Let’s close some tabs in Firefox, shall we?
First, I am just loving this story about the big mafia don’s encryption scheme. We live in a world where essentially uncrackable public key encryption is freely and easily available, and this guy–the “boss of bosses”–is using a substitution cipher that my 20 month old daughter could crack. It’s not the simplest possibly substitution cipher (A=1, B=2, etc), but it is just a linear shift of the simplest possible one (A=4, B=5), an almost irrelevant distinction.
I actually laughed out loud when I got to the part in the article that says “According to Martignago, the Provenzano code might have been made more secure by changing the + 3 key with other shift characters ( +5, +7, +8, etc.) from time to time.” Christ. Of course, the article later says “Top Mafia businesses were conducted on an obsolete Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter”, and “The fact that the boss code was rather straightforward may be explained by Provenzano’s lack of education. It stopped when he dropped out of school at about eight.” so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that such an idiot simple code was used.
Not only does this make me wonder how the hell the organized crime managed to operate at all, I think it also really reflects badly on the Sicilian police: if this is the calibre of your opponents, shouldn’t crime have been eliminated by now?
Second, a note for my American friends in mid-April: 42% of Your Taxes Pay for War. Allow me to also refer you to this, specifically to this passage:
There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing; who even postpone the question of freedom to the question of free-trade, and quietly read the prices-current along with the latest advices from Mexico, after dinner, and, it may be, fall asleep over them both. What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot to-day? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret.
’nuff said.
Third, Norse Mythology as an alternative to the Flying Spaghetti Monster for use in illuminating the ridiculousness of people who want to teach “creation” in school.
