Posts Tagged ‘theft’
Sunday Morning!
* Early career advice you can use: The Hiring Process at Teaching Colleges. How Your Journal Editor Works.
* So what do I mean by claiming that there is no future to the study of culture in the 21st Century? My thesis is that we are (or should be) nearing the end of the study of culture, and that to continue to study it as we have will run the risk of irrelevance, or worse. In this talk I maintain that there is no future for the study of culture if it does not include the study of key concerns of the 21st century, including especially those ecological, geopolitical, and economic issues which threaten the existence of culture as we know it.
* Kim Stanley Robinson on Generation Anthropocene.
* I thought the first episode of Harmonquest was pretty promising. I’ve also been enjoying The Union of “The State” for the full 90s flashback experience. And why not wash it down with Dana Carvey’s Nano-Impressions?
* Bad news: 2016 will get one last extra second to make us all suffer.
* There’s a Secret Message Written Into the Sands of Mars.
* “I’m a black ex-cop, and this is the real truth about race and policing.” A bit more from Kottke on what happens when you turn police agencies into a revenue stream.
* Pokémon Go and Race in America.
* Hillary Clinton’s Poll Numbers Look Nearly Unbeatable.
* The Leftist’s Guide to Actually Existing Welfare.
* When a physician is the perpetrator, the AJC found, the nation often looks the other way.
* An interactive self-care guide.
* Millennials and class identity.
* The parental misery index. Whenever I see this studies I really think that “happiness” is the wrong value to be trying to measure; being a parent is unquestionably the best thing I’ve ever done, whether it makes me quantifiably “happier” moment-to-moment or not.
* No more half measures: only the total elimination of the university can protect students and teachers from each other.
* The Trusted Grown-Ups Who Steal Millions From Youth Sports.
* On playing the LAPD in your local pickup league.
* And truly we are all guilty before the law.
Saturday Morning’s All Right for Linking
* Bryan Fuller Reveals New ‘Star Trek’ Details, Says Series Will ‘Eventually’ Revisit Characters. Interesting interview that suggests a lot of what is circulating about this series is wrong.
* On the deep, abiding, and highly dispersed influence of Gordon Lish.
* West Virginia in the Anthropocene: At least 23 people have been killed after powerful storms swamped West Virginia on Thursday night, forcing high water rescues across the state and leaving thousands of customers without power through Friday evening, officials said.
* CDC: Flint water crisis “entirely preventable.”
* Why Brexit Is Much Scarier Than You Think. Brexit: The Crisis Begins. The Sterling Depreciation of 2007-2008 and Its Implications for Brexit. A timeline of the coming slow-motion car-crash. “Clusterfuck.” We will never know the full extent of the lost opportunities, friendships, marriages and experiences we will be denied. Freedom of movement was taken away by our parents, uncles, and grandparents in a parting blow to a generation that was already drowning in the debts of our predecessors. David Cameron Has Secured His Place as One of the Worst Prime Ministers Ever. Boris already flinching. Article 50 as Stalemate. No Takebacks. Brexit and the university. The A-Z of Brexit. Brexit Impact Will Be Felt in Wisconsin. The United Kingdom is the fourth-largest export market for Wisconsin goods, with $824.2 million worth of products shipped from the Badger State last year, or about 3.7% of the state’s exports. Morexit?
* “Worst ‘Zombie States’ in America ‘Deteriorate Faster, Further.’
* Oil Made Venezuela Rich, And Now It’s Making It Poor.
* The central problem is that employment policies that are gender-neutral on paper may not be gender-neutral in effect. After all, most women receive parental benefits only after bearing the burden of pregnancy, childbirth, nursing, and often, a larger share of parenting responsibilities. Yet fathers usually receive the same benefits without bearing anything close to the same burden. Given this asymmetry, it’s little wonder some recently instituted benefits have given men an advantage.
