More semi-Random links

You can carry a gun, but no nail clippers
Teens should teach adults about safe sex
Apps for Real Life
America's Third War: Texas Strikes Back
Where are the body scanners?
A little girl gets "bullied" for liking Star Wars
Facebook is hazardous to your marriage (if your marriage is already in trouble or you are a clueless techno newb)
How to prepare for Black Friday (Unfortunately, this method does not involve copious quantities of Scotch)
China pwns USA
Twitter alphabet
Black Friday creep
Chinese housing bubble
Visual tour: 25 years of Windows

A bunch of Stuff

Here are some links:
Jimmy "Neil Young" Fallon & Bruce
Calendar girl
Electronics kits under $100
Jet Lag May Cause Stupidity
Twitter Reputation scores
Roku get Hulu Plus Support
Snoop sticks - track your friends with a USB drive
Math is the key to a (financially) successful marriage
Idiocracy the allegory for our times
5 Fresh Places to Find Online Video (but where are the 5 stale places, Miller Lite?)
How do you expect a company that can't spell "light" to make a good beer?
Startup Bubble or Startup Boom?
Barack Obama: Great president or greatest president ever?
Altoona boots the PA East West High School All Star football game
Oh, PLOT holes
10 best dystopian novels

Everything to Excess

Civilization V is coming

On Sept. 21, Civ 5 will be released. Casey Johnston thoughtfully wrote up The history of Civilization: 20 years of Wonders for Ars Technica. While I'm not even sure I have a computer that will play Civ V, I am hoping to get to play within the next few months. I still enjoy BTS, though, so that will have to keep me occupied for the time being.

How to Rescue a Crashed PC

PC Mag has an online article about recovering a crashed computer. This is one of those things that you need rarely, but when you do...

Maybe I'll be able to find it when I need it.

Dead Hand

Here's a scary one. The Soviets set up a system to automatically launch a nuclear 2nd strike if their leadership were removed by a first strike. I came across Dead Hand (formally called the Perimeter system) in some speculation about the termination of broadcast by UVB-76. This lead me to the Wikipedia article on the Dead Hand. The whole thing seems like a bad Russian imitation of Skynet. Apparently, it may not have been totally automatic - there was a sort of Mechanical Turk in a deep underground bunker that could send a low frequency radio signal to initiate the responsive launch. Last year, Wired said that the system was still in place.

Risks of terrorism

From Terrorist Attacks and Comparable Risks, Part 1: As can be seen, annual terrorism fatality risks, particularly for areas outside of war zones, are less than one in one million and therefore generally lie within the range regulators deem safe or acceptable, requiring no further regulations, particularly those likely to be expensive. They are similar to the risks of using home appliances (200 deaths per year in the United States) or of commercial aviation (103 deaths per year).