January 2012
1 post
December 2011
2 posts
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November 2011
1 post
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Quote of the Day - Carnivorous San Francisco
Anyone who doesn’t have a great time in San Francisco is pretty much dead to me. You go there as a snarky New Yorker thinking it’s politically correct, it’s crunchy granola, it’s vegetarian, and it surprises you every time. It’s a two-fisted drinking town, a carnivorous meat-eating town, it’s dirty and nasty and wonderful.
Anthony Bourdain, via SFGate
October 2011
4 posts
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Ron Paul's America
What’s wrong with this? It doesn’t take much work to paint a dystopian picture. Let’s begin with a simple example. Without an Interior Department, there would be no agency to oversee national parks, federal lands and offshore drilling. Land would have to be auctioned off to the highest bidders, most likely oil-and-gas, coal and timber companies. The states would inherit Teddy Roosevelt’s...
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WatchRichard Dawkins: Who Was the First Human? (via FORA.tv)
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Occupy Wall Street vs. The Tea Party
“Yeah, I’m oversimplifying, but only a little. The greatest threat to our economy is neither corporations nor the government. The greatest threat to our economy is both of them working together. There are currently two sizable coalitions of angry citizens that are almost on the same page about that, and they’re too busy insulting each other to notice.” - James Sinclair...
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Why 9-9-9 Isn't Going Anywhere
Let’s say you’re 20 years old. You don’t care what tax you pay — you haven’t paid any yet. But if I’m 65, I’ve spent my whole life paying income taxes. I’m about to stop paying them. What’s the benefit to me if you bring on a sales tax? Thanks — you’ve just made every retired person’s pension 30 percent less valuable.
...
September 2011
1 post
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August 2011
1 post
July 2011
2 posts
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Quote of the Day II - Guilt by Association
Now you know how it feels, Ms. Geller. When the terrorist is a Christian—in his own words, a “Crusader” for “Christendom”—and when the preacher to whom he has been linked is you, you suddenly discover the injustice of group blame and guilt by association. The citations you didn’t create, the intermediaries you didn’t recognize, the transactions you...
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Quote of the Day - Debt Ceiling Chicken
Yes, at some level it’s a game of chicken. Something we can all understand pretty intuitively in human nature and game theory terms. But to really get what’s really going on you’ve got to understand one key point: one of the two cars doesn’t have a driver in it.
Josh Marshall, on media coverage of the debt ceiling debate, via Talking Points Memo
June 2011
2 posts
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Quote of the Day - The Slippery Slope
There’s a good general rule to follow when you think about slippery slope arguments: does the slippery slope work with or against human nature? The former are far more dangerous than the latter.
Kevin Drum, via Mother Jones
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Seasteading Institute Plans Floating Nations off... →
The libertarian answer to the Utopian commune movements of the 20th century, and bound to be just as successful. At least Friedman is right up front about wanting to be a despot.
May 2011
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John McCain on Bin Laden and the Torture Debate
I asked CIA Director Leon Panetta for the facts, and he told me the following: The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. The first mention of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti — the nickname of the al-Qaeda courier who ultimately led us to bin Laden — as well as a description of him as an important member of al-Qaeda, came from a...
April 2011
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U.S. Liberals on Nuclear: “It’s Complicated.” →
Chris Mooney: “It’s true that many liberals who opposed nuclear power in the 1960s and 1970s seem to be reliving much of that era. And there has been, from some on the left, clear exaggeration of the dangers of nuclear radiation and the amount of deaths (past and future) attributable to Chernobyl…
However, I don’t see much evidence–though I’m willing to be convinced–that many on...
March 2011
3 posts
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The Onion: NYTimes.com's Plan To Charge People... →
“To ask NYTimes.com’s 33 million unique monthly visitors to switch to a cash-for-manufactured-goods-based model from the standard everything-online-should-be-free-for-reasons-nobody-can-really-explain-based model is pretty fearless. It’s almost as if The New York Times is equating itself with a business trying to function in a capitalistic society.”
February 2011
1 post
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January 2011
2 posts
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Quote of the Day - Angry Rhetoric Edition
Mr. DeMoss, a former aide to Moral Majority founder Rev. Jerry Falwell and an unpaid adviser to Republican Gov. Mitt Romney in the 2008 presidential campaign, said that he was particularly surprised by the hostility to the civility pledge from conservatives.
“The worst e-mails I received about the civility project were from conservatives with just unbelievable language about communists, and...
December 2010
6 posts
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How to Win a Holiday Argument
First of all, I should say that if you’re looking for real advice instead of a sarcastic rant, Slate’s brilliant John Dickerson already nailed this one. So for that, go there. But for the rant:
Here’s a little blurb where NPR tries to be helpful by providing a list of books to help you win political arguments with your insane relatives over the holidays. Yes, really.
...
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Why the Apollo 11 Astronauts Stayed So Close to... →
Nice job, Krulwich. I wish Neil Armstrong would write me emails.
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Quote of the Day - Sympathy for the News Junkie...
“The news so powerfully suggests ‘what matters’, it takes a while to realise ‘but this drama is not my life’ and switch off. Addiction to ‘news’ becomes a substitute for much-needed reform in one’s own life.”
Alain de Botton, via Twitter (@alaindebotton)
November 2010
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WatchDoes Democracy Need the News? (via FORA.tv)
“When someone gets information that power doesn’t want and communicates it to the powerless, they are committing the act of journalism.” - John Nichols
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October 2010
11 posts
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Quote of the Day - Fear the Beard Edition
“I’d like to be a crossword clue one day. I want to be in The New York Times’s Sunday edition. Right now, the clue ‘Giants great’ is always Mel Ott. I want my clue to be down, not across. The down ones are usually harder. And when I’m the clue, I’ll fill it in — just that one — and frame it.”
S.F. Giants closer Brian Wilson, via NYTimes.com
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Fewer Kids Get Vaccinated As Parents Worry About... →
Idiots.
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Democrats Look to Cultivate Pot Vote in 2012 →
Well, this would be an interesting tactic…
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Quote of the Day - Second-Rate Science Edition
“It’s better to read first-rate science fiction than to read second-rate science. Second-rate science may not be true either, and it is less entertaining.”
Cosmologist Martin Rees, via FORA.tv
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Quote of the Day - The Tea Party In a Sentence...
“Government isn’t what our founding fathers put into the Constitution.”
Sharron Angle, Nevada GOP candidate for Senate, via Mesquite Local News
September 2010
3 posts
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Atheists Outdo Believers in Survey on Religion →
Pew Research study suggests a majority of devout Americans know little about world religions, and some can’t answer basic questions about their own faith. Many Americans also have dramatic misperceptions about religion in public life, particularly in regards to public school classrooms — an interesting statistic considering the amount of political activism that gets fired up around...
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August 2010
3 posts
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WatchTIME Announces New Version Of Magazine Aimed At Adults | The Onion
I have to admit — I loved Time when I was a kid. Also USA Today. Mmm… Infographics.
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A Quarter Century after Chernobyl: Radioactive... →
Oh, well, you can’t eat them. That’s going to feel like the least of your problems once a 100-foot-tall Boarzilla emerges from the woods to crush Berlin.