homo superior blogs

• Such, Such Was Eric Blair – The New York Review of Books

  And George Orwell? It would surprise, and doubtless irritate, him to discover that since his death in 1950 he has moved implacably toward NT status. He is interpretable, malleable, ambassadorial, and patriotic. He denounced the Empire, which pleases the left; he denounced communism, which pleases the right. He warned us against the corrupting effect on politics and public life of the misuse of language, which pleases almost everyone. He said that “good prose is like a window pane,” which pleases those who, despite living in the land of Shakespeare and Dickens, mistrust “fancy” writing. He distrusted anyone who was too “clever.” (This is a key English suspicion, most famously voiced in 1961 when Lord Salisbury, a stalwart of the imperialist Tory right, denounced Iain Macleod, secretary of state for the colonies and member of the new reforming Tory left, as “too clever by half.”)

  tags: George Orwell, reading list

• TPMMuckraker | Talking Points Memo | Jindal Admits Katrina Story Was False

  This is no minor difference. Jindal’s presence in Lee’s office during the crisis itself was a key element of the story’s intended appeal, putting him at the center of the action during the maelstrom. Just as important, Jindal implied that his support for the sheriff helped ensure the rescue went ahead. But it turns out Jindal wasn’t there at the key moment, and played no role in making the rescue happen.

  tags: Jindal, Republicans, GOP, lies, reading list

• Nation’s Blacks Creeped Out By All The People Smiling At Them | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

  A majority of African-Americans surveyed in a nationwide poll this week reported feeling “deeply disturbed” and “more than a little weirded out” by all the white people now smiling at them.

  tags: Obama, The Onion, reading list, African-Americans, comedy, satire

• Aquatic Sex: Pregnant Fish Fossils Found – CBS News

  The fossilized remains of two pregnant fish indicate that sex as we know it – fertilization of eggs inside a female – took place as much as 30 million years earlier than previously thought, researchers said Thursday.

  tags: reproduction, fish, biology, paleobiology, reading list, paleontology

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• Op-Ed Contributor – This Is the Way the Culture Wars End – NYTimes.com

  PRESIDENT OBAMA wants to end the culture wars. He recently called for “common ground” on abortion reduction and an end to the “stale and fruitless debate” over family planning. His joint address to Congress this week could be an opportunity to change that debate. But to make a real difference, he’ll have to tell two truths that the left and the right don’t want to hear: that morality has to be practical, and that practicality requires morals.

  tags: Obama, morality, gay marriage, abortion, Democrats, Liberals, Conservative, Republicans, reading list

• The risks of a bust-up in Europe | The bill that could break up Europe | The Economist

  Bailing out the same mythical Polish plumbers who just stole everybody’s jobs will be hard for Europe’s leaders to sell on the doorsteps of Berlin, Bradford and Bordeaux, especially with the xenophobic right in full cry. German taxpayers are already worried that others are after their hard-earned cash (see article). The bill will indeed be huge, but in truth western Europe cannot afford not to pay it. The meltdown of any EU country in the region, let alone the break-up of the euro or the single market, would be catastrophic for all of Europe; and on this issue there is little prospect of much help from America, China or elsewhere. It is certainly not too late to rescue the east; but politicians need to start making the case for it now.

  tags: reading list, EU, Europe, Eastern Europe, Economist, euro, economics

• Michael J. Totten: Christopher Hitchens and the Battle of Beirut

  Last week Christopher Hitchens and I were attacked in Beirut. Less than 24 hours after we landed at the international airport, a half dozen members of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party jumped us on Hamra Street when he defaced one of their signs.

  tags: reading list, fascists, Beirut, Lebanon, Christopher Hitchens, Michael Totten, Nazis, swastikas

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• Why the United States needs to press for a “two-state” solution NOW | Stephen M. Walt

  Shouldn’t someone in the U.S. government start thinking about what our policy should be in the event that the two-state solution collapses? Starting to contemplate this possibility is risky, of course, because it might undermine our efforts to create two states if it became known that we were beginning to plan for an alternative future. But the fact is that we may face that future before too much longer. If so, then it might be a good idea if somebody began thinking about how to deal with it now, so that we don’t have to invent a new approach on the fly.

  tags: Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Obama, Israeli, Palestine, reading list

• Ben White: The real Israel-Palestine story is in the West Bank | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

  It is quite likely that you have not heard of the most important developments this week in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the West Bank, while it has been “occupation as normal”, there have been some events that together should be overshadowing Gaza, Gilad Shalit and Avigdor Lieberman.

