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Good morning, everyone. It's good to know that your own patterns on what's important in the world mirror that of Mr. Doctorow - it's most likely that the things you need to pay attention to on the Web or in the News will be repeated, retweeted, or otherwise brought back to the forefront should they fall off the radar or get buried in the information avalanche.
Of interest today is the reversal of position by the Obama administration on defending the Defense of Marriage Act, instructing the Justice Department to stop trying to defend the law that says the federal government only recognizes one man, one woman marriages.
On the situation in Wisconsin, the governor of Delaware registers his opinion that Governor Walker has gone too far in his zealotry, even as he is symapthetic to the need to cut wages and benefits for public-sector workers. Taking a far harder line is a Deputy Attorney General of Indiana, who suggested the use of live ammunition against the protesters in a tweet, one in a long string of violent rhetoric tweets against liberals and leftists. Said deputy AG has been sacked for those comments.
Governor Walker himself revealed not only his hand, but the mind behind it in talking to someone he believed was David Koch, one of the billionaires responsible for funding the campaign that got him elected - highlights include instructing the paychecks of the missing state senators to be locked inside their desks at the Capitol, general anti-union sentiments, strategies like planting troublemakers in the crowd, and a whole lot more. The transcript itself is worth a read. So are the implications that Walker will happily pick up for David Koch, but not listen at all to the people in his state trying to bend his ear. The mainstream media reaction to this revelation.
In Indiana, the state Democrats took the same cue from their Wisconsin family and are missing so as to prevent quorum on their own anti-unions bill. Not to mention the continuing stories of all the other states with anti-union bills or that might be getting them soon as part of this country-wide onslaught wrapped in the disguise of budget fixing. Like how Rhode Island plans on firing all of its teachers and then hiring some back at lower wages as a cost-cutting measure.
Out in the world today, Libyan dictator Gaddafi said he would fight to his last drop of blood before giving up the country, a situation that seems more and more likely to happen, including bloodshed of the dictator at the hands of the rebellion.
Domestically, 26 years in prison for a couple that broadcast their rape of a child on the Internet. I suspect that if they make it through those twenty-six years without incident, they will have been blessed by Fortune (inexplicably).
Rahm Emanuel wins the mayoral election in Chicago. Considering, the last we heard of him was that he had been ruled ineligible for the post, this is a bit of a surprise. So, once again, there's not a Daley in charge of Chicago.
Instead, we might be able to take a thing or two about Palin political corruption, although this one hasn't become a family affair - Sarah Palin maintains a sockpuppet account.
In technology, some quick graphs to let you know which programming language have the highest incidences of profane language in their commit messages.
And then, just how much U.S. tax dollars are being used to fund malware development, ostensibly to be used against The Enemy, but just as likely to be used against those declared enemies at home, as well as the previously reported-on personas-in-a-box technology useful for fouling up information on social networks or flooding certain areas with comments.
Finally, a 2006 article from LifeHacker describing rules-based password generation that could be used to create secure, different, passwords for all your places on the Web but would be all very easy to remember at login time because you would simply follow your rules and reconstruct the password.
In opinions, Mr. Sowell pogoes between two positions, the first being that Americans are not dense enough in population to justify the building of high-speed rail services between various cities, and that Americans are too dense in intelligence to realize that when Barack Obama talks about building things like high-speed rail, it's nothing more than government trying to justify increased spending that is already bankrupting the country so as to capture more votes. And lest we think that we can get out of such a situation by raising revenues, he tells us that any attempt to raise taxes on the people that can afford to pay them will only result in them dodging taxes more and less revenue for the government in the future. Which suggests, again, that the problem is the presence of too many shelters and loopholes for the wealthy, not that the tax rate is too high already. Close off a few of those escape hatches and see whether income improves or not, yeah?
Last, A plastic surgeon, Dr. Kreiger, claims that the current health care bill is encouraging collectivization of health care insurers, hospitals, and providers, with the results being that the government can intimidate fewer people into doing its bidding, with reduced choice and access as the obvious consequences of such collectivization and intimidation. "DEATH PANELS!" "SOCIALIZED MEDICINE!" "PROGRESS WILL BE STOPPED!" The cure? Tax breaks for people who get coverage outside of their insurance, selling insurance across state lines, making sure there are "options" for coverage choices, and removing any ability of the government to require minimum standards of care or of what counts as an insurance plan.
