May 2012
1 post
Black Girl Dangerous: Obama Loves Queers! (Except... →
This is just stupid: OP complains that Obama didn’t endorse a complete overhaul of US family law to incorporate polyamorous relationships.
Leave aside that that would be politically untenable and massively increase the chances of his losing to Romney; even if this were within the realm of the possible, there is no legal blueprint for doing so. No-one is talking about this issue seriously,...
February 2012
3 posts
Lingua Franca - February 2001 | Cover Story: The... →
Interesting old article about intellectuals who travelled from right to left.
“Might we one day find ourselves in a situation like in a free market where...”
– Science beyond individual understanding | Michael Nielsen
What happens when science grows beyond the capacity of a small group to understand it.
January 2012
1 post
Letters of Note: To My Old Master →
Just read the whole thing.
December 2011
1 post
One teachers approach to preventing gender...
H/T Andy
togetherforjacksoncountykids:
“It’s Okay to be Neither,” By Melissa Bollow Tempel
Alie arrived at our 1st-grade classroom wearing a sweatshirt with a hood. I asked her to take off her hood, and she refused. I thought she was just being difficult and ignored it. After breakfast we got in line for art, and I noticed that she still had not removed her hood. When we arrived at the art...
November 2011
3 posts
“Dear Mr. Tustin,
Thank you for your email to Mr. Pessina on the ethics of...”
– This is an email from someone at Boots by the name of Marco Pagni (he does not give his position), in reply to my email less than two hours earlier regarding the reported refusal to issue emergency contraception on religious grounds.
Assuming it’s not misleading, this seems like a nice...
WIL WHEATON dot TUMBLR: "What I'm looking at is... →
Charles J. Kelly, a former Baltimore Police Department lieutenant who wrote the department’s use of force guidelines, said pepper spray is a “compliance tool” that can be used on subjects who do not resist, and is preferable to simply lifting protesters.
“When you start picking up human bodies,…
The Awl: The McRib as Arbitrage →
willystaley:
I wrote about a conspiracy theory that surrounds the elusive McDonald’s sandwich for The Awl. No rap in this one, which is a big step for me!
October 2011
4 posts
“Did the same advisers consistently achieve better returns for their clients year...”
– Don’t Blink! The Hazards of Confidence - NYTimes.com
I’m not sure about this method. Why use rankings? After all, the point of being or hiring an investor is not to be ranked best out of the people in the firm, but to consistently make money.
This measure just tells us that none of the guys...
Steve Jobs' achievements (and every computer...
Indulge me for a moment in commenting on what Steve Jobs did to the computing industry, and what that says about every senior industry executive who isn’t him.
Steve Jobs’ real impact on the computing industry was to decide to sell computers based on (1) good industrial design generally (2) user interfaces which are pleasant for users, and do so quite successfully. Without Apple...
September 2011
2 posts
“Fairtrade locks many Africans into non-mechanised, back-breaking cheap labour...”
– Why Fairtrade is an unfair deal | Tim Black | spiked
“The only way to actually ensure that no millionaire, anywhere, pays less than...”
– What’s Wrong With the Buffett Rule? - Megan McArdle - Business - The Atlantic
Apparently Megan McArdle has a very poor imagination. There is nothing conceptually complex about a minimum tax rate that kicks in at certain levels of income. Without exceptions or deductions it would be...
August 2011
6 posts
“It seems to me that a more rigorous idea about where it does and doesn’t make...”
– Incentives and Obviousness | ThinkProgress
Matthew Yglesias on the patent system.
“If the goal is to reduce the amount of not-producing-anything that people are...”
– Matthew Yglesias, http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/08/09/291970/the-era-of-trade-surplus-envy
“As Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett point out in The Spirit Level: Why...”
– There is a context to London’s riots that can’t be ignored | Nina Power | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
“At first I thought, that’s quite a lot,” Dr. Roeder said. “Then I thought, that...”
– UN official Dr. Peter L. Roeder comparing the cost of the Royal Wedding with the cost of eradicating Rinderpest
Rinderpest, a Centuries-Old Animal Disease, Is Eradicated - NYTimes.com
July 2011
1 post
“The appointment of Cressida Dick as head of counter-terrorism following John...”
– Nina Power, the Guardian
June 2011
2 posts
“The number of claims for offenses like false arrest and brutality has surged by...”
– Watching the Detectives - NYTimes.com
May 2011
11 posts
“Here’s an even more horrendous fact: more black Americans are now in jail...”
– Mary Ann Sieghart: A ‘war’ we should fight no longer - Mary Ann Sieghart, Commentators - The Independent
“In order to comply with government search warrants on user data, Google created...”
– U.S. enables Chinese hacking of Google - CNN.com
“Kulwant and Rekha live in Sagarpur, a lower middle-class area in south-west...”
– BBC: Speaking peace unto other nations.
BBC News - Where are India’s millions of missing girls?
“The fact that one can reach the conclusion that it is shows that there’s...”
– Yglesias » To Hardcore Libertarians, Democratic Government As Such Is a Form Of Slavery
“You pretend to be some kind of grieving mother but it’s just an act. You’re up...”
– Apparently Knox County, Tennessee has the worst public officials of any place.
Things you couldn’t make up if you tried – Part 1 | | mamapunditmamapundit
“That is why law cannot be divorced from Christianity.”
– The article touches on the important issue of conscience, but the above claim is simply bizarre.
The legal systems of most major countries (including the UK) have been divorced from Christian ethics for decades. Taken literally, the claim would mean that no Islamic country, nor any other...
“Verhuizen is een van de meest stressvolle gebeurtenissen.”
(“Moving...”
– Dutch Word of the Day: Verhuizen
The fact that the two sentences are identical in structure bodes well for my attempts to learn Dutch.
Also, Dutch Word of the Day is great.
“Herein, though, lies a reason why Marxism is so much more insightful than other...”
– Stumbling and Mumbling: Marxism, liberalism & social change
“There is, though, another possibility - that the middlingly rich are not that...”
– Stumbling and Mumbling: The poor rich
Worth reading in full.
“But the suburbs of the era were not created simply by the rise of the middle...”
– The Good Old Days - Megan McArdle - Business - The Atlantic
April 2011
18 posts
1 tag
“The important thing is that people should be discouraged from consuming...”
– Time to stop ordering your armadillo steak pink.
Armadillos Transmit Leprosy to Humans, Study Confirms - NYTimes.com
The Republican Threat to Voting - NYTimes.com →
A Florida bill would curtail early voting periods, which have proved popular and brought in new voters, and would limit address changes at the polls. “I’m going to call this bill for what it is, good-old-fashioned voter suppression,” Ben Wilcox of the League of Women Voters told The Florida Times-Union.
Many of these bills were inspired by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a...
“2,896 likes, 23 dislikes”
– YouTube - Tom Waits - Heart Attack and Vine
“I always say that my gang is bigger than their gang, and even the dimmest yob...”
– The Magistrate’s Blog: Nasty Piece of Work
2010 Human Rights Report: United Kingdom →
The national minimum wage, which ranged from 3.57 to 5.93 pounds (approximately $5.65 to $9.37) per hour, depending on the age of the employee, did not provide a decent standard of living for a worker and family; however, government benefits, including complete free universal access to the National Health Service, filled the gap.
h/t Bystander
“First on the list, of course, was Harrods. I was impressed by the doormen in...”
– London, This Time Following in More Mature Footsteps - NYTimes.com
The NY Times serves up probably the worst possible advice on visiting London.