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TheConservatives.com, the Washington Times Web project that was billed as an ambitious "multiplatform" venture to allow "the Joe the Plumbers of the world to speak up to major thinkers, like Newt Gingrich," has gone silent.
December 2009 Archives
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Mikkel's post nicely addresses the topic. In particular, the commenter rebuts the Salon rebuttal.
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Food choices are often like that: difficult to articulate yet strongly held. And lately, debates over food choices have flared with particular vehemence... But before we cede the entire moral penthouse to “committed vegetarians” and “strong ethical vegans,” we might consider that plants no more aspire to being stir-fried in a wok than a hog aspires to being peppercorn-studded in my Christmas clay pot. This is not meant as a trite argument or a chuckled aside. Plants are lively and seek to keep it that way. The more that scientists learn about the complexity of plants — their keen sensitivity to the environment, the speed with which they react to changes in the environment, and the extraordinary number of tricks that plants will rally to fight off attackers and solicit help from afar — the more impressed researchers become, and the less easily we can dismiss plants as so much fiberfill backdrop, passive sunlight collectors on which deer, antelope and vegans can conveniently graze.
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"Researchers at the Imperial College London have announced development of an alcohol substitute that has many of the same properties as the Synthehol from the series Star Trek, in that one will get a buzz from it but will not end up with a hangover. In addition you will have the option of getting immediately sober if you so desire it. Let's hope this is not the typical vaporware. It is not that I really want a drink of Synthehol, but with its release I assume Romulan Ale won't be far behind."
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The success of The Blind Side might be attributed to the fact that it is the most recent example of what some film historians have labeled the "black saint" or, less politely, "magic negro" genre, in which a virtuous black character saves the white protagonist. The term was coined to describe a series of movies in the 1950s—most notably No Way Out, Blackboard Jungle, Edge of the City, and The Defiant Ones—that feature Sidney Poitier as an upright black man who sacrifices himself, often with his life, for whites. These movies were so successful that they not only established Poitier as the first “serious” black movie star, but also changed the way Hollywood thought about race.
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The balance of power between the political press and politicians now favors pols. Bandwidth used to be very thin. If you wanted to communicate to voters, you had to get the attention of one of a very small number of national television newscasts or one or two local newspapers. Now there’s much more bandwidth you can take advantage of. At the same time, budgets have declined. Consequently, campaign coverage now consists largely of reporting what candidates or their representatives said or even just putting two proxies on television and listening to them talk. Segments that report in a moderately serious way about what the candidates are all about are a very small share of the total.
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#9) EXCEPT FOR SLAVERY, JIM CROW, LYNCHINGS, AND SEAN DELONAS, IT'S NOT A BAD COMPARISON In an article titled "Rise of an Epithet," National Review's Jay Nordlinger admits that the term "teabagger" was originally created by conservative activists — but then likens it to the term "nigger." "When I was growing up, in Ann Arbor, Mich.," writes Nordlinger, "there was a little debate: should school officials try to prevent black students from using the N-word? I don't believe the issue was ever settled. And this brings up the question of whether 'teabagger' could be kind of a conservative N-word: to be used in the family, but radioactive outside the family."
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There's indication the Founders intended pardon power as a check against injustice, not only in cases of wrongful conviction, but where the law was misapplied or where a conviction otherwise wouldn't be in the interest of justice or fairness... Yet that isn't how governors generally use the pardon. Instead, they bestow redemption on guilty people who claim that they're rehabilitated. This converts the pardon from a check on an imperfect system to an almost religious capacity for conferring forgiveness, for reasons often more personal than related to public policy. There's room to debate whether the criminal justice system is too punitive and if it should focus more on rehabilitation... But the pardon and clemency power isn't the place for it. That power is correctly used to draw attention to injustice, not grant mercy to a few lucky (and guilty) souls. Barbour is handing out mercy to killers while paying no heed to the staggeringly flawed system operating right under his nose.
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GEORGIA IS #19. "One was a survey of 1.3 million Americans done over four years by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which asked people about their health and how satisfied they were with their lives. Those self-assessments were stacked against “objective indicators” borrowed from researchers at U.C.L.A. They included state-by-state variances on quality-of-life gauges like climate, taxes, cost of living, commuting times, crime rates and schools.
When the two sets were blended, the economists discovered that the subjective judgments closely tracked the objective ones. In other words, people knew what they were talking about when they said if they were happy or not. Americans who described themselves as satisfied tended to live in places where the quality of life was good by most standards — where the sun shone a lot, the air was reasonably clear, housing didn’t leave you busted, traffic wasn’t too fierce and so on.
Harris concludes that the average hours spent online have increased from 7 hours from 1999 to 2002, to between 8 and 9 hours in 2003 to 2006, and surged after that.There was a sudden spike in time spent online in 2007 when the average hours spent on the Web increased to 11 hours. Last year, Internet users were online for 14 hours a week, double what it was from 1999 to 2002, although Harris says this could have something to do with the outbreak of the financial crisis and the lead-up to the presidential election in October 2008
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I’m looking to enlist your support in some public shaming. You can also point-out the utility of installing a video camera system during a renovation. This Grinch stole the Christmas wreath from the front door of my house early Friday morning. She looks like a fairly put-together person, why is she out stealing in the middle of the night? Pacific Heights of course…
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Matt Haughey recently unloaded his PVRBlog.com domain and content on ebay for $12,110.00 at the conclusion of a 7 day auction. As with most items that attract seasoned bidders, the reality was closer to a 20 minute event — during which time we saw PVRBlog’s price more than double.
