This talk at Google, which just got posted yesterday, is well worth your time, particularly if you are one of those people whose attitude is more or less Remember what it felt like in 2008? And now …? Meh.
You might also have a look at the website RebuildTheDream.com and the book of the same name [Powells | B&N | Amazon].
Even for renowned science fiction authors.
Here is John Scalzi speaking at Google on 27 April 2007, just five short years ago. Start listening at 18:28 and let it run for about five minutes.
No diss, and I'm sure he's had this pointed out before. I also think he's an insightful guy about a whole lot of things. I just thought this was kind of funny.
On the surface, sure, it seems like a good idea.
The company announced a plan on Tuesday morning to encourage everyone on Facebook to start advertising their donor status on their pages, along with their birth dates and schools — a move that it hopes will create peer pressure to nudge more people to add their names to the rolls of registered organ donors.
What about that, Paul Ford? Think Mark wants to resell your kidneys?
There was a brief flurry a few days ago over hints that the National Football League is considering doing away with the Pro Bowl. Do we care? I doubt it. I don't think I've ever watched it. But this picture is definitely worth sharing.
(h/t: Danger Guerrero/Kissing Suzy Kolber)
__________
P.S. If you're wondering how I ended up on a site called "Kissing Suzy Kolber," it was due to Googling and Deadspin, after seeing her heretofore unfamiliar name mentioned, in a more weighty piece about one of my favorite sportswriters, Joe Posnanski.
Maybe! From an article about a terrorism trial currently underway, in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, NY:
“As you apply a law enforcement model to these cases, people always cooperate,” said Anthony S. Barkow, a former federal prosecutor who specialized in terrorism cases and now works in private practice. “It took a long time in organized crime; it is taking less time with national security.”
[...]
“The federal courts are not just about providing due process and protecting defendants’ rights,” said Jonathan Hafetz, a professor at Seton Hall University School of Law who focuses on national security. “There is an information-producing function that allows the public to see how terrorists act and how the government acts to prosecute these terrorists.”
He added, “That’s something that we lose when we deal with more secretive processes like military commissions.”
Vatican laments Irish dissent, silences priests
What, you want context?
Okay, here's the lede, with a little added emph.:
DUBLIN, IRELAND -- Just weeks after a report from a Vatican inquiry into the Irish church lamented what it described as “fairly widespread” dissent from church teaching, it was revealed that the Vatican has “silenced” Redemptorist Fr. Tony Flannery.
The Holy See’s move provoked fury among the members of the 800-strong Association of Catholic Priests, which has accused the Vatican of issuing a fatwa against liberal clerics.
As KK says, it's not just the nuns.
From the Department of Hate To Say I Told You So, But I Frickin' Told You So:
Newt Gingrich is preparing to make the transition from forgotten-but-not-gone to gone-and-hopefully-forgotten by dropping his presidential campaign next week. And he’s doing it in good Reagan-and-Bush-era Republican fashion – carrying on about fiscal responsibility while piling up a nice fat budget deficit.
Mr. Gingrich currently has $4.3 million in debt, according to TPM Muckraker – about 20 percent of his Gross Campaign Product, which puts him in Greece territory. He has more debt than any other failed Republican presidential candidate since 1992.
Emph. added. Not that you needed it.
[Added] Interesting tidbit from the quoted TPM Muckraker link:
Tim Pawlenty closed out with $435,542 in debts which was paid off by Mitt Romney affiliates.
Hmmm! There aren't many people blander than ol' Wonder Bread Willard, but that guy who is known only for having a mullet longer than anyone else on the planet, who (Some would say) was scared out of the race by whispers that Mr. Mitch Charisma Daniels might jump in, is certainly on the short list.
Developing ...
A four-minute clip from Mechanical Principles, a 1930 film by Ralph Steiner, excerpted and set to some new music by VertikalDesign.
The music is "Little Boy," by 3 Liquid Hz.
(h/t: Don McArthur)
Planetary Resources, Inc. (website | Twitter | Google+ | YouTube | Facebook) will be making a public announcement today at 10:30 am PDT, which will stream live on Spacevidcast.
While you're waiting, here's an article about them in the NYT.
[Update] The live broadcast was recorded and posted to YouTube. I watched it live. It's pretty exciting in parts, if you're of a mind like mine when it comes to this sort of thing.
An oldish Bérubé piece that I somehow missed when it came out a year and a half ago. But! Nothing has changed!
... sixth runner-up on Atrios's list of Wankers of the Decade. Ah, well, Pareene didn't think very little of him, either.
Thanks to hat-tippee Henry Farrell, who also gave me a bonus: I now know that there is (should be) a Krauthammer Unit! Which sort of gives away the winner, doesn't it?
Not to make this all about me (because who would stand for such a thing, on a blog?), but in less than a month, ALEC has gone from an organization I'd never heard of to the front page of the New York Times.
