Posts Tagged ‘2012’
A Few More
* Sitcom Characters Still In Shock After Christmas Episode Proves Existence Of Santa Claus.
* io9 Star Treks Into All the Clues and Easter Eggs from the Star Trek Into Darkness Teaser Trailer. Furious time-traveling Picard or nothing.
* Harlan Ellison + Paul Chadwick team for major new DC sci-fi comic.
* Senate Hits New Low as Mitch McConnell Filibusters Himself.
* And 2012 in photographs: 1, 2, 3.
All the Midweek Links
* Both In Focus and The Big Picture visit the 2012 Paralympics.
* Michelle Obama did great last night, but the story of a sick little girl named Zoey whose ability to live was saved by the ACA hits a bit closer to home.
* Who’s going to be the lesser evil in 2012 2008 2004 2000 1996 1992 1988 1984 1980 1976 1972 1968?
* On reporting poverty. Related: Melissa Harris-Perry talks poverty on MSNBC.
* Mitch Hurwitz Talks to Vulture About Reviving Arrested Development.
* The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of “writer’s block.” These results have since been confirmed.
* The real affirmative action: Researchers with access to closely guarded college admissions data have found that, on the whole, about 15 percent of freshmen enrolled at America’s highly selective colleges are white teens who failed to meet their institutions’ minimum admissions standards.
* How many people have died because Walter White got cancer? And a Breaking Bad Fermi problem: What is a good approximation of how much money Skyler had in the storage unit when she showed Walt how she stopped counting it?
* A portrait of David Foster Wallace as a midwestern author. And more. Words David Foster Wallace’s Mom Invented.
* Report: Student Debt Is Holding Back The Housing Recovery. Are you interested in student debt now, old people?
* In North Carolina, Obama’s 2008 Victory Was Ahead of Schedule.
* Getting spicy: Hacker Group Claims to Have Romney’s Tax Returns.
* BREAKING: Rachel Carson Didn’t Kill Millions of Africans.
* BREAKING: Social Security Administration to arm illegal immigrants with hollow-point bullets to murder taxpayers. Wake up, sheeple! The truth is out there.
* Erin DiMeglio is a third-string high-school quarterback.
* And for the kids: How We Got to Mars. The lives of the cosmonauts. HTML5 Map of the Firefly ‘Verse. And a lost interview with Ray Bradbury:
Blast from the Past
An all-male troop of science fiction writers from 1987 predict 2012. Only Asimov really comes close:
Assuming we haven’t destroyed ourselves in a nuclear war, there will be 8-10 billion of us on this planet—and widespread hunger. These troubles can be traced back to President Ronald Reagan who smiled and waved too much.
Though Gregory Benford has his moment:
…the attitudes expressed in this collection of predictions will seem very outmoded and “twen-cen.”
Nailed it.
Monday!
* Police Tape is an Android app from the American Civil Liberties Union that is designed to allow citizens to covertly record the police. When activated, it hides itself from casual inspection, and it has a mode that causes it to send its recording to an ACLU-operated server, protecting against police seizure and deletion.
* Capitalism can turn anything into a miserable boondoggle: London Olympics edition.
* Share Our Future – The CLASSE Manifesto.
* “I’ll be paying this forever,” said Chelsea Grove, 24, who dropped out of Bowling Green State University and owes $70,000 in student loans. She is working three jobs to pay her $510 monthly obligation and has no intention of going back.
“For me to finish it would mean borrowing more money,” she said. “It makes me puke to think about borrowing more money.”
* 2012 drought rivals Dust Bowl.
* Journalists really should just refuse quote approval. That’s just not how this is supposed to work.
* And Nate Silver says voter suppression efforts probably won’t determine the results of the election. But digby and Ed Kilgore say light your hair back on fire.
Fourth of July-ish Links
* Your single chart that explains everything, academia edition:
* The student loan suicides. The graduates of 2012 are already dead. Every Article About Graduate Unemployment Ever.
* This is education in the neoliberal age: a quest not for success, but for survival. You ask what it is that will give your children ‘a better chance’. You find a dispassionately technocratic answer, based on the rigorous analysis of academic achievement data. You discount every factor that might make your children non-average, beginning with their attitudes and desires. While you’re at it, you put out of your mind the very idea of social relationships and of the social good. Remember: your children are drowning. It would be quite absurd at this time to wonder what your friends’ children, what their own friends are up to.
* “Yesterday—only the first day of the month—was hot enough to shatter 27 records and tie 24 others for the highest ever July temperatures. Here’s the whole last week:
Back to back 105 days in my beloved Durham. Are any scientists working on this trying to figure out what’s going on? Firsthand Accounts: Parts of WV, Ohio “Apocalypse” due to the Derecho. Colorado Wildfires Shutter Climate Lab. Get used to wildfires.
* All your preconceptions confirmed: 69 Politicians As They Were In High School.
* Libertarianism and the Workplace.
* Via Bitter Laughter, Reddit explains ACA. Another great piece from Amanda Marcotte that shows how fact-free right-wing opposition to Obamacare has been allowed to be: Questions for Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney and Other Opponents of Health Care Reform: Where Are Your Facts?
* As Supreme Court Affirms Patchwork U.S. Healthcare System, Vermont Pushes Ahead with Single Payer.
* The truth is out there: U.S. government lies about the existence of mermaids.
* And sometimes Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal gets it all right. Happy Fourth of July.
Sinister Climate Scientists Continue to Lie to Everyone for Their Own Nefarious Purposes, Just Ignore Them
Bombshell: After Fixing Errors, UK Met Office Says 2010, 2005 Hottest Years on Record, World Warming Faster Than Thought. Sure, and next you’ll want me to believe 2012 never had a winter.
Friday Links
* Credit where it’s due: despite my fears, Obama’s contraception judo turned out to be a genuinely inspired solution that gives everyone what they want. As I and others have been saying on Twitter, this whole thing is a good reminder that for all his other faults there’s almost no one better than Obama at campaigning. I don’t know if the trap was planned or if he just played a bad hand well, but either way this now looks a rare case of actually existing eleven-dimensional chess.
* Esquire has some new maps of the United States in 2012. The tour-de-force is #4: “The Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion.” Via MeFi.
* Police composite sketches of literary characters. Via Kottke. Below: Humbert Humbert.
* Disappointing Springsteen song to accompany disappointing president on the campaign trail.
* Judge rules penniless Ghost Rider creator owes Marvel Comics $17K.
* Obligatory Republican primary links: Even At CPAC, Conservatives Seem Despondent About 2012 Choices.
* And Nate Silver invades your dreams: The Bettor’s Case for Santorum.
