Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries ….
- Britain to Pay Ex-Guantánamo Detainees – NYTimes.com
- NPR.org » Ten ‘Who Cares?’ Tweets About The Beatles Coming To iTunes
- The Beatles finally hit iTunes – Holy Kaw! – As opposed to, um … ripping their songs off of your CDs? I mean, this isn’t rocket science, folks.
- Kyl intent on destroying U.S. foreign policy – Who cares about the rest of the world? We have a President to sink!
- Bachmann explains budgeting as only she can – “So, what have we learned from the leading right-wing Republican? Earmarks are bad, unless they’re going to Bachmann’s district, and slashing spending is good, except for the ‘legitimate projects that have to be done.'”
- Portrait of the Emperor’s clothes – On the one hand, the Official GWB Portrait doesn’t warrant too much hand-wringing, but it is pretty darned crappy. Which, I suppose, makes it appropriate.
- Six stellar Thanksgiving wines to savor on Turkey Day – Denver Restaurants and Dining – Cafe Society – Plenty of reds already pulled for the big day (and week), but we’ll be sure to have some of Jackie’s Pacific Rim on hand. And bubbly!
- Well-deserved humiliation for John McCain – The only positive thing I can say about McCain these days is that he’s better than the loon that almost beat him in his primary this year.
- LaBarbera Worries Gay TSA Agents Are “Secretly Getting Turned On” At Airports – Hmmmm … since we can’t know whether a TSA agent is heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual, we should train chimpanzees and robots to do patdowns …
- You only try this once – The Oatmeal – Yup.
- Facebook Email – Heh.
- Tea Party FAIL: GOP’s Historic Ban on Earmarks Already History – “Of course, this is all political theater anyway, since earmarks constitute about 1% of the budget. But Teabaggers seem to believe that banning them will eliminate the deficit, keep out the Mexicans, prevent Sharia Law from being imposed, and return the Western to prime-time network television — so this will give them a good excuse to throw yet another tantrum.” One issue is that “earmarks” are such a vague term — some specific item for a district added into a bill. But that could be a needed item, or an unneeded one — like obscenity, one only knows it when one sees it.
- Reason No. Eleventy Gajillion Why We Need a Transaction Tax : Mike the Mad Biologist – I agree whole-heartedly. This will, of course, be spun by the GOP (at their financial corporations’ behest) into an attempt to “penalize small investors, such as Mom and Pop sitting at home using eTrade, impacting the 401(k) accounts of millions of hard workers, and putting at risk our major financial institutions.” That will have nothing to do with reality, of course, but …
- Clueless Conservative Christian – The Conservative Christian leadership who’ve latched onto the GOP as their secular savior and stepping-stone to power have been more than willing to compromise their message to be GOP-friendly, turning Jesus into a rah-rah supporter of capitalism, business-friendly trade policies, neo-conservative foreign policy, and tax cuts. None of which were in Jesus’ primary (or even secondary) message, but which is just what you’d expect (historically) when you mingle the goals of church and state.
- Stuxnet Was Designed To Subtly Interfere With Uranium Enrichment – If so, fiendishly clever.
- Tracks – Cool.
- FDA sidesteps safety concerns over TSA body scanners – “But, in the FDA’s response, the agency gave the issues little more than a data-driven brush off. They cite five studies in response to the professors’ request for independent verification of the safety of these X-rays; however, three are more than a decade old, and none of them deal specifically with the low-energy X-rays the professors are concerned about. The letter also doesn’t mention the FDA’s own classification of X-rays as carcinogens in 2005.” For the average “fly home at the holidays” once or twice a year flier, it’s likely (but hardly established) that there’s no substantial risk. For more frequent or business fliers (including flight crews), I am utterly unpersuaded that this is safe.
- Welcome to the Police State – Greetings, Airline Passenger Mister K …
- 611 Reasons Fall Is the Most Beautiful Season of All – I love the fall. And I love living somewhere it means something.
- New aviation risk: pleats – So these magic boxes also require us to take off our belts, empty our pockets, and, coming soon, will dictate what we can or cannot wear when we fly. Lovely.
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