  First, there have been a large number of Israeli raids on Palestinian villages, with dozens of Palestinians abducted. These kinds of raids are, of course, commonplace for the occupied West Bank, but in recent days it appears the Israeli military has targeted sites of particularly strong Palestinian civil resistance to the separation wall.

  tags: reading list, Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, separation wall, Israel

• Mozilla backs EFF in support of iPhone jailbreaking | Apple – CNET News

  Mozilla has thrown its support behind the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s push to have the U.S. Copyright Office allow iPhone jailbreaking.

  tags: EFF, copyright, jailbreaking, iphone, Apple, Mozilla, reading list

• How Obama’s sentence-structure works – Boing Boing

  This may be the essential Obama gift: making complexity and caution sound bold and active, even masculine… or rather, it may be one facet of a larger gift: what Zadie Smith calls “having more than one voice in your ear.” Notice the canny way that the sentence above turns on the fulcrum of what may be Obama’s favorite word: “but.” What appears to be a hard line – “My view is… that nobody is above the law” – turns out to have been a qualifier for a vaguer but more inspiring motto: “I am more interested in looking forward than I am in looking back.” The most controversial part of the sentence – “people should be prosecuted” – gets tucked away, almost parenthetically, in the middle…if comedians ever overcome their Obama anxiety, this may be his Achilles heel: “The beef, assuming it’s in a port wine reduction, sounds, uh, amazing, but on the other hand, given that the chicken is, ah, locally grown, I’d be eager to try it.”

  tags: Obama, grammar, reading list

• The New Atheism, and Something More :: Sam Harris

  Mr. Comte-Sponville does address one political question, of the broadest sort. While he has no doubt that individuals can live without religion — he is, after all, a happy atheist — whether societies can live without religion, he feels, is a more complex matter

  tags: atheism, reading list, books, philosophy, religion

• What Facebook’s Stumble Can Teach Your Company – John Sviokla – HarvardBusiness.org

  When you share information on a social site: Who owns the content? Who controls it?

  tags: reading list, privacy, copyright, Facebook, TOS, social networking, social media

• Good Luck and Good Riddance – News – The Stranger, Seattle’s Only Newspaper

  In the first week of February, the news broke that President Barack Obama had tapped Seattle police chief Gil Kerlikowske to serve as the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy—a position colloquially known as “drug czar.” The choice looks perfect from many angles: Kerlikowske would be relieved from patrolling a third-tier burg, and we’d be relieved to unload Kerlikowske. Moreover, if confirmed by the Senate, our top cop—a liberal by national standards—could take Seattle’s progressive approach to drug enforcement to Washington, D.C.

  tags: Kerlikowske, reading list, Seattle, drugs, drug enforcement, Obama, needle exchange

• NYU Student Protest Takes Violent Turn Overnight

  tags: reading list, NYU, tuition, democracy, protests

• AIDS becomes China’s deadliest disease | News Story on 365gay.com

  AIDS was the top killer among infectious diseases in China for the first time last year, with 6,897 people dying from the virus in the nine months through September, a state news agency said.

  tags: AIDS, HIV, China, reading list, deaths

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• www.dcexaminer.com >> Politics

  This delay had nothing to do with sunlight — and everything to do with showmanship.

  tags: Obama, legislation, campaign promises, stimulus, financial crisis, reading list

• Straight Couples in France Are Choosing Civil Unions Meant for Gays – washingtonpost.com

  In passing the [civil unions] law without making it specific to gays, however, France distinguished itself from other European countries that have approved civil unions or even marriage for same-sex couples. As a result of that ambiguity, the PACS broadened into an increasingly popular third option for heterosexual couples, who readily cite its appeal: It has the air of social independence associated with the time-honored arrangement that the French call the “free union” but with major financial and other advantages. It is also far easier to get out of than marriage.

  tags: reading list, gay marriage, marriage equality, France, civil unions

• The lights are going out all over Twitter | Technology | guardian.co.uk

  [The new law] tells internet service providers that they “must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination” of accounts used by anyone deemed a “repeat infringer” – regardless of whether the person has been convicted of a crime or not.

  tags: New Zealand, piracy, copyright, ISPs, protests, Internet life, reading list

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Ben Smith’s Blog: Gay snipers stalk WV – Politico.com

  The ad, which targets Christian voters, calls for a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage, something that’s already in place in a majority of states. “A weekend trip to SF for a WV same-sex couple, plus a pro-bono ACLU attorney, could easily become a nightmare for marriage in West Virginia,” says the narrator.