* Six weeks before the Summer Olympics open in Rio de Janeiro, the laboratory that was set to handle drug testing at the Games has been suspended by the World Anti-Doping Agency in a new escalation of the doping crisis in international sports.
* FBI Says There’s No Evidence Orlando Gunman Omar Mateen Had Messaged Men or Had Secret Gay Affairs.
* Can Daenerys Fly to Westeros on Her Dragons?
* What’s The Matter With Poetry?
* This is near my neighborhood, and I can confirm this intersection is singularly terrible.
* And I know things seem bad, but here’s a preview of Civilization 6‘s gameplay. Hang in there!
Thursday Links!
* CFP: Edited collection on Welcome to Night Vale.
* More details on a very sad story: UCLA Student Shot Professor Over Grades Before Killing Himself, Say Police. UPDATE: The shooter was a PhD student.
* And for those who need it: some back-of-the-envelope calculations about your chances of being shot on campus.
* Cornell breaks with other Ivies, sets path forward for grad student union.
* Some characteristics of successful teachers.
* Behind the scenes at Hamilton.
* All of man’s highest apirations are hubris in the eyes of the gods.
* I have a number of other reasons for believing Trump’s alleged wealth is basically a fraud – not my own reporting but piecing together various details from the reporting of others and things that have happened during this campaign. But one point Cuban references is key. Trump hasn’t built a high-rise building in decades. He moved into licensing as his main business about fifteen or twenty years ago. If you’re worth $10 billion do you waste time on Trump Steaks? Trump University? Of course not. That speaks to someone who’s fairly strapped and needs every new revenue stream he can get. Still fabulously rich by mortal standards. But not running a thriving company worth $10 billion.
* Huge, if true: Race, Gender Biggest Differentiators in Views of Clinton, Trump.
* At least five times in the past year, the candidate who is now the Republican nominee for president has implied that certain public officials are suspect, or are acting against the national interest, because they or their family members are Latino.
* The results, the IMF researchers concede, have been terrible. Neoliberalism hasn’t delivered economic growth – it has only made a few people a lot better off. It causes epic crashes that leave behind human wreckage and cost billions to clean up, a finding with which most residents of food bank Britain would agree. And while George Osborne might justify austerity as “fixing the roof while the sun is shining”, the fund team defines it as “curbing the size of the state … another aspect of the neoliberal agenda”. And, they say, its costs “could be large – much larger than the benefit”.
* Would It Be That Bad If the New Star Trek TV Series Was Set in the Reboot Universe? No true fan would even ask that.
* Is Daenerys Targaryen the Real Villain of Game of Thrones?
* The Spider-Man 4 that never was.
* For the completist, the cast of Hello from the Magic Tavern was on Improv Nerd recently and even did a little bit from Foon-30 (the dimension where Chunt is a wolverine).
* My new Plan B: Duo used stolen cash to buy winning $1M lottery ticket.
* And because you demanded it! Presenting the G.I. Joe, Transformers, Micronauts, ROM, Action Man, and M.A.S.K. (Mobile Armored Strike Kommand)) Shared Universe.
Tuesday Links!
* CFP: Palgrave Macmillan’s Studies in Science and Popular Culture.
* “If time is money, then sleep is theft.”
* Life in the 21st Century, Part One: Reporters From Nevada’s Largest Newspaper Demand To Know Who Owns Their Company.
* And Part Two: Threats Made To Spoil Star Wars: The Force Awakens Unless Demands Are Met. The Chrome Anti-Star-Wars-Spoiler Extension Will Be With You, Always. (It actually pings the first link, but I think it was just seeing the words “Star Wars” and “spoil” in close proximity.)
* In Flint, Michigan, there’s so much lead in children’s blood that a state of emergency is declared.
* Why today’s long STEM postdoc positions are effectively anti-mother.
* While we all take courses “outside” our field at some point, we generally sort ourselves into two groups pretty early: people who study American literature and people who study British literature. And, by the end of graduate school, we have become people who teach Introduction to American Literature and people who teach Introduction to British Literature. Finally, we become people who apply for jobs in American literature and British literature.
