Posts Tagged ‘fiscal cliff’
Wednesday Wednesday Wednesday
* Read the article on professor-mothers that set Twitter aflame. Guaranteed to be the worst thing you read this week!
* No one can figure out how Borislav Ivanov is cheating in chess. Via Boing Boing.
* The rise and fall of the American arcade.
* The intentional fallacy: Kathryn Bigelow says Zero Dark Thirty’s fine because she’s a lifelong pacifist.
* Single charts that explain everything.
* #nodads: California convicts twelve-year-old boy for murdering his neo-Nazi father at ten-years-old.
* Finally, proof that all movie trailers use the same color palette.
* Todd Glass looks back on a year since “the Marc Maron thing.”
* Here Are Obama’s 23 Executive Actions on Gun Violence. 11. Nominate an ATF director. That’ll solve it!
* You can carry a loaded firearm into national parks and can tuck your rifle and ammunition into stowed luggage on Amtrak trains. Federal product-safety law subjects everything from toys to toasters to safety inspection and recalls, but exempts guns. Little-known laws shed light on NRA influence.
* I know people will believe anything, but I have to believe Sandy Hook Trutherism is almost entirely a media phenomenon.
Saturday Pre-Epic-Road-Trip Links
* An und für sich considers Django Unchained. I haven’t seen this yet either.
* Peter Frase: Occupy Beyond Occupy.
* 6 Places You’ll Recognize from the Background of Every Movie.
* “Finally, a drone story that ends in less blood being spilled”: Dallas Meat Packing plant investigated after drone images reveal pollution.
* Debtmageddon vs. the Robot Utopia.
* Epic MetaFilter commente explaining the general screwed-uppedness of graduate admissions.
* And superheroes across history.
Midweek Links
* Erik Loomis is being targeted by prominent figures on the right in what has to be the most ludicriously unfair, bad-faith attack I have ever seen.
* Walker declares state of emergency in Wisconsin due to snowstorm.
* Guide to Answering Academic Job Interview Questions.
* Argument Over Sandy Hook Shooting Ends in Gunfire. Why Won’t We Talk About Violence and Masculinity in America? Gun Violence In American Schools Is Nothing New. Top Conservative Publication: Shooting Occurred Because Women Ran The School. Weaponize the husky twelve-year-olds. Virginia Republican Legislator Actually Wants To Require Concealed Weapons In Schools. The Arms Race of Stupid.
* I can’t help wondering if the bullets of Sandy Hook Elementary will be for Obama what the snarling dogs and high-pressure fire hoses of Birmingham, Alabama, were for John F. Kennedy in 1963: the human tragedy that will force him to take a political risk, simply because it is right.
* Conservative Historian Warns Obama and Democrats are ‘Much More Radical’ than Marxists. So much more radical. So much more.
* Best Astronomy Images of 2012. (Keep scrolling past the image for more links.)
* Wayne State faculty gives OK to union leadership to call strike if necessary.
* Terrible person to teach terrible class at terrible university.
* News from Nerdistan: What Frodo would have looked like as Gollum. Joss Whedon wanted the Wasp and an extra villain in The Avengers. Tolkien vs. technology. Someone at Disney is already trying to lay the groundwork for a second sequel trilogy after Star Wars 7-9. Nearby Tau Ceti may host two planets suited to life. Netflix Instant Adds a Bunch of Fake ‘Arrested Development’ Shows and Movies. LEGOs run the world now.
* It’s time to start asking serious questions about the safety of lube.
* Here: an exercise in choice. Your choice. One of these tales is true.
* Petraeus Scandal 2.0. Nothing about sex, so no one will care.
* Matt Yglesias has the most logical incoherent “think piece” you’ll read on Society Security today. Money doesn’t magically become not-money when it’s spent by retirees.
* Plans to avoid the fiscal cliff cut government more than the fiscal cliff. Why, it’s almost as if this whole debate is total bullshit!
* Shale Oil Might Be Less Awesome Than We Think. From a personal perspective, I doubt that’s possible.
* Top 20 most valuable college football programs all made at least $24 million in profit last year, according to Forbes. $200K Average Salary for Asst. Football Coaches in Major Programs. Bill Introduced for IRS to Collect Student Loan Payments.
Justin Draeger, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said he supported the bill, arguing it could “nearly eliminate student loan default.”
* But the reinvention conversation has not produced the panacea that people seem to yearn for. “The whole MOOC thing is mass psychosis,” a case of people “just throwing spaghetti against the wall” to see what sticks, says Peter J. Stokes, executive director for postsecondary innovation at Northeastern’s College of Professional Studies. His job is to study the effectiveness of ideas that are emerging or already in practice.
* The Wreckage of the Deepwater Horizon is Emitting a Mysterious Substance Into the Gulf of Mexico.
* Quentin Tarantino Says Drug War, Justice System Are Modern Day Slavery.
* Apocalypse and Revelation Are the Same Word.
* And life’s not all an endless series of miserable atrocities: Found: Whale Thought Extinct for 2 Million Years.
Tuesday Mo(u)rning Links
* Utopian for Beginners: An amateur linguist loses control of the language he invented.
* Uncomfortable metaphor watch:
The two spacecraft, Ebb and Flow, have been orbiting the Moon since their launch in September 2011 to create a gravity field map of its surface.
But, with not enough fuel to carry out further experiments, the American space agency opted for a “controlled descent” to avoid the risk of obliterating astronaut Neil Armstrong’s footsteps on the Moon.
* Questions They Might Ask You at Your MLA Interview.
* Great moments in attendance policies.
