Glenn Greenwald:
The Democratic Party’s deceitful game
… Basically, this is how things have progressed:
Progressives: We want a public option! Democrats/WH: We agree with you totally! Unfortunately, while we have 50 votes for it, we just don’t have 60, so we can’t have it. Gosh darn that filibuster rule. Progressives: But you can use reconciliation like Bush did so [...]
Has it occurred to you that Listerine is named after Joseph Lister, who we learned (when? junior-high biology?) was the inventor of antisepsis. Listerine was named in 1879, when Lister was still alive and working, so the association was presumably livelier than it is today.
The -ine in Listerine has the sense, from chemistry, of “forming [...]
I knew that Toyota founder Kiichiro Toyoda had named his company Toyota, and have had the vague impression that he did so because he thought it sounded better.
Bill Poser elaborates on a nice BBC account of the story. Pretty interesting, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.
Covering Lolita: “Over 150 book and media covers from 33 countries and 54 years.”
This is my current copy, 1962 US Fawcett (Crest Books), Greenwich CT. There are some themes: movie stills, skin, Nabokov, plain brown wrappers.
Have a look. Fascinating.
I note, somewhat belatedly, that I’ve been blogging here since January 2005 (or November 2004, if you want to count a first experimental WordPress post).
My first substantive post, BBC: Small-class pupils ‘do no better’, began:
New British research suggests that there “is no evidence that children in smaller primary classes do better in maths or [...]
As you may know, I have an interest in elections and voting, and follow the literature more than casually. I’m delighted to pass on this excellent paper, On Voting Systems, by Archdruid Eileen of the Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley.
It’s a brief paper, but contains a fairly comprehensive review of portal, hydraulic and feline balloting [...]
The World According to Howard Zinn
From his 2002 autobiography You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train:
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in [...]
(I have a draft post on “teaching to the test” rattling around somewhere, hence the title of this one.)
The gadget shown here was displayed at the recent Consumer Electronics Show. Cnet reported:
The device, called the Airnergy, uses an antenna and circuitry to harvest the energy and an internal battery to store the electrical charge. A [...]
This morning on NPR we heard from a fellow name of Rob Atkinson, president of something called the “Information Technology and Innovation Foundation” (where do these think tanks come from, anyway?). He was riffing on Obama’s SOTU line, “I do not accept second place for the United States of America.”
Mr Atkinson helpfully points out that [...]
Matthew Yglesias makes the case that we (in the US) vote too much. Heretical, of course, but it has the ring of common sense.
For Less Voting
Ezra Klein saw the same Larry Lessig presentation I was at yesterday. His take is more skeptical than I would be about the pernicious influence of money in politics. [...]
As I was listening to a friend discuss the early days of digital computer design, and how much things had changed, it struck me that there is one common technology of similar age that would be instantly recognizable to its inventor: the Edison incandescent light bulb.
Edison was only one of many, of course, but [...]
From his hometown paper:
Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and whose books, such as “A People’s History of the United States,” inspired young and old to rethink the way textbooks present the American experience, died today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he [...]
STV, to be precise. Circa 1985. Pretty good.
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Geoff Pullum. Perhaps you can resist reading the rest of his post.
Language Log asks you (don’t all shout at once)
… Yes, thickheads. I know they won’t like being called that; but hey, what do I care? I’ve shut off the comments area to new contributions now. Let them squirm and fume, with the smoke coming [...]
Dean Baker says yet again what, sadly, needs saying yet again.
The Debate Over the Cause of the Debt and Evolution
The NYT had an article discussing President Obama’s plan to set up a commission to propose recommendations for reducing the deficit. At one point the article refers to the debate: “over the nation’s rising debt and [...]
Glenn Greenwald.
Presidential assassinations of U.S. citizens
… Just think about this for a minute. Barack Obama, like George Bush before him, has claimed the authority to order American citizens murdered based solely on the unverified, uncharged, unchecked claim that they are associated with Terrorism and pose “a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests.” They’re [...]
On NPR this morning, of President Obama in advance of tonight’s SOTU: “the tide is running against him”.
This is one of those metaphors that most listeners, if pressed, could explain. I think. While it’s dead, it’s not yet returned to dust. But how many of us have any experience of a “running tide”? We in [...]
Amen, Brother Ezra!
Catastrophe tears us apart
“It is amazing that some people here in Congress still don’t get it,” says Sen. Evan Bayh, who’s counseling Democrats to move to the right. “For those people it may take a political catastrophe of biblical proportions before they get it.”
I’ll just note that the “catastrophe of biblical proportions” that [...]
Over at Angry Bear—it sounds plausible, doesn’t it? But what do I know…
Is China a Bubble?
A friend of mine who does just about all of his business providing a very specific service to selling to companies who do business with China. (And yes, that is as specific as I am willing to be, except to [...]
Bruce Schneier. Emphasis mine.
U.S. enables Chinese hacking of Google
… China’s hackers subverted the access system Google put in place to comply with U.S. intercept orders. Why does anyone think criminals won’t be able to use the same system to steal bank account and credit card information, use it to launch other attacks or turn it [...]