Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries ….
- Escape your search engine Filter Bubble! – So there’s a conflict here. If search engines give you raw, alphabetical data, the noise drowns out the signal. If they take a majoritarian view and give you the links that most people look at, then they promote groupthink. If they tailor their results to what you’ve shown you’re interested in before, then they are creating a filter bubble. Maybe we need a set of buttons at the top to allow folks to choose different ways of sifting the results.
- How Bad is the Texas Drought? “In Austin, They are Praying for a Hurricane” – “Even a couple degree warming can make a 100-year event a three-year event. It has to do with the tail of the bell curve. When you move the bell curve, that area changes dramatically.”
- Rhode Island State Senate Approves Civil Unions, Bill Advances To Governor’s Desk – I fully admit I don’t have have the same skin in this game as some others … but I’d say take what you can get NOW and strive for more after that, rather than reject a 80% solution in hopes of driving toward 100%.
- A bipartisan enemy of the people – “Reigning in the pernicious influence of the credit scoring agencies ought to be near the top of any progressive agenda because it makes life even worse for the poorest, for minorities, for the powerless. And it ought to be near the top of any “tea party” type agenda because if you’re genuinely concerned about “the road to serfdom,” then it would be hard not to notice that for most Americans, most of the time, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion are doing more to promote serfdom than even the worst caricature of the IRS or the EPA.”
- Yifan Lu | Kindle 3.2.1 Jailbreak – This is the jailbreak to allow different screen savers (and, for some more adventurous sorts, different fonts) on Kindles. Amazon used to allow this kind of thing automatically with the Kindle 1. With the 2s and 3s, it’s taken some jailbreak code. Now with the ad-supported 3s, Amazon is trying to close the gaps (since the ads are, in fact, the screen savers). A pity, since customizing the screen saver is one of the nice, personalizing things you can do with your Kindle. Since I bought my Kindle without the ad-supported discount, I don’t feel any compunction about bypassing the restriction.
- Constantine is dead – Re Evangelism: “But now I feel like I’ve just congratulated a healthy adult for tying his own shoes. The declaration that, from now on, we’ll try to avoid deception, coercion and bribery shouldn’t be cause for celebration.”
- Senate Introduces Bill to Limit Use of Antibiotics in Livestock – I’ve no doubt it will be shot down by congresscritters beholden to Big Ag (mostly but by no means all from the GOP).
- YouTube – The Ray Harryhausen Creature List– Inspiring a generation (or three) of Dungeon Masters the world over …
- Ways In Which Sandals Beat Up Your Feet – I’ve avoided flipflops for years. And my experience last weekend certainly points to the value of well-cushioned, well-fitting sandals.
- McConnell To Vote Against Free Trade Deals If They Include Aid For Workers Who Lose Their Jobs – Because how can people make obscene profits outsourcing to free trade partners if some of their taxes are going to retrain displaced American workers? I mean, we need to keep our priorities straight!
- DeMint Won’t Listen As Geithner Explains Why Failing To Hike Debt Ceiling Would Impair American Credit – The lunatics are running the asylum.
- Google unveils Swiffy: turns high maintenance Flash animations into HTML5 – Anything that can get rid of Flash …
- The Announcer’s Test – This is cool. Also, I read it cold and with only a few hints of a bobble on 10 (over some pronunciation to use).
26 view(s)