Hello.

James Burke predicted the future in 1973. Now he does it again
(Audio, 13 minutes, via the brilliant gorjuss mailing list)
http://audioboo.fm/boos/1574606-james-burke-predicted-the-future-in–1973-now-he-does-it-again

Naming hurricanes after climate deniers
(fun idea)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efAUCG9oTb8
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-28/push-to-name-hurricanes-after-climate-change-deniers/4917206

Accidental weather station
(via @bowbrick)
http://opensignal.com/reports/battery-temperature-weather

NAO report on Universal Credit. Interesting stuff about the attempted use of agile approaches here
17."The Department experienced problems incorporating the agile approach into existing contracts, governance and assurance structures."
25.b. "The Department should not allow arbitrary time pressures to drive decisions or justify lack of information."
3.10. "The Cabinet Office does not consider that the Department has at any point prior to the reset appropriately adopted an agile approach to managing the Universal Credit programme."
http://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Full-Report.pdf

James Bridle: Australia: Drone Shadows, Diagrams, and Political Systems
“Drones are avatars of the the political process: they are instantiations of a set of ideologies and beliefs, made visible by their reification in electromechanical systems. When we talk about drones, we are really talking about the politics that demand, shape, and deploy them, and the politics which are made possible by them. … No wonder then that politicians are afraid of even artistic representations of the drone.”
http://booktwo.org/notebook/australia-drone-shadows/

Bill Gates on his foundation’s health and education campaigns
“When you’re dying of malaria, I suppose you’ll look up and see that [Google] balloon, and I’m not sure how it’ll help you.”
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-08-08/bill-gates-on-his-foundations-health-and-education-campaigns

"The NSA has secretly and successfully worked to break many types of encryption, the widely used technology that is supposed to make it impossible to read intercepted communications"
http://www.propublica.org/article/the-nsas-secret-campaign-to-crack-undermine-internet-encryption
"some might say that because of its value as an intelligence tool, the existence of the mind-reading program should never be revealed. We do not agree. In our view, such a capability in the hands of the government would pose an overwhelming threat to civil liberties"
http://www.propublica.org/article/why-we-published-the-decryption-story
and some speculation plus a bit more background from Matthew Green
http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/09/on-nsa.html

Proper use for a yoga ball
(According to goats)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu31o9zzHQs

Deboning a chicken
(I badly want to try this)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAekQ5fzfGM

Yours sincerely
Roo

Roo Reynolds
@rooreynolds
http://tinyletter.com/rooreynolds