Nerdy Fool

I read this article about two sisters, ages 36 and 38, who are serving two life sentences each for armed robbery, but will be released if one donates a kidney to the other. Apparently, the one sister's dialysis is costing the state $190,000 a year, and they're eager to be free from the expense. It's an interesting story in and of itself. But what I found more interesting is why these two women got double life sentences in the first place. Apparently, they were only accomplices to the armed robbery, leading two men into an ambush, where they were hit over the head by some others, and robbed of $11. It's a crime that they should be punished for. But double life sentences?? People who commit murder don't even get that most of the time. And here these two women in their early 20's - with children - are sentenced to double life sentences for being involved in a mugging. The first thought I had when I read that was: they must be black. There's no way a jury...

I created a LinkedIn account a few weeks ago. Today I got an e-mail asking me if I knew certain people that I could connect with on LinkedIn. There were six names. Two of them I recognized. One of them was the father of a kid my son played racquetball with a few years back. I don't have any online associations with him at all, except that he's sent me a few e-mails, and I've sent him some. He's not a Twitter or Facebook friend. The other one was someone I know on both Twitter and Facebook, but haven't e-mailed directly. Yet somehow, LinkedIn (a company supposedly separate from Twitter, Facebook, and Google) was able to connect me to these two individuals, recognizing that there was some connection between us. How did it determine those connections? From Gmail? (That might apply to the first one, but not the second.) From Twitter or Facebook? (That would apply to the second, but not to the first.) I don't know, I find this ability of companies to guess ...

The recent awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama shows that the award really isn't about merit or accomplishment, but about making a political statement. In 1994, Yasser Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin. What did he do to win the prize? After decades of being a terrorist leader, he basically made a promise to stop doing terrorism. That's right. Decades of terrorism, combined with a promise to stop blowing up innocent women and children, equals Nobel Peace Prize. The awarding of Arafat the peace prize in 1994 showed that the prize was not so much about actual accomplishment, but, rather, about making a political statement. In that case, the Nobel Committee wanted to send a statement that they supported the accord that Arafat had reached with Israel. The accord hadn't actually done anything; and there was no evidence that Arafat would actually stick to the agreement (and later history showed that he, indeed, didn'...