February 2009
19 posts
“The Obama DOJ’s embrace of Bush’s state secrets privilege in the...”
– Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com
Bad Reactors - Mariah Blake →
Nuclear power may have some unsavory side effects, like radioactive waste and the risk of meltdowns. But no other energy source can deliver vast quantities of low- or zero-carbon energy at a price that rivals natural gas and coal, as the industry has promised the new breed of reactors will do. With this in mind, many people who once dismissed atomic power out of hand have come to view it as a...
Matthew Yglesias » The Trouble With State... →
So I wind up being skeptical that you could really improve much of anything even in those areas when I think the libertarian perspective is broadly correct by devolving more authority downward.
Matthew Yglesias on the problems with the subsidiarity principe / moving more political power to the states.
Counter-cyclical asset of the day →
Sales of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” have almost tripled over the first seven weeks of this year compared with sales for the same period in 2008. This continues a strong trend after bookstore sales reached an all-time annual high in 2008 of about 200,000 copies sold.
Anecdotal evidence from the Netherlands: I’ve recently seen several dutch people reading Atlas Shrugged during their train...
"Nudge" by Richard Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein →
Thaler and Sunstein invite us to enter an alternative world, one that takes our humanness as a given. They show that by knowing how people think, we can design choice environments that make it easier for people to choose what is best for themselves, their families, and their society. Thaler and Sunstein demonstrate how thoughtful choice architecture can be established to nudge us in beneficial...
Managed to use a network printer to print a document in Word 2007 running under WINE. *Very* impressed. It just works.
How to Present While People are Twittering →
As a presenter, the idea of presenting while people are talking about you is disconcerting. But to balance that, there are huge benefits to the individual members of the audience and to the overall output of a conference or meeting.
Nice article about utilizing modern technologies such as twitter to make conferences more interactive. Hype or useful?
There’s some quotes about twittering...
“Yesterday, I talked to a man in California who for the past five years worked as...”
– The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan (February 28, 2009) - The View From Your Recession
Why No More 9/11s? The Terrorists-Are-Dumb Theory →
slate in brief summarizing Slate:
9/11 only happened because of multiple instances of dumb luck, not through any genius-level planning or preparation.
The attack itself was a very stupid move, since “nearly 80 percent of al-Qaida’s Afghanistan-based membership was killed” in the US retaliatory attack and al-Quaida’s standing-and membership-in the Muslim world is worse than ever.
Office / Word 2007 on Ubuntu Intrepid (8.10) using...
There’s now one less reason to avoid Ubuntu.
I’ve gotten Office 2007 enterprise to work on Ubuntu Intrepid, through Wine 1.1.15 (a development release), using the official Office installer. That’s a pretty awesome achievement by the Wine devs. Installing required no winecfg tweaks of any kind.
Initially, there was some trouble getting it running. The office apps couldn’t...
5 Writers On The Death Of Green (And Why It's OK) →
Hope this message is at the exact time of 1234567890
“To some extent, I think de-cluttering involves recognizing that regret is part...”
– Occhiblu @ Ask Metafilter Via 43Folders
January 2009
6 posts
Tip for stupid vandals: if you set fire to a trash can don’t do it with one next to a sandbox. Kinda easy to put it out.
“Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went...”
– George Orwell (via travors) 