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Jennifer Weiler, the freshman who sued, says that Green Mountain housed her in a facility where only shared bathrooms were available. When she complained, the suit says, the college designated a bathroom in her dormitory as a women's bathroom, but did nothing when male students went right on using it.
Ron Weiler, Jennifer's father, said in an interview that his daughter had no idea when enrolling that the bathrooms were shared by men and women. He said that the bathrooms feature showers with curtains, and toilets in stalls. But he said that while the female students generally disrobe and towel themselves behind the shower curtains, many male students do not, nor do the male students necessarily shut the stall doors.
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The $2.99 app "will continue to evolve in the months ahead," Esquire editor David Granger writes in his iPhone edition intro. "We'll be back with another issue next month, with a few added features."
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Netflix says it's a “slight change…to highlight movies and TV episodes you can watch instantly on your TV or computer.” But that description downplays the strategic significance of the move, which could help reposition the company as a streaming video provider rather than a subscription DVD rental service. THat's the future of the service.
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I'm on Netflix's side: An in-the-closet lesbian mother is suing Netflix for privacy invasion, alleging the movie rental company made it possible for her to be outed when it disclosed insufficiently anonymous information about nearly half-a-million customers as part of its $1 million contest to improve its recommendation system.
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E-mails stolen from climate scientists show they stonewalled skeptics and discussed hiding data — but the messages don't support claims that the science of global warming was faked, according to an exhaustive review by The Associated Press. The 1,073 e-mails examined by the AP show that scientists harbored private doubts, however slight and fleeting, even as they told the world they were certain about climate change. However, the exchanges don't undercut the vast body of evidence showing the world is warming because of man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
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Fewer than half of college students responding to a national survey said their professors are using instructional technology, and educators worry that the technology gap between faculty and students might hinder campus learning. The study also revealed a jump in the percentage of students who use technology to prepare for college classes. Eighty-one percent said they used computers, social networking, and other tools to study, marking an 18-point increase from 2008, according to CDW-G's "21st Century Campus Report," which was released this fall.
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EXCERPT: In order to make sure students still have access to the expensive software that many courses require—like 3-D modeling tools and advanced statistical programs—UVa is among the growing number of institutions trying virtual computing labs. They are not physical places, but systems that let students use the software over the network, logging in from anywhere on their own laptops.
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AFP - A monster iceberg has been spotted drifting towards Australia in what scientists Wednesday called a once-in-a-century event.
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Somewhere in between sunset and full dark, the Christmas lights and the ambient light will start to mix beautifully. You'll have about a 10-minute window which will give you a nice series of subtly different lighting variations. Remembering to keep your camera as still as possible, shooting lots of frames through the mix light.
They discuss his ties to anti-gays in Uganda and the "kill gays" legislation.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
I'd have thought I'd be interested. I care about industrial food. But somehow I'm put off. Now I find, everyone hates Safran Foer...
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Megan says, "I've become considerably more concerned at items that have subsequently gotten more attention."
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Economist Richard Baldwin at VoxEU has put together an amazing presentation detailing how the wheels came off the global economy. It shows just how the global collapse unfolded at the speed of light.
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The best part about Bing Maps Beta--by far--are the rich transitions between high-resolution street-level or bird's-eye view photos as you move around a city, making it feel like you're actually driving down the road.
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Lo-Jack for Macs!
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So what should the FCC do about this controversy? It should ask Hollywood and the cable companies for real evidence that plugging up the "analog hole" will make their offerings more secure (especially when one studio is already offering early run VoD movies without SOC). And it should ask PK and CEA for more data on how they got their damage numbers—the latest from CEA being 25 million TV households impacted by SOC. But most important of all, the FCC should ask what kind of example it sets to let two powerful industry lobbies force consumers to buy new equipment to fully access not iPod movie rentals, but our baseline communications system.
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You want a camera that shoots Raw: "My initial regret was from the realization that raw photos, although taking up about three times the storage space as a JPEG and requiring manual processing, offer higher quality and more flexibility. But what I've come to understand since then is a second advantage of raw: because processing software improves over time, raw photos in effect can get better with age. For that reason, I've begun recommending friends who show some enthusiasm for photography that they should think about shooting important events in raw format alongside JPEG. "
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BRAVO! "Now, I don't mind being critiqued. I think that being a public figure automatically involves that. ... But it also really sucks to just be the talking head as everyone else is having a conversation literally behind your back. It makes you feel like a marionette. And frankly, if that's what public speaking is going to be like, I'm out... I will do my darndest to give new, thought-provoking talks that will leave your brain buzzing. I will try really really hard to speak slowly. But in return, please come with some respect. Please treat me like a person, not an object. Come to talk with me, not about me. I'm ready and willing to listen, but I need you to be as well. And if you don't want to listen, fine, don't. But please don't distract your neighbors with crude remarks. Let's make public speaking and public listening an art form. Maybe that's too much to ask for, but really, I need to feel like it's worth it again."
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VERY COOL: The basic premise is that Flavors lets you produce a well-designed springboard to portfolio pieces, current work and profiles. Users add links, edit fonts and colors, and upload a background photo. Rather than fiddling with cascading style sheets or modifying blog templates, this service offers a fast and easy way to create an elegant web presence.
Under the banner of Hii Def Inc. internet incubator, brothers Jonathan and David Marcus and former Vimeo design lead Jack Zerby created Flavors as just one of three companies to launch in 2009. Prior to Flavors.me, the group produced online sneaker shop Superkix. As a hybrid of both Flavors and Superkix, the team will soon release an online storefront tool by the name of Goodsie.
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