Last for tonight, the latest music copyright wrangle - over the scores and parts that musicians use to play the music, as a wiki-like interface of the works of long-dead composers scans, uploads, and error-checks the scores and parts as they make them available.
Of interest today is the reversal of position by the Obama administration on defending the Defense of Marriage Act, instructing the Justice Department to stop trying to defend the law that says the federal government only recognizes one man, one woman marriages.
On the situation in Wisconsin, the governor of Delaware registers his opinion that Governor Walker has gone too far in his zealotry, even as he is symapthetic to the need to cut wages and benefits for public-sector workers. Taking a far harder line is a Deputy Attorney General of Indiana, who suggested the use of live ammunition against the protesters in a tweet, one in a long string of violent rhetoric tweets against liberals and leftists. Said deputy AG has been sacked for those comments.
Governor Walker himself revealed not only his hand, but the mind behind it in talking to someone he believed was David Koch, one of the billionaires responsible for funding the campaign that got him elected - highlights include instructing the paychecks of the missing state senators to be locked inside their desks at the Capitol, general anti-union sentiments, strategies like planting troublemakers in the crowd, and a whole lot more. The transcript itself is worth a read. So are the implications that Walker will happily pick up for David Koch, but not listen at all to the people in his state trying to bend his ear. The mainstream media reaction to this revelation.
In Indiana, the state Democrats took the same cue from their Wisconsin family and are missing so as to prevent quorum on their own anti-unions bill. Not to mention the continuing stories of all the other states with anti-union bills or that might be getting them soon as part of this country-wide onslaught wrapped in the disguise of budget fixing. Like how Rhode Island plans on firing all of its teachers and then hiring some back at lower wages as a cost-cutting measure.
Out in the world today, Libyan dictator Gaddafi said he would fight to his last drop of blood before giving up the country, a situation that seems more and more likely to happen, including bloodshed of the dictator at the hands of the rebellion.
Domestically, 26 years in prison for a couple that broadcast their rape of a child on the Internet. I suspect that if they make it through those twenty-six years without incident, they will have been blessed by Fortune (inexplicably).
Rahm Emanuel wins the mayoral election in Chicago. Considering, the last we heard of him was that he had been ruled ineligible for the post, this is a bit of a surprise. So, once again, there's not a Daley in charge of Chicago.
Instead, we might be able to take a thing or two about Palin political corruption, although this one hasn't become a family affair - Sarah Palin maintains a sockpuppet account.
In technology, some quick graphs to let you know which programming language have the highest incidences of profane language in their commit messages.
And then, just how much U.S. tax dollars are being used to fund malware development, ostensibly to be used against The Enemy, but just as likely to be used against those declared enemies at home, as well as the previously reported-on personas-in-a-box technology useful for fouling up information on social networks or flooding certain areas with comments.
Finally, a 2006 article from LifeHacker describing rules-based password generation that could be used to create secure, different, passwords for all your places on the Web but would be all very easy to remember at login time because you would simply follow your rules and reconstruct the password.
In opinions, Mr. Sowell pogoes between two positions, the first being that Americans are not dense enough in population to justify the building of high-speed rail services between various cities, and that Americans are too dense in intelligence to realize that when Barack Obama talks about building things like high-speed rail, it's nothing more than government trying to justify increased spending that is already bankrupting the country so as to capture more votes. And lest we think that we can get out of such a situation by raising revenues, he tells us that any attempt to raise taxes on the people that can afford to pay them will only result in them dodging taxes more and less revenue for the government in the future. Which suggests, again, that the problem is the presence of too many shelters and loopholes for the wealthy, not that the tax rate is too high already. Close off a few of those escape hatches and see whether income improves or not, yeah?
Last, A plastic surgeon, Dr. Kreiger, claims that the current health care bill is encouraging collectivization of health care insurers, hospitals, and providers, with the results being that the government can intimidate fewer people into doing its bidding, with reduced choice and access as the obvious consequences of such collectivization and intimidation. "DEATH PANELS!" "SOCIALIZED MEDICINE!" "PROGRESS WILL BE STOPPED!" The cure? Tax breaks for people who get coverage outside of their insurance, selling insurance across state lines, making sure there are "options" for coverage choices, and removing any ability of the government to require minimum standards of care or of what counts as an insurance plan.
Last for tonight, the latest music copyright wrangle - over the scores and parts that musicians use to play the music, as a wiki-like interface of the works of long-dead composers scans, uploads, and error-checks the scores and parts as they make them available.
