April 2009 Archives
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Assorted Links 4/29/09
World’s Most Popular Motorcycle Returns to America
- Media Relations for Public Affairs Professionals, May 5, 2009
- Advanced Media Relations, May 6, 2009
- Crisis Communications Training, May 7, 2009
- The riskiness of trying to eliminate all risk - pension edition
- The 10 craziest things about Boylemania: Yes she’s a good singer, but there’s no excuse for turning Susan Boyle into a theological, moral and political symbol.
- Globalization and Tax Reform
- Simple, Colorful Invention Could Save Lives
- U.S. Homeownership by Age Group
- Practical Tips for Combatting Swine Flu In Your Home
- Swine flu: All is well, remain calm!
- Google Maps Mashup Tracks Swine Flu
- Against torture prosecution
- Congressional Rep. Webcasts Hearing With Supreme Court Justices To Show How Easy It Is
- Pass the death sentence on mandatory sentencing: ‘Americans are a fundamentally decent people’, politicians proclaim, leaving you to wonder why over two million of us are in prison.
- Prestige Matters More For Smarts
- Two Academies
- Prayer is not about God coming over to you
- Mary Ann Glendon Turns Down Honor At Notre Dame Commencement
- "checkers is more helpful to kids as a game to prepare for life than chess."
- Unfair and Deceptive Data Trade Practices
- Five Cars Only Gearheads Would Love
- GM Employee Stock Fund Dumps All Company Shares
- Where’d You Learn to Drive?
- OhGizmo! Review - Oral-B Triumph Electric Toothbrush With Wireless SmartGuide
- Optimum Online announces Ultra service, 101Mbps/15Mbps for $99
- Alpine Innovations Spudz: Keychain-ready microfiber
- $3 million for not-very-matic pizza
- LaCie DataShare recycles your bits, will never say goodbye or hurt you
- Apple prototyping "iPhone lite" and MacBook Mini / media pad for Verizon?
Assorted Links 4/27/09
“Everything is amazing; nobody is happy.” Louis C.K.
Thus spake Hegel
- Media Relations for Public Affairs Professionals, May 5, 2009
- Advanced Media Relations, May 6, 2009
- Crisis Communications Training, May 7, 2009
- NetVideoHunter Downloads Videos From Popular Video Sharing Sites
- More Delusion on the High-End
- What a difference being responsible makes.
- Brad Smith for the Defense (of Deadlocks) [at the FEC]
- The capital well is running dry and some economies will wither: "The world is running out of capital. We cannot take it for granted that the global bond markets will prove deep enough to fund the $6 trillion or so needed for the Obama fiscal package, US-European bank bail-outs, and ballooning deficits almost everywhere. "
- 4 Things to Consider Before You Try to Join the Amish
- We've only chlorinated our water for a hundred years
- A Tree (and Fruits and Veggies) Grow in Detroit
- On Pelosi's Duplicity and Apparent Sandbagging of Elizabeth Warren
- Marines Equipment Woes Increasing Problem
- The UN’s Epic Fail in Geneva
- Is America now an exceptionally bad country?
- Editorial: Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used to Be. Or Is It?
- Confessions of a Contrarian
- After mass security lapse, RBS Worldpay gets IRS contract - "RBS Worldpay - the electronic payment processor that admitted it exposed sensitive financial records for millions of customers - has been awarded a contract by the Internal Revenue Service to process tax return payments next year."
- From Jingle Of Coins To Jingle Of Jail Keys - "Imagine $170,000. Now imagine that much in quarters and nickels and dimes. That's how much money Alexandria [VA] police say William J. Fell stole, canister by canister, from his job as a parking meter repairman over about a year"
- The Mansion: A Subprime Parable
- Fake Facts on Twitter
- Individuals and History, by Riz Din
- Promoting Webinars With Twitter - "I hate Twitter.... I find Twitter to be the present-day equivalent of a fictional anecdote from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams. The only way the Belcerebon race could deal with the curse of telepathy that was imposed upon them was to talk endlessly about utter trivia. And thus it is with Facebook walls and personal tweets."
