I normally avoid reposting news I find on other news aggregators, but sometimes I come across an item sufficiently singular and unique that I feel I have no choice. In this case, Adam Savage of MythBusters recounts his attempt to sculpt a perfect recreation of the Maltese Falcon as a way to explore the nature of obsession. The talk is at once highly entertaining and deeply moving. In a way I never fully grokked when watching MythBusters, Adam is a true geek.

By popular demand, I have reënabled comments, now using DISQUS as the back-end. I’ll tighten up the integration over the next week, but in the meantime, everything does work as-advertised.

You know you’re getting too casual with your coworkers when your Secret Santa leaves this on your desk:

(Thanks to Tyler for the picture.)

Several weeks ago, I ran across a small OS X tool called The Unarchiver—a free replacement for the built-in BOMArchiverHelper.app utility that Mac OS X uses to extract zip archives. The Unarchiver goes beyond BOMArchiveHelper, handling more file formats (including 7-zip and StuffIt), including better internationalization support, and having a more Finder-like interface (multiple simultaneous extractions are in a single window). I’ve been very happy with it. If you run OS X and deal with archives often, take a look.

This morning, on the 6 train, I saw the following advertisement:

Believe it or not.

In 1986, the subway and bus fare was $1. That’s $1.89 in 2008 dollars. Today 30-day Unlimited Ride MetroCard brings the fare down to $1.17. Believe it.

I have a better idea: I’ll accuse the MTA of engaging in false and deceptive advertising practices.

The ad makes a completely bogus comparison. There were no Unlimited Ride MetroCards in 1986. Hell, there were no MetroCards in 1986. There were single-ride tokens. The equivalent of a single-ride token today is a single-use MetroCard, which retails for $2.00. This is a 6% increase in fare since 1986.

But, just for fun, let’s check their bogus comparison. Where does the $1.17 come from? Well, a 30-day Unlimited Ride MetroCard is $81. Even if we assume you ride the train twice a day, every day, for a total of 60 times over the life of the card, that means you’re spending $1.35 per ride—still higher than their $1.17. Indeed, you have to ride the train 70 times in 30 days to get down to their $1.17 price point. Where’d they get that number? Who knows. They could just as easily have decided that New Yorkers ride the train fifteen times a day, and claimed a 30-day unlimited card drops your fare to 18¢. The beauty of unlimited v. limited comparisons is I can make up whatever numbers I want.

What’s so stupid is that there’s a comparison that the MTA could have made that would have been valid, and does translate to a real fare drop. When the MTA introduced MetroCards, they instituted a discount program: for every $x you put on the card (currently $7), you get a free ride. As long as you’re buying rides in bulk, the cost of a ride has dropped to $1.75—which is indeed a solid 7.5% drop from the 1986 price.

But that’s not what the ad claims. The ad makes a bogus comparison, and should be called out for the tripe it is.

Believe it? No thanks. I’ll stick to the truth.

I’ve long preferred Pownce to Twitter. It allows longer messages, has better uptime, has a better API, allows you to send links, photos, and files in addition to text…basically, it was just better in every way. The Copilot team made heavy use of Pownce during our Hair on Fire sprint, and continued to use it until we adopted Laconica internally.

So I was deeply saddened to learn that, in a mere two weeks, Pownce will be no more. I guess Twitter’s where I’ll be now, whether I like it or not.

Pownce, you’ll be missed.