Peter Winer

Nike + Map It

The Nike + Map It Community is a mash up for running.  Users can upload their routes and share them.  I looked at my neighborhood in Los Altos, California and found a bunch of runners with their different running routes.  Some locations are better covered than others.  No routes posted in Jackson, Wyoming and a small number in Flushing, New York.  I'm still looking for a site that does this for road biking.

Dick Durbin's Big Mistake

Senator Dick Durbin regrets not being able to tell the American people that they were being misled during the run up to the Iraq War. 
As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Durbin was sworn to secrecy.  He couldn't reveal the inconsistencies between White House public statements and secret briefings to the committee.  This makes Durbin and other democrats complicit in falsely selling the war.
Last Friday, Keith Olbermann of MSNBC's Countdown pointed out that Durbin could have just stated that there were inconsistencies without revealing the secrets.  This might have slowed the drive to war.

RFID and Passports

Those people familiar with my former rants know that I'm opposed to embedding RFID in government-issued identity documents.  Since January 2007, new passports have included embedded RFID tags containing the passport identity information.  That's an obvious threat to privacy.
Well, Wired Magazine recently offered instructions for disabling the RFID tag without destroying the passport.  The answer: Hit the chip hard with a heavy blunt object such as a hammer.  A wonderfully low-tech solution!

Gonzales v Gonzales

Alberto Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday.  In the New York Times Editorial, Gonzales v Gonzales includes the following exchange:

...Mr. Gonzales was asked when he had lost confidence in David Iglesias, who was fired as federal prosecutor in New Mexico. His answer was an inadvertent slip of truth.

“Mr. Iglesias lost the confidence of Senator Domenici, as I recall, in the fall of 2005,” Mr. Gonzales said. It was Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico, of course, who made a wildly inappropriate phone call to Mr. Iglesias in 2006, not 2005, to ask whether charges would be filed before the election in a corruption inquiry focused on Democrats. When Mr. Iglesias said he did not think so, Mr. Domenici hung up and complained to the White House. Shortly after, Mr. Iglesias’s name was added to the firing list.

I believe the Bush/Gonzales Justice Department is an instrument of White House political strategy.  The White House has subverted the Justice Department for the Republican Party's political agenda.  This government is like a banana republic.

The Ghost Map

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson is a fascinating book about two men who discovered the cause of cholera in nineteenth century London.

In the book, John Snow a physician in the SoHo district of London works for prove that cholera is transmitted through water.  Within 30 years of Snow's proof, London has a city-wide clean water system that is the first of its kind worldwide.  Other cities follow London and cholera deaths in major cities are virtually eliminated by the early twentieth century.

Snow convinced skeptics by mapping cholera deaths using a Vonoroi diagram.  The diagram showed how most of the related deaths were among people who used the same pump for their drinking water.  Since Snow had no way of testing the water for bacteria, this map was an important basis for his proof.

To me, the book was fascinating.  Fans of Neal Stephenson will appreciate Johnson's style and approach to technology.

New prescription for gun control

Robert Reich presented A New Prescription for Gun Control on Public Radio's Market Place yesterday.  In this commentary, Reich notes that buying a gun is easier than getting a prescription for anti-depressants.  All other advanced nations have stricter gun laws and better access to health care.  Our country has it backwards.

This is where it all starts

Hello world.  This is the start of a new instance of this blog.