January 2012
15 posts
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Rich People Create Jobs! And five other myths that... →
For decades, America’s economic policies have been based on the notion that catering to corporations and the wealthy is the way to stimulate the economy. Republicans routinely insist that we need to bail them out, lower their taxes, allow them to repatriate hundreds of billions in overseas profits, and free them from annoying government meddling. If we don’t, the “job...
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Quiz: Cop or Soldier? →
I’ve put together a little quiz that may be of interest to Boing Boingers. The idea is to illustrate just how hard it can be distinguish police from military. Which is a problem, given that they have two very different jobs.
It is a tough quiz! And, of course, it should not be.
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Republican Job Creation →
Shortly after gaining the House of Representatives in 2010 the new Speaker of the House, John Boehner, made the welcome claim that the primary goal of the Republican Party was to increase employment. His exact words were: “We’re going to have a relentless focus on ...
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WatchAnother fantastic Colbert/Stewart SuperPAC ad about SuperPACs.
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WatchColbert ad: if corporations are people, then Mitt’s corporate raiding makes him a serial killer
Via BoingBoing.
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Woman calls police to report that she was sold... →
47-year-old Suzanne Basham of Springfield, Missouri called police to report that she had paid $40 for crack cocaine that turned out to be sugar, and wanted her dealer arrested. She is now in jail.
We are definitely winning the War on Drugs!
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Top Five Regrets of the Dying →
Interesting article, a better-formatted version of the original here.
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Friedman (unit) →
The Friedman, or Friedman Unit (F.U.), is a tongue-in-cheek neologism coined by blogger Atrios (Duncan Black) on May 21, 2006.
A Friedman is a unit of time equal to six months in the future. The Huffington Post cited it as the “Best New Phrase” of 2006.
The term is in reference to a May 16, 2006 article by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) detailing columnist Thomas...
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The Dumbest Idea in the World: Maximizing... →
Fascinating, bracing article by Steve Denning in Forbes based on Roger L. Martin’s new book, Fixing the Game:
Martin says that the trouble began in 1976 when finance professor Michael Jensen and Dean William Meckling of the Simon School of Business at the University of Rochester published a seemingly innocuous paper in the Journal of Financial Economics entitled “Theory of the Firm: Managerial...
December 2011
12 posts
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Neven Mrgan's tumbl: Murder stats →
mrgan:
Crime is fascinating, and murder is the most fascinating crime. Every night, millions of Americans watch fictionalized accounts of the most violent act of all, followed by fictionalized attempts to discover, solve, and punish it. Here are some raw numbers to go with our intuitions and popular…
Real life vs. TV — Americans do seem to worry about murder far more than they...
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Tiny home-built schooner saved Tillamook settlers →
After the only skipper willing to brave their fearsome river bar died, the only way to get wheat and cheese to market was to build their own trading ship — which they did.
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A Christmas Message From America’s Rich →
People like Dimon, and Schwarzman, and John Paulson, and all of the rest of them who think the “imbeciles” on the streets are simply full of reasonless class anger, they don’t get it. Nobody hates them for being successful. And not that this needs repeating, but nobody even minds that they are rich.
What makes people furious is that they have stopped being citizens.
Most of...
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Smoke Screening →
As you stand in endless lines this holiday season, here’s a comforting thought: all those security measures accomplish nothing, at enormous cost. That’s the conclusion of Charles C. Mann, who put the T.S.A. to the test with the help of one of America’s top security experts.
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“After reading this in coverage of the latest Republican Presidential Candidate...”
– http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16210858
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WaMu Officials Settle FDIC Suit →
Washington Mutual’s implosion in 2008 was the biggest bank collapse in U.S. history—are the executives who ran it getting off easy? The FDIC charged three WaMu executives with gross negligence in a civil lawsuit; however, according to The Wall Street Journal, the FDIC is now willing to settle with them for less than 10 percent of the $900 million it originally sought—less than $75 million. Most...
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The cartoon professor →
I have been perplexed for some time why Newt Gingrich is routinely acknowledged even by his bitter enemies within the Republican Party as a “genius,” but the answer turns out is simple: he acts exactly like one of those obnoxious elitist intellectual know-it-alls that the right-wing no-nothings think is the hallmark of an intellectual. He is constantly reminding us of his doctorate...
