[In case it needs to be said: I don't agree with every word of everything I link to. --L.]
- Quickly change volume in Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx)
- If you’re a music fan like me, you’re listening to music almost all the time whilst browsing the web/working/studying. Often an interuption requires you to quickly lower the volume or mute the music so that you can, for example listen to what a colleague has to say…
- Dow Average to Congress: Your Reform Bill is a Joke
- The market has dropped over 400 points in the past two days, and it’s been down 9 out of the past 12 days. While there are certainly a lot of factors influencing the situation, the market’s volatility sends a clear message is that the reform bill is inadequate to restoring confidence in their wake. [...]
In other words, fraud is a bad market structure. Who could’ve predicted?
- The Labor Market Puts Down Its Mat and Stops Walking… (Brad DeLong)
- There is no statistical evidence that a V-shaped recovery is coming. And each anecdote showing strength above the average story told by the macroeconomic aggregates is balanced by another anecdote showing weakness below the average story stold by the macroeconomic aggregates: that is, after all, why the average is the average–it is the average. And the average does not look like a "V" at all…
[Chart porn. -L]
- Seven Year Old Girl Shot To Death By Detroit Police During No-Knock Raid
- I’ve been meaning to post about the police shooting of seven-year-old Aiyana Jones. Rad Geek says just about what I would have said…
Racewire points out that both the police department and the officer who apparently shot Aiyana (he claims that the girl’s grandmother grabbed his gun and it went off) have a history.
[The last link in this post, to Adrienne Maree Brown's essay "there is no justice for aiyana" is a must-read. -L]
- Genome from a bottle (Science News)
- Synthetic DNA makes cells switch species
- This tiny robotic butterfly is helping to reinvent the airplane [Mad Engineering]
- Japanese researchers have built an artificial butterfly that mimics the unusual flight patterns of the swallowtail butterfly. Their tiny model is called an "ornithopter" – and we've got the video of the little guy in flight.
- Black holes and xenon accelerators you'll want to hang on your walls [Science Art]
- This may look like a new promo pic from Tron Legacy, but it's actually the winning image in Princeton University's "Art of Science" competition. Physics doesn't just explain the most awesome phenomena in the universe — it also creates art.
- Ada Lovelace T-Shirt (ThinkGeek)
- Augusta Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace wrote the above in 1843. She had undertaken, at Charles Babbage's behest, a translation from the French of Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea's description of Babbage's lecture in Turin on what he called an "Analytical Engine." In her notes, which are longer than the text being translated, she presents for her English-speaking audience a clear distinction between the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine, as well as how the Jacquard loom punch cards could be fed into the Analytical Engine so that the program could be held separate (and repeatable) from the device itself. "We may say most aptly, that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves." She clearly inherited some of her father's poetic manner. Later in the notes, she sets forth a series of calculations for this as-yet hypothetical machine, which, although she didn't get to run it, are recognized as the very first computer program.
- Soaking In It (Shakesville)
- I am left breathless with astonishment that anyone, anywhere, with any sense of decency, could categorize [redacted redacted redacted] as "merely kinky," …
And not only did Janet Malcolm make this stunning claim, but the proof-readers and editors and everyone who saw this piece before it went into print in the pages of The New Yorker all apparently felt it was totally appropriate for publication.
Yikes.
- Killing The Mentally Ill for being "non-complliant" (Hullabaloo – Digby)
- I'm afraid that any American with a heart condition, epilepsy or mental illness of any kind is going to have to start wearing a big sign saying "please don't tase me, it will probably kill me," so that police won't use their "alternative" to deadly force on you. (If you don't have health care or don't know if you have a heart condition, well, just drop to the ground and submit yourself to police every time you see one, just in case.)
These things are killing a lot of people. If tasers were a drug or a food additive they would have been taken off the market a long time ago with this track record.
- BP’s Permission Not Needed for Feds to Monitor Spill Effects
- OK, this is just bullpucky. The government is doing all sorts of handwringing about how it can’t force BP to disclose information about what’s actually going on in the gulf.
- Dennis Kucinich Says Targeting US Citizens Should Be Illegal
- Of course, why anyone would need to introduce legislation to prohibit the killing of US citizens with no due process, I don’t know. Isn’t there already a piece of paper that prohibits such things?
The Link(s): Thu, May 20th, 12pm by Lee Salazar, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at leesalazar.com.