short takes

Our landlord has installed combination locks on the restroom doors, as a security measure. Um. You already have to pass a security guard, or swipe a card, to get into the building. And if they were going to use locks anyway, wouldn't it be more secure to use those same cards instead of distributing a combination by word of mouth? (Every sys-admin known to man knows how well the shared password works over time.) Eh, whatever -- my memory for short sequences of otherwise-useless numbers is pretty good, so it doesn't harm me personally. It just seems a little odd to do it that way.

Was the Nick Berg video a fabrication? (Link from metahacker.) I can't tell if this is a case of conspiracy theories gone wild or something real, and I'm not qualified to evaluate things like Jordanian accents, but the point about the blood could be telling. (I have only second-hand information on the amount of blood, having neither the stomach nor the inclination to watch the video.)

The fine art of systems development (largish cartoon), courtesy of ommkarja.

Fun quotes from a chemistry class focusing on explosives, from anisodragnfly. My favorite: "This [fireball] should be four times bigger, but you should be okay where you are."

Seen on CNN:

nominally-African vegetarian stew

This was published in the local newspaper recently and was attributed to Nava Atlas. I made it tonight and it was really tasty. I'm paraphrasing the recipe 'cause I'm lazy. ( recipe and notes )