  tags: fundamentalism, Christianists, homophobia, marriage equality, gay marriage, gay rights, reading list

• Canon Has No Sense of Humor, Tries to Shut Down Fake Chuck Westfall Blog — Update: And Fails | Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

  Holy parody Batman! I just saw over at the Fake Chuck Westfall blog (read *fake* Chuck Westfall blog folks, sorta like that *fake* Steve Jobs blog from a while back) that Canon Inc. and some lawyerish type named Douglas E. Mirell from Loeb & Loeb are trying to shut poor fake Chuck down.

  tags: reading list, Canon, parody, satire, comedy, blogs

• Wallace Stegner on Profanity – The Atlantic (Fiction Issue 2005)

  Words are not obscene: naming things is a legitimate verbal act. And “frank” does not mean “vulgar,” any more than “improper” means “dirty.” What vulgar does mean is “common”; what improper means is “unsuitable.” Under the right circumstances, any word is proper. But when any sort of word, especially a word hitherto taboo and therefore noticeable, is scattered across a page like chocolate chips through a tollhouse cookie, a real impropriety occurs. The sin is not the use of an “obscene” word; it is the use of a loaded word in the wrong place or in the wrong quantity. It is the sin of false emphasis, which is not a moral but a literary lapse, related to sentimentality. It is the sin of advertisers who so plaster a highway with neon signs that you can’t find the bar or liquor store you’re looking for. Like any excess, it quickly becomes comic.

  tags: Wallace Stegner, profanity, language, reading list

• Johann Hari: Despite these riots, I stand by what I wrote – Johann Hari, Commentators – The Independent

  Here’s how it happened. My column reported on a startling development at the United Nations. The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights has always had the job of investigating governments who forcibly take the fundamental human right to free speech from their citizens with violence. But in the past year, a coalition of religious fundamentalist states has successfully fought to change her job description. Now, she has to report on “abuses of free expression” including “defamation of religions and prophets.” Instead of defending free speech, she must now oppose it.

  tags: human rights, religion, free speech, reading list, United Nations

• Why Wikipedia’s Policy to Blacklist Blogs is Outdated and Wrong – ReadWriteWeb

  This week we received an email from a reader telling us that he’d tried to add a link to ReadWriteWeb onto a Wikipedia article, only to get the message: “The following link has triggered our spam protection filter: http://www.readwriteweb.com. Either that exact link, or a portion of it (typically the root domain name) is currently blacklisted.” After a bit of investigation, we discovered that our site had been blacklisted by Wikipedia in mid-2008 and labeled as ’spam’! There is no explanation on Wikipedia as to why this happened. We certainly don’t think we’ve done anything that would justify being blacklisted. So after some emailing and twittering, we found out that the way to challenge this blacklisting was to make our case on this Wikipedia page.

  tags: blogs, blogging, tech blogs, wikipedia, reading list, research, journalism, ReadWriteWeb

• On Darwin’s Birthday, Only 4 in 10 Believe in Evolution

  On the eve of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, a new Gallup Poll shows that only 39% of Americans say they “believe in the theory of evolution,” while a quarter say they do not believe in the theory, and another 36% don’t have an opinion either way. These attitudes are strongly related to education and, to an even greater degree, religiosity.

  tags: reading list, evolution, education, religion, Darwin, science

• The Shorty Awards: Why Nerds Hate Twitter | Epicenter from Wired.com

  It’s official. No longer the domain of the digerati, the Twitter short messaging platform has woven itself into regular peoples’ lives to help with practical matters — getting in shape, picking stocks, raising funds for a Senate run or selling cruise ship tickets. For proof, one need look no further than Wednesday night’s Shorty Awards, which honored the best Twitterers as determined by a popular vote.

  tags: twitter, social media, reading list

• Hit & Run > Sheriff Lott’s New Toy – Reason Magazine

  The Richland County, South Carolina Sheriff’s Department (that’s them above) just obtained an armored personnel carrier, complete with a belt-fed, .50-cal turreted machine gun. Sheriff Leon Lott has charmingly named the vehicle “The Peacemaker,” and insists that using a caliber of ammunition that even the U.S. military is reluctant to use against human targets (it’s generally reserved for use against armored vehicles) will “save lives.”

  tags: war on drugs, law enforcement, reading list, cops, military hardware

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Mininova – One Million Torrents Strong | TorrentFreak

  For the first time in its four year existence, Mininova now has a million torrent files stored on its servers. These meta-data files are spread out over 10 categories on this BitTorrent giant, with movies and music representing more than half of all the torrents.

