DARPA has a list of twenty-three mathematical challenges that they want solve. Some of them are interesting, some of them are vague:

Mathematical Challenge Six: Computational Duality
Duality in mathematics has been a profound tool for theoretical understanding. Can it be extended to develop principled computational techniques where duality and geometry are the basis for novel algorithms?

Overall, reading the document I'm not entirely convinced that the people putting it together know what they're talking about. Not that I would do much better with many of the topics, but still.

I think I'm going to tackle Challenge Ten, just so I can tell people I'm working on "algorithmic origami."

Environmentally aware people don't make real sacrifices:

The longest and the most frequent flights were taken by those who were most aware of environmental issues, including the threat posed by climate change.

I'm certainly a hypocrite in this regard; I fly more than average, and therefore pollute more than average, regardless of whatever other environmentally friendly measures I take.

Bruce Schneier thinks you should be arrested for trying to bring toothpaste on a plane:

If some copycat terrorists try to bring their liquid bomb through airport security and the screeners catch them -- like they caught me with my bottle of pasta sauce -- the terrorists can simply try again. They can try again and again. They can keep trying until they succeed. Because there are no consequences to trying and failing, the screeners have to be 100 percent effective. Even if they slip up one in a hundred times, the plot can succeed.

Too many people go to college:

We should look at the kind of work that goes into acquiring a liberal education at the college level in the same way that we look at the grueling apprenticeship that goes into becoming a master chef: something that understandably attracts only a few people. Most students at today’s colleges choose not to take the courses that go into a liberal education because the capabilities they want to develop lie elsewhere. These students are not lazy, any more than students who don’t want to spend hours learning how to chop carrots into a perfect eighth-inch dice are lazy. A liberal education just doesn’t make sense for them.

Paul Tough likes Obama's education plan. Megan McArdle doesn't. The funny thing is, they both offer their own idea of what we should do about education, and they both say the same thing. Here's Tough:

Help persuade teachers to give up some job security in exchange for more pay. Help the school systems get rid of poor-performing teachers—not just a few of them, but a big swath, the whole bottom tier.

And here's McArdle:

Scarsdale knows that if it doesn't keep the schools successful, middle class parents will leave, taking their lavish tax dollars with them. Riverdale, too, knows that it needs to keep parents happy and test scores high. The New York City public school system, on the other hand, mostly has to get butts in seats, because that's how they get their money. It's not that the teachers don't want to teach kids; it's that they don't have to.

I agree with both of them.

Walmart is making you thinner:

We estimate the impacts of Wal-Mart and warehouse club retailers on height-adjusted body weight and overweight and obesity status, finding robust evidence that non-grocery selling Wal-Marts reduce weight while grocery-selling Wal-Marts and warehouse clubs either reduce weight or have no effect. The effects appear strongest for women, minorities, urban residents, and the poor.

Upset that kids in his inner-city district go to underfunded schools, James Meeks buses a thousand black students to the suburbs:

He bused them all to Northfield, a wealthy, mostly white Chicago suburb, to the lavish campus of New Trier Township High School, a public school with four orchestras, a rowing club, a course in "kinetic wellness," and AP classes in French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Latin, and Chinese. You know, your basic American public school. The Chicago kids lined up and tried to enroll for classes.

Germans make good board games. They like rules, apparently.

Bruce Schneier on the no-fly list:

How to fly, even if you are on the no-fly list: Buy a ticket in some innocent person's name. At home, before your flight, check in online and print out your boarding pass. Then, save that web page as a PDF and use Adobe Acrobat to change the name on the boarding pass to your own. Print it again. At the airport, use the fake boarding pass and your valid ID to get through security. At the gate, use the real boarding pass in the fake name to board your flight.

Remember to vote Schneier for Secretary of Homeland Security.