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Revealed: huge increase in executive pay for... →
Chief executive pay has roared back after two years of stagnation and decline. America’s top bosses enjoyed pay hikes of between 27 and 40% last year, according to the largest survey of US CEO pay. The dramatic bounceback comes as the latest government figures show wages for the majority of Americans are failing to keep up with inflation.
“Wages for everybody else have either been...
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"Get It Done": Urging Climate Justice, Youth... →
Youth delegate makes an inspiring speech at the COP 17 “Conference of Polluters”.
November 2011
15 posts
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Congress: pizza is a vegetable when it is fed to... →
After intense lobbying from frozen pizza makers, and the potato and salt industry, Congress is poised to pass a spending bill whose riders establish that pizza is a vegetable and can be served in school cafeterias in substitute for actual vegetables.
We’re now facing a policy decision that has replaced science-backed common sense with the assertion that pizza ought to count as a vegetable when...
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Congressional SOPA hearings: no opponents of the... →
As the House of Representatives opens hearings on SOPA, the worst piece of Internet legislation in American history, it has rejected all submissions and testimony from public interest groups and others who oppose the bill.
Irony Alert: The House is holding hearings on sweeping Internet censorship legislation this week — and it’s censoring the opposition! The bill is backed by...
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How members of Congress make gigantic bank on... →
Even as the Occupy protesters are being swept out of their campsites, Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes is exposing the very greed and corruption they are protesting The 60 Minutes team did a great segment tonight on insider trading on the stock market.
Congress: Trading stock on inside information?
A very informative fifteen minutes of video.
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Making the Grade: Why the Cheapest Maple Syrup... →
The market for maple syrup offers an odd inversion. The thin, pale fluid labeled Fancy or Grade A Light Amber commands the highest prices. It is the white bread of condiments, an inoffensive accompaniment to more flavorful fare. The robust, thick syrup marked Grade B fairly bursts with maple flavor, but sells at a significant discount. So why does the nominally inferior grade offer decidedly...
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“What happened in the last few days is something quite shocking to the Eurocrats....”
– Andrew Sullivan on what happens if Greece Leaves the Euro. (via cheatsheet)
It really struck me when I was listening to NPR’s initial reporting on this, because their report was essentially “WTF is Papandreou thinking?” Not once was there any mention or hint that maybe, just...
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October 2011
20 posts
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Watch“ClimateGate” debunked, but where is the coverage? Jon Stewart makes it clear as always.
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Innovation Starvation →
My lifespan encompasses the era when the United States of America was capable of launching human beings into space. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting on a braided rug before a hulking black-and-white television, watching the early Gemini missions. This summer, at the age of 51—not even old—I watched on a flatscreen as the last Space Shuttle lifted off the pad. I have followed the...
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Ten Years After the Patriot Act, a Look at Three... →
Ten years ago today, in the name of protecting national security and guarding against terrorism, President George W. Bush signed into law some of the most sweeping changes to search and surveillance law in modern American history. Unfortunately known as the USA PATRIOT Act, many of its provisions incorporate decidedly unpatriotic principles barred by the First and Fourth Amendments of the...
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Officials use ruse at high school to clear halls... →
“The teaching point here is that they can not trust the people into whose care they are given. The authorities will lie to you and try to use fear to control you. I hope the kids learn this.”
At Wolcott High School one morning this week, an urgent announcement crackled over the intercom: a threatening intruder was in the building and students were told to immediately take refuge in...
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“‘Illegal’ is the latest in a long line of euphemisms that politicians use to...”
– Peter Beinart on why the GOP demonizes ‘illegals.’ (via cheatsheet)
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Scrutinizing mobile apps: privacy violations,... →
Troy Hunt installed the HTTP proxy Fiddler on his network and used it to examine the way that iPhone apps performed. What he discovered was a series of shockingly poor implementation decisions that massively bloat the bandwidth needed to load and use apps (important for users whose mobile phone plans contain strict bandwidth caps); poor password security (important for mobile users who roam to...