We went for a longer-than-expected walk just north of San Francisco and stumbled across these mail boxes. I love that they’re so bright and cheerful. Maybe it takes the edge off receiving lots of junk mail and bills?

• American Stonehenge: Monumental Instructions for the Post-Apocalypse – Who doesn’t love a good mystery?
• The Holy Faceble: Genesis:1-2 – The more I learn about Facebook, the less I want to join. Same with this god stuff.
• Rejected. – “It’s just frustrating when the problems crop up, because compared to nearly everything else about the whole setup, the problems seem so arbitrary, avoidable, and developer-hostile. For instance, this problem wouldn’t be nearly as frustrating if approval, even for minor updates to established apps, took less than 7-14 days.” Not that I’m bitter than a minor update to Yummy recently got rejected or anything…

• A thought experiment – “This presents a problem for customers who are still running the 2.2.1 firmware: they can’t get your fix until they upgrade to the 3.0 firmware.”
• U.S. support for Detroit would buy 50 million Tata Nanos – “What else might we do with $100 billion in this industry? Assuming that we could get a wholesale price of $2000 per car, that’s enough to buy 50 million four-passenger 54 mpg Tata Nanos. The fuel savings from driving Nanos to the 7-11 instead of monster SUVs would save taxpayers $100 billion every year.”
• Right to privacy broken by a quarter of UK’s public databases, says report – “The report, Database State by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, says that more than half of Whitehall’s 46 databases and systems have significant problems with privacy or effectiveness, and could fall foul of a legal challenge.” And people wonder why I’m against ID cards and internet snooping laws.

• Pro-God buses for London streets – Anyone feel like complaining about these Christian ads on the ground that they make unsubstantiated claims?
• House Approves Whitelist of People Who Aren’t Terrorists – The solution to the errors and inconvenience of the no-fly list is… drum roll… another database! How could that possibly go wrong?
• Exclusive: ID cards are here – but police can’t read them – After spending shed-loads of money on ID cards, apparently the police and immigration officers can’t read them.

• NetNewsWire and iPhone-Sized Data – “Lesson learned: It’s not enough for an iPhone app to sport an iPhone-optimized user interface. It needs iPhone-sized data, too.” I agree with this in principle but I’ve been thinking how I’d apply it to my iPhone application, Yummy, and coming up with a blank. How can you decide in advance which bookmarks you’ll want to see? Most recent? Those with a particular tag? I can’t think of an option other than ‘all.’
• The Inauguration of President Barack Obama – In case you’re not sick of the inauguration already, here are some great images of the day.
• Gordon Brown withdraws plan to keep details of MPs’ expenses secret – “The PM said proposals for reforms of MPs’ expenses would provide ‘more transparency’ than in most other parliaments around the world.” I’m not convinced that this is a standard we should aspire to. Let’s face it, our parliament is more open that North Korea and less tyrannical than Iran’s but really that’s not much of an achievement.

• Withnail tourism – Must head up to the lakes, or at the very least dig out my DVD.
• Bush Street Renamed Obama Street in San Francisco – Welcome to the White House, President Obama!
• Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over’ – On the eve of Obama’s inauguration it’s instructive to look back to Bush’s 2001 speech…

• US imposes 72 hour pre-reg for Visa waiver travellers – And this is going to help how?!
• ID Cards: Scandalous as Well as Idiotic – More on ID cards and the lengths that the government is going to in order to make sure that we all get them, like it or not. Very sneaky.
• Want to buy Jacqui Smith’s ID? – “Four people have been arrested after the BBC bought a driving licence and utility bills in the name of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.” Yet the government insists that this is a good reason for having a national ID card? They still don’t understand…

• An elephant never forgets? George W. Bush’s lost e-mails – “The administration has chafed at external oversight and shown a tendency to come up with dubious legal justifications for ignoring laws it doesn’t agree with.” Just what is Mr Bush trying to hide?
• WordPress 2.5.1 – I just upgraded to the newest version of WordPress. Looks good as far as I can see but let me know if you spot anything untoward.
• Madonna, Hard Candy – “It’s about grooves rather than memorable songs, and Madonna just doesn’t make for a convincing soul diva [as she] sings them with the emotional engagement of a sat-nav suggesting a right turn onto the A23.”

• The Cost of E-Voting – One of the many reasons that I am against e-voting machines: the cost. “The cost … increased 179 percent per voter on average.” All that money for a less reliable system. Bargain!
• Change we can believe in – I didn’t realise that we were in line for some new coins. They look surprisingly good, certainly much better than the new US notes. (Originally from daringfireball.net)
• Bali bombings: A sister’s search for justice – I’ve always said that it’s much easier to be against capital punishment when it’s just an abstract idea. Here the sister of one of the Bali bombing’s victims argues why she’s still against it.

• Behind the Scenes at the Bay Bridge Construction Site – I saw the construction going on a few times last year, but from a distance while driving past. Interesting to see what they’re doing in more detail.
• Hand-wringing About American Culture – Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge? – “Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters.” The article concentrates on the US but I don’t think it’s limited to North America.
• America – more hassle than it’s worth? – Next week they’ll announce that all travelers need to wear orange overalls, the next that all flights go straight to Guantanamo… and then they’ll announce that it’s all an elaborate joke and that they just wanted to see how far we’d go before complainin