September 2009
Wednesday, 30 September 2009
A Western Water War Slows Some Solar Projects
NYTimes.com: “There are a lot of people out here for whom their water rights are their life savings, their retirement”
Monday, 28 September 2009
The Simple Health-Care Solution: Medicare for Everyone
George S. McGovern: “We know that Medicare has worked well for half a century for those of us over 65. Why does it become ‘socialized medicine’ when we extend it to younger Americans?”
Thursday, 24 September 2009
RSS has no Fail Whale (Scripting News)
Dave Winer: “RSS, in over ten years, has never gone down.” – and my car has never returned a 404 error.
Wednesday, 23 September 2009
What Do We Do About John Yoo?
Brad DeLong: “But if 9/11 altered the landscape so thoroughly that our old laws are no longer adequate for the new era, then we need to change our laws. We can revoke our adherence to the Geneva Conventions. We can withdraw from the U.N. Convention Against Torture. We can amend Article I so the president can suspend habeas corpus whenever he wishes. And we can remove the requirement that the federal government detain suspects only with probable cause.”
Tuesday, 22 September 2009
Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine
Wired: “Hidden in hardened silos designed to withstand the massive blast and electromagnetic pulses of a nuclear explosion, these missiles would launch first and then radio down coded orders to whatever Soviet weapons had survived the first strike. At that point, the machines will have taken over the war.”
Sunday, 20 September 2009
Clive Thompson on the New Literacy
Wired: “The fact that students today almost always write for an audience (something virtually no one in my generation did) gives them a different sense of what constitutes good writing. In interviews, they defined good prose as something that had an effect on the world. For them, writing is about persuading and organizing and debating, even if it’s over something as quotidian as what movie to go see. The Stanford students were almost always less enthusiastic about their in-class writing because it had no audience but the professor: It didn’t serve any purpose other than to get them a grade”
Saturday, 19 September 2009
You Have No Idea What Health Costs
Ezra Klein: “That’s the dilemma for Washington wonks trying to fix this mess: They look at the numbers and see health-care costs crushing our economy, overwhelming our government, swallowing our wages. But the public isn’t feeling it. Virtually no one cuts a $13,375 check for health care. Most pay 27 percent of it, or even less. The surest way to cut health-care spending would be to make people shoulder more of the burden directly, as opposed to hiding it in taxes and lost wages. But that’s about as popular as a puppy pot roast”
Sunday, 13 September 2009
2 flu strains in 1 pig led to new H1N1
chicagotribune.com: “Relatively few pigs engage in intercontinental travel, and those that do are strictly quarantined.”
Thursday, 10 September 2009
Treatment of Alan Turing was “appalling”
Gordon Brown: “So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.”
Tuesday, 8 September 2009
Pittsburgh? Yes, Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh? Yes, Pittsburgh: “I didn’t even particularly like Pittsburgh growing up, yet I still feel passionate, almost protective, of it.”
A.V. Club
A.V. Club: “Like most people, I was initially confused by EMI’s decision to release remastered versions of all 13 albums by the Liverpool pop group Beatles, a 1960s band so obscure that their music is not even available on iTunes.”