- Dell Vostro A90: The cheapest Macbook Mini? - "The Dell Inspiron Mini 9 is one of the easiest netbooks to install OS X on."
- Swine Flu Pandemic Would Cost Trillions
- Sticking it to the streets of New York--and elsewhere
- Take Aerial Photos with a DIY Kite Camera Timer
- Not *Every* Children's Book Needs A Film Adaptation
- Easy web-based alarm: OnlineClock
- A Basic Checklist for Computer Security
- Come to our Contemporary Worship - We promise to keep the God stuff down to, like, five minutes tops.
- Scientists create super strong spider silk... using metal
Assorted Links 4/25/09
Martin Luther King Sings (auto tune)
- Media Relations for Public Affairs Professionals, May 5, 2009
- Advanced Media Relations, May 6, 2009
- Crisis Communications Training, May 7, 2009
- Survival, Attention, and Doing Nothing, by James Sogi
- Waste, Fraud, and Stimulus
- Human Sacrifice At The Altar Of The Cult Of Buoyancy
- Here's why Jon Stewart is a hack
- You're a bastard
- Back to the future: Obama’s foreign policy
- "Can someone please tell us how U. S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano got her job?"
- Diabetic Men Who Stay Fit Live Longer
- Connectedness: "a remarkable extent of the world is now covered in roads."
- GMAC Credit Card Biz Breaks with BOA
- Jim Webb Is Open to Legalizing Pot
- Putting MADD in Charge of America's Highways: President Obama's troubling nominee to head the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
- The Worst Stock of the Decade
- Amazon Kindle 2 costs about $185.49 to build, $359 to own
- Why I want a big screen ereader
- Candle Forks
- How to Keep Foods Fresh Longer
- Jailhouse Tech Sniffs Out 'Cell' Phones
Assorted Links 4/23/09
How to Make a Baby
- Understanding Congressional Budgeting and Appropriations, May 13, 2009
- "We haven't even seen the bottom for RI [house prices] yet!"
- Housing Bust and Geographical Mobility
- Know How to Spot an ATM Skimmer
- Is it a good sign to see cops eating at a restaurant?
- GM Is Becoming a Royal Debacle
- GM to Close Factories for Nine Weeks This Summer
- Five Factors Driving the Coming 'Transparency Squeeze'
- Tarred by TARP
- "The main reason we are annoyed by our fellow passengers' physical intrusions is that the airlines don't give us enough room for normal occupation of a physical space for long periods of time."
- Obama and the Pundits: Wrong on the handshake, wrong about Chavez
- The New World Order - A Group Photo
- The Anti-Capitalist Documentary That Can Make You Love Ayn Rand
- Sea ice in Antarctic is increasing as a result of the ozone hole, reveals new research
- Elizabeth Warren Grills Geithner
- Nonlethal Weapons and the Right To Defend Life
- Teacher of Year nominee laid off: "they have to go on seniority.”
- My Students. My Cellphone. My Ordeal.
- The Great Brazilian Sat-Hack Crackdown
- Low-Tech Impersonation
- Part-Time and Full-Time [Law] Students
- Gag name - Wikipedia
- Delta Airzound Bike Horn
- The Bride Was Beautiful
- Could Handwriting Recognition Be Andoid’s Secret Weapon?
- Author Offers Free Copy Of His Book To Anyone Who Writes An Amazon Review
- Parents, Don’t Listen To This Bologna
- A Child’s Garden of Alleged Bad Touching
- Blazing Saddles: 1922
- Stuff Journalists Like: #5 the good old days
Assorted Links 4/22/09
C'est Ne Pas Une Pipe
- Understanding Congressional Budgeting and Appropriations, May 13, 2009
- Are the Right Convicts Being Let Out of Jail Early?
