Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries ….
- The Onion: “Snowy conditions proving hazardous for nation’s idiots.” – HA!
- How to correctly sing Auld Lang Syne: Christopher S Penn
- Michele Bachmann: ‘Snotty’ Gore Vidal Novel Made Me Realize I Was a Republican – I’m not a huge Vidal fan but, jeez, how utterly infantile … which goes to Al Franken’s point, I suppose.
- I have found the cognitive surplus, and it hates pigs – Of course, that presumes that the “cognitive surplus” would actually be used cogitating. Maybe my brain is more effective in some ways, or at least refreshed, or stretched in some fashion, by playing Angry Birds.
- Barefoot and Progressive: Will there be unicorns on the Ark? – “Kentucky will now be known as the state whose governor endorsed and gave $40 million in tax breaks to people who want to tell children that science and history explain that a 600 year old man herded dinosaurs, fire-breathing dragons and unicorns onto a big boat 4,000 years ago.” Your tax dollars at work (if you live in Kentucky).
- Email, Twitter, and Social Networking the Basis of PM 2.0 – Yea Right – Though I’d probably substitute GReader for Gmail …
- Audiophiles
- Hogmanay: Dictionary.com Word of the Day – Also, New Year’s Eve itself.
- “American” Companies Created Millions Of Jobs, Just Not In This Country – It’s not a bug! It’s a feature!
- Too Easy To Predict: Cost Of Obama Vacation Riles Conservatives – Yeah, because Dubya’s ranch trips, Reagan’s ranch trips, Bush 1’s trips wherever they went … those were all free, right? Yeesh.
- Open a Champagne Bottle with a Saber – And be sure to videotape it for YouTube.
- The Last Roll of Kodachrome Film Ever Will Be Developed Today [Photography] – Well done, good and faithful servant.
- The Spinning Girl Illusion Revisited – I’ve shared this before. I couldn’t make her change while watching it, but when I was reading the article I could see her change out of the corner of my eye.
- SUDDENLY: Cheezburger Network
- You Can Now Lend Your Kindle Books to Friends for 14 Days [Books] – That’s nice … but it’s still controlled by title (if the publisher or author doesn’t want to, you can’t), and you’d best make sure the person you’re loaning it to is ready to read it in the next 14 days.
- Science is not dead – "Early in any scientific career, one should learn a couple of general rules: science is never about absolute certainty, and the absence of black & white binary results is not evidence against it; you don't get to choose what you want to believe, but instead only accept provisionally a result; and when you've got a positive result, the proper response is not to claim that you've proved something, but instead to focus more tightly, scrutinize more strictly, and test, test, test ever more deeply." And that's why it works, for increasing degrees of accuracy.
- Million-volt ZAP Cane – I WANT (eventually).
- By the numbers, American journalism failed to inform voters – The Founders were clear that it was not just democracy that was important, but a democracy among informed citizens (one reason, or excuse, they had for limiting the franchise to landed men, the idea being that they would be educated and aware of stuff gonig on around them). That the media has allowed (or, in cases, promoted) misinformation is a direct threat to our government and nation. Really.
- “Only Bad News Counts As News” – Part of the reason for this is, in fact, people are more interested in news that requires some sort of action to be safe, or that signals a “problem.” The actual problem with this problem is when the actual urgency or risk or danger from “bad news” is unrealistically pumped up to sell amidst all the other bad news. In other words, “if it bleeds, it leads” is less of a bad thing than “IT’S BLEEDING! YOU MAY BE NEXT! OR YOUR CHILDREN! FILM AT 11!!!”
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