Aye, your descriptions are dead on. Appreciate you balancing my poor attempt at humour with some clear facts.

Appreciate that in outlining the technology your elucidation underscores the reality that it still all comes down to real police work.

I would reckon a single red light camera in Chicago issues at least that many tickets per hour. Either they're pointing the cameras in the wrong direction or Brits really are as civil as they seem to be on Dr. Who.

Cardinal Richleau famously decreed "Control the langauge, control the people" and was the basis for his establishing L'Acadamie Francais which to this day enforces what can and cannot be used as a word in the French langauge. I believe there is still a legal ban on the word "Le Weekend".

Arch-Romantic and symboliste genius Arthur Rimbaud, inspiration for the film series Rambo, saw this sameinsight from the other perspective: change your language, change your life. This insight led him to abandon his incredible literary achievements at 17 to go off an lead a life of adventure, travel, gun running and decadence.

If it language doesn't change perception, why is so much effort put into double speak? The verbal Frankensteins created by today's spin doctors would make Orwell blush or more likely vomit. And it's done at such a granular level it goes unnoticed. I remember reading an interesting thesis that the word 'like' was injected into the hippie subculture to weaken their mindset on the simple premise you may recall from poetry class that a simile is much weaker than a metaphor. Whether it was intentionally planted or evolved organically, it was like totally bogus in helping the like counterculture gain any like credibility.

Both words and numbers can hide meaning. Nothing zen to it other than the basic premise of maya or all things are an illusion. But even the Buddhists find enlightenment in contemplating words. Basho's frog comes to mind.

The enlightened however are able to see there is truth in everything, even lies. Particularly lies. Something the counterculture of the 60's / 70's could perhaps grasp but not express. Much of this was due to a lack of mathematical understanding and poor verbal skills that left them inarticulate and ineffective.

Vietnam was a military failure much in part as it was based on faulty maths much based on Game Theory and the Prisoner's Dilemma and other works of paranoid schizophrenic John Nash. While Nash's works hold critical insight, those who attempted to apply them had little grasp on what those insights were. Where Nash realised insight in numbers, the pentagon just saw them as something to punch into adding machines. It wasn't necessarily garbage in garbage out, but just the wholesale download of data into the garbage disposal for shredding with the results interpreted by certifed tea leaf readers.

Body counts and other meaningless quota systems gamed the system against victory because the theory failed to recognise that humans are not calculators. Sure some weird freaks are, and until recently the word calculator referred not to machines but to someone good at calculating numbers. Overall, most humans are bad with numbers but good at lazy (different than the greedy that was used to incorrectly apply game theory) and being able to build odd logic systems when forced to meet meaningless imaginary goals such as quotas. Numbers are easy to fudge, and if you don't fudge them you can always get bonus points in the body counts by killing anyone and labelling them as enemy afterwards. The mathematical results did little to realise the martial goals originally set out upon.

One thing I have found strange in all the recent talk in the US regarding healthcare is that it seems much of the mess we're in was a result of these same bad maths strategy of Vietnam were later applied to the US Healthcare system when Robert Macnamera played his same numbers game as consultant for the US and later at the invitation of Margaret Thatcher in the 80's to apply his 'wizardry' to the UK system. Both applications were utter failures worse than Vietnam. But like there were no hippies, like complaining. Instead, they turned to alternative medicine which is based on even less reliable principles.

Speaking as someone who has a degree in English Literature, I can safely say I use the maths every day. Although I should preface that I work as an analyst and the fields of mathematics I do the most research result in receiving an inordinate amount of CIA recruiting adverts from google adsense. On the upside, I can google "eclipse" and get zero vampire results.

That I ended up in a maths intensive vocation is not unusual. I didn't realise it at the time, but as a kid I had freakish abilities. I just thought it was not unusual. Actually, I believed my teachers who thought I was retarded. I could score 99th percentile on the maths portions of standardised testing, I just couldn't read, write or speak and was severely withdrawn.

Part of this was due to the fact that my father taught me the three R's at an early age and let me write left handed. At school I was required to switch to be right handed. Much later, a teacher advised me to try typing and it helped a lot.

Rather than pursue an Honours Engineering course at University of Illinois, I majored in Lit and Philosophy at a small liberal arts college to become a part of society. I had a fear of becoming an alienated scientist bullied by the same jocks from school into making nuclear weapons.

