Link: NHL Legend Brian Burke and His Advocacy for Gay Athletes: Profiles: GQ

This is a wonderful story, and heartbreaking. Read it. And if you’re in a “macho” profession, read it twice.

The word “aerobics” came about when the gym instructors got together and said, “If we’re going to charge $10 an hour, we can’t call it jumping up and down.

Rita Rudner

Link: Kara’s Ethics Statement | AllThingsD

Not exactly brief, but the most complete—and easiest to read!—disclosure statement I’ve ever read.

Link: Smartphone Browser Landscape

Yet more great stuff from A List Apart.

Link: The Real Lessons Of Gawker’s Security Mess

Lots of good lessons—and schadenfreude—to be had from this comedy of errors…

Link: Isuzu 4BD1 Transmission to LT230 t-case

This kit adapts an MSA 5D (and similar) transmission to the Land Rover LT230 transfer case. At the same time, it also converts the transmission to a lever shift, from the standard cable shift. Utterly brilliant.

The bottom line here is that privacy has its value, not just between members of the public, but between citizens and their governments, and between government officials. Everything does not need or deserve to be public. There is a line. And while I certainly would not elect myself to decide where that line is, it does exist. And to those that say such a line is unneeded or inappropriate, I call bullshit on that.

All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can’t get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer.

Attributed to an IBM maintenance manual, ca 1925

Link: 20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web

The book itself is good and interesting and informative, but the UI is fascinating, too.

The browser page does not reload every time you turn the page, but the URL location changes! (And here’s how they do it, with history.pushState.)

My prediction: If Apple announces a pill that cures cancer, AIDs, herpes, and reveals a light bulb that lasts 99 years, while telling us the location of Jimmy Hoffa’s body, the Apple Haters will still call the announcement “disappointing,” and will be angry that Apple thinks that they cured cancer first (they’ll bring up an obscure scientist in New Guinea that maybe did it first).

Then they’ll insult the people who buy the cancer medicine for being Sheeple and complain about the fact that you have to swallow it in tablet form (why no syringe, Apple, it’s faster, OMG!). They’ll then declare that they will wait for the Android version in syringe form.