  tags: piracy, mininova, torrent, bittorrent, reading list

• Obama Stumps for Stimulus in a City Hit Hard by Downturn – NYTimes.com

  President Obama took his case for an $800 billion economic recovery package to one of the most distressed places in America on Monday as he opened a series of campaign-style events intended to press Congress to approve the plan by week’s end.

  tags: Obama, stimulus, economics, reading list

• How to Write for the Web (Full Paper)

  Studies of how users read on the Web found that they do not actually read: instead, they scan the text. A study of five different writing styles found that a sample Web site scored 58% higher in measured usability when it was written concisely, 47% higher when the text was scannable, and 27% higher when it was written in an objective style instead of the promotional style used in the control condition and many current Web pages. Combining these three changes into a single site that was concise, scannable, and objective at the same time resulted in 124% higher measured usability.

  tags: writing, usability, design, blogging, reading list

• Obama Has Upper Hand in Stimulus Fight

  The American public gives President Barack Obama a strong 67% approval rating for the way in which he is handling the government’s efforts to pass an economic stimulus bill, while the Democrats and, in particular, the Republicans in Congress receive much lower approval ratings of 48% and 31%, respectively.

  tags: stimulus, economics, Obama, Democrats, Republicans, Congress, Senate, American politics, reading list

• Commonweal – A review of religion, politics and culture

  Don’t expect triumphalists to recant or apologize. Yet their time has passed. The Age of Triumphalism has ended. The Age of Muddling Through has commenced. In this new era, over which Barack Obama will preside, grandiose ideas will take a back seat to figuring out what actually works and calculating how much we can afford. Instead of looking to transform the world, the imperative of this new age is to preserve what’s left and restore what’s been lost. The nattering about the United States as an almighty superpower has ceased. For this at least we should be grateful.

  tags: reading list, American dream, triumphalism, Obama, Bush, superpowers

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• YouTube’s January Fair Use Massacre | Electronic Frontier Foundation

  This is what it’s come to. Teenagers singing “Winter Wonderland” being censored off YouTube.

  tags: EFF, copyright, fair use, YouTube, corporations, Warner, reading list

• Italy bans kebabs and foreign food from cities – Times Online

  The drive to make Italians eat Italian, which was described by the Left and leading chefs as gastronomic racism, began in the town of Lucca this week, where the council banned any new ethnic food outlets from opening within the ancient city walls.

  tags: reading list, food, ethnic food, immigration, Italy

• Falluja’s Strange Visitor – A Western Tourist – NYTimes.com

  “I am a tourist,” were his first words. The telephone line from Falluja was bad, but there could be no mistake. Falluja’s first Western leisure visitor was in town.

  tags: reading list, tourism, Iraq, Baghdad, Falluja

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• To deprogram a Jihadist – Featured World – Macleans.ca

  News last week that Said Ali al-Shihri, a former inmate of Guantánamo, has emerged as al-Qaeda’s deputy leader in Yemen intensified debate on how to deal with prisoners held at the U.S.-run detention camp in Cuba. But al-Shihri’s narrative raised other interesting questions as well. In 2007, the U.S. released him to Saudi Arabia, where he underwent a much-trumpeted religious “deradicalization” program for jihadists that clearly didn’t take. In the past, Saudi authorities have consistently claimed that none of the program’s graduates have returned to terrorism in the five years since the program was established. But after al-Shihri’s story began unfolding, authorities admitted that nine others have been rearrested. Despite the failure, Time has reported, the Pentagon won’t change its policy on repatriating Gitmo’s most dangerous detainees to the kingdom even though the Saudi program has been called into question.

  tags: terrorism, Saudi Arabia, Guantanamo, al-Qaeda, reading list

• Godless watch, continued | Democracy in America | Economist.com

  Interesting. I’m not sure if Mr Obama isn’t trying a little too hard to please everyone here, but the fact that he is trying to please everyone—and remember that a major presidential candidate said not long ago that “freedom requires religion”—is striking.

  tags: atheism, Obama, prayer, religion, reading list

• NYTimes Exposes 2.8 Million Articles in New API – ReadWriteWeb

  What do you do when your industry is shifting under your feet? Taking the lead with radical steps is one strategy. The New York Times did just that this afternoon when it announced that it has released a new Application Programming Interface (API) offering every article the paper has written since 1981, 2.8 million articles. The API includes 28 searchable fields and updated content every hour.

  tags: newspapers, API, web2.0, NYT, reading list

• Joe the Plumber is now doing political strategy with Republicans.