- Have I got a deal for you
- Scientists Augment Scorpion Venom with Nanoparticles; Promise Super Brain Cancer Killer
- The Bail-Out as Class Warfare
- Citi Guys Slams Sysco
- When They Say "Smart Grid," Think "General Electric"
- Clean Up Your Classic Car With Propane
- The Wonders of Socialized Dentistry
- David Simon: Newspapers could emulate HBO and charge for content
- ABC Reports Psychics Contributing to Bad Economy
- Miss Bennett makes a move
- Can We Replace DHS Secretary Napolitano with Fox News Legal Expert Napolitano?
- Wag the Dog: What if the system to provide heart care has already gotten as big as it should be?
- Foreclosures: Movin' on up!
- California, Please Send A Message! California citizens have a chance to tell the spendthrifts to go to hell.
- NEA Asks President to Nationalize Industries
- Louis Armstrong Live At The 1958 Monterey Jazz Festival - Revisited
- Pedal powered electricity generator
- Markets in everything - Fake TV
- Chinese Gov't Computer Problems May Force Chinese Citizens To Change Names
Assorted Links 4/20/09
AA-12 Combat Shotgun Can Fire 5 12-Gauge Shells Per Second
Atchisson Assault Shotgun - Wikipedia
- Understanding Congressional Budgeting and Appropriations, May 13, 2009
- Reference materials
- Charter [schools] can’t meet demand
- Does Declining Popular Identification with State Governments Undermine the Case for Federalism?
- Why don't they boo more at the opera?
- Potato bins
- How To Make Potato Vodka
- Poteen Folklore
- Going Postal: The Imminent Death of the U.S. Postal Service?
- Yahoo Removing Your Stock Board Comments Is Not A Violation Of Your First Amendment Rights
- Washington’s Government-Centric View of the World
- Mystery Saturn Investors Enable Dealer Denial
- Why Won't Local Governments Just Increase The Length Of Yellow Lights?
Assorted Links 4/16/09
They laughed when she stood up to… sing
- Understanding Congressional Budgeting and Appropriations, May 13, 2009
- OpenSecrets.org releases 200 million government data records
- Conflict at the FEC
- Mortgage Fraud on TV
- Six Banks to Receive up to $9.9 Billion for Mortgage Modifications
- "It appears that both the Great Depression and the current crisis had their origins in excessive consumer debt -- especially mortgage debt -- that was transmitted into the financial sector during a sharp downturn."
- The Ungoverned Space Moves to Sea; Clinton Outlines Response - "The solution must ultimately lie ashore. 'We can’t continue to have the Navy floating around without some political direction,' [Martin] Murphy says, adding more ships offshore is not going to solve the Somalia as pirate safe-haven problem, the area is fast becoming another sanctuary for not only criminal gangs but Islamic extremism, similar to the tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistan border."
- McKinsey: adopt the cloud, lose money. Virtualize your datacenter instead.
- Questions that are rarely asked: Is euchre making a comeback?
- Great liars of the law
- The Tax-Defying DC Detective
- If You Work For The IRS, You Better Pay Your Taxes. If You Run The IRS, Not So Much.
- Livio Radio: Pandora Streaming Without the Computer
- A Buyer's Guide to Wi-Fi Internet Radio Receivers
- Pandora Internet Radio
- The death of a block
- CycleKarting: Extreme Vintage Go-Karting
Assorted Links 4/13/09
Using a Square Wheel
W.T. Wallington's Forgotten Technology Official Website
Wally Wallington - Wikipedia
The Construction of the Pyramids
- Understanding Congressional Budgeting and Appropriations, May 13, 2009
- Kindle Formatting: The Complete Guide
- It all depends on what the meaning of “bow” means
- Video Camera Strapped To An Eagle
- All the News That’s Fit to Tint - ht Cafe Hayek
- CBO: TARP Bailout to Cost Taxpayers Even More Than Expected
- Stalled CRE [Commercial Real Estate] Projects in D.C.
- Fed Paper on Reducing Foreclosures - "This analysis suggests mortgage modifications - without principal reduction - will have limited success. The authors suggest that loan or grants to homeowners with lost income might be more effective than mortgage modifications."
