Archive for August, 2008

Hacking The Olympics

Stryde Hax, a new blog popped up yesterday claiming to show definitive proof that one of the gold-medal winning Chinese gymnasts is much younger than her officially claimed age of 16. Young enough that it’s actually against the rules for her to be competing in the Olympic Games. The blogger, known as “Stryde” searched Google for Excel documents on Chinese websites listing the name “He Kexin” and the date “January 1, 1994″. Google had a single hit, but the underlying document no longer existed on the Chinese government servers that Google had previously indexed it on, and the cache of the document had expired. However, Stryde hit pay dirt on the Chinese search engine Baidu, turning up two registration spreadsheets that listed He’s name with the 1/1/1994 birthdate.
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On The Whole, I’d Rather Be In Philadelphia!

Actually, I was just in Philadelphia this past weekend, for a little bit of sightseeing, some fine-dining, and a show. My wife is currently working on a project that puts her in Pennsylvania for at least a part of most weeks, so we’ve been trying to arrange a trip where I would join her up there and we’d spend the weekend exploring the city. We found the perfect excuse when we saw a show at the Electric Factory with Andrew Bird and the New Pornographers on the same bill. Mona loves Andrew Bird, and I am a huge New Pornographers fan, so this was a great excuse to get on a plane. Philly rolled out the welcome mat for us – great weather, beautiful sunny days, and early fall temperatures during what should have been the dog days of summer. More on our Philadelphia adventure after the jump!
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