Could you pass the U.S. citizenship test? - Being an American - MSNBC.com

I have to be an honest Abe here: I only got 75%. The INS looks for 80%

If you play guitar and know who Richard Thompson is, you’ll probably find his Gear and Tunings Q&A an interesting read. If you don’t play guitar, there’s an assortment of
mp3’s available from his site, both serious and otherwise. His 1000 Years of Popular Music album is a brilliant idea, well worth checking out.

In writing songs, you ought to pull things into a sharper focus, so you draw characters who are larger than life, and you write about experiences that perhaps most people don’t have from day to day. People are not really interested in the story of a soccer dad, necessarily. Unless it’s the story of a soccer dad who can’t take any more and shoots his family. There’s a ballad. There’s your contemporary “Tom Dooley.”

Shatner: Horses can help disabled kids - Yahoo! News: “”

“Shatner said that placing injured people on horseback has been shown to improve their conditions. “We know that the use of a horse in their therapy takes them beyond their handicapped body, their injured body, and into another area of health,” he said.”

Torino Webcams: “”

Given the international climate now, just about anything could show up on these cams.

The Blog | Danielle Crittenden: The Secret Presidential IMs: Bush & Clinton Swap Chick Problems | The Huffington Post

The Blog | Danielle Crittenden: The Secret Presidential IMs: Now if only we could get Jon Stewart to host… | The Huffington Post: “”

The Onion’s AV Club has an interview with Stephen Colbert, host of The Colbert Report and the man who coined the American Dialect Society’s 2005 Word of the Year: truthiness.

“There are no televisions behind me, like the way [NBC Nightly News anchor] Brian Williams has, or even [Daily Show host] Jon [Stewart]. At certain angles, there are monitors behind Jon that have the world going on, which implies that that’s where the news is, and that’s where the information is, and the person in front of it is the conduit through which this information is given to you. But on my set, I said, ‘I don’t want anything behind me, because I am the sun. It all comes from me. I’m not channeling anything. I am the source.’”

Bloomberg reports that four Winston-Salem, NC Waffle Houses are turning non-smoking next week. Going smoke free in the heart of tobacco country is a bold move for any restaurant, and for Waffle House to try this sounds like a suicidal move. Next time I’m in North Carolina, I’ll be going to IHOP instead.

The headline sort of speaks for itself:

BBC Sport: Scudamore announces bung inquiry

Scudamore said that it was the ongoing rumours of a culture of bungs that had provoked the Premier League to take action.

So what is Scudamore going to do about these bungs?

“We’re going to clean this thing up one way or the other, in terms of perception and in terms of turning it into reality.”

Even after reading the whole article, I’ve been unable to infer what “bung” means in this context. Either it’s just really funny to Americans, or proof that there’s homoerotic subtext to sports worldwide.