A man in Pennsylvania has been charged with a felony for wiretapping, after using a video camera to record a police officer during a traffic stop. As it turns out, state law “bars the intentional interception or recording of anyone’s oral conversation without their consent.” What I find interesting about the article is that everyone seems to agree charging him with a felony isn’t the proper response in this case, but no one mentioned the fact the law itself seems fundamentally flawed. Not being able to record public officials in their duties is a problem, not to mention the number of violations that could be happening every day from tourists. (“Hey, look, Amish! Let me get the camera!”) How do they define intention? A recording of a party is intentional, as is the recording of guests’ voices, but it sounds almost like you would need to get permission from each person if it’s possible to construe that as eavesdropping. ...

A federal report on the Virginia Tech shootings asserts that confusing privacy laws played a hand. While I don’t doubt the privacy laws might be confusing, one of the problems with extensive bureaucracies is that it is really hard to tell afterwards whether the procedures and possibilities were confusing, or whether they just weren’t followed. It doesn’t take much to break the system, and it sounds like in this case broken links made a lot of difference. ...

EWeek lists their 15 geekiest vacations. I’ve only done one of these – maybe two, if your count going to great places for geeky reasons – the National Air and Space Museum. I was 100 feet away from the International Spy Museum on our most recent trip to DC and didn’t want to walk over there due to the rain. I can’t help but think I need to be more ambitious. ...

While I have little doubt Iran is probably arming groups in Iraq and Afghanistan, I’m having trouble seeing these sorts of stories as being anything beyond the Bush Administration building a case for starting a war with yet another country. Does the administration understand some simple, logical problems with this scenario? Iran will react, and it probably has more capability to do so than Iraq did. Iran is sitting next to two countries we’re having enough trouble occupying. What, do they figure an Iranian invasion will get people to love us? Our military is overstretched and is particularly vulnerable in those two countries. We can’t occupy yet another country. (I know, it would likely be bombing. How long does it stay an air war when the Iranian troops come over the border?) Even if Arab countries don’t necessarily like Iran, they’re not going to support us fighting yet another Islamic country. Finally, Administration, you do realize you’re going away in 1.5 years, right? This would be a bad mess to leave for the next one. I really wish we hadn’t seen this before, but we have. I supported it with Afghanistan, and thought the administration had gone insane with Iraq. It starts with these statements, goes to the UN, and then we ignore whatever happens there and jump in. I’m wondering how long before we hear about the Al Qaeda/Iran link? Will “Al Qaeda” head to North Korea next? :| ...

Somehow I really don’t think this is accurate. I’m thinking 75, or whatever age you need to be to get all suspicious of the young and start muttering about “Teenagers!” :) My New York age is 28 This New York age puts you-generally speaking-into the young category. That’s what you were hoping for, right? Run and tell your friends. Then get drunk (as usual). Then sleep it off. Then pop an Adderall. Then come back and consider experimenting with a more mature type of New York life (just once in a while). Have you ever been to the Village Vanguard or the Living Theatre? Eaten at Elaine’s? Taken a date to Michael Feinstein? Before you laugh, check ’em out and see what old-school NYC experiences you can add to the new. ...

This map renames the U.S. states with the name of the country that has a similar Gross Domestic Product. Nice, we’re Sweden. :) Link courtesy of The Doc Searls Weblog.

Surprise! Apple has released the Safari browser for Windows. It does seem to be a bit faster than Firefox at page rendering, although I wonder if the extensions I have in Firefox slow it down a bit. We have noticed so far that some some sites don’t seem quite ready for the news that Safari usership is about to expand. Yahoo! Mail Beta doesn’t seem to like it very much, and Google occasionally offers some Mac-specific downloads. ...

I’m pretty sure mashing up pictures of cats with various feeds is a work of genius. :) The Phantom City, in cats. My Twitter, made more interesting. Phantom-Thought makes everyone sleepy. Link courtesy of Climb to the Stars. Update: Tried out a few other feeds, and discovered Ed Cone’s blog has one of the best matchups between cat pictures and blog entries possible. Must be the shorter title. :)

Joss Whedon “snaps” over a world where women getting murdered is “entertainment:” How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence – is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable. ...

I really want to get a MacBook Pro, now that I can do my work (Apple) and play games (Windows) with it, and the Pro models were just updated. So, I’m salivating over the concept of paying the Mac premium for a laptop, checking out the 17", 1680 x 1050 display version – I’ve gotten too used to 1600 pixels’ worth of space at work and home to go to the 15" display – when suddenly I realize they now have a 1920 x 1200 version as an upgrade. ...