* Tracy even sent us a certified letter demanding proof that Noah once lived, that we were his parents, and that we were the rightful owner of his photographic image. We found this so outrageous and unsettling that we filed a police report for harassment. Once Tracy realized we would not respond, he subjected us to ridicule and contempt on his blog, boasting to his readers that the “unfulfilled request” was “noteworthy” because we had used copyright claims to “thwart continued research of the Sandy Hook massacre event.” More here.
* The sad economics of internet fame.
* The Chicago Teachers Union has authorized a strike.
* Here’s What We Can Piece Together About the Plot of Star Trek Beyond From the Trailer.
* More movie trailers! Synchronicity! High Rise!
* Emory Students Want Professors Evaluated on Number of Microaggressions They Commit.
* Josh and Jessica review “self defense” under Common Law and the Model Penal Code in analyzing whether Han Solo was legally justified in shooting Greedo first in the original Star Wars (Episode IV).
* The Star Wars bit part actors who are now more popular than ever.
* “We must get to Mars before World War Three kicks off.” Well there’s a rallying cry!
* And enjoy it: it’s the last good day to be a Star Wars fan.
Wednesday Links! Some Especially Good Ones!
* Paradoxa 26, “SF Now,” is on its way, and has my essay on Snowpiercer and necrofuturism in it. Mark Bould and Rhys Williams’s introduction to the issue is online.
* Extrapolation‘s current call for reviewers.
* UCR is hiring: Jay Kay and Doris Klein Science Fiction Librarian.
* African SF: Presenting Omenana 1.1. Of particular note: “The Unbearable Solitude of Being an African Fan Girl.”
* Nnedi Okorafor, Ytasha Womack, Isiah Lavender, and Sigal Samuel discussion #BlackStormTrooper.
* NASA Officially Announce Plans To Put Humans On Mars With Orion Space Capsule.
* UAB shuts down its football program. Of course, the reason is austerity:
“The fiscal realities we face — both from an operating and a capital investment standpoint — are starker than ever and demand that we take decisive action for the greater good of the athletic department and UAB,” Watts said in a statement released by the university. “As we look at the evolving landscape of NCAA football, we see expenses only continuing to increase. When considering a model that best protects the financial future and prominence of the athletic department, football is simply not sustainable.”
We just can’t afford to throw bricks at students’ heads any more — not in these tough times.
* Teaching fellows strike at the University of Oregon.
* “Hypereducated and On Welfare”: The adjunct crisis hits Elle.
* Stefan Grimm and academic precarity: 1, 2.
* Meanwhile: College Hilariously Defends Buying $219,000 Table.
* Work, the welfare state, and what counts as “dignity.”
* It really pains me to say it, because I think the consequences for anti-rape activism will be dire, but significant questions have been raised about Rolling Stone‘s UVA story that neither the journalist nor the magazine have good answers to. It’s a good day to think carefully about what Freddie deBoer says here: “…it’s an inevitable result of associating the work of progressive politics with having a hair trigger, with demonizing those who ask us to be careful and restrained, and of treating overwhelming digital character assassination as a useful political tool.”
* Imagine a World Without Prisons: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Superheroes, and Prison Abolition.
* Against New Atheism: The “New Atheists” have gained traction because they give intellectual cover to Western imperialism.
* The mass transit system Milwaukee didn’t know it needed. Now, if you could just snake another couple lines up the lake side… More links below the map.
* The Ferguson PD victory lap continues: Ferguson Police investigating whether Michael Brown’s stepfather intended to incite a riot.
* How Police Unions and Arbitrators Keep Abusive Cops on the Street.
* How One Woman Could Hit The Reset Button In The Case Against Darren Wilson.
* Utah’s Insanely Expensive Plan To Seize Public Lands. “…a price tag that could only be paid if the state were able to increase drilling and mining.” Oh, so not insane, then, just evil.