* Fill-in-the-Blank Generic Gun Massacre Cartoon. Joe Scarborough, communist. Obama speaks at Sandy Hook Vigil. The formula is simple: The more batshit malevolent the gun cult gets, the more power they exert. Our Moloch. On politicizing tragedy:
What that means in practice is that in the aftermath of contemporary gun tragedies, we don’t see new gun legislation. What we do see is a spike in gun sales. After the shooting last summer in Aurora, Colorado, gun sales went up. After the Giffords shooting, there was a surge in purchases of the very Glock semiautomatic that wounded her. Certainly, the firearm industry and lobby will confront some bad P.R. in the coming weeks, but they can likely find succor in an uptick in business. Following the Newtown shooting, Larry Pratt, the Executive Director of Gun Owners for America, suggested that these massacres might be avoided in the future, if only more teachers were armed.
As Pratt’s sentiment should make clear, the United States has slipped its moorings and drifted into a realm of profound national lunacy. Ponder, for a second, the fact that I cannot walk into a C.V.S. today and purchase half-a-dozen packages of Sudafed, but I can walk into a gun dealership and purchase a .50 caliber rifle of the sort that U.S. snipers use in Afghanistan. In fact, I can buy six or ten—there is no limit imposed by law. Should the gun dealer think it fishy that I might want to acquire a weapon capable of downing a small aircraft (much less six of those weapons) he may report the purchase to the A.T.F. But in most states, he’s not required to.
You are terrible: The tragedy in Newtown, Conn., is a price that is paid for protection of the Second Amendment. You are terrible: Huckabee Blames ‘Tax-Funded Abortion Pills’ For Newtown Massacre. You are terrible: Can you imagine being in the shoes of the one who feels his power slipping away? You are terrible: If we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once.
Unless I am missing a very subtle parody of libertarianism, McArdle’s plan to teach children to launch banzai charges against mass murderers is the single worst solution to any problem I have ever seen offered in a major publication.
Support the creation of local organizations to act as “neighborhood watch” for schools. Had George Zimmerman been at the front door instead of some mechanical card reader those children would still be alive. Perhaps it’s time we start asking for volunteers to protect our children. It will require security checks, but isn’t that worth it? This dovetails with the union problem; the unions will fight this measure tooth-and-nail.
No, Really, Regulate the Bullets. Race, Class, Violence and Denial: Mass Murder and the Pathologies of Privilege. What makes America’s gun culture totally unique in the world, in four charts. But maybe this chart is the only one you need.
* Dreams in Infrared: The Woes of an American Drone Operator.
* I’m sorry to say I’ve followed Ricky Gervais pretty far down the “obnoxious asshat” rabbit hole, and even I can’t imagine how his staring in The Muppets 2 could possibly turn out good.
* Popular Mechanics makes 110 predictions for the next 110 years.
2012 to 2022
Drones will protect endangered species. Guarding at-risk animals from poachers with foot patrols is expensive and dangerous. This summer rangers in Nepal’s Chitwan National Park previewed a savvy solution: Hand-launched drones armed with cameras and GPS provided aerial surveillance of threatened Indian rhinos.
Digital “ants” will protect the U.S. power grid from cyber attacks.Programmed to wander networks in search of threats, the high-tech sleuths in this software, developed by Wake Forest University security expert Errin Fulp, leave behind a digital trail modeled after the scent streams of their real-life cousins. When a digital ant designed to perform a task spots a problem, others rush to the location to do their own analysis. If operators see a swarm, they know there’s trouble.
Vegetarians and carnivores will dine together on synthetic meats. We’re not talking about tofu. We’re talking about nutritious, low-cost substitutes that look and taste just like the real thing. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has already invested in Beyond Meat, which makes plant-based chicken strips so convincing they almost fooled New York Times food writer Mark Bittman.
Bridges will repair themselves with self-healing concrete. Invented by University of Michigan engineer Victor Li, the new composite is laced with microfibers that bend without breaking. Hairline fractures mend themselves within days when calcium ions in the mix react with rainwater and carbon dioxide to create a calcium carbonate patch.
* Catfood forever! Catfood for everyone!
* And Republicans are still planning on rigging the Electoral College. Or you could just try being popular. You could, just once, try that…
Tuesday Night Links
* Nation’s Uncles Enter Last Stage Of Prep For Thursday’s Thanksgiving Debates.
WASHINGTON—Sequestered in their homes today to review talking points on a range of topics from gay marriage to Gaza to the wisdom of purchasing a hybrid car, the nation’s uncles have reportedly entered their final stages of preparation for Thursday’s highly anticipated sit-down Thanksgiving dinner debates. “Now, now—now Bob—Bob!—you can’t just go saying… Hold on—you can’t just go saying that without considering the consequences,” said the loudmouth contrarians, talking into their mirrors as they vigorously rehearsed various interruptions and smug denunciations on subjects such as political bias in the media and whether or not underage nephews should be allowed to have a few sips of wine on a holiday. “If you thought about—thank you, Mary, it was delicious—if you thought about the consequences for one second, you’d realize how completely wrong that plan is. That’s exactly what these congressmen think, and that’s why we’re headed off a fiscal cliff. You see?” Sources confirmed the nation’s uncles are drafting their closing remarks around the theme of how the crust on the pumpkin pie could be “a little flakier.”
* 21 Pictures that Sum Up the Whole History of Science Fiction.
* Astronomers discover a planet so massive it defies classification.
* Forty years from now, America will be twice as rich on average as we are today. But most of that wealth will go to the very richest households. We only have a budget crisis if they refuse to pay higher taxes.
* And there goes my absolute last shred of hope for humanity: It’s almost impossible to believe, but authorities along the northern Gulf of Mexico are having to investigate a rash of violent attacks on dolphins after bodies were found with gunshot wounds, cuts, and missing tails.
Gerry Canavan 