politics

Guns in Japan

December 20, 2012

My father (who started his own blog) shares what you need to do to get a gun in Japan. To get a gun in Japan, first, you have to attend an all-day class and pass a written test, which are held only once per month. You also must take and pass a shooting range class. [...]

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Revenge of the Nerds

November 8, 2012

While everyone spoke of New York Times blogger, Nate Silver’s uncanny, almost witchlike ability to call the election last night, the big winner was the triumph of big data and smart algorithms over gut feel and egos. Those in tech that have been following Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog at the New York Times broke out [...]

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Obama Up, Romney Down

September 29, 2012

The New York Times’ wonky FiveThirtyEight blog posted this rather dramatic graph showing the poll numbers of Obama and Romney over the past few weeks. What used to be a 1-2 point difference is now a 5-6 point gulf with the lines getting further, not closer, together.

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Stellar Wind

September 15, 2012

There’s a chill wind blowing through the our government. Since 9/11 it’s been known that the NSA has been wiretapping email and phone calls as part of a domestic spying program. Now the evidence is piling up that as of December of this year, a new data center in Utah is getting ready to come [...]

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Yelp Release Notes go Political

November 13, 2011

I always make it a habit to read the release notes of apps when they push updates to see what’s new. Usually it’s pretty dry stuff, what’s fixed, what’s new. Yelp is always good for a few laughs too and their latest release pokes fun at the latest Rick Perry gaffe. For those that haven’t [...]

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Digital Cartography

November 7, 2011

Eric Fischer takes large datasets and turns them into art. His flickr stream is a collection of fascinating time-series maps plotting data over time to draw out shapes which take on a greater meaning. Weather it’s a map of taxis in San Francisco or an overlay of flickr metadata on top of NYC, Eric’s creations are at once [...]

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Throwing Stones

February 3, 2011

The images coming out of Cairo are very disturbing. Nothing good can come out of a situation where the two sides resort to the throwing of blunt objects at each other. My hope is for calmer minds to prevail tomorrow. Google (and Issac Asimov) tell us, “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” Ignore [...]

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What Not to Say. . .

February 2, 2011

. . . when you are trying to instill global confidence in your leadership abilities. In response to questions from the international press about S&P issuing it’s first downgrade on Japanese credit worthiness in nine years, Prime Minister Naoto Kan had little reassurance to offer. “I just heard that news,” a flustered-looking Mr. Kan told [...]

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Two ways to watch the SOTU

January 31, 2011

Last night I watched the 2011 State of the Union address, conveniently streaming it via YouTube in 720p over the home wifi and out to my flatscreen Samsung TV here in Finland. I found the archive easily enough and noticed that the White House had conveniently split the screen to show helpful infographics on the [...]

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Jon Stewart’s Closing Remarks

November 1, 2010

Jon Stewart’s closing speech at the Rally to Restore Sanity was brilliant. On mass media the most tweeted line of the day was, “If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.” Viewing the United States political process from Finland, I have to say the “fun-house mirror” through which Americans portray themselves is a bit comic. Europeans [...]

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