February, 2010

Cogan, Hubbard, and Kessler: A Better Way to Reform Health Care

John Birch Pravda: "Taken together, the policy changes outlined here will produce a substantial decline in health[...]"

I Guess It Is My Turn To Be Emo Today

Balloon Juice: "So basically, we successfully vilified the insurance companies, got the house to pass the public option, got the public to support a public option, and ten unnamed Dems in the Senate will scuttle it, leading to the inevitable death of the whole bill in the House."

A failure of White House leadership

Ezra Klein: "This has been a complete and utter failure of White House leadership."

Clifford Stoll: Why Web Won't Be Nirvana

Clifford Stoll - Newsweek.com, Feb 27, 1995: "Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works." -- courtesy of @odannyboy

How Google & Facebook Violate Your Privacy

Dan Lyons: "The problem with buying things with your privacy is you really don't know how much you're paying. [...] Only the techies know how much your info is worth, and they're not telling. But the fact that they'd rather get your data than your dollars tells you all you need to know."

“I’ve had all I can stand”: The Joseph Stack letter

David J. Williams: "We’re so eager to categorize everything into our taxonomy of preconceptions that most of us never even wonder just how logical that taxonomy is in the first place."

Win win

Balloon Juice: "And all the talk about ‘unit cohesion’ isn’t so different from some of the rhetoric that was used to argue against integrating sports teams in the 50s and 60s. How many people would argue that we’d better off with an all-white Olympic basketball team now?"

How Christian Were the Founders?

NYTimes.com: "Recently, however — perhaps out of ire at what they see as an aggressive, secular, liberal agenda in Washington and perhaps also because they sense an opening in the battle, a sudden weakness in the lines of the secularists — some activists decided that the time was right to try to reshape the history that children in public schools study. Succeeding at this would help them toward their ultimate goal of reshaping American society."

Kremlinology

Balloon Juice: "The next time abu Ghraib happens, the President may not feel compelled to apologize. I would consider that moment to be the death of America as its founders would have understood it. A government unaccountable to law in its use of torture and worse contravenes every principle laid out by Founders in the Constitution, in the Federalist Papers and in every other contemporary writing. I think it would give them cold comfort to know that they were right to the end, understanding as they did that the Hobbesian side of men in power will inevitably triumph without a vibrant and adversarial press corps to provide shame and transparency."

How To Report The News

Teens think blogging is about as cool as Rick Astley hits

ars technica - Must. Resist.

How to Survive a 35,000-Foot Fall

Popular Mechanics: "No matter the surface, definitely don’t land on your head."

Bill Watterson, creator of beloved 'Calvin and Hobbes' comic strip looks back with no regrets

cleveland.com: "Ah, the life of a newspaper cartoonist -- how I miss the groupies, drugs and trashed hotel rooms!"

High-energy physics has a case of the Higgs

ars technica: " The actual conclusion is that we haven't found it yet."