Stuff below the fold

The "I fought the Law and the Law Won" story of the day:

The Ruthlessness of Gravity

Years ago, I tried crossing a downhill street plated with glare ice (friction is one of our few weapons against gravity) and could no more walk across that street than I could fly.  And for the first time, I understood what gravity was capable of.  It doesn’t negotiate, it can’t be avoided, it runs this place like an absolute dictatorship.

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the unintended consequences story of the day:

Water Saving leads to the big stink.

 Water conservation can lead to smellier sewers and more corrosion in sewer pipes, according to new research.

Yeah, we see that in our open trench sewer system now, during the dry season: they are full of smelly sludge (and plastic bags) and that terrible black algae growing in all the drainage ditches...the good news is that probably mosquito larvae can't survive there...

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The Physics of Bad Piggies.

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Drudge has a headline about a new bill in the US Congress to allow government monitoring of email without a warrant.

But StrategyPage points out that emails are not exactly secret anyway.

Email has been an enormously useful intelligence gathering tool, mainly because it so damn convenient and police and intelligence agencies can easily get access to anything that is transmitted via an email network. There are techniques terrorists can use to make their communications more secure, but most don't know them, or don't bother to use them. Things like leaving email as a draft, rather than sending it, or using encryption. But even techniques like these make your messages vulnerable to interception. The recently resigned head of the CIA found this out the hard way when he was reminded that the old “leaving email as a draft” dodge has long since been turned into something all intel agencies watch carefully.

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The "WAGD" post of the day:

Eruption fears rise at Mount Doom:

A New Zealand volcano that featured as Mount Doom in The Lord of the Rings movies is in danger of erupting as pressure builds in a subterranean vent, officials warn