* There are boondoggles and there are boondoggles: Federal prosecutors subpoenaed dozens of records and documents relating to the Los Angeles Unified School District’s iPad program, including emails, proposals and score sheets dealing with the bids that led to a multi-million Apple contract with the district.
* For $5 I promise not to orchestrate this situation, and for $25…
* Why I Am Not Coming In To Work Today.
* And the market for Girl Scout cookies is about to be disrupted. I gained ten pounds just reading this story.
No, YOU’RE Procrastinating: Wednesday Afternoon Links!
* We just landed a spacecraft on a comet for the first time. Here’s why it matters.
* Capitalism and the space program.
This is no accident. The same contradictions that have divided human aspiration from human achievement, producing growing hunger and want in a world with the technological means to solve both, paralyze the reach of humanity into the solar system. The task to reclaim space as humanity’s birthright is inseparable from that necessary to oppose war and conquer want and deprivation. In other words, it is the fight for socialism.
* Theory and Event‘s special supplement on Ferguson and “Disposable Lives.”
* Interview with Sherryl Vint on science fiction and biopolitics.
* College Athletes of the World, Unite. Ladies and gentlemen, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
* This is a great TNI interview on California, “the carceral state.”
If we believe that the prison system is broken, then we must also believe in its ability to be fixed. Here we can see how the PIC keeps functioning through the rehearsal of the “broken system” narrative. As Angela Davis and many others have argued, it is precisely through reform that the prison-industrial complex expands. We can see the materiality of this expansion through the mandatory increase in police in schools through Proposition 47.
* Wisconsin woman said this week that she may have to file for bankruptcy because she was taken to an out-of-network hospital after having a heart attack, but now she owes more than $50,000 more than she would have if she had been taken to a hospital less than half a mile away.
* I was fired for sending a letter to the League for Innovation in the Community College, criticizing the Moraine Valley Community College administration for treating adjunct faculty as a “disposable resource” and the “chilling effect” on adjuncts who lack job security.
* Can White Teachers Be Taught How to Teach Our Children?
* America’s workers steal more than its shoplifters.
* Now we see the violence inherent in the system: Man Points Rifle At Teen Daughter After Game Of Battleship Goes Bad.
* And again. To limit divorce settlement, conservative billionaire argues that he got rich through luck.
* And again. Maryland School Board Asked To Recognize Muslim Holy Day, Strikes References To All Religious Holidays Instead.
* Pretty good fan pitch for what The Force Awakens should be about.
* The Handmaid’s Tale was a documentary: Domino’s founder turning FL town into unconstitutional contraception-free ‘Catholic enclave.’
* And Christoph Waltz has been stealing my bit.
All the Weekend Links You’ll Ever Need
* Key Findings in Chapel Hill’s Academic-Fraud Investigation. I find the scale of this thing totally amazing; that the NCAA is still claiming it has no jurisdiction here is also amazing. It’ll be interesting to see UNC’s next accreditation report.
* Another sportsball-related disaster that the NCAA, alas, just can’t do anything about: Many Athletes Receive Little Education on Concussion.
* Lawsuit Alleges College Athletes Should Be Paid at Least Minimum Wage. The NCAA wishes it could act.
* S’More Inequality: The Neoliberal Marshmallow and the Corporate Reform of Education.
* Miami University gave George Will four adjuncts’ yearly salary for this nonsense. But presidents of higher ed nonprofits say that’s chump change.
* Study: we should probably just abolish men.
* Law Will Allow Employers to Fire Women for Using Birth Control. So old I can remember when giving employers direct veto power over health care was the reductio ad absurdum of the Hobby Lobby case.
* Surfers of the nightmare Internet: The Laborers Who Keep Dick Pics and Beheadings Out of Your Facebook Feed.
* The Anti-Socialist Origins of Big Data.
