Don't talk to the police

Security guru Bruce Schneier has a post that links to this video of Professor James Duane of the Regent University School of Law explaining why you should never talk to the police. While I'm not sure how relevant the advice is under Canadian law, it does seem to make sense. Once the police are interested in you as a suspect there really isn't anything that you can say to change there minds.

The problem is that Professor Duane doesn't really explain what to do when you aren't a suspect. I don't think that he's really suggesting that witnesses shouldn't talk to the police but he should have made that clear. The problem of course is that you can start out as a witness and end up as a suspect and I would imagine that the transition between them isn't very clear.

Another video shows the second part of the lecture and features a police officer discussing, and essentially agreeing with, the points made by the Professor.

Follow up: John has also blogged about this.

Target Panic

The New York Times has an article about target panic. This is a condition suffered by champion archers which prevents them from aiming at a target.

via kottke.org

Mile High Showers

The Telegraph reports that certain models of the new Airbus A380 will have showers in first class.

Such luxury is reserved for the 14 people in the first class cabin, who will have access to the two showers during the trip.

The passengers will book their 25-minutes slots, which will include five minutes in the shower itself and some extra time to dry themselves off and get dressed again.

Follow up: Here's a blog post with pictures from a tour of the plane, including some of the shower.

Spacestation crosses the sun

Astronomy Picture of the Day has a great photo of the International Space Station silhouetted against the sun.

Torpedo Video

The blog The Stupid Shall be Punished has a post with a video of a retired American warship being sunk by a torpedo fired from an Australian submarine.

Calendar Desktop Wallpaper

An interesting idea from Smashing Magazine, fancy desktop wall paper with a built in calendar. I've never been a big fan of desktop wallpaper - I usually leave the one the comes with the machine - but these are interesting in that they each (well most of them) have a calendar of the month somewhere in the image. Plus they come out with new ones every month.

You can't judge a book by its cover

The other day I was sitting in the coffee shop minding my own business (more or less). A mid-thirties white man and a small child came in and sat beside me. The kid looked like a fairly normal eight-ish year old boy but the man, presumably the boy's father, looked slightly rough. He didn't look dangerous or anything but was a bit weathered looking and had a slightly scruffy beard and some tattoos.

They were sharing a packet of pretzels and after a few minutes the kid held one up and said, "What do you think this looks like?"

The father said "it looks a bit like a Chinese character. In fact it looks like the character for hot."

He then broke of a tiny part of the pretzel and said "There, now it looks just like the character for hot."

The father then spent the rest of the meal modifying pretzel to teach the son various Chinese characters.

A Party Game for Werewolves

Werewolf is an interesting party game that doesn't require any special equipment (except for some slips of paper that the players draw to determine their role).

There are four different roles in the game - one player is the moderator, two are werewolves, one is a seer and the rest are villagers. All of the roles are kept secret except for the moderator who basically runs things.

Every turn has two phases - day and night. Every night the werewolves kill a villager and every day the villagers lynch one other player (ideally a werewolf). Also every night the seer can determine if one other player is a werewolf or not.

The werewolves win if they kill all the villagers. The villagers (and the seer) win if they kill both the werewolves.

Flying Frog

National Geographic Photo of the Day has an action shot of a flying frog. I didn't know there were flying frogs but this is National Geographic after all.

Usually it's just me

downforeveryoneorjustme.com is a handy website for finding our if a website is really down or if you just can't see it for some reason.

Own goal needed to win

Snopes.com (the famous debunkers of urban legends) has an article about a soccer game in which both teams had to score on their own goals in order to advance in the tournament.

There was a strange rule in effect that said that a win in penalty kicks counted as a win by two goals. Since one of the teams in the game needed to win the game by two to avoid being eliminated from the tournament, they decided the force the fame into penalty kicks by scoring in their own goal to force a tie. The other team then tried to prevent this by scoring in their goal.

Eating in the air

A blog post from my friend Alexa describes an unusual meal that she had recently. They basically strapped her to a chair then hoisted the table and chair (and a bunch of other people) 35 meters into the air with a crane. Then they fed her breakfast.

Things you can do with a Wii remote

Sometimes you can make some interesting things by combining software with cheap(ish) things you have laying around. This video shows some interesting things you can make with a Nintendo Wii remote.

The video is from one of the talks at the TED conference. I've been slowly looking through them and some of them are really worth watching.

Learn any language in an hour (sort of)

A blog post from Tim Ferriss (of Four Hour Workweek fame) tells how you should spend the first hour of learning a language looking for pitfalls. He has some sample sentences that he gets translated that highlight potential trouble spots.

Canadian Millionaires

The National Post has a column about Canadian millionaires. The article breaks down the percentages of the population that are millionaires by age. Over 15% of people born between 1945 and 1954 are millionaires whereas only about 2% of people born between 1965 and 1974 are.

Flying Aircraft Carriers

Airminded has a post about airships used to carry airplanes. This was a big idea in the early days of aviation but never really worked out.

Russia to build spacecraft for private tour company

Yahoo News reports that the Russian Space Agency has entered an agreement to construct a Soyuz spacecraft for a space tourist agency.

Cardboard Bicycle

The Telegraph has an article, with a photo, about a bicycle that has a frame made out of cardboard. I have seen cardboard furniture before but I think this is the first time I've seen an outdoor vehicle made of cardboard.

via The Peace of Paper

Flash Pages can now be Indexed

Tech Crunch is reporting that Flash pages can now be indexed. Presumably this means that their content will now be visible to search engines.

Follow up : Google reports they will be including the pages.

Designer Packing Tape

In case you have too many plain looking things in your life, you can now get designer packing tape.