“Before I came to Reed, I thought I understood two things about college rankings: that they were terrible, and that they were irresistible. I have since learned that I was wrong about one of them.” (via AJH)

Defense agencies are absurdly reclassifying previously declassified documents, says Fred Kaplan at _Slate_. Those who control the past control the future…

The US Secretary of State released a coarse anti-Russian statement. This is because she is a single woman who has no children, says _Pravda_. Wow. Just…wow.

As long as the judges keep rewarding ugly failure, you’ll never see a beautiful skate program, at the Olympics or otherwise.

Michael Botsko looks at six years of ticket stubs and discovers some interesting, if not entirely unexpected, trends. (via Kottke)

Bruce Schneier tells us that “identity theft” is a misnomer, and that for real change to happen, the burden must be shifted from the individual, who has little recourse, to the financial institutions taht have the means to stop the fraud.

Slate on the nonsense of Olympic doping rules. On a related note, I haven’t found myself watching a single second of Olympic coverage, even by accident, thus far.

_Grey’s Anatomy_ creator Shonda Rhimes writes about the Super Bowl two-parter on the show blog. In case you were wondering, the bomb squad dude is *dead*. He isn’t coming back after having been blown up, even if it did take place in a hospital.

Ray Bradbury tells us that the answer to LA’s escalating transportation woes is an overhead monorail system. I completely agree. In fact, I was advocating a Monorail for Brandeis! (Instead of “you went where?” it would be, “oh, man, you went to that school with the monorail!”). Public transportation, and not massive new freeways, is the answer. Subways have not proven to be viable. Busses are useful, but not a complete solution. Monorails, as silly as it may sound, could prove to be an excellent answer. (via Aaron)

I’m happy to hear that _Coast to Coast AM_, a show I used to listen to regularily during summer vacation from high school, continues to be the highest rated radio show in its timeslot even three years of the departure of legendary host Art Bell.

I had a simple question, which characters are allowed in MySQL database passwords (i.e. can I use #^% and other special characters to make the password more secure). I asked Google, and the page I ended up with (which is actually for Oracle databases) shows that some people have put *far* too much effort into figuring this sort of thing out, and that the answer is completely bonkers.

Says Jim Wier of lawn equipment maker Snapper, “I could go to my grave, and my tombstone could say, ‘Here lies the dumbest CEO ever to live. He chose not to sell to Wal-Mart.’“

In a small patriotic American town, the high school production of _Grease_ created a controversy because of the drinking, smoking, and wearing of nightgowns. Now they’ve cancelled _The Crucible_ (not for any specific reason) and are also nixing plans for _Little Shop of Horrors_ (woman gets beaten, plant eats people). Also off the table: _Bye Bye Birdie_ (smoking and drinking), _Oklahoma_ (scene of near-rape), and _Diary of Anne Frank_ (not appropriate for young children). The irony of banning _The Crucible_ — a play about the Salem witch trials — is of course completely lost on the community leaders. To add insult to injury, the drama teacher has been told that her contract might not be renewed. Oh, and they’re not too hot to the idea of putting on _Romeo & Juliet_, either. You think I’m joking, but I’m not.

Rocketboom’s eBay ad auction brought in $40,000!!! Wow, big congrats to them. I expect to see great new things, or at least a less sucky new backdrop! (RB is a daily 3 minute web video broadcast).

How world leaders make phone calls — Oh explainer, you’ve always been my favorite!

Learn how to build your very own Web 2.0 ™ layout in just 5 minutes! Be cool with big text, a gradient, a tag cloud, and highlighting!

Ars offers a primer on the CableCARD standard that is set to replace set top cable boxes. Or not. Luckily, I expect IPTV, iTunes, and the like, will make much of this a moot point, which is good, since the new content control systems are, in a word, sucky.

Rocketboom asks, “why is George W. Bush so awesome?” Potentially ironic aside: at least two of the interviews were filmed inside Berkman — directly in front of a bathroom. That people were trying to use. Hehe.

This short article is very light on details but the gist gets across just fine: anyone with a few minutes access to your cell phone can start tracking your every movement by paying nine bucks to a shady web site. One might wonder how they do this without the phone companies being involed. Or one might be cynical, like me, and not even have that thought.

Blogs and the internet in general are making reporting a more open and transparent process — sometimes in constructive ways, sometimes in a blatantly partisan ways — but, as we apparently have to reiterate every time one of these stories appears, this doesn’t mean traditional journalism is dying or becoming irrelevent, its just becoming better. RMacK gets a few quotes. Maybe she’ll post the email transcript. 😉 (via Aaron)