It turns out I am not the only person suspicious of "URL shorteners" designed to make very long links into shorter, manageable ones.    On a service like Twitter, where communications are limited to 140 characters, shorteners are absolutely necessary and utilities like TweetDeck build them in for you automatically.

For people you know, shorteners are obviously fine, because there is an element of trust.   For strangers, though, I never click on shortened URLs because the URL can usually tell me something about the link.

Really, no one needs to add anything to the title to make it funnier but the fact that the CIA, with its vast store of intellectual talent, didn't figure its WikiLeaks Task Force and acronym WTF would get chuckles in the Internet age makes it that much more humorous.

The WikiLeaks Task Force is no laughing matter, of course - it was created to ferret out the source of 250,000 leaked U.S. diplomatic cables and determine their impact, and it was also partly created because WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is an annoying prat.

A widely publicized report that cosmic microwave background, the glow left over from the explosive start of the universe believed to have occurred 13.7 billion years ago, contains echoes of previous cycles of cosmic birth and death, has been disputed by new analyses.

Three teams state that circular patterns do exist but are entirely consistent with the leading model for the birth of the universe, known as inflation, and do not require an alternative, pre–Big Bang theory. According to inflation, the universe began as a subatomic entity that ballooned in size during the first tiny fraction of a second of its existence.

Although people may not feel particularly overheated after this week’s Midwestern snowstorm, data from NASA show that the 12-month period from November 2009 to November 2010 was the warmest on record since 1880.

Science bloggers may regard Republicans as anti-science but it is hard not to see them as pro-technology.   While the FCC, with the support of the Obama administration, has repeatedly attempted to make Internet regulation the domain of government, Republican Senators are standing in the way of the one thing still working in the US economy.

In a letter they write

Unlike the American Revolution, the French version is best forgotten, especially to those on the short end of it - and it wasn't just the current monarchy that got punished by the philosophy of the day.   In 1793, revolutionaries also desecrated the tombs of previous monarchs, including  assassinated King Henry IV - it had been a hard time to be a Protestant king in France in 1610, it seems, so Henry was murdered, and then 180 years later the French stuck it to him again.   After executing Louis XVI, the current monarch, they went after the old ones.

It may be poignant that the "Hamburglar", one of the many characters McDonald's created in the early 1970s to rip off the "H.R. Pufnstuf" children's television show (fear not, McDonald's was sued and lost) is used in Reuters / Fox News headlines about hackers who hack filched data from the McDonald's servers in classic “Robble robble” fashion.

If you're like me, you want to binge a little during the ever-increasing Christmas holiday season, which is now 15% of the year and so is well on its way to joining Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall as actual seasons.

What is the most ridiculous food you can eat that is commonly available to most of the US?  In 2010 it is Cheesecake Factory’s Bistro Shrimp Pasta with 2,730 calories, 78 g saturated fat, 919 mg sodium and 141 g carbohydrates.   Not bad if you are an NFL lineman and it's the only meal you eat that day but otherwise not great.

When you're number one, you are always a target.  Basically, you can't win when you are the world leader in search but critics are ramping up complaints about Google's search engine placement just the same.   

Google is content and specialized-search sites in hopes of boosting ad revenue and that means search ranking by 'authority' drop.   So rivals are taking it personally.