Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries ….
- So Long Sanford, We Hardly Knew Ya [1] – Love the way Sanford’s been quickly cut loose from the Values Voters Summit.
- Not from the Onion: Teacher Rubber Rooms [2] – So the districts (and the article, implicitly) blame unreasonable union rules … which, when examined, say you can’t just willy-nilly fire someone or cut off their pay for an unsubstantiated allegation, but need to go through a disciplinary hearing. I think that’s called “due process” in criminal proceedings. If it’s taking months-to-year to hold those hearings, that’s hardly the fault of the accused teachers.
- So crazy…it just might work [3] – Wow. That’s very cool.
- Video Proves Police Lies. Again. : Dispatches from the Culture Wars [4] – Criminals who willfully break the law and hurt innocents need to be quickly and sternly punished. When the police are the accused, the same standard applies.
- Nah, Ten Commandments Monuments Aren’t About Religion [5] – People without a clue …
- Amazon Tries To Clarify Download Limits For Kindle Books, Doesn’t Quite Succeed [Drm] [6] – I’m sure some folks would gripe to see the suggested policy change implemented … but only because it’s telling an unpleasant truth. That would be more than compensated by the relief of FUD that Amazon would provide nervous users. In the long run, the truth works.
- Southwest Suddenly Decides Frequent Flyer Is Too Big To Fly [Southwest Airlines] [7] – Wow. Amazing customer service FAIL here by Southwest.
- Meet The Virtual ATM Skimmers [Malware] [8] – Oh, that’s just swell. Thank you to all the idiots who thought Windows would make a great OS for ATMs (and that they wouldn’t have to patch / innoculate / scan the machines on a regular basis to keep them safe). Brilliant.
- The Neocon War On Roger Cohen: Andrew Sullivan [9]
- Torture At Bagram: Andrew Sullivan [10]
- Will Republicans ‘Ask Questions’ Of Sanford, Rather Than ‘Circle The Wagons For One Of Our Tribe’?: Think Progress [11]
- Just as the Drinks Arrive, Just as they Play Your Favorite Song: Eric Martin [12]
- Father’s day photo-shoot ends with cops pointing guns, photographer face down on tarmac [13] – And, of course, he’ll now be checked by security every time he tries to fly for the rest of his life. Yeesh.
- Vizio releasing Twitter-, Flickr-, Netflix-enabled TV [14] – I class this as 3-year technology — in 3 years it will either be irresistably widespread, or in 3 years it will be completely obsolete. I can wait.
- Former FDA Head Says Food Manufacturers Use Sugar, Salt, And Fat To Short Circuit The Brain’s Reward System [Health] [15] – It sounds interesting. On the other hand, it’s like saying, “How dare you make this food be really, really, really tasty?!”
- Transformers 2: “Have you ever fallen into a city-sized Cuisinart?” [16] – Sounds like an excellent party DVD … for someone else to buy and bring over.
- Antiwar.com Blog · A Thought Experiment [17] – This really is a key argument, and an excellent analogy (read the whole article). We lost our rhetorical rights to argue about regime change in Iran fifty years ago, and have done nothing since then to rebuild them. And most Iranians are painfully aware of that. The decrying of Obama as “timid” are coming from folks in this country who have their own poltical axes to grind, not from folks in Iran.
- The Pyramid of North Dakota: Dylan Thuras [18]
- “If You Don’t Believe in an Afterlife, Why Be Moral?”: vjack [19]
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1 Comment To "Unblogged Bits for Wednesday, 24 June 2009"
#1 Comment By BD On Wed 24-Jun-09 7:10pm @ 7:10pm
Wow, the rubber room thing was done years ago on This American Life….You should give it a listen some time. For the most part it is not as the article states about union rules, but away for the admin to get rid of teachers they do not like, or who question their authority….and the real reason is to see who blinks first, the admin (letting them teach again), or the teacher (getting bored out of their mind, quitting and getting a job elsewhere). Basically yet another slanted article from the AP.
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So a Racist ex-neocon defends America’s Concern Troll from their former Neocon buddies….eyes…bleeding.
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Followed by the same racist ex-neocon deciding that all the things he supported did some bad things like torture and such…which all the DFH he kept telling to shut up back when things could have been stopped, told him that is what was going to happen. Eyes bleeding even more.
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Go read Ebert’s review of the new Transformers movie, it’s his best review since North. =P
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