Just when I thought the dust had settled Virginia Hefferman chimes in from the New York Times about the ScienceBlogs kerfuffle and stirs things up again. Hefferman plunges into the turmoil caused by Seed Media’s quickly reversed decision to host Pepsi’s “corporate” FoodFrontiers blog in the Science Blogs network and […]
Liberty, Politics, & Current Events
96 posts
So says Shikha Dalmia in Forbes. And kudos to the hard working Anthony Watt’s whose “Watt’s Up With That?” blog just celebrated 50,000,000 hits. His mix of polite, respectful, and insightful climate blogging draws a crowd. Only 49,995,000 more to go here to match his record!
Leonard Read’s classic economics essay “I, Pencil“ tells the story of a simple pencil. By tracing the far flung and complex origins of this seemingly trivial device, Read’s parable teaches a powerful lesson: that the unfettered, distributed wisdom of the market trumps the abilities of any centralized controller or regulator. […]
Lenore Skenazy also has a great article on students who aren’t allowed to touch rocks and other examples of overzealous safety nannies run amok.
I made an off-hand comment a while back to my Facebook friends that I wondered how it was the “Mata Hari of the 21st century” had been working for years to infiltrate American social circles for her Russian spymasters and somehow ended up with less than 200 Facebook friends. Anna […]
Glenn Reynolds has a Popular Mechanics piece on the prevalence of police, security guards, and other officials who falsely think taking pictures of them is a crime. An excerpt: Here’s how bad it has gotten: Not long ago, an Amtrak representative did an interview with local TV station Fox 5 […]
A few additional updates on the ScienceBlogs debacle (sounds way better than “Pepsi-Gate”): Angry weighs in on the ScienceBlogs debacle with a web comic summary. A recently updated scorecard of who’s in and who’s out at ScienceBlogs from Skulls in the Stars. The “strike” has apparently been resolved. Luboš Motl […]
ÆtherCzar has been following the 1099 Mandate for a while now. This provision, slipped into the Health Care Bill, targets small businesses and independent contractors by requiring them to file a 1099 form with the IRS for the cumulative purchases they’ve made from any other individual or business with whom […]
ScienceBlogs is a science oriented blog network and community. Among the prominent bloggers affiliated with Science Blogs are P.Z. Myers (Pharyngula) a prominent atheist/evolution/skeptic/biology blogger and Orac (Respectful Insolence), a leading medical news and information blogger. Earlier this month, Seed Media, owners of ScienceBlogs, added a new blog to their […]
In 2003, Barbra Streisand objected to aerial images of her Malibu mansion being included in a project to provide a photographic survey of the California coastline. Lawyers filed a $50M lawsuit on her behalf. The resulting publicity greatly enhanced public awareness of Streisand’s property far beyond what would have happened […]
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul of Kentucky has been criticized for saying the poor in the U.S. are better off than the poor elsewhere. Like Ed Driscoll, I doubt anyone seriously contests Paul’s conclusion. But Paul’s justification, supported by Soviet-era propaganda films, has caused skepticism:
Science fiction writer, James P. Hogan, died Monday July 12 at his home in Ireland. He was 69. More from io9.com.
AetherCzar has passed on a number of TSA stories – most of which cast the agency in a poor light. In fairness, I should relate the story of what happened when Q-Track hauled a suspicious looking RF transmitter prototype through the security checkpoint at the Huntsville, AL airport last week.
In Sunday’s Guardian, Fred Pearce notes a benefit of “Climategate” is an increased acceptance of the need for scientists to be more upfront about uncertainties, and transparent in allowing access to raw data.
Physicist, woodworker, and patent attorney, Steve Gass, invented the “SawStop” system ten years ago. SawStop technology detects when a saw blade makes electrical contact with a finger and brakes the saw blade before it can do more than give you a small nick (see the video ,below). This is an […]
TSA humiliated an amputee mother, and traumatized her four-year-old son, according to her story, here [LINK BROKEN]. Hat tip: Radley Balko Update: Adding insult to injury, the mother in question was so traumatized by trolls that she deleted the original post (cached).
Here’s an interesting analysis of the underlying problems that led to last month’s stock market “flash crash.” Amazing what subtle data latency issues can do in complex information systems. Hat Tip: Paul Blair, Jay Garing.
In a post on Saturday (In Defense of “For-Profit” Education), I described my experience as an instructor at one of the leaders in for-profit education, ITT Technical Institute. I called it an “educational sweatshop,” a characterization which probably says more about the lackadaisical teaching demands of typical institutions of higher […]
Friday, the House held hearings on the dangers and evils of “for-profit” education. In a recent Mother Jones piece, subprime mortgage critic Steve Eisman is quoted as follows: “Until recently, I thought that there would never again be an opportunity to be involved with an industry as socially destructive and […]
A few interesting links from recent days… Vin Suprynowicz explains his modest proposal to eliminate the National Debt and keep the government from excessive (well, actually “any”) borrowing in the future: default. Humorist P.J. O’Rourke offers another modest proposal – this one for improving American education. Last week, I presented […]
Here’s a selection of some of the most interesting features we’ve seen on the Internet this week: Physicist Frank Tipler observes that a couple of the most prominent physicists – including Einstein and Feynman – owe their success not so much to raw intelligence or “brightness,” but rather to an […]
Last month, I discussed the curious case of the recycled glass that wasn’t. It seems the Huntsville City Council let a contract out to Allied Waste, paying them $2.3M per year to run the City’s recycling program. Recyclers painstakingly washed and cleaned their glass and made special trips to lovingly […]
Over at TechCrunch, Michael Arrington discusses his disillusionment with politicians who seem determined to “help” high-tech entrepreneurship in ways virtually certain to hurt instead: Silicon Valley has fueled much of the growth in our economy over the last few decades and has created amazing (and highly profitable) companies that are […]
A quick two minute satirical video to help you understand the European economic crisis: deadpan and utterly hilarious! Hat tip: Devil’s Knife.