* African Writers in a New World. The interviews in this series will lead up to the Symposium of African Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. The event, which will take place December 2-3, 2014, will feature conversations with Laila Lalami, Maaza Mengiste, Nnedi Okorafor, Sofia Samatar, and Taiye Selasi. “African Writers in a New World” will conclude with a conference report from the Symposium.
* It became necessary to destroy Detroit in order to save it. And Chicago. And pretty much everywhere.
* Rio has used mega-events like the World Cup and the Olympics as a “state of exception” to push through private development projects and neoliberal reforms. The Jock Doctrine.
* America’s perpetual state of emergency.
* I said on Twitter that this “13th grade” pilot program in Oregon seems like an example of Goodhart’s Law, though I think I could probably be convinced otherwise.
* Republicans increasingly saying the quiet part loud.
* And that’s not even a link to this utterly bizarre video from AEI about roofies.
* Infidels defile the sacrament: I suspect some of the irrationality around voter ID laws might be linked to Stephen Keating’s notion of voting as religious ritual.
* Speaking of saying the quiet part loud: Seattle Cops Bring Lawsuit Claiming They Have A Constitutional Right To Use Excessive Force.
* At about 4 a.m., officers were dispatched to 3779 W. 5300 South to check on a man who had called a suicide hotline, according to Detective Matt Gwynn, the public information officer for Roy Police Department. A negotiator from the SWAT team was then brought in, and Gwynn says a 6- to 6 ½-hour standoff ensued. “At some point those negotiations failed and unfortunately the SWAT team was involved in a shooting, and the subject is now deceased,” Gwynn said.
* Cops Use Action-Movie Arsenal to Catch Teen Who Stole Cigarettes. I just thank god they caught the guy.
* CHP officer says stealing nude photos from female arrestees ‘game’ for cops.
* Cash damages for woman duped into having undercover spy’s child.
* Climate Change Is Causing Mountain Goats To Shrink. Will you act now, America?
* Methane Leaks Wipe Out Any Climate Benefit Of Fracking, Satellite Observations Confirm.
* By pretending climate change isn’t real we develop the tax base to deal with climate change. With a plan this solid, what could go wrong?
* I’m sure Miami seceding from the rest of Florida would solve it. Of course Republicans have a better idea.
* The United States of Reddit.
* It’s nearly impossible to fire a tech millionaire.
* I mean really, we need to figure out how to fire some of these guys.
* On the Internet, Men Are Called Names. Women Are Stalked and Sexually Harassed. Cassandra among the creeps.
* Matt Yglesias Entirely Misunderstands Why [Anything] Exists.
* Peter Jackson vows Battle of the Fire Armies will be literally unwatchable.
* J.K. Rowling releasing new Harry Potter story about Dolores Umbridge.
* If you call slipstream “transrealism” it sounds like a new thing.
* You’re finally getting (another) dark, gritty Archie reboot.
* What’s my risk of catching Ebola? But that’s no reason not to panic.
* Kim Stanley Robinson on “Mount Thoreau” and the naming of things in the wilderness.
* Science proves I listen to Counting Crows because I’m just that smart. So it’s not my fault and no one can blame me. I’m as much a victim as anyone.
* And io9 has your Top 100 Science Fiction-Themed Songs Of All Time. That they left off “Nothing But Flowers” is a crime against all time and space.
More Sunday Links!
…some number pilfered from Aaron Bady!
* Proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments. (via)
* “None of my friends are working on nukes anymore,” he says. “This is the most evil place on the planet, and nobody’s talking about it.”
* The fire next time: geoengineering and nationalism.
* To speak of disaster communism is to recognise that if communism is to emerge, it will do so in the anthropocene. As capitalism accelerates climate change, ‘possible’ reforms become utopian and ‘impossible’ revolution becomes realistic. We live in strange times. The bourgeoisie is blasting and ruining not just its world, but the Earth systems which sustain human civilisation. We are going to inherit ruins and abandoned cities, there is only the slightest doubt about that. But we still also know how to build, and to build better.
