... the cash on the ice is recycled

needcoffee dot com's Widgett interviews David Parker of Wells Fargo who explains the ATM in Antarctica.

Stolen Valor Act Held Unconstitutional

Eugene Volokh just blogged that the Stolen Valor Act is unconstitutional.

The Stolen Valor Act is a 2006 law that was designed to punish creeps who pretend to be soldiers by buying and displaying medals as if they earned them in the military. Unfortunately, it also banned mailing military medals and collecting old medals such as Civil War medals.

I think Volokh is reporting the whole law has been thrown out. If Congress decides to pass an new version I hope they focus on creepy impostors and grant exceptions for museums, films, and collectors.

New symbol for the Indian Rupee

D. Udaya Kumar's design for the rupee symbol has been approved by the Indian Ministry of Finance.

For India, the next step after government approval is submission to the Unicode Consortium...

Article on fine art forgery in the New Yorker

Readers, I haven't been posting lately. Everything is OK, I am just too busy these days to post.

David Grann has a story in The New Yorker about fine art authentication. If you read it make sure to read the whole thing—the tone changes about half-way through.

The article did not mention that it's easy to make replicas of human fingers from photographs using the techniques of Japanese security expert Tsutomu Matsumoto. So if you have a photograph of an Old Master's fingerprint please don't put it on the Internet!