Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries ….
- Clash of the Pteridophytans – HA!
- Senate Passes Food Safety Bill That Would Increase FDA Authority – Good for them. I hate it that the House has to accept the Senate’s bill just to avoid debate that would likely spill over into next year (and the new political realities), but I’d rather see this bill get through than nothing.
- Tea Party Nation President Says It ‘Makes A Lot Of Sense’ To Restrict Voting Only To Property Owners – Note the buzz words here of “Founding Fathers,” even though property ownership franchise is not part of the Constitution (or even the Declaration of Independence), it was just the accepted custom, designed to keep the poor and immigrants and indentured from cluttering up the voting roles. I expect to see this ass-hat suggestion bubble up more in the coming years.
- Eleven Tech Trends To Watch In 2011 – Don’t agree with everything here (some tech change happens slower than folks in the middle of it recognized), but there’s nothing here I would dismiss out of hand.
- Testing the TSA with Titanium Man – Some very, very interesting perspective on airport security and recent developments. Recommended reading.
- TSA scans uniformed pilots, but airside caterers bypass all screening – It never pays to peer behind the curtain at the Security Theater.
- Winner-Take-All Politics: how America’s super-rich got so much richer – Not surprisingly, the super-rich got richer through Congress — most of whose members (esp. on the Senate side) are millionaires, and who can only get elected through lots of campaign contributions … given by people who stand to then personally profit if the tax code and economic policy favor the super-rich. And if anyone complains, then they’re a socialist. Easy-peasy.
- Chinese officials were ‘scared to death’ by Pelosi, but will love Boehner.: Joe Sudbay (DC)
- Non-breeding behavior must be punished [Pharyngula] – Sadly, too many people in the US believe the same thing.
- The new bipartisanship – This Modern World – Salon.com – “Well, okay, but if we concede this, this and this, will that make us friends?” “Thank you. NOW DIE!”
- Amazing Phone Book Carvings by Alex Queral – Very cool.
- On jargon, and why it matters in science writing | Not Exactly Rocket Science | Discover Magazine – There’s a difference between “using complex jargon is unnecessary to communicate to the audience” and “writing in a clear and understandable style to your audience.” These exercises in jargon-bashing seem to make that mistake — and I say that as someone who works in IT in a multi-disciplinary engineering environment (so I’m surrounded with IT jargon, engineering jargon, chemistry jargon, regulatory jargon, agency jargon, etc.). And, far too often, they turn into silly attacks on preferred writing style and proscriptive vocatulary (e.g., “If I see someone use ‘access’ as a verb one more time, I’ll scream”), which is about as useful as saying that apple pie is too filling for customers so you should only serve ice cream, when the problem is YOU don’t like apple pie.
- For DecorMyEyes, Bad Publicity Is a Good Thing – NYTimes.com – Is it true that there’s no such thing as bad publicity? The gentleman here seems to have gamed a lot of systems very successfully (and sleazily).
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3. Well, if we’re going to require qualifications, how about a test to prove that you understand government and the Constitution before you can vote? That at least makes more sense to me than owning land.
If we go the other way, Dave, may I buy a square nanometer of your property?
Silly boy. The GOPowers that Be have no interest in people actually understanding the Constitution or how government is supposed to work!
I do see an interesting market cropping up in “indivisible shares of property,” a la condo complexes.