http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/1336.html
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Yearly Archives: 2009
Untitled
30 December 2009 – 9:58 pm
RT’ing Andrew Coyne
30 December 2009 – 1:04 pm
The Short Parliament
By Andrew Coyne – Wednesday, December 30, 2009 – 59 Comments
As Canadian democracy spirals further down the drain:
Prime Minister Stephen Harper will prorogue Parliament Wednesday for a two-month break.
The House of Commons and the Senate will come back in March, after the Vancouver Olympics, for a Speech from the Throne and a budget. [...]
I’m afraid of engineers
29 December 2009 – 11:23 pm
http://www.slate.com/id/2240157
"Gambetta and Hertog write about a particular mindset among engineers that disdains ambiguity and compromise. They might be more passionate about bringing order to their society, and see the rigid, religious law put forward in radical Islam as the best way of achieving those goals. In online postings, Abdulmutallab expressed concern over the conflict between [...]
This has totally been the decade of “you can’t make this shit up”.
29 December 2009 – 9:57 pm
"Expect to hear a lot about the fact that America's Transportation Security Administration is currently leaderless. Talking Points Memo says that's because Sen. Jim DeMint, a conservative Republican from South Carolina, has blocked the confirmation of a prospective head for the agency. Mr DeMint says he's blocking the confirmation because the nominee won't say whether or not he [...]
Everyone should read this, srsly
29 December 2009 – 9:27 pm
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23519
"For the last thirty years, in much of the English-speaking world (though less so in continental Europe and elsewhere), when asking ourselves whether we support a proposal or initiative, we have not asked, is it good or bad? Instead we inquire: Is it efficient? Is it productive? Would it benefit gross domestic product? Will it [...]
Why are we so bad at detecting the guilty and so good at collective punishment of the innocent?
28 December 2009 – 7:20 pm
http://www.slate.com/default.aspx?id=2239935
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Are Americans a Broken People?
28 December 2009 – 6:45 pm
Alternet.org
"Today, U.S. colleges and universities have increasingly become places where young people are merely acquiring degree credentials — badges of compliance for corporate employers — in exchange for learning to accept bureaucratic domination and enslaving debt. [...] Today, increasing numbers of people in the U.S. who do not comply with authority are being diagnosed with mental [...]
The Role of Fiction in the Well-Lived Life
20 December 2009 – 5:54 pm
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To be kind rather than to be cruel; a rebuttal of Kenneth Kidd
18 December 2009 – 9:43 pm
When I read this today (Oscar the cat and the science of kindness) I was indignant and dumbfounded that someone could be so fucking dense (emph mine):
“In a world filled with overwhelming selfishness, schadenfreude and cruelty, why is there still empathy, sympathy and kindness? There must be some evolutionary advantage, otherwise those traits would have long [...]
Apple Computers does Climate Change 1987
14 December 2009 – 11:14 pm
Apple's concept video projecting how computers might be in twenty years: our time. To illustrate a professor at work, they imagined he was studying the greenhouse effect.
I also love this video for the way it documents the late '80s idea of academics: old dark wood and smarmy arrogance.
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