Lunatic Platitudes

I must have been living under a rock since March 10th, 2007. That was the date of the first release of FireGPG. The name merges Firefox, the best browser in history, with GnuPG, which is the Gnu Privacy Guard package. FireGPG is a firefox plugin which brings a user friendly interface for GnuPG to Firefox.

GnuPG is a free implementation of the OpenPGP standard defined in RFC 4880. PGP stands for “Pretty Good Privacy” which humbly states the obvious. You can encrypt text using public and private key pairs and exchange this data with people you have public keys for. This ensures messages come from intended senders and are only opened by intended recipients. It’s good stuff.

FireGPG actually even has a tie in to Gmail which is a service I use. It integrates seamlessly with the compose message interface, providing buttons to clear sign a message or encrypt, sign and send. It is really slick.

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This map was put together by researchers who went over death and weather data from the “1970’s” through 2004. Sorry, but it just doesn’t get any more specific than that. The report I read has a quote in it that says this is a call to action: if you have enough money you can move someplace our decades of data says you are less likely to die in a natural weather event. I hope that dude’s rich ego can avoid getting hit by a bus on the way to wherever it is he’s going. of course, I live in an area that shows up on the good side and despite the headline, it’s in the south.

This is clearly one of those moments where I am certain we’ve made too much of the need for knee pads, helmets and boogy man mentality. We’re teaching our kids to be afraid of almost everything and propagating the concept of a darker reality than is necessary. Sure a level of awareness and safety consciousness is good, but this is ridiculous. That’s my take anyway.

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This defies commentary. Thanks for the laugh John!

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