One could argue that there's no need to pursue literacy beyond the basics. And the author of the article mentions this. But really, what a dismal waste of one's life. It reminds me of the cliché Italian mobster who justifies a sociopath existence banking on a deathbed prayer can absolve him and get him to heaven -- it shows a true lack of understanding in the concept of statistics and risk analysis that someone in that line of work will even have a death bed beyond an unexpectedly cold sidewalk.

Society as it is far too unaware and lost. Literature, Science and Math are what glue our society together. Without it, there's just bread and circus and a general abuse of nerds. Do we really want a culture that would murder Archimedes or make a lampshade out of Einstein or Godel? It's not like we're that removed from that culture of violence today.

Life without intellectual stimulation is a banquet of white bread and margarine washed down with kool-aid while watching the football on the big screen. You can say it's adequate, but it's not my cup of tea.

Yes, one may rarely use the quadratic equation in everyday life, but that doesn't mean the neuron pathways developed in learning this formula doesn't help one make more rational and strategically better decisions in subject matter far removed from the ethereal world of numbers.

Math is neither an art, nor a science; it is the magic that holds the two hemispheres together; writing code seems to be a composite of both: poetry with numbers.

Sure one could do without either, but as Calvin's tiger Hobbes said, without it would be "nasty, brutish and short." For society's sake, we need more maths. I teach junior high economics and personal budgeting through JA and believe me when the teacher asks you quietly after class how to calculate percentages, you know mathematics is not valued enough in our culture.

Something to consider today, the birthday of John Keats, a man who so beautifully combined poetry and science to envision discoveries, such as the workings of the nervous system, not to be revealed through the scientific method for some time later.

My dad taught me to write before I started at school. And I was left handed and did great. But at school the nuns wouldn't have none of that sinister writing and forced me to relearn with my right hand. Which led to what I guess would be called learning disability these days.

Fortunately, a guy in my bike club figured this out (he was a writer) and got me to try typing. I got a big 3/4 ton Adler and went to town. It solved a lot of left / right hemisphere problems.

So I've been a touch typist before I got my first computer (Apple IIe). And stuck with the Adler through University.

My hand writing is not as good as it used to be. But I also fill notebook after notebook. Reams of data. I take notes at meetings, phone conversations, etc. A lot of times, I have to copy out by hand the text I am trying to learn. When I'm cracked on a coding problem, I often write out my code by hand or it's to the window with the dry erase pens.

Over the years, I've gone from being left brain / right brain to pure amygdala. It seems that switching it up gets the whole brain working again. To me, it's like how artists switch medium to get their creativity driving again.

But the amnesia part of the story hit home. I hate the forgetting part. For example, I do some coding in python. I'd say I am a medium to experienced coder in the language. Well, I probably wouldn't but that's what the brainbench test said. I usually feel like I suck.

But anyways, hadn't used python for a week. Went back to a project and could not remember Idle. Just stared blankly at the screen saying ACK!! like Bill the cat.

Thankfully Google brought it back. Made me wonder what outsourcing our memory to Google will do to the species. Will it dumb us down and smarten us up like text did?

You'll find the right balance. My dad died when I was young. Before grade one. Relatives tried to archive him with the tech of the day -- audio tapes, photos, etc. But I don't have anything but his watch.

I have many memories of doing yard work with him or sitting on the back steps going over the financial pages of the newspaper. Probably one of the few four year olds who knew what a P/E ratio was -- knowledge that served me well in the dot com bubble, I might add.

I may not have a photo of him, but feel connected to him following the markets, doing maths or working in the yard.

The downside of guns, is they tend to attract criminals as they are useful tools in committing other crimes and have a ready black market: for a stolen item, you get the most buck for the bang as opposed to trying to flog the action figures, comic books and decrepit hardware with weird OS's that most geeks tend to hoard.

Guns are light, easy to transport (as opposed to a large LCD) and unless you're into shooting sports the large investment leave you unprepared to defend your home. And even if you are a good shot, chances are it's either not at hand when needed (locked in the other room), the breakin occurs whe you won't be around to use it and just have it straight out stolen, or worst case ontario have it or use it on yourself in the heat of the moment.

The one time I had a home invasion, the first thing I did was hide my gun, a beautiful Israeli AK-47, as I didn't want it to be involved in the pending brawl.

I come from a family with a long tradition of shooting and piss off my ATF cousins when I outshoot them at family get togethers. Still I don't own anything more than a pellet rifle. Shooting anything beyond that is an expensive sport that I don't find compelling enough to invest in either the time or gear.

There have been a number of break-ins recently in my area. The place two doors down has had three. In general, the targets had one thing in common: gun owners.

