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You have arrived at the web home of Noah Brier. This is mostly an archive of over a decade of blogging and other writing. You can read more about me or get in touch. If you want more recent writing of mine, most of that is at my BrXnd marketing x AI newsletter and Why Is This Interesting?, a daily email for the intellectually omnivorous.

July, 2008

Top Ten Myths in FBI History

This article is partly interesting in and of itself and partly because it sits on fbi.gov. The piece itself is mostly fluffy, combining myths like "The FBI has Nikola Tesla’s plans for a 'death ray'" with a paragraph about the FBI's reasonable record with hiring minorities. Like I said, though, what's more interesting is that the article lives on the the FBI's official government site. It's got a little "share this" button and includes such un-governmental writing as "The FBI was hardly way ahead of its time in providing equal career opportunities to all Americans, but it is not true that the FBI was unwilling to hire minorities during Hoover’s tenure" and "So, bottom line: while FBI agents chasing aliens and other supernatural creatures may make good entertainment, it’s not part of our job description, and we don’t have a secret collection of 'X-Files' squirreled away somewhere." They've even got their own Flash video player. While I think it's far from perfect, it's a pretty good example of a company (or in this case a governmental organization) recognizing what makes it interesting to people and turning that into a website (instead of putting a bunch of boring stuff up there and thinking people will read it/watch it). Other articles include "How to Protect Your Computer" and "Elliot Ness and the FBI" (doesn't look like they update to frequently).
July 28, 2008
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Noah Brier | Thanks for reading. | Don't fake the funk on a nasty dunk.