Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries ….
- President Obama Brings Helen Thomas Birthday Cupcakes
- Two Dozen Awesomely Nerdy Cupcakes – This one’s for Kate!
- All In A Day’s Work: Rep. Kingston Smears The Stimulus On TV, Takes Credit For Stimulus Jobs In His District: Lee Fang
- OWNED (PWNED) – Some great word origin stuff here.
- Right Conclusion, Wrong Reason – I say it again: locked-down technology will find it harder and harder to prosper over time.
- Ruth Gledhill – Times Online – WBLG: Quakers back gay marriage – For having such a quaint image in this country, the Quakers are often quietly in the forefront of many progressive social movements.
- Ruth Gledhill – Times Online – WBLG: New push for same-sex marriage, gay ordination in Church of England – Well, this could be interesting … or get ugly.
- Study: Sex Without Condoms Makes People Happier, Less Depressed | Carnal San Francisco – A couple of thoughts. First, evolution is a blunt instrument; how we evolved is not optimal but satisfactory, and for mass populations not for individuals. Second, there seems to be some confusion between correlation on causality (as well as causal direction).
- Re-reading Sandman: An introduction – Oh, cool — I look forward to this “reread.”
- The History of the Pledge of Allegiance – A few typos, and a clear ideological slant, but a lot of good info here, too.
- DefCon participants fooled by fake ATM – HA! Okay, that was pretty ballsy.
- Senator’s campaign website suffers search-engine death penalty for embedding invisible homophobic slur against opponent – Actually, on the face of it, the campaign’s explanation makes sense (I can easily imagine an automated process that looks for highly sought-after terms in certain categories then embeds them on the page). That’s not necessarily evil, though the excessive use of it by the SEO firm led to Google and Yahoo’s action. Nor is it necessarily evil that the particular phrase was used — of the 2000+ terms that were hidden, I’m sure the vast majority were much more innocuous, and I’m willing to believe that it was done in an “untouched by human hands” fashion. That said — yeah, that’s the danger of trying to game the system in an automated fashion.
- Imaginary Liberal “Disruption”: Fascism! Actual Conservative Disruption: Democracy! – The other difference in this particular wingnuttery is that I don’t actually recall any “OMGEVILACORN!” counter-protesters at the Teabag Parties, let alone any disruptive or provocative ones.
- Neutron: Brand New
- Exterminate Malware Efficiently with Spybot Search & Destroy – I've used Spybot S&D for years — and, yes, I don't run TeaTimer (from annoying past behavior).
- Adjustable-Focus Glasses Can Replace Bifocals – Wow. Let me know when they come with a mental control, because this sounds more inconvenient (and expensive) than my blended bifocals.
- Rachel Maddow on GOP Thugishness at Town Halls: This is Called Hooliganism – Wait until they start issuing them stylish brown shirts …
- Latest Republican Strategy of Violence [Greg Laden’s Blog] – I wouldn’t use the word “violence” … yet. But organized, incited shouting-down protests are a dangerous step in that direction. And the GOP seems clueless as to the danger that represents to them, as well.
- The Postmark Experiment: David Malki !
- The “Costs” of Inaction – It’s not necessarily an even 1:1 trade-off — some spending is more efficient than other spending — but I suspect a lot of what drives Texas’ budget-helping parsimony on taxes is not fiscal and policy analysis but ideology (economic, political, and, yes, racial) and greed.
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My father has often spoken about his “Pledge” being different than mine. He remembers the salute with palms up and that hand went from heart to salute on “and to the republic…” Not quite old enough for the earliest wording however.
It always interests me how things that we expect are ‘permanent’ have actually changed many times. I’ve noticed at baseball games that folks who have not needed to remove a hat are still putting their hands over their hearts (and most women now remove their hats, which didn’t used to be the case). As a Girl Scout, I was taught to stand attention when addressing the flag with hands at my sides. And then there’s the proliferation of US flags on clothing, furniture, doormats, car seats-just about anything you can name. It used to be considered disrespectful to have the flag be represented as anything other than a flag (in fact, as a girl my grandmother wouldn’t buy me a shirt that had a small flag on the front – it just wasn’t done).
I think it’s related to the idea that the Golden Age of Comics is whatever you were reading when you were 11.
Alas, folks tend to assume their personal experience (and opinions) are eternal verities. Not that I’m immune to that, mind you.
Fun slide show, I knew most of it but there were bits and pieces that I did not know, and the comments from the SCotUS justices were interesting.
Though, still not saying the pledge until the “Under God” part is removed…even though this has caused problems at Rockies games post 9/11. 🙁