- America's Love Affair With Malls Ends; Toxic Drywall; Halted Projects; and Vacant Dealerships
- The Cost of Global Warming: A Story in Pictures
- Seek Superstar Slavery
- "Teacher’s aide in Queens, N.Y., sues 11 year old, saying he was dashing for ice cream and ran into her (this happened when he was eight)"
- Is your interior designer really putting your life at risk?
- The Folly of Sin Taxation
- The Tax Capital of the World: States are raising taxes despite the 'stimulus'; New York is No. 1.
- The New Atheists’ Easter message? ‘Grow up or die’. Religulous, Bill Maher’s religion-baiting documentary, confirms what modern atheists hate most about religion: its humancentricity.
- It’s time to stop this ‘miracle cure’ madness: In his speech to the Royal Society of Medicine, Dr Michael Fitzpatrick said the ‘war on autism’ is dehumanising people with the condition.
- The monster inside my son: For years I thought of his autism as beautiful and mysterious. But when he turned unspeakably violent, I had to question everything I knew.
- Autism - Wikipedia
- YouTube Is Doomed (GOOG) - ht Marginal Revolution
- The World as It Is and "simple-headed vanity"
- Surviving in a post-American world
- Just How Easy it [is] to Disrupt Infrastructure?
- $200 Oil Is Coming While We Waste a Perfectly Good Crisis
- Concerned resident aims to form armed militia to patrol Stockton, CA
- No Tofu in Colorado (Or the F-Word, Either) - ILVTOFU
- Time Traveling The Multiverse
- Castro, Race and the Black Congressional Caucus: An Inconvenient Truth
The Valmadonna Trust Library
Join Sotheby's experts and Jack Lunzer, custodian of the Valmadonna Trust Library, for an intimate tour of this fabled collection of Hebrew books and manuscripts.
Highly recommended.
More
- The Valmadonna Trust Library - Wikipedia
- Valmadonna photos and comments
- The Valmadonna Trust Library at Sotheby’s
- The Valmadonna Trust Library - photos from the NYT
Assorted Links 4/9/09
Stop Spending Our Future!
- Understanding Congressional Budgeting and Appropriations, May 13, 2009
- John Hope Franklin's Moral and Intellectual Poise - ht ALD
- Does a Move To Greater Internationalism Jeopardize American Free Speech Values?>
- Apartment: Vacancy Rate Increases, Rents Fall
- Which are the most neurotic states?
- The More Obama ‘Challenges,’ the More Education Will Look the Same
- Repo markets in everything, Passover edition
- In Defense of Free Speech: The 2009 Jefferson Muzzle Awards
- Portfolio Allocation in Times of Volatility and Uncertainty - Nouriel Roubini
- Parking In Rome. a/k/a You Think YOU Have Parking Problems
- Sadr City After the Fall
- Worst Is Yet to Come for Banks - Mike Mayo
- Who Won the First Naval Battle of Yulin?
- Strong words and actions as Stevens conviction set aside
- Chubby Belly a Predictor of Heart Failure
- Ultra Surge Protector
- The War on Drugs: Methamphetamine
- China’s SAIC To Buy Buick For Bupkis
- SWAT Regulation
- Reinventing College
- The Bloom Could Not Survive
- The Dark Side of Dubai
- What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: Tina Seelig's Great New Book
- Close Look at the Accelerating Rate of Unemployment
- It's Not a Flying Car -- It's a Driveable Airplane
- Vacancies, vacancies, vacancies ... and falling rents
Assorted Links 4/7/09
A Tiny Lightbulb from Luxim Has Great Medical Future
- Media Relations for Public Affairs Professionals, May 5, 2009
- Advanced Media Relations, May 6, 2009
- Crisis Communications Training, May 7, 2009
- Understanding Congressional Budgeting and Appropriations, May 13, 2009
- Compare LED Lights
- WeLoveLEDs
- Turn Storage Containers into Self Watering Tomato Planters
- Shorting Reason
- The Future of Our Cities: Open, Crowdsourced, and Participatory
- Stealing Commodities
- From Bubble to Depression?
