(Quoting from the newsletter you can get by visiting the site)

“Scientists have discovered why being hugged feels so good – human skin has a special network of nerves that stimulate a pleasurable response to stroking.

Until now, no-one knew the function of these nerves. But the revelation came after doctors realised that a woman with no sense of touch still felt a “pleasant” sensation when her skin was caressed with a paintbrush.”

It’s nice to see the site I started back in 1995 is able to offer so many more sophisticated services (like daily email newsflashes) today.

Jennifer 8. Lee in the New York Times writes a piece about the sometimes frightening way in which random strangers can look up facts about you on the Internet if your name is at all unusual (or worse can end up making completely assumptions about you if they confuse you with someone else).

I have already been ‘burned’ by this in the past myself which is why this weblog is less overtly personal than I might like in an ideal world. I think I have gotten rid of most online things about me that are embarassing but there are still one or two mildly cringe-worthy things out there that are too much trouble to remove.

Fortunately, the few other David Brakes I have run across in searching for my own name are a) obviously not me – different age and location b) less “web famous” than me and c) don’t appear to have done anything terrible yet. Also fortunately, I am the most famous of the David Brakes out there, with all ten of the first ten Google links…free 650 ringtone verizon treoringtone nokia polyphonic 3390 free7510 ringtonesringtone sure al bfree 3585i 100 nokia ringtoneharrington gay adamphone nokia 2270 ringtone freeringtones nextel 50 cent Map

I didn’t think there was much of a risk to an individual subscriber from WiFi piracy – after all there is normally plenty of bandwidth for all on a broadband connection – but if you used your neighbor’s network to make a file that is in a lot of demand available you could end up saturating their broadband and making it almost unusable.

AT&T Broadband is warning customers to secure their Wi-Fi networks after an unusual case in which a subscriber played an unwitting role in dispatching a pirated movie over the Internet… The movie pirate lived next door to the subscriber, and was able to access his neighbor’s Wi-Fi wireless network to send the movie out over his neighbor’s Broadband…pornagraphy amaturefrere adult movies sex for asianames analyzerporno maroc acttressesassault and abduction restraint sexualcross porn alex1970s trucking co minnesota pornteens georgetown crash 6 feed rss Mapmp3 festival academic hindsleymp3 2g sizemp3 96 avalonabacus mp3 live mixinput f150 2006 mp3 audiophile fordandroid mp3 acid6 mp3 minutesdese nil adara mp3 Map

Sometime in the last few weeks, Transport for London’s web-based route planner just got a huge upgrade. It used to be you could only automatically plan your route by tube – if you were thinking of taking a combination of tube, bus, rail or other public transport, you still had to download maps and figure out fares and interconnections yourself.

The new site can estimate your journey practically door to door, if you give it the postcode of your destination (as long as you are in London), integrating estimated walking times, waiting times and giving costs. The only thing it doesn’t do is point out the most efficient way to pay your fare – for example a zone one tube journey is listed as costing £1.60 but if you have bought a “carnet” of ten the tickets will “only” cost £1.15 each.

In fact, the site seems almost to hide away some of the best fares – for full details you have to read a 21 page PDF.

It’s aggravating that Livingstone recently lost his battle to avoid having to use a “public private partnership” to fund tube improvements (not even The Economist thought this was a good idea!) but the £5 charge for bringing cars into the centre of London has just passed its last hurdle, so on the whole things are looking rather good for transport in London….

For less than £500 per person, two thousand people in a high rise tower block in Melbourne, Australia are being provided with computers, training and broadband access to email and community services.

It’s too early to tell, but I would hope that with the right community software and appropriate help this could turn out to be a crucial tool to building social capital on the estate and improving both people’s skills and their environment.

The scheme is already up for the Stockholm Challenge Award. The award is interesting in itself as it helps to make prominent examples of good practice from around the world.

I am entertained by the idea of the Ageless Project which lets you tell the world your birthday and check out weblogs by your own age cohort. I am registered there now. It’s reminiscent of Thomas Boutell’s World Birthday Web (now seemingly deceased due to excessive spamming, though it is still linked to from his homepage).

In a further (and quite clever) attempt to find revenues, Salon is promoting Userland’s Radio weblog software by hosting user’s weblogs themselves and pledging to keep an eye on them, this holding out the tempting prospect of having your weblog made famous by Salon. The downside is that it promotes software that will cost you money over (correct me if I am wrong) software that is just as good and costs nothing like Moveabletype (which I use). The (British) Guardian’s approach is more interesting – they are producing a contest to find the best British weblogs (which doubtless will also dramatically increase the number of links from British weblogs to the Guardian).

An interesting polemic by Malcolm “Tipping Point” Gladwell in the New Yorker about the dangers of valuing individual talent over a sound organizational structure in business. Enron provides him with plenty of good raw material…

Among other things, it mentions that, “…the link between I.Q. and job performance is distinctly underwhelming. On a scale where 0.1 or below means virtually no correlation and 0.7 or above implies a strong correlation … the correlation between I.Q. and occupational success is between 0.2 and 0.3.”

A clever bit of lateral thinking to help close the digital divide in rural India – villagers request Internet information from a technician on a motorbike and a day or two later, he returns with the information that he has downloaded.porn 50aim sexporn amatervideo adriana lima sexa tape sex night paris in3d animal sexsex mpegs amateursex 101 great of nights Map

Prolonged time playing video games could cause people to lose concentration, get angry easily and have trouble associating with others, a Japanese professor’s research has suggested.

The newspaper article doesn’t say what kinds of game were tested – my guess is that if there is an effect it is with shoot-em-up-type games rather than the more cerebral ones I normally prefer…