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A remote Hawaiian island, East Island, was destroyed by Hurricane Walaka. East Island was 11 acres. It was also a key refuge for turtles and seals. Read more in The Guardian. Maersk has sent a ship, the Venta Maersk, through the Northern Passage. The journey and its significance were outlined by the Washington Post, with…
Read More Change in the WeatherWe here at Emergent Chaos have long been frustrated with the Obama Administration. Their failure to close Guantanamo, their failure to prosecute war crimes including torture, their choice to murder American citizens (never mind without due process), their invocation of the state secrets privilege, their persecution of whistleblowers, their TSA running rampant, the list of…
Read More Emergent Chaos: Romney/Ryan for America!(From The Oatmeal.) It’s widely understood that Seattle needs a better way to measure snowfall. However, what’s lacking is a solid proposal for how to measure snowfall around here. And so I have a proposal. We should create a new unit of measurement: The Nickels. Named after Greg Nickels, who lost the mayorship of Seattle…
Read More Seattle in the SnowThe servers that host my personal email have been taken offline by a surprise attack by the evil forces of snow and ice, and my email is likely to start bouncing soon. If you need to reach me, you can use nameofthisblog @ google, or first.last @ microsoft. You can also ask me to follow…
Read More Email chaos: How to reach Adam ShostackYesterday, I said on Twitter that “If you work in information security, what’s happening in Egypt is a trove of metaphors and lessons for your work. Please pay attention.” My goal is not to say that what’s happening in Egypt is about information security, but rather to say that we can be both professional and…
Read More Egypt and Information SecurityThis is cool: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is using its financial clout to push the Haitian marketplace toward change by offering $10 million in prizes to the first companies to help Haitians send and receive money with their cell phones… The fund will offer cash awards to companies that initiate mobile financial services…
Read More Mobile Money for Haiti: a contestCourtesy of the BBC.
Read More AlbionFor some time, I’ve watched the War on Bottled Water with amusement. I don’t disagree with figuring out how to reduce waste, and so on and so forth, but the railing against bottled water per se struck me as not thought out very well. The major reason for my thinking is that I never heard…
Read More St. Cajetan's RevengeThe BBC reports that “Indonesia minister says immorality causes disasters:” A government minister has blamed Indonesia’s recent string of natural disasters on people’s immorality. Communication and Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring said that there were many television programmes that destroyed morals. Therefore, the minister said, natural disasters would continue to occur. His comments came as he…
Read More Tifatul Sembiring Causes DisastersBruce Schneier points in his blog to an article in The Telegraph in which Steve Ballmer blames the failure of Vista on security. Every security person around should clear their throat loudly. Security is not what made Vista unpalatable. Many people liked Vista. My tech reporter friends not only adored it, but flat couldn’t understand…
Read More Vista Didn't Fail Because of Security