Identity theft via repeated name changes

Raymond Chen April 30, 2009 Apr 30, 2009 04/30/09

In the United States, it is legal to change your name as many times as you like, and you don't even have to have a reason, as long as you're not doing it with fraudulent intent. The ease with which name changes can be accomplished has been exploited by people who use it to carry out identity theft. Creditors coming after you? Change your name...

Qrystal does more research into those spam blogs

Raymond Chen April 29, 2009 Apr 29, 2009 04/29/09

Blogger Qrystal got hit with blog trackback spam and did research into the phenomenon, even discovering the author trying to sell the spam blog. And he had to cut the price because Google AdSense has cut him off. Ha, ha, haaahhhhh~! (Read the blog entry for the spammer's for-sale offers and other linkity goodness...

A simple bar chart on letter distribution

Raymond Chen April 28, 2009 Apr 28, 2009 04/28/09

I was visiting a colleague's office in another building and I spotted a whiteboard on which the following enigmatic bar chart was drawn. The source data for the analysis was left unspecified. It looks like there's an entire Web site devoted to profound charts like this. For example, a graph of beer bottle distribution as a function of ...

What kind of uncle am I?

Raymond Chen April 27, 2009 Apr 27, 2009 04/27/09

Like every language, English has its own collection of words to express family relationships. There are the easy ones like mother, father, brother, and sister. Also comparatively easy are cousin, aunt, uncle, niece and nephew. But most people don't know about this "removal" part, beyond the fact that your "first cousin twice removed" is ...

No, we’re not nerds, why do you ask?

Raymond Chen April 24, 2009 Apr 24, 2009 04/24/09

Last year, to celebrate successful completion of a project milestone, our group went on a "cultural expedition" to a glass-blowing studio where we were to learn about the craft of glass blowing and even do some of it ourselves. (By the way, it was fun.) One of the glassblowers had been making a lot of little jokes about Frodo and Mount Doom...

Fashion is something that can be acquired by looking at lots of different fashions

Raymond Chen April 23, 2009 Apr 23, 2009 04/23/09

Actress Brenda Dickson teaches us how to be awesome. Update: Apparently that video link died within days of my finding it, but there are plenty of other copies floating around the Intertubes. Here's one of many series on YouTube: Part 1 (Fashion), Part 2 (Make-Up), Part 3 (Exercise). and Part 4 (Diet and Nutrition...