Steve, Mom and I were discussing some claims about hotel keys yesterday.  The two main topics:

1. You should always take your hotel keys with you when you check out and shred them when you get home, because they contain sensitive information like your credit card number and expiration on them, plus your name and address, and it's not even encrypted.
2. Don't store your hotel key in your pocket with your cell phone--it will erase it.

Well, first off, hotels do not put credit information on the hotel key.  The most you'll find at a normal hotel is name, room #, check in and check out dates.  This data is encrypted.  Places like Disney and casinos will also typically store a unique key that identifies you in their system, in order to authorize charges--but the card is stored in their system, not in your key.  The only fraud that can occur with that kind of key is similar to what would happen with a stolen credit card--which is why those resorts tell you to protect those keys like a credit card for the duration of your stay.  After you stay, the card is deactivated in their central system and cannot be used for further purchases.

Now, there are a lot of folks out there spreading the rumor about this non-existent data risk.  There was a legit blog posting many years ago (at Network World, if I remember correctly), and they claimed they were able to pull credit data off a hotel's keycard.  They were challenged to prove this--were unable to--and retracted their claim. However, it's been passed around as a false email warning since then.  See the Snopes article for more details. 

On to the ability of cell phones to erase hotel key cards.  Contrary to what you have probably heard about cell phones, they don't emit radiation like what comes out of active nuclear sources.  They emit very low power microwaves.  That's it.  Microwaves do not have any degaussing properties.

What can screw up cards?  Well, first of all--key cards have a *very* thin stripe on them--far thinner than what's on your credit cards.  This doesn't take much to screw up--your keys and coins in your pocket are far more likely to screw up the magnetic stripe with physical damage.  Think back to science class--one way to demagnetize a material is physically striking it to jostle the heck out of the magnetized ion arrangement.  Take a very flimsy stripe of magnetic material and bang a few metal objects into it (keys, coins, maybe even your cell phone, haha) and presto, you've erased your card.  

See, I'm not always full of crap.  :) 

OK Go, the guys behind the treadmill video Here It Goes Again a few years ago, also known for A Million Ways. Their new album is out, and the first video was neat: WTF? but I kinda figured they had something better in store.

So, first came this:

Uh-oh! YouTube won't show their video? WTF? Oh, wait, here it is:

Ah, but never happy to do just one video for a song, here it is again:

And if that wasn't cool enough, each of those videos shown above for that song were done in one take.