Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries ….
- Idaho Hunters to Kill Pesky Wolves for Eating Too Many Elk – The comment section has some interesting back and forth about wolves, rich hunters who want to bag wolves and elk, and some rural Idahoans who depend on hunting for food and claim to be impacted by the wolves in question.
- Mozilla resists US gov’t request to nuke “MafiaaFire” add-on – Kudos to Mozilla for this. Their questions back to DHS are perfectly legitimate.
- Novell overturns judgement, WordPerfect antitrust suit against Microsoft is back on – Unlike the lawyers I don’t see any conflict between the competing claims that MS engaged in unfair business practices against Novell, and that Novell bungled its handling of WP and Quattro. Both are almost certainly true.
My company used to be a heavy Novell shop. It’s sad to see how they’re on their last legs as an entity.
- Editorial: Games for Windows Live is a broken mess and I hate it – Hmmm. Sounds like a system that grew too fast on an architecture that didn’t even consider accessing accounts on different sorts of devices and locations at the same time.
- Intelligence Gathered At Abbottabad Compound Shows Bin Laden Actively Involved In Directing Al Qaeda – Interesting. And, apparently, he was doing it all with human couriers, to avoid cell phone / computer tracking. Which works fine until the courier network gets spotted, which is what happened here.
- Must-read on PoliticusUSA: the ‘Texas Cheerleader Who Was Assaulted Never Had A Chance’ – Wow. This story just gets worse and worse.
- Goodyear blimps to be replaced by German Zeppelins [printer-friendly] • The Register – A nice summary of airship history.
- Gov. McDonnell’s Public Broadcasting Cuts Actually Strip Funding From Virginia’s Classrooms – “The funding McDonnell eliminated with the veto doesn’t actually go towards developing television or radio programming. Rather, its for the Instructional Telecommunications Services contract with the public broadcasters, a program dedicated to developing and providing low-cost or free electronic educational materials for Virginia schools. When legislators agreed to an earlier round of public broadcasting cuts in February, they did so in exchange for an increase in educational broadcast funding. That’s the funding that McDonnell cut.” Stay classy, Bob!
- Exxon Makes $30.5 Billion, So GOP Votes Unanimously To Give Them Tax Breaks – And yet, weren’t some of those same GOP House members back home a few weeks ago admitting to their constituents that, just maybe, such subsidies should be reconsidered? Oh, well.
- Fact Checking Barton Part V: Treaty of Tripoli – I’ve always thought the Treaty of Tripoli argument was a weak one (really? we’re going to pay attention to polite reassurances in a treaty document?), but to completely wish it away is to be a bad historian.
- Fact Checking Barton Part IV: “I Never Had To Retract A Single Thing” – David Barton’s a bad fact-checker, purveyor of debunked quotations, and doesn’t show a strong or faithful skill in history itself? Say it ain’t so!
- David Barton OKs Sharia Law in the U.S. – I think they tried that kind of local majoritarian approach once. It was called Yugoslavia, and it didn’t work well without a strong(man) central government. It’s also a matter of scaling, which is where I think Barton is being deceptive. At what level should the local majority be able to dominate the local minority? Neighborhood? Town? City? County? State? Nation? Arguments can and are made for any of those, which makes me think that None of the Above is the right answer.
- McDonald’s Hires 62,000 At Job Event, Turns Down 938,000 – The Consumerist – As Fred Clark put it, “So next time you hear some condescending, privileged jerk preaching resentment toward the poor — ‘Why don’t they just get a job flipping burgers?’ — you can remind them that Mickey D’s has 20 applicants for every job opening.”
- Supreme Court of Brazil votes 10-0 to legalize civil unions for same-sex couples – “The shining city on a hill just moved south.”
- Bill Clinton Now Supports Gay Marriage – Better late than never.
- Wisconsin Dems Allege Massive Fraud By GOP Recall Petitioners – To be fair, at least some of these fraudulent claims appear (ethically, if not legally) to be the fault of people who can’t be bothered to read the petition they are signing.
- The Smithsonian Has Picked the Games of Its Art of Video Games Exhibit – I’ve actually played some of these. 🙂
- Fact Checking Barton Part III: First Amendment – Still a dolt.
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