The Tudors...err, Tutors?

In many ways, it shouldn't be surrpising that in Hong Kong, where scoring well on public exams is so critical, tutors have become celebrities. The so called "Tutor Kings" can rake in a healthy living each year; when's the last time you saw your local Princeton Review math tutor tooling around in a Lamborghini?

This sounds like the basis for an Asian reality show or sitcom.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

This trailer for the upcoming adaptation of John le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy does the trick, doesn't it?

I have a soft spot for spy novels. While the current flavor is Nordic crime novels (the Millennium trilogy, Henning Mankell, et al), I still remember the first time I read The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. The terse prose, the elevation of human deception to the level of a high stakes game, it's all good fun.

The original Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy starring Alec Guinness is brilliant, too. Like a thick grey, somber wool blanket to wrap oneself in on a cold, autumn night.

Imagine the past

Why is human memory less reliable than we expect? Perhaps because our mental model for how human memory works is wrong. We picture ourselves retrieving a memory from a data bank like a computer retrieving a file.

But MRI studies conducted by Daniel Schacter indicate that the way we remember something may be the same process we use to imagine the future. That is, our brain takes disjointed components and tries to assemble it on the fly into a coherent picture. A process like that is inherently susceptible to influence. We may imagine a rosy future for ourselves for a variety of reasons, but it may be just as likely that we wear rose-tinted glasses when it comes to our past as well.

Our brains process time in one direction, but if we were to reverse the direction, perhaps it would feel the same to us. That is, we'd be remembering the future and imagining the past.

You are the ammunition

Late in the morning of the Tuesday that changed everything, Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney was on a runway at Andrews Air Force Base and ready to fly. She had her hand on the throttle of an F-16 and she had her orders: Bring down United Airlines Flight 93. The day’s fourth hijacked airliner seemed to be hurtling toward Washington. Penney, one of the first two combat pilots in the air that morning, was told to stop it.

The one thing she didn’t have as she roared into the crystalline sky was live ammunition. Or missiles. Or anything at all to throw at a hostile aircraft.

Except her own plane. So that was the plan.
Battling suicide with suicide. One of probably hundreds of amazing stories I hadn't yet heard about 9/11.

(hat tip to Daring Fireball)