Aside

I have a way-the-hell-too-early flight (read: 07h15) to Baltimore tomorrow. I spend about 24 hours in the DC area before hopping on a train to New York with my parents on Dec. 20. I’ll be busy nearly every minute, either working or visiting with friends, and then I’ll have an encore ride of the Hartford Chinatown bus (featured in my Master’s thesis) on Dec. 23, where I’ll be spending Christmas vacation with my assembled family. A Happy Chrismahanukwanzakah, Solstice and…

[Screen grab taken around 8 am Pacific.] How is it that it’s colder at night in Oakland than it is in New York? And that my aunt in Hartford (where I’m headed later this week) tells me that there’s no snow on the ground? And that the cars on our street got frost last night?!?! What is going on?

So here’s the deal: Apple France and French ISP Orange are hooking up to provide French consumers with a rented MacBook and 1 Mbps DSL for €60 ($79.50) a month. That works out to about €2 a day. (You can upgrade to 8 Mbps DSL for an additional €5 per month.) The catch is that you have to sign up for three years, but that includes three years of Apple Care. Louis-Pierre Wenes, executive director of France Telecom’s domestic operations…

This is a piece I wrote for The Economist’s latest “Technology Quarterly” guide (December 2, 2006). You’ll just have to take it on faith that I wrote it, given that there’s no byline. Hed: Roaming holiday Dek: Communications : New gizmos that combine audio guides with satellite tracking let tourists explore cities at their own pace WHEN Melissa Mahan and her husband visited The Netherlands, they felt imprisoned by their tour bus. It forced them to see the city according…

Los Angeles Times: IMAGINE a presidential debate in which John McCain answers Hillary Clinton’s arguments by stripping down to his underwear or breaking into a rap song. Strange as it might sound, such tactics are gaining cachet — and victories — in a top breeding ground for future politicians: America’s college debate circuit. In recent years, renegade rhetoricians from Cal State Fullerton and other underdog schools have clobbered debate kingpins from Harvard and UC Berkeley with a hodgepodge of unorthodox…

The Washington Post: When the State Department recently asked the CIA for names of Iranians who could be sanctioned for their involvement in a clandestine nuclear weapons program, the agency refused, citing a large workload and a desire to protect its sources and tradecraft. Frustrated, the State Department assigned a junior Foreign Service officer to find the names another way — by using Google. Those with the most hits under search terms such as “Iran and nuclear,” three officials said,…

One would think that one of our most valuable embassies in the Arabic-speaking world would have more than 0.6 percent of its staff fluent in the language of the host country, wouldn’t you think? Nah, that’d make too much sense. Reuters: WASHINGTON, Dec 6 (Reuters) – Among the 1,000 people who work in the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, only 33 are Arabic speakers and only six speak the language fluently, according to the Iraq Study Group report released on Wednesday.…

Wired News: by Cyrus Farivar Hazmat suits to protect against biological and chemical attacks are often made of thick, synthetic rubber that’s impervious to the nastiest toxins. But they’re also impervious to sweat, and people wearing them can typically only work for short periods before succumbing to exhaustion, heat stroke and, occasionally, death. Now, a joint team of scientists from the University of Colorado and private firm TDA Research have developed a breathable rubber suit made from butyl rubber impregnated…

Rolling Stone: At the time, the proto-Ali G was a slightly more upper-class character who delivered wack monologues and went by various monikers, among them MC Jocelyn Cheadle-Hume (named after an area of Chesire). But one day, everything changed: Baron Cohen, while filming an MC Jocelyn Cheadle-Hume segment, saw a group of white skateboarders who were also dressed like wanna-be gangstas. Baron Cohen and Toppin decided it might be fun to interact with them. “Afterward,” he recalls, “me and Mike…

I wrote a piece for Foreign Policy for the November/December 2006 issue, but just today got a letter from Editor-in-Chief Moisés Naím, thanking me for my work. I’m not sure if this is standard for all FP contributors, or just new freelancers, or if my tiny back-of-the-book piece was so great that it warranted a thank you note, but either way, I was mightily impressed by his letter: Dear Mr. Farivar, Thank you for contributing an excellent article to the…