Good Reads - December 23rd

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I spent a fair amount of time today reading through my (impressive) backlog of articles in Instapaper (if you own an iOS device and don’t own Instapaper you should check it out, it is wonderful). I’d guess I managed to read out thirty or forty blog posts or articles and I wanted to provide a list of the highlights.

  1. Does Airport Security Really Make Us Safer? is a piece in Vanity Fair about the inadequacies of the measures taken by the U.S. government to secure air travel. It also touches on how “securing” air travel has simply made other targets (malls, casinos) more appealing.
  2. Belay Lessons: Smarter Web Programming is a piece about a different way of doing user authenticated actions in web applications. I’m not sure it is something I’d like to try but it is certainly interesting to consider.
  3. Attention and sex is far more about attention, though it does mention sex. To borrow a phrase from Minimal Mac, this is what we believe in. Pay attention to the things you want to excel at because no matter who you are multitasking doesn’t work.
  4. turned the city in a better direction (The woman who took on Glasgow’s gangs) is about a woman who helped make an organization in Glasgow possible which has drastically reduced gang violence.
  5. Dear Internet: It’s No Longer OK to Not Know How Congress Works takes the opposite point of view of many SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) detractors. It is not acceptable we, the citizens of the internet, don’t understand government and the law-making process just as it is not acceptable Congress does not understand how this legislation will destroy the internet.

There were some other good ones but these five were the most informative and thought provoking.