September 2009
1 tag
Watchlelapin:
leo:
Breaking Up a Traffic Jam - One person CAN make a difference. (via Metacafe)
2 tags
Astroturfing Health Care Discourse
[via The Lie Machine : Rolling Stone by Tim Dickenson]
“Conservatives were quick to insist that the near-riot — the first of many town-hall mobs that would dominate the headlines in August — was completely spontaneous. The protesters didn’t show up “because of some organized group,” Rick Scott, the head of Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, told reporters....
3 tags
Sept 24 Birthday Tree
HAZELNUT TREE (the Extraordinary) - charming, undemanding, very understanding, knows how to make an impression, active fighter for social cause, popular, moody and capricious lover, honest and tolerant partner, precise sense of judgment.
1 tag
“We, society as a whole, are willing to live our lives as hirelings, and...”
– Stowe Boyd
“It is not good to settle into a set of opinions. It is a mistake to put forth...”
– Hakagure: The Book Of The Samurai
[via Jeff McNeill]
“The generous attitude towards failure that big cities afford is invaluable...”
– David Byrne
[via Catarina Fake, How that idiot made 10 million dollars: Cities and Genius]
1 tag
“Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to...”
– Catarina Fake
[via Caterina.net: Working hard is overrated]
1 tag
Krugman on Obama's Greatest Challenge
After his ‘Green Is Easy’ essay last week, Paul Krugman has returned to the question of climate change, taking a much more reasoned tack, stating that it is the most serious issue confronting us and that Obama better get with it.
[via Cassandras of Climate by Paul Krugman]
“Responding to climate change with the vigor that the threat deserves would not, contrary to legend, be...
2 tags
No Jobs, But More Talk Of War
In principle, I am in favor of President Obama’s efforst to reform health care (although he has settled on the restructuring of health insurance, and has forsworn health care reform as impossible, given the intransigence and outright stupidity of Republicans and right-leaning citizens), but his adventuring in Central Asia is outright madness, especially when he should be focusing on getting...
2 tags
The Globalization Of Waste
Huge amounts of wast, some toxic, are flowing from developed nations with stricter laws to less developed nations for recycling or disposal. Why? The money saved from skirting regulations.
[via Smuggling Europe’s Waste to Poorer Countries by Elisabet Rosenthal]
“Paper, plastic and metal trash exported from Europe rose tenfold from 1995 to 2007, the agency says, with 20 million containers...
2 tags
Watch Out For That Cultural Relativism!
[via Uphill Fight for Pope Among Secular Czechs by Dan Bilefsky]
““If the pope wants to create a religious revival in Europe, there is no worse place he could come to than the Czech Republic, where no one believes in anything,” said Jaroslav Plesl, a self-confessed lapsed Catholic who is deputy editor of Lidove Noviny, a leading daily newspaper here. “Add to that the fact that the pope is...
6 tags
Obama At The Brink
Will Obama resist the trumpeting of the hawks, and adopt a counter-terrorist stance in Afghanistan, or will he fall into counterinsurgency nation building? Kennedy resisted in Vietnam.
[via Op-Ed Columnist - Obama at the Precipice - NYTimes.com by FRank Rich]
“Though Kennedy was outnumbered in his own White House — and though he had once called Vietnam “the cornerstone of the free world...
1 tag
your birthday and corresponding tree →
bowfolk:
bookselves:
milkymoon:
gridlockcaravans:
coronitadarling:
December 23rd :)
APPLE TREE (the Love) - of slight build, lots of charm, appeal, and attraction, pleasant aura, flirtatious, adventurous, sensitive, always in love, wants to love and be loved, faithful and tender partner, very generous, scientific talents, lives for today, a carefree philosopher with imagination.
...
1 tag
“The observer of city gardens cannot fail to notice that not one of the plants...”
– Michael Hough, City Form and Natural Process
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“President Obama may be reconsidering his idea of substantially increasing the...”
– Bob Herbert, [via Fed Up With War]
8 tags
The Melt Down At The 'Third Pole'
The Himalya glaciers are melting at an astonishing rate, at the temperatures there are rising at a rate faster than the rest of the world. The consequences are likely to be devastating.
Orville Schell, The Thaw at the Roof of the World
Because of climate change, the roughly 1.7-mile-long Baishui Glacier No. 1 could well be one of the first major glacial systems on the Tibetan Plateau to...
1 tag
AIDS Vaccine Show Real Promise
[via For First Time, AIDS Vaccine Shows Some Success - NYTimes.com by Donald G McNeil Jr]
“The vaccine — known as RV 144, a combination of two genetically engineered vaccines, neither of which had worked before in humans — was declared a qualified success after a six-year clinical trial on more than 16,000 volunteers in Thailand. Those who were vaccinated became infected at a rate nearly...
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Krugman does a grand disservice to advocacy of taking a hard line against climate change by suggesting ‘it’s easy being green’:
[via Op-Ed Columnist - It’s Easy Being Green - NYTimes.com by Paul Krugman]
“So the main argument against climate action probably won’t be the claim that global warming is a myth. It will, instead, be the argument that doing anything to limit...
Ҥ 121.306 Portable electronic devices.
(a) Except as provided in paragraph (b)...”
– [Doc. No. FAA–1998–4954, 64 FR 1080, Jan. 7, 1999]
The actual rule for telling us to turn off our gadgets. Needs a little update, maybe?
1 tag
Obama Steps Back From Bush Abuse Of Power, Into A...
[via Obama to Use Current Law to Support Detentions - NYTimes.com]
“In concluding that it does not need specific permission from Congress to hold detainees without charges, the Obama administration is adopting one of the arguments advanced by the Bush administration in years of debates about detention policies.
But President Obama’s advisers are not embracing the more disputed Bush...
3 tags
1 tag
Bruce Springsteen ‘The Wrestler’
A Breakthough In Bricks
[via Silicon Valley reinvents the lowly brick | Reuters]
“”Bricks have been made pretty much the same way for 3,000 years, until Calstar’s scientists came up with their new technique, said Chief Executive Michael Kane.
Ordinary bricks are fired for 24 hours at 2,000 degrees F (1,093 C) as part of a process that can last a week, while Calstar bricks are baked at...
1 tag
Who Will Watch The Watchers?
National Briefing - Washington - Schools Were Not Told of Suspect Food - NYTimes.com]
“The Agriculture Department failed to tell schools promptly about recalls of potentially tainted peanut products and canned vegetables, and cafeterias may have unknowingly served them to children, according to the Government Accountability Office. The agency’s investigation, requested by Democrats in...
2 tags
Oh Boy
[via Editorial - Safety and Trucking - NYTimes.com]
“… it is hard to see how naming a trucking industry insider like Ms. [Anne] Ferro, the president of the Maryland affiliate of the American Trucking Associations, to lead the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration squares with Mr. Obama’s promise of “a clean break” from business as usual.”
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Obama continues to run counter to...
2 tags
Joe Biden Is My Boy!
[via Obama Considers Strategy Shift in Afghan War by Peter Baker and Elisabeth Bumiller]
“President Obama is exploring alternatives to a major troop increase in Afghanistan, including a plan advocated by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to scale back American forces and focus more on rooting out Al Qaeda there and in Pakistan, officials said Tuesday.”