... just in case:
(h/t: Belinda Del Pesco, via email. And I'm pretty sure she sent it because she knew the improper letter casing would really grind my gears.)
Some time in the past hour, I guess they ran out of patience. The new look showed up, and this time, there was no option to switch back. Oh, well. At least they added a settings switch for text labels on the buttons.
360° panorama of a space shuttle cockpit. In addition to allowing you to spin all around, it's amazingly zoomable, too.
(Controls are in the upper left corner. The + and - weren't immediately obvious to me when I first got there.)
(h/t: FlightAware)
First come, first served.* Send me an email or DM. New subscribers only, it sez. And remember that you already get free access if you're getting home delivery of the paper paper.
[Update] Sorry if you wanted it. Already claimed.
*(Unless I don't like you.)
So, while I'm driving to the grocery store, I'm got the Mavs-Lakers game on. Pull into the lot, get momentarily distracted by someone bent on T-boning me, hear the announcer say, "… and West makes the shot!"
For one brief, terrifying moment, I thought he meant Jerry.
Sorry about that, Delonte.
Bad moment at the grocery store (click to make it more obese):
So, how many people are just going to be cramming handfuls of these, figuring they're Doing The Right Thing?
Just got a piece of spam with that in the subject line. No doubt some Republican will see this as an opportunity to bash the USPS.
From the never-ending saga of our broken political system, this just in, from the state of Washington:
... a momentous initiative to legalize marijuana for all adults, which will be on the ballot this fall, is being opposed by the medical marijuana industry that the previous initiative created.
(Assuming you have the Google Chrome browser installed already, I mean.)
Open any web page inside Google Chrome, press Ctrl+P (or Cmd+P if you are on a Mac) to open the Print dialog and change the destination printer to “Save as PDF.” Hit the Print button and the current web page will instantly download as a PDF document. Simple!
For me, the Print button changed to a Save button, but it did in fact work.
One more thing. You can also use Chrome’s PDF engine to convert your local image files, text files and any local HTML web pages to PDFs – if you an open a file in Chrome, it can convert the file to PDF.
pourmecoffee Short, data-rich look at ongoing campaign to restrict voting rights in the states: http://bit.ly/HFReyZ
The link in that quoted tweet takes you to the Brennan Center for Justice, which must be some kind of historical site? Among the highlights (up is down in today's RealAmerica) of their "2012 Summary of Voting Law Changes:"
As of March 21, 2012, at least 65 bills remained pending that have the potential to suppress the vote. … • Photo ID laws … • Proof of citizenship laws … • Making voter registration harder … • Reducing early and absentee days … • Making it harder to restore voting rights …
So far, pre-registration transvaginal ultrasounds aren't required. But give them time. I'm sure they'll get around to it.
In some 24 years of government service, I experienced my share of dissonance when it came to what was said in public and what the government did behind the public's back. In most cases, the gap was filled with scared little men and women, and what was left unsaid just hid the mistakes and flaws of those anonymous functionaries.
What I saw while serving the State Department at a forward operating base in Iraq was, however, different.
My case also illustrates the crude use of "national security" as a tool within government to silence dissent.
As ex- or soon-to-be-ex-government employees all, when we meet, we make small talk about retirement, annuities, and the like. No one speaks of revolution or anarchy, the image of us the government often surreptitiously pushes to the media. After all, until we blew those whistles, we were all in our own ways believers in the American system. That, in fact, is why we did what we did.
A sad story by Peter Van Buren, but important to read.
See also: his Twitter feed and book's website: We Meant Well. And there's an excerpt of his book on MoJo.
Today, Rick Santorum dropped out suspended his campaign.
Yesterday, we posted this ad.
COINCIDENCE???
(pic. source: I forget. TBogg, probably.)
I think Jesus just carried his Smirnoff Ice into the next room.
-- Roy Edroso
It's most definitely worth heading over to find out the context.
In honor of yesterday's win, the Yankees' first of the season (which was nice even if it did not break them out of their tie with the Red Sox for last place), I looked up a couple of numbers I'd been wondering about.
Micah Zenko and Michael Cohen have a longish piece up on Foreign Affairs on the problem of threat inflation. Here's the article summary:
U.S. officials and national security experts chronically exaggerate foreign threats, suggesting that the world is scarier and more dangerous than ever. But that is just not true. From the U.S. perspective, at least, the world today is remarkably secure, and Washington needs a foreign policy that reflects that reality.
If you're not already a subscriber, you'll have to register to read the article. But that's free, and painless.
Of course, given the reality of our political system's utter ownership by the military-industrial complex, it's hard to imagine that this article will do much more than get people like me to nod with approval. But you never know, and you gotta start somewhere, and maybe at least, it'll make it easier to keep at least some pressure on the brakes.
(h/t: Foreign Entanglements)