- Repair Manifesto
- Confessions Of A Recovering Leaf Blower Addict
- Comments on Criticism of Cato [Global Warming] Ad
- Franken-Coleman gravy train rides on
- Just A Friendly Reminder… - back up your data
- Designer Threatened With Copyright Infringement Claims... On His Own Work
- Why "Voting With Your Feet" in a Federal System Benefits the Poor More than the Rich
- Announcing the 2011 Obama Sedan - also see "The Pelosi GTxi SS/RT, Take 2"
- Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and Wall Street's ownership of government
Last night, former Reagan-era S&L regulator and current University of Missouri Professor Bill Black was on Bill Moyers' Journal and detailed the magnitude of what he called the on-going massive fraud, the role Tim Geithner played in it before being promoted to Treasury Secretary (where he continues to abet it), and -- most amazingly of all -- the crusade led by Alan Greenspan, former Goldman CEO Robert Rubin (Geithner's mentor) and Larry Summers in the late 1990s to block the efforts of top regulators (especially Brooksley Born, head of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission) to regulate the exact financial derivatives market that became the principal cause of the global financial crisis. To get a sense for how deep and massive is the on-going fraud and the key role played in it by key Obama officials, I highly recommend watching that Black interview (it can be seen here and the transcript is here).
. . .
Just think about how this works. People like Rubin, Summers and Gensler shuffle back and forth from the public to the private sector and back again, repeatedly switching places with their GOP counterparts in this endless public/private sector looting. When in government, they ensure that the laws and regulations are written to redound directly to the benefit of a handful of Wall St. firms, literally abolishing all safeguards and allowing them to pillage and steal. Then, when out of government, they return to those very firms and collect millions upon millions of dollars, profits made possible by the laws and regulations they implemented when in government. Then, when their party returns to power, they return back to government, where they continue to use their influence to ensure that the oligarchical circle that rewards them so massively is protected and advanced. This corruption is so tawdry and transparent -- and it has fueled and continues to fuel a fraud so enormous and destructive as to be unprecedented in both size and audacity -- that it is mystifying that it is not provoking more mass public rage.- Traffic: Deal With It. Hanoi Style
- Retiring Public-Sector Retirement Plans
- Top 10 Home Office Hacks
- Tekkeon MP3450 Power Station Review
- Brunton Solaris 26 Solar Panel Review
- Chlorine in Our Drinking Water - A Cause For Concern
Assorted Links 4/6/09
Back to Work
- Understanding Congressional Budgeting and Appropriations, May 13, 2009
- Working with Congress and Congressional Staff: Communicating Effectively with Capitol Hill, May 15, 2009
- Sodastream Home Soda Maker - see spring specials at company website
- StashSafe 100 Hip Pack
- Inflation vs. Deflation
- Blast small LDL to oblivion - eliminate wheat from your diet
- Buy local, get a goiter
- PDF for Lawyers
- Paperless office? Ha! How about a paperless life? Is it possible to make everything digital? Is it desirable?
- [House] Pricing Rule-of-Thumb
- U.S. property bust threatens condo "death spiral"
- The DAP Legacy: FHA Delinquencies Rise Sharply in 2008
- Harvey Mansfield on economists
- Too Crazy to Fail
- Why creditors should suffer, too
- "trusting a politician’s conscience seems a bit like trusting a prostitute’s sense of propriety."
- Does a Stimulus Lobbyist Work for You?
- They don’t get the joke
- Daimler Finds Use for 200 U.S. Smart Cars
- WiFi is a Must for Smartphones
- Video - Building Innovation Teams - What is Your Learning Type?
- Learning-styles-online.com
- Savory: Native Kindle epub and PDF Converter
- UCSF draws the line at $75 bottles of wine
Assorted Links 4/4/09
Hayek Warns of "Omnipotent Elected Assembly"
- Understanding Congressional Budgeting and Appropriations, May 13, 2009
- The Road to Serfdom - wikipedia
- “Game Changer”
- 57 Days to GM Bankruptcy: Stock Set for Delisting
- Obama, his task force, and the auto industry: does anyone else find this especially chilling?
