Link roundup

1. How to remove yourself from various background check sites.

2. Good article about the history of DDT. For example:

The German army purposely triggered malaria epidemics, such as in Italy in 1944. Drainage pumps on the Roman marshes ordinarily pumped excess water out to sea, desiccating the land enough to make it malaria-free and thus habitable for thriving cities and towns. By stilling the pumps, the Germans could have flooded the region and effectively impeded the Allies' progress. But German malariologist Erich Martini had studied the habits of the local malaria vector, Anopheles labranchiae, in depth, and he knew that inundating the region with the Mediterranean's salty waters would allow A. labranchiae, which can thrive in brackish water, to flourish. And so rather than simply stopping the pumps, they reversed them, salinating some ninety-eight thousand acres. Then they confiscated local stockpiles of antimalarial drugs. As the German soldiers departed, they left behind "clever sketches," The New York Times reported in 1944, "of the plague of mosquitoes that would follow the flooding of the farmlands." More than 100,000 of the 245,000 locals sickened with malaria.

3. Today's economic news (aside from the stock market's freefall, and the continuing slow motion collapse of the Euro) was about protests in Israel. This was the most interesting analysis. (Hint, their economic problems don't really look anything like the USA's.)

Link roundup

1. How to be An Android power user. Also, how to use Android's voice-activated search as a calculator and conversion tool.

2. Criticism of the Washington Post's special "Top Secret America" features:

Clearly, a lot more effort went into assembling a detailed, comprehensive listing of classified programs and contractors than went into the stories. There’s clearly a risk to national security in making such a listing readily available; it could lead to the companies being targeted by intelligence services or even terrorists. Still, some of that information is readily available. Once you have a company name, basic data like the company’s location, employees, and revenue is widely available from business sources. What’s new and what required real work was the detailed listing of companies and agencies tied to classified contracts, plus the appealing graphical interfaces.

That said, a quick look left me with doubts about the quality of both the graphics and the research. After playing with them for a while, the visualizations seemed more like eye-candy than useful tools. And the database is less impressive when you focus on agencies you know something about. Is the Transportation Security Agency really doing a bunch of Top Secret border control research, as the database reports? I’m skeptical; I had policy responsibility for TSA when I was at DHS, and TSA doesn’t really do border controls; it’s got its hands full just doing transportation security.

3. Good Fark headline: Palestinian man gets 18 months in jail for trying to pass his meat off as kosher.

*Buy I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Pentagon's Black World at Amazon.

Smoking Alien (link roundup)

Smoking alien by Jeff Simpson.

And a few more links:

1. A claim that Jewish settlers in the West Bank are perfectly willing to leave if given a satisfactory amount of money.

2. Beijing has a Hooters restaurant. Via.

3. Handpainted kitchen recipe doors.

*Previously: Mittens for smokers with built in cigarette shaped hole.

*Buy the Dave McKean-illustrated cookbook at Amazon.

Smoking Alien (link roundup)

Smoking alien by Jeff Simpson.

And a few more links:

1. A claim that Jewish settlers in the West Bank are perfectly willing to leave if given a satisfactory amount of money.

2. Beijing has a Hooters restaurant. Via.

3. Handpainted kitchen recipe doors.

*Previously: Mittens for smokers with built in cigarette shaped hole.

*Buy the Dave McKean-illustrated cookbook at Amazon.

A Bert to haunt your nightmares

Seseame Street's resident demon, Bert, in his most terrifying form. High-res photo here.


Here's a few more random links:

1. North Korean defector lives in South Korea and sends anti-Kim Jong Il pamphlets to North Korea using helium-filled balloons and special timers. Via.


2. Israel's border with Gaza is watched over by remote-controlled machine-gun armed sentry towers and remote-controlled armored vehicles. Apparently, the towers are chiefly operated by women.


3. As previously suggested, the Arena Football League is canceling the season.


4. Former NFL player identifies various players by name who intentionally display their packages to female reporters.


*Previously: Bert eats a screaming child.

*Buy Muppets toys at eBay.