  The line between Republicans’ approach to governing and satirical performance art blurs just a little more.

  tags: Republicans, GOP, Joe the Plumber, reading list

• Teen accused of male-on-male sex assaults in web scam | 365 Gay News

  This won’t make us smarter, but it’s still interesting:

  An 18-year-old male student is accused of posing as a girl on Facebook, tricking at least 31 male classmates into sending him naked photos of themselves and then blackmailing some for sex acts.

  “The kind of manipulation that occurred here is really sinister in my estimation,” Waukesha County District Attorney Brad Schimel said Wednesday.

  tags: reading list, sexual assault, child porn, Facebook, scams

• U.S. soldier argues for asylum in Germany – Los Angeles Times

  Shepherd, of Cleveland, was among 71 soldiers to desert European bases in 2008, but he is the first known to have sought asylum in Germany. If he succeeds, it could open a new door for soldiers looking to escape the military, supporters say. Rejection could find him handed over to the U.S. military or deported to the United States.

  tags: soldiers, US army, Iraq, desertion, reading list

• Is the solar system unique? – space – 03 February 2009 – New Scientist

  Since the first discovery of a planet orbiting another star in 1992, some 280 alien solar systems have been identified. Most look quite unlike ours, and for good reason. Planets are mainly spied by the way their gravity makes their host star wobble as they orbit. The smaller the planet, the smaller the wobble: lightweight planets like Earth produce effects too small to detect with current technology.

  tags: astronomy, reading list, science

• In Bolivia, Untapped Bounty Meets Nationalism – NYTimes.com

  In the rush to build the next generation of hybrid or electric cars, a sobering fact confronts both automakers and governments seeking to lower their reliance on foreign oil: almost half of the world’s lithium, the mineral needed to power the vehicles, is found here in Bolivia — a country that may not be willing to surrender it so easily.

  tags: Bolivia, energy, Lithium, reading list

• ASA : White House Responds to DEA Raids, Vows to End Policy

  White House Spokesman Nick Shapiro reacted to new Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) raids at medical cannabis collectives in California, saying he expects President Obama to end that policy when a new DEA Administrator is seated. “The president believes that federal resources should not be used to circumvent state laws, and as he continues to appoint senior leadership to fill out the ranks of the federal government, he expects them to review their policies with that in mind,” Shapiro said.

  tags: Obama, marijuana, DEA, raids, medical marijuana, reading list

• Coffee lovers face lower dementia risk – Aging- msnbc.com

  The study found that among 1,400 Finnish adults followed for 20 years, those who drank three to five cups of coffee per day in middle-age were two-thirds less likely than non-drinkers to develop dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.

  tags: coffee, Alzheimer’s, disease, health, dementia, reading list

• Future Watch: A.I. comes of age

  “Stair, please fetch the stapler from the lab,” says the man seated at a conference room table. The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Robot, standing nearby, replies in a nasal monotone, “I will get the stapler for you.”

  tags: AI, artificial intelligence, science, robots, reading list

• Home | Who Profits from the Israeli Occupation?

  sraeli and international corporations are directly involved in the occupation: in the construction of Israeli colonies and infrastructure in the occupied territories, in the settlements’ economy, in building walls and checkpoints, in the supply of specific equipment used in the control and repression of the civilian population under occupation.

  tags: occupation, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, reading list

• Cramps Singer Lux Interior Dead At 62 – News Story | Music, Celebrity, Artist News | MTV News

  Lux Interior, lead singer of influential garage-punk act the Cramps, died Wednesday morning (February 4) due to an existing heart condition, according to a statement from the band’s publicist. He was 62.

  tags: reading list, Cramps, Lux, punk rock, psychobilly

• BBC NEWS | Politics | Ministers face torture pressure

  UK ministers must answer allegations that Britain was complicit in torture, a senior Conservative MP has said.

  tags: torture, House of Commons, reading list, Britain

• A rant from a soon to be laid off T-Shirt Hell employee:

  (In response to a select group of assholes and their self righteous reaction to us going out of business)

  I would like to say something to all the idiots who think we’ve poisoned society. And I’m not talking about the religious nuts or the militant [whining minority here]. I’m talking about this new wave of douches comprised primarily of twenty- and thirty- something white people who feel like they have to defend the little guy, despite the fact that in 2009 the little guy no longer exists, and if he does he isn’t even aware there’s a fight going on.

  tags: reading list, t-shirt hell, t-shirts, satire

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.