- Wrong Tomorrow
- What crisis? "Keep calm and carry on"
- Woman’s DNA showed up at 39 crime scenes
- NPR on CPSIA: “Public Concern, Not Science, Prompts Plastics Ban”
- Faith In Breasts
- The monster inside my son: For years I thought of his autism as beautiful and mysterious. But when he turned unspeakably violent, I had to question everything I knew.
- "As research reveals more about inheritance, it has become abundantly clear that humans are not blank slates. Neither, however, are our personalities and behaviour forged by genes alone."
- Cities Where Cars Are More Trouble Than Worth
- Pay Cuts For Thee, But Not For Me (if Me is a Federal Worker)
- Who Are The Top Hayekian Public Intellectuals in America? - ht Marginal Revolution
- There Will Be (Hyper)Inflation
- Just Add Diesel: How Unintended Consequences Rob Taxpayers Blind
Who's going to pay for the deficit?
Who's going to pay for the federal deficit?
Assorted Links 4/2/09
Sweet Science
King Corn, the movie
- Congressional Dynamics and the Legislative Process, April 22, 2009
- Media Relations for Public Affairs Professionals, May 5, 2009
- Advanced Media Relations, May 6, 2009
- Crisis Communications Training, May 7, 2009
- Understanding Congressional Budgeting and Appropriations, May 13, 2009
- Working with Congress and Congressional Staff: Communicating Effectively with Capitol Hill, May 15, 2009
- Public Affairs and the Internet: Advanced Techniques and Strategies, May 19, 2009
- "Just the kind of debate folks in DC love, one that sounds really important but leaves the government-created problem almost totally untouched."
- Report: Obama believes automaker BK appears inevitable
- Welcome to a Fascist….er, Managed Democracy?
- Ho-hum
- People Tend To Follow The Advice Of Experts Over Their Own Common Sense
- Congress Will Support Energy Policy As Long As It's Ineffective
- Virginia Gov. Kaine blocks funding for embryonic stem cell research
- Taxpayer Financing of Campaigns Returns
- Ford U.S. March sales fall 40.9%
- No You Can't Sign Up For A Comcast Account And Resell It Throughout Your Building
- The Spaghetti Book Club - "I would recommend this book about Cinderella to my mom because she likes to do chores."
- Which new mothers are most likely to abandon their old jobs?
- Data Glutton, Data Pauper
- Gorilla Power!
- The muddling-through option in China is not to be misunderestimated
- Gaza Crossings
- Top 10 Trends for Your Home This Year
- How to Become a "Death of Newspapers" Blogger
- Jane Brody’s Cholesterol Headache
- Tom Naughton and "Fat Head": A Revisit
- Thefts at the Museum of Bad Art
- Blair, Gates OK Multi-Billion Secret Sats
Assorted Links 4/1/09
Amusing, but Tragically Accurate, Video on Ag Subsidies from the U.K.’s Taxpayers Alliance
- Media Relations for Public Affairs Professionals, May 5, 2009
- Advanced Media Relations, May 6, 2009
- Crisis Communications Training, May 7, 2009
- The AP Daily without the AP
- Chinese cyberspy ring discovered
- Obama Taps Ralph Nader to Run GM, Nader Joins UAW
- GM of the Future: Much Smaller and Actually Profitable
- The many fascinating legal and social issues swirling around "sexting"
- "We have to wait for the fire brigade because of health and safety"
- Traveling With Tea
- The Nutrition Lesson Hidden in a Bowl of Miso Soup
- Says he didn’t mug her (but does want her money)
- Skype May Be The Biggest Winner From The Web 2.0 Era
- Stuff Journalists Like: #43 anonymous sources
- Frogs and Hawks, from Victor Niederhoffer
- Some Interesting Details - Carla Baron
- IIG Special Investigation: Carla Baron, Psychic Detective (?)
- Verizon to Sell 3G Hotspot From Novatel
- Verizon MiFi 2200 Personal Hotspot Leak
- Self-directed health: At-home lab testing
- Privacy and the Fourth Amendment
