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Mon, 21 Jul 2008

Calorie Calorie

Last night I flew from New York's JFK airport to Portland's PDX. While at JFK, I was hungry. I was enticed by the delicious-looking fries in the display sample from "Cheeburger Cheeburger [sic]."

When I went up to order, I found the fries alone seemed to have over 1700 calories. Since when do fast food joints tell me how many calories are in the food right next to the price? I ordered my cheeseburger but could not in good conscience buy a side of fries that had nearly three times as many calories as the "entree" itself.

This morning I ran into a news article explaining that this is because of a new health inspector rule requiring calorie counts "displayed on [chain restaurant] menus in the same font and format as the name or price of food items." The article reports, "New Yorkers appeared unfazed by the rule."

It continues to quote a casually pro-corporation anti-informing-consumers analyst named John Owens, "I'd be shocked if consumers weren't already aware that when they're eating in a fast-food restaurant." I knew it wasn't "healthy" to eat burgers and fries from fast food chains, but I'm still a little shocked that the fries alone have more than 1700 calories.

Maybe we could have this sort of signage everywhere, even in cities that aren't New York.

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Wed, 16 Jul 2008

IP over Avian Carrier: Security implications

BBC News has a story on Brazil's pigeon drug mules.

Quoth Bruce Schneier:

I think this is the first security vulnerability found in RFC 1149: "Standard for the transmission of IP datagrams on avian carriers." Deep packet inspection seems to be the only way to prevent this attack, although adequate fencing will prevent the protocol from running in the first place.


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Tue, 15 Jul 2008

Seattle to Portland on a Unicycle

I decided that I didn’t want to disappoint me, Helen, or God, so to Winlock we went.

Via Eric, who attempted this for the first time this year. Congratulations!

It concludes: 

A unicyclist with two beautiful and talented daughters as a unicycle honor guard drove the crowd completely wild, and I felt like I was the king of the world as I rode triumphantly, giving high fives to my subjects.

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