An alibi?

Robert J. Sawyer never knows when he’ll need an alibi.

Gun control

Two people went to look at a car they saw on Craigslist. It turned out to be an attempted robbery. Fortunately, the two car buyers turned out to be off-duty cops.

“You think about regular citizens and you feel bad because it’s like a no-win situation for them,” said Markham Deputy Police Chief Tony DeBois at a news conference. “You know, they’re not police officers, they’re not trained for this type of incident.” — Off-duty cop describes shootings after answering fake Craigslist ad

Regardless of training, in Chicago regular citizens aren’t armed.

“The salted pork is particularly good”

Warning: contains salt and rich, fatty pork

Scientists Agree: Denny’s Is Dangerous, says the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The plaintiff (because of course there is a plaintiff; there’s always a plaintiff) says the food he regularly ordered contained more salt than he should eat.

“Denny’s Meat Lover’s Scramble, which has two eggs with chopped bacon, diced ham, crumbled sausage, Cheddar cheese, plus two bacon strips, two sausage links, hash browns, and two pancakes has 5,690 mg sodium, or 379 percent of the advised daily limit.” And so a lawsuit was filed in the Superior Court of New Jersey.

Denny’s should have checked the patient’s chart to see what he was allowed to eat. Turns out the Meat Lover’s Scramble is not suitable for a low-sodium diet. But that girl who brings it? She’s not a Registered Nurse. The guy at the grill isn’t a dietitian. Denny’s isn’t a hospital. The whole country, however, is well on its way to becoming an old folks home.

Next time drive through

Customer: Yeah, I’ll have this Meat Lover’s Scramble, and coffee.

Waitress: “Now Grandpa, you can’t eat like that at your age! Have a nice bowl of oatmeal, and I’ll bring out some applesauce and a cup of decaf.”

Customer: “What? Get the manager!”

Manager: “Yes Sir, is there a problem?”

Customer: “Not if you bring me a Meat Lover’s Scramble.”

Manager: “With your body-mass index? No way! They’d lock me up.”

Customer: “What is this, the Twilight Zone?”

Manager: “And what’s this I hear from nurse about you not eating your oatmeal?”

Customer: “Why you little…”

That’s why you can’t carry a gun in a restaurant. First they take our guns, then they come for our bacon and eggs.

Paranoia is justified, again

Assembling bits of public and private information, social security numbers can be guessed. A habit of reticence and the occasional ruse de guerre will help preserve your privacy.

Yippy little dogs

They’re more useful than you think.

Proving the value of Taco Bell, three chihuahuas corner a mountain lion.

Burglar’s tools

…including a set of magical “hex” keys

In the waning days of the Ottoman Empire, a Turkish border guard saw some Latin letters on the side of a shipping case. “What does that say?” he asked the importer. “This machine makes 1500 revolutions per minute,” the importer replied. “Well then you’re not bringing it in here,” said the guard.

That was a hundred and fifty years ago. Today, a judge issued a search warrant partly because the suspect used one of those new-fangled command prompts.

Hopefully it’s okay to have a Torx screw driver. I mean, nobody should have to have one, but the man who goes to jail should be the inventor of the wretched things, not me.

Adblock Plus filters

“I kind of went overboard with it. But you have to admit, it’s pretty amazing, right?” One Man, One Long List, No More Web Ads

Right. Thanks, Rick752.

Privacy when job hunting

This is timely advice for more people, unfortunately: “Whenever possible, contact the person doing the hiring and submit your resume directly to him or her, recommends Ms. Dixon. In recent years, this has gotten easier; one of the biggest shifts she has seen is that more and more employers are allowing prospective candidates to contact them directly.” — Protecting Your Privacy When Job Hunting

Malware

On Slashdot, and examination of malware for Firefox: it relies on a bug in Firefox, and on a bug in human nature, to get users to install a plugin.

Chinese food

US ‘import alert’ on China food. This expands on the earlier warning about Chinese milk products to include lots of other Chinese food products.

I think the FDA is behind the curve. Every manufactured product from China ought to be banned. The only reason, say, yo-yos from China are not banned is because we don’t yet know what deadly safety flaw the People’s Liberation Army managed to build into yo-yos. Toxic paint? Radioactive plastic? Explosively flammable small parts that come off easily? I’ve worked with sophisticated weapons systems that were less hazardous. The only hazard we know Chinese yo-yos don’t contain is E. Coli. We add that ourselves.