Categories
quotes

Who Controls The Nukes?

Nuclear weapons are inherently dangerous. Handling them, using them, not using them, requires caution, care. Living as we do now with North Korea, Pakistani generals, jihadists, and who knows who’ll be the next U.S. president, the world is very, very lucky that at one critical moment, someone calm enough, careful enough, and cool enough was there to say no.

Robert Krulwich in You (and Almost Everyone You Know) Owe Your Life to this Man [phenomena.nationalgeographic.com]

That’s as close as National Geography gets to calling Trump insane.

Categories
quotes technical

Why Public Cloud

The fact is that cloud service providers (CSPs) at any kind of scale have more network engineers, security engineers, compliance experts, and operational personnel than most companies that run their own data centers. 

John Purrier quoted in The Roles Cloud and DevOps Should play in Your Digital Transformation [enterprisersproject.com] on The Enterprisers Project

This will be the single biggest driver in moving to the cloud in the future. Even large enterprises have proved how bad they are at security —looking at you Sony! The big cloud players will be the ones who can bring these services at the most capable, most professional and most cost effective level to all companies from startups to mega multinationals. Why should every company have its own IT Security team?

Categories
quotes

Frotteurism

Frotteurism” is your word of the day.

Among those questioned, 35 percent had a thing for voyeurism (watching someone engaging in intimate or sexual behaviour), 26 percent said they enjoyed fetishism (sexual stimulation from an inanimate object or nonsexual body part), another 26 percent said they liked frotteurism (unconsenting rubbing or groping), and 19 percent got a kick out of masochism (getting sexual gratification from pain or humiliation).

from Abnormal Sexual-Interests are Actually Completely Normal [iflscience.com] on I Fucking Love Science

Moral of this story – Canucks are deviants at heart. I wonder how this survey would pan out in, oh I don’t know, Japan?

Categories
photography

Partial Solar Eclipse, Singapore, March 2016

IMG_6752

There was a total solar eclipse [nasa.gov] today! A few hundred kilometers south of Singapore it was a total eclipse but we got 88% coverage at maximum here [timeanddate.com].

It’s amazing how little knowledge there was about this in Singapore. First mention I saw of it in local media was two days before. No one anywhere selling viewing glasses or sheets or anything; seem Singaporeans don’t fully understand capitalism, there is a total eclipse in December 2019 here so I need to pre-order a few thousand solar eclipse glasses!) I put too much effort into taking my photos – I rented a 500mm Canon lens and a doubler from Camera Rental Center [camerarental.biz] here in Singapore. Read up on how to take the photos on Mr. Eclipse [mreclipse.com] and ordered solar film and glasses from Thousand Oaks Optical [thousandoaksoptical.com] via Amazon [amazon.com].

The photos turned out great. You can see the full Partial Solar Eclipse, Singapore, March 2016 [flickr.com]. The only issue was my tripod was not up to the task of holding that mammoth lens so I could not take longer exposures – they got too blurry. C’est la vie, ISO 3200 FTW! Next chance in 2019.

Categories
quotes

Whips And Chains… ‘Cause Science!

“[it] may be hard to believe, considering how nipple clamps don’t always seem that sane, but you can’t argue with science.”

Zeynep Yenisey in 3 Non-Vanilla Sex Acts That Are Actually Good for You, According to Science [maxim.com] from Maxim