January 2010
The 50 Most Loathsome Americans, 2009 →
colinbrineman:
I don’t think The Beast are good people, but I enjoyed this article immensely.
Interesting that “You” moved up to number 26, from number 43 in 2008. Here’s “you” in 2009:
Charges: Based solely on Fox News and cartoon depictions of evil scientists, you think “Climategate” is a real controversy that somehow affects the truth of global warming....
Solving the Climate Crisis is a smart political move. Judge for yourself:...
– — Al Gore
Ugh! I feel the same way about Gore as I do about Obama. Their broad rhetoric points in the right direction but their implementation misses the mark completely. All Gore is the kind of guy that want us to think that changing a light bulb is a political statement.
Climate Change is not a...
The only thing that would make me sit through...
He isn’t though, is he?
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Time to split Apple up
It so happens that last week’s brouhaha attending Apple’s iPad announcement coincides with a lecture I’m delivering next week on public policy and the internet. Over the past few days I’ve been reading a lot of commentary about iPad, about how it marks the shift from Old World computing to New World computing, and about how iPad is a golden calf of DRM. But I’ve...
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This is the best bit of my Sunday
The smell of roast lamb is slowly filling the house
Philip Glass is playing on my speakers
I am drinking deep at the well of Yochai Benkler’s wisdom
The fire is lit and the dogs are dozing
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if and when i ever got married, i would allow my husband to sleep with sherry....
– Nudawn
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The emergence of the networked information economy…depends on the...
– Yochai Benkler
Tony Blair accused of putting war with Iran on the... →
Sir Richard Dalton, a former British ambassador to Iran, accused Blair of trying to make confrontation with Iran an electoral issue after the former prime minister repeatedly singled out its Islamic regime as a global threat in his evidence to the Iraq war inquiry yesterday.
Blair said many of the arguments that led him to confront the “profoundly wicked, almost psychopathic” Saddam...
10 lies Tony Blair told about Iraq →
U.S. suspends medical evacuations from Haiti →
anthropophagous:
The U.S. military said on Friday it has stopped flying Haitian earthquake victims to the United States for medical attention following concerns by some state governments about who will pay for the treatment.
“At this moment in time, yes, the flights have stopped,” said Navy Captain Kevin Aandahl, a spokesman for the U.S. Transportation Command, which manages the military’s...
SUPPORT WIKILEAKS →
publiccommunication:
iisabelle:
pythoness:
“We have received hundreds of thousands of pages from corrupt banks, the US detainee system, the Iraq war, China, the UN and many others that we do not currently have the resources to release. You can change that and by doing so, change the world. Even $10 will pay to put one of these reports into another ten thousand hands and $1000, a million.”
...
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Walls close in on e-book garden →
The digital publishing industry and consumer advocates breathed a sigh of relief when Apple chief executive Steve Jobs revealed that the iPad would use the open EPUB format for the electronic books it sold through the iBooks store .
Unlike Amazon, which has quickly grown to be the world’s largest seller of e-books, it appeared Apple was steering away from introducing its own file format...
What year is it where Rick Sanchez is?
And the daftest question of the night goes to...
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Pete Cashmore's Scotland, CA accent is doing my...
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In three years, when the low-end WiFi-powered iPad costs $199, many households...
– We Have Seen The Amazing Future Of Apple’s iPad And This Is It
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Angry people in local newspapers →
errorgorilla:
Angry people pointing at things and looking sad.
Best thing on t’internet.
Howard Zinn didn’t want or need flowery eulogies. He wanted us to get out there...
– The Field: Howard Zinn (1922-2010): In Lieu of Flowers, Organize (via ziatroyano)
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We lynched the landlord
Three months ago, I reported that my daughters’ former landlady was refusing to return their deposit of £1100 on spurious grounds, and claiming a further £1100 from them on the basis that the flat they had vacated was in such a poor state that she had lost a month’s rent pending repairs and redecoration.
In the UK, landlords have to register each tenancy with an independent Deposit...
New Left Project →
The New Left Project takes as its starting points:
A belief in the value and equality of human life;
An endorsement of the fundamental rights that flow from this (as set out for example in the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights); and…
The view that those rights are best honoured by cohesive, co-operative societies based primarily on collective and democratic social organisation and...
One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion....
– Howard Zinn (via azspot)
Raoul
fireland:
One day my kids brought home a male prostitute. “Can we keep him?” they cried. I folded my arms and said: “Are you going to feed him and play with him?” They were like: “Yes, Daddy, yes, of course!” I gave him a good long look, lingering for a moment on his gold lamé short shorts. “Oh all right,” I said, “but if he dies I’m not making a little tombstone out of popsicle sticks like I...
Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over...
– Howard Zinn, “The Problem is Civil Disobedience” speech at Johns Hopkins University, November 1970 reprinted in Voices of a People’s History of the United States
The spine of my copy of Voices is broken at this page (484), because this passage informs everything I do, everything I teach,...
Fake Steve Jobs iPad liveblog →
Refresh your browser for updates. Namaste.
Mossberg back up, and blabbing away again. Is it wrong that I wish he’d stayed down?
8:51– fucking Sinbad is backstage. Sinbad?!?! He’s like, hey I’m a huge fan. I’m like, I wish I could say the same, but come on, you’re fucking *Sinbad*.
8:57– John Mayer = officially a pain in my ass.
9:40– it’s official. Phil just peed his pants.
9:41– mr...
snuh:
The Simpsons: Disrespect dirt with Mr Sparkle! Can’t you see I am serious!
I was so proud when my kids started going round saying “Awesome-w power!”. They were only tiny.
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Don't cook this with that
The other day I was explaining DRM to some students. I used the analogy of buying a chicken in a supermarket. When you leave the supermarket, you notice this guy walking alongside you. He follows you everywhere, even gets into your car with you and follows you into your home. When you put your food away, and when you take it out to cook it, he’s there, telling you what you may and may...
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Two Tumblrs that I wish would update
topherchris:
Type Nesting Art Of The Arcade
Howard Zinn, historian who challenged status quo,... →
Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and a leading faculty critic of BU president John Silber, died of a heart attack today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling, his family said. He was 87.
thought: I may be a progressive conservative. I...
(via vruz)
Things have never been simpler.
Every time I see clingtomymouth on the dashboard... →
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Guardian editor hits back at paywalls →
The Guardian editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, has delivered a riposte to Rupert Murdoch’s campaign to introduce paywalls to newspaper websites, claiming that it could lead the industry to a “sleepwalk into oblivion”.
Delivering the 2010 Hugh Cudlipp lecture at London College of Communication today, Rusbridger said that universal charging for newspaper content on the internet...