* What adjuncts do. The difference between large schools and small schools, and between large and small departments, becomes extremely important here. We cannot continue to talk about “academic labor” as if it were only one thing that is the same everywhere.
* To that end, it must be remembered that this current crisis in American public higher education and the larger Great Recession did not result from an absolute scarcity of money but rather from an unwillingness to safeguard, manage, and fund some of this country’s most basic public goods.
* Another dubious first for America: We now employ as many private security guards as high school teachers — over one million of them, or nearly double their number in 1980.
* Workplace Reappropriation: An 8-Point Guide for the Unfulfilled.
* …what happens is that only people who don’t need money are able to live like this.
* Headlines from the apocalypse: Packs of Chihuahuas running loose in Phoenix neighborhood cause concern.
Thursday Links
* MOOCs as Neocolonialism: Who Controls Knowledge?
* More College Adjuncts See Strength in Union Numbers.
* Seven of 10 students graduate from college with loans; average debt on the rise.
* A Hard Lesson from Motown: They Will Steal Your Pension.
* Professors to Grad Students: Focus on Studies, Not Wages. Most NCAA Division I athletic departments take subsidies.
* Harvard government professor Harvey Mansfield has long been a critic of grade inflation. He’s developed his own way of trying to combat it: giving students two sets of grades — the one they deserve and the one that shows up on their transcript.
* George Parros, after the concussion.
* Rest in peace, José Esteban Muñoz.
* Most of America’s silent films are lost forever.
* NY Times Runs Op-Ed Asserting Poor People Need More Carbon Pollution.
* Prosecutorial coercion should be outlawed.
In a landmark 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision on the right to a lawyer during plea bargaining, Justice Anthony Kennedy noted that 95 percent of convicted U.S. criminal defendants enter into a plea bargain and never go to trial. That percentage is even higher for drug defendants, who enter into plea deals in 97 percent of federal cases, according to a new Human Rights Watch report. Prosecutors have had a significant hand in turning the criminal justice system into a system of pleas, wielding in many instances the threat of harsh mandatory minimum prison terms and other sentencing enhancements so severe that defendants may frequently plead guilty simply to avert the high risk. As Human Rights Watch phrased it, prosecutors “force” defendants to plead guilty.
The consequences for those who choose to exercise their Sixth Amendment right to a trial in this system are significant. The average federal drug sentence is three times longer for those who go to trial than for those who plead guilty, at 5 years and 4 months for guilty pleas, and 16 years after trial, the report found…
* And DC has done an impressively terrible job casting Wonder Woman in a film Zack Snyder is certain to ruin anyway. Well done, sirs.
Elsewhere in Capitalist Perfection
A 2009 study by the Labor Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that there was an average of $26 million worth of wage violations each week in Los Angeles.
Tuesday!
* C21’s book on Debt is finally almost out. My essay draws on the bits of the Polygraph introduction I wrote and is about ecological debt.
* Syllabus minute: I have W.H. Auden envy.
* MOOC Completion Rates: The Data.
* How neoliberal universities build their football stadiums.
Some projections showed Athletics might not be able to make payments starting in the 2030s when the debt service balloons. The debt is structured so that for the next 20 years, Cal only needs to make interest payments on the debt. The principal kicks in in the early 2030s, resulting in payments between $24 million and $37 million per year.
Look, if it’s good enough for an idea man who settled out of court on securities fraud, it’s good enough for me.
* Kent State fires adjunct who built their journalism master’s.
* Ian Morris, psychohistorian.
* What If? on The Twitter Archive of Babel. The Twitter Archive of Babel contains the true story of your life, as well as all the stories of all the lives you didn’t lead….
* Proud Species Commits Suicide Rather Than Be Driven To Extinction By Humans.
* A People’s History of “Twist and Shout.”
