Mr. Beck lives in a cloistered world of paranoid delusion that is impervious to a priori evidence that contradicts his world view
This is in response to Glen Beck telling his audience that no one but Fox “dared” show the footage of Israeli commandos repelling onto a boat and being attacked with clubs — despite (as The Daily Show makes painfully, hilariously clear) all major news outlets ran that footage in the 24 hours preceding Mr. Beck’s accusation.
This is an excellent TED talk about what intellectual property people can learn from the fashion industry. In essence, there is no IP protection in fashion (except for trademark), and yet its economic impact dwarfs highly-protected fields like music or film.
This piece from the Atlantic captures my feeling pretty close to exactly, re: the recent Rand Paul flap on the Civil Rights Act and his alleged “courage”. In particular, the conclusion:
Now, after the police dogs, night-sticks and fire-hoses have been beaten back, Rand Paul wants to reopen the question, while, to be sure, claiming that he would have had the “courage to march with Martin Luther King.” This is a common strain of courage. It chiefly shines through in men born 50 years too late. Presently among the crowd, they are distinguished at that decisive moment when queried about wars they won’t have to fight, in times they will never live. These men populate our history books. They are all on the wrong side.
Everyone says they could balance the budget if they were in charge. Few understand what would be involved. I just played a neat simulator that actually allowed me to explore what different policies would do.
Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any easy way to post the results, but I did a screen-capture hatchet job:
Click for a full view. My choices — like anyone’s — probably wouldn’t please everyone but I don’t think they’re monstrous. A guiding principle was to avoid adding much new until the current spending is more under control. In reality, I know that government should be countercyclical, so this set of choices might actually be less than wise. But it was still a good thought experiment.
This (http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/) is an animated illustration of how Facebook has been increasingly defining your personal data as “open to everyone”.
The EFF has an excellent timeline of the changes in the privacy policy at Facebook. It’s worth a read for anyone who might consider Facebook either (a) private in any sense or (b) ethically reliable in any sense. These changes bother me less than other people because I’ve always assumed Facebook would screw us over on privacy, so I treat it like a big virtual billboard+skywriting.
A meme spreading like wildfire throughout the rabid right is that “47% of Americans don’t even pay federal income tax.” Clearly it’s time for another tax cut for the uber-wealthy in the interest of “fairness”.
David Leonhardt wrote a piece in today’s New York Times exploring this. Short version: The number is true… and meaningless. The working class pays far more in total taxes (once payroll, state, and sales tax is included). People aren’t getting a free ride. The article is worth a read, if only as an example of a calm, fact-based response to overheated breathless propaganda.