The fact that I have a yard full of sled dogs and my house is clearly visible from the road are probably two factors I have not yet been victimized. And to be honest, would appreciate some kids hauling off my collection ancient hardware just to avoid the recycling fees.

'Have heard this is why the original ice cube trays used for the development of Jello Shots by Tom Lehrer can neither be confirmed or denied although documented in Wikipedia.

The lead male character, loosely based on the author, is named is Blomkvist, a wry nod to the real driver named Stig, the guy who perfected cornering with the power slide driving a Saab 96, one of the first front wheel drive cars. He'd apply the gas while locking up the back wheels with the park brake to fly through rough rally course corners and win many a race in this manner throughout the seventies and early eighties. Until the Audi Quattros, he was unbeatable.

He was my hero as a kid, which makes watching that other Stig as annoying as some computer show having a 'secret' character known only as The Woz. who was not Steve Wozniak.

The real Stig Blomqvist was a genius. His innovative technique saved my life when my little Honda broke a strut and lost a front wheel while travelling down the freeway. I used the brake and gas to keep the car under control and brought it to a safe stop at the side of the road rather than letting it flip into a hunk of twisted metal as it seemed destined. Didn't even hit a sign or mile marker.

Well there is still the dispute over his estate. He died without a will and as I understand it his father and brother split up his money and took the book rights. The woman he lived with for many years claims to have the only copy of a nearly complete fourth volume of the originally intended series of ten but refuses to let it see the light of day. Although other stories say she is working on completing it. Have also heard she somehow was able to get the film rights.

It would be great to think a lot of people are actually reading the Millennium Series. It is a compelling series and well researched. Steig Larson made his mark as a journalist who exposed a variety of covert neo-nazi organizations in Europe. He was a frequent recipient of threats and his death at a young age was initially investigated as a murder.

From my anecdotal evidence, agree with you on this number being more marketing engineering than reality. I know very few people who have even heard of the Millennium series outside of my mentioning it. Been enjoying the series as a book I read only while waiting for medical appointments. Enough appointments that I've read the first two so far and not one person in any of the waiting rooms mentioned reading the book and a room full of nervous people tend to make small talk over any connection they can find.

In fact, the only people I've come across who have read the book, or even heard of it, are doctors and one physical therapist who freaked out her book club when she got them to read the first installment. To the rest of the generally illiterate population, they probably think it's a Taco Bell commercial.

This could reflect more on the fact that I live in Central Wisconsin: home of many of your average American hate groups and cults including Ed Gein, Joe McCarthy, the John Birch Society and the Posse Commutates (the group who spawned the recent Holocaust Museum shooting and several assassinations of Doctors who performed abortions). The whole area seems pretty obsessed with neo-nazi ideologies and tend to find it difficult to see nazis as the bad guys. Things haven't seemed to change much here from the days Herzog filmed Stroszek here roughly thirty years ago.

For example, when we moved here, the kids in the local high school were tourettes-level obsessed with saying 'Heil Hitler' and casually use the term 'Jew' as a strong pejorative. It was like banging my head against a brick wall trying to convince the principal that this was offensive. Even after explaining to him we are Jewish descendants of Aushwitz survivors, he saw no reason to intercede. Instead, the school's solution was to try and save our souls and convert us to Christianity.

Which is probably why movies like American Beauty don't even show in the local theaters. It's almost Stalinist, the tendency of so many interesting sounding books and movies to just sort of disappear -- airbrushed out of the general consciousness.

It could be salvaged if Ellen Page played Lisbeth and could redeem her reputation from that dreck flick she was in Juno, too. Reading the book, I imagined Lisbeth to be a mix of her as Treena Lahey and her role in Hard Candy. Was sad to hear she's no longer up for the role.

I loved the Swedish version and can't see it being improved upon. Wonder if they going to recast the location, too?

I avoided reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo because the title sounded like that song Willie Nelson did for the Taco Bell ad, The Girl with the Rose Tattoo.

Glad I waited. Found it in hardcover at a garage sale for a buck. Totally awesome read.

Have to agree with you. Once pharma advertising budget surpassed pharma research it was game over.

Although it is a slightly different game than the googlitis

.... not to say the two can't combine for a mega-cocktail -- especially when you consider pharma advertising recombining with GoogleDNA adsense.

Have for sometime really been hating looking up health info online. It's just chucked with so many experts exchanges.

I think we're starting to go back on the pendulum started by Susan Sontag who was an early advocate of taking control of your health back when doctors would often conceal diagnosis from patients as to not excite them.

Your post worried me, and immediately tested with ADP Timesaver and it worked for me. Not sure if it's the same product.