* PPP: Russ Feingold Poised For Comeback, Could Top Scott Walker Next Year.
* Michael Chabon: Dreams are useless bodily effluvia. Nicholson Baker: Dreams are all we have.
* You and I are gonna live forever: 72 is the new 30.
* Settling nerd fights of the 1990s today: Is This the Smoking Gun Proving Deep Space Nine Ripped Off Babylon 5?
* The Star Wars Heresies: Star Wars and William Blake. Tim Morton’s essay in Green Planets has a similar impulse with respect to Avatar.
* And in even more insane mashup news: WWE Keeps Pressure On Glenn Beck.
Friday Night Links, Special ‘Jesus Year’ Edition
* Reality is a hoax: If you’re 27 or younger, you’ve never experienced a colder-than-average month. That’s right; there hasn’t been a colder-than-average month in twenty-seven years.
* “We Would Never Propose A Carbon Tax,” Says White House Spokesman. I’m so glad the pro-science, reality-based candidate won!
* Aaron Bady vs. the excluded middle.
* Federal Court Rules that Banning Affirmative Action Is Unconstitutional.
* The new normal: Missouri police foil mass murder plot at ‘Twilight’ screening, Walmart.
* Hostess successfully looted, crime pinned on unions.
* Meanwhile people in Miami are looking to prosecute the owners of the Marlins for racketeering.
* Walmart Strike Spreads to Texas as Organizers Promise Massive Black Friday Protest.
* Patriot Coal agrees to stop using mountaintop removal mining.
* The age of the password is over. We just haven’t realized it yet.
* And the frame giveth, and the frame taketh away: after the insanity of the last year, Americans describe themselves as pro-choice again.
The Rich Are Different from You and Me
The world’s super-rich have taken advantage of lax tax rules to siphon off at least $21 trillion, and possibly as much as $32tn, from their home countries and hide it abroad – a sum larger than the entire American economy.
Friday Linkfest
* The Portal 2s that could have been. I do, I happily admit, want to play all of these.
* Drop everything! My brilliant friend and colleague Melody Jue is now blogging at Philosophy of Water.
* At right is your photo of the day: An aurora over Faskrudsfjordur, Iceland.
* Joss Whedon explains how to write a sequel.
* Steal $80 million in a Ponzi scheme, get 18 months. Steal $4,367 in food stamps, get 3 years.
* The year without a winter. Things are going to get weirder. But don’t worry: God told James Inhofe global warming is a hoax.
* “I have not heard of another hug”: Janet Bell, Derrick Bell’s widow, speaks out.
* Pat Robertson gets one right: he says we ought to legalize it.
* The Seuss book no one’s bought us (yet): The Seven Lady Godivas: The True Facts Concerning History’s Barest Family.
* Jacob Burak crunches the odds on Russian Roulette. But he’s completely failed to account for the quantum immortality factor.
* Science quantifies the Tina Fey effect.
“When all other variables in the model are held at their mean, those who watched the SNL clip had a 45.4 percent probability of saying that Palin’s nomination made them less likely to vote for McCain,” they write. “This same probability drops to 34 percent among those who saw coverage of the debate through other media. Exposure to the clip had no significant effect on the likelihood of voting for Obama.”
* When Terry Kneiss wins a Showcase Showdown, son, he wins it.
* On chess, gender, and Laszlo Polgar’s Grandmaster Experiment.
* For more than two years, Adrian Schoolcraft secretly recorded every roll call at the 81st Precinct in Brooklyn and captured his superiors urging police officers to do two things in order to manipulate the “stats” that the department is under pressure to produce: Officers were told to arrest people who were doing little more than standing on the street, but they were also encouraged to disregard actual victims of serious crimes who wanted to file reports. I’m shocked, shocked! Followup to this This American Life story.
* The headline reads, “Breakthrough Alzheimer’s treatment stops brain damage in mice.”
* And TPM has today’s sci-fi architecture porn.
Gerry Canavan 