Month: August 2012

by liberal japonicus This is nice In December, a judge ordered the bank to pay the couple $2,500 in attorney fees. But months went by and the bank never cut a check. So, the Naples Daily News reports, Nyerges hired a lawyer, who pursued a levy, and this past Friday the showdown was on: The Nyergeses showed up … Read more

by Doctor Science The Romney campaign has been running ads saying Obama is planning to remove the work requirement for welfare, so “your” money goes to “those” people. As reported by Ben Smith at Buzzfeed [emphasis mine]: “Our most effective ad is our welfare ad,” a top television advertising strategist for Romney, Ashley O’Connor, said … Read more

by liberal japonicus Well, maybe not, but my post about Akin and the Republican Mission Impossible disavowal somehoe moved to the perfidious Chinese, so in that light, this article on Huawei is quite interesting. The first grafs: Chen Lifang is a bit flummoxed. Chen is a board member and senior vice president at Huawei, the … Read more

by liberal japonicus Something a bit off of the politics talk. I'm a mac user, but I wanted to give a different perspective to the Apple-Samsung decision and maybe talk about something other than politics. As usual, the thread is also for everyone who wants to explain why the patent system sucks, why Apple is the best/worst … Read more

by liberal japonicus As a person with not a scintilla of drawing ability, I feel this woman's pain. Juan María de Ojeda, a city councillor, said the woman, acting "spontaneously and with good intentions", had confessed what had happened as soon as she realised "that things had got out of hand". Discuss here the biggest … Read more

–by Sebastian This isn't really important, but it has bugged me for a little while and I was reminded about it when Julian Assange came back into the news recently.  Assange says that he doesn't want to go to Sweden because he is afraid that Sweden will extradite him to the United States.  The weird … Read more

by Doctor Science Over at Making Light, Patrick Nielsen Hayden wrote about how Ewan Morrison mangled the history of fanfic in his recent article in The Guardian, In the beginning, there was fan fiction: from the four gospels to Fifty Shades. Subheading in The Guardian: EL James’s Fifty Shades of Grey originated as a piece … Read more

by liberal japonicus Not picking on Russell, but his love of the Scottish people (a love I share) gives me an excuse to make a link list. Brad DeLong on Niall Ferguson Fallows on Ferguson Wolcott on Ferguson Ezra Klein on Ferguson Sullivan (and Sullivan) on his "old and good" friend Ferguson Krugman on Ferguson and … Read more

by Doctor Science My foray into Art of the Low Countries fandom continues apace. (Previous installment: How cleanliness sat down next to godliness) Today I bring you Pieter Aertsen‘s Adoration of the Magi, with some observations that have never before been published, as far as I can tell. Here’s the painting, currently in the Rijksmuseum, … Read more

by liberal japonicus Just an amuse bouche for you, but I'm trying to figure out if this is progress or not. Senior Republicans on Monday pushed their candidate in the Missouri Senate race, congressman Todd Akin, to quit over his remarks about rape that distracted from the build up to the party's nomination of Mitt … Read more

by liberal japonicus As you probably know, from the iconic NSFW speech in Trainspotting. It's a speech I have my students work thru for English phonetics and that I love for a number of reasons, but that's just a hook to hang this Guardian article on the DNA of the people of Scotland. Scotland, he told … Read more

by liberal japonicus This Guardian article is about the heightened speculation of a Iran strike and the possibility of it occuring before the US presidential election. From the article: Writing in Israel's biggest-selling daily, Yedioth Ahronoth, Nahum Barnea and Simon Shiffer, both respected commentators, said: "Insofar as it depends on Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, … Read more

–by Sebastian There has been a 'why Paul Ryan' explosion on the internet media channels.  Just about everyone is making the analysis too complicated.  There are two essential types of Vice President picks: solidify your base voters or attempt to broaden your appeal to swing voters.  A presidential campaign tends to choose which of those … Read more

by liberal japonicus A thread for all your Paul Ryan thoughts. My own thought is that they chose him because he presents so many possibilities that the Dems will forget how to be as ruthless as they were with the Mitt Romney singing ad. A target rich environment, so to speak. Here's a quick collection … Read more

by liberal japonicus joel hanes asks us to turn our eyes towards Alabama and this A federal judge this afternoon sentenced former Gov. Don Siegelman to 78 months in prison. U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller handed down the sentence  – 10 months less than the 88 months he originally gave Siegelman — after a day of emotional … Read more

by liberal japonicus A point/counterpoint pair of articles here. An Atul Gawande New Yorker article about how 'Big Med' is a solution to rising medical costs, comparing The Cheesecake Factory with hospital chains. Fascinating stuff. One section about the resistance of doctors and staff to the idea of supervision: Sometimes they resist. “You have got to … Read more

by Doctor Science I got caught up in one of those obsessive desires to find out what something is — a lifelong procrastination trap of mine which the Internet is *not* helping — and found myself at the British Museum website[1], looking at this pot: Vase with turquoise glaze, 17th century China. Porcellaneous stoneware wine-jar … Read more

by liberal japonicus Tons and tons of stuff to choose from, so, as is my basic principle, I go for the one with the lowest form of humor. Specifically, this: The judges declared that the claim regarding their learned friend's allegedly missing testicles could not be regarded as offensive because it had been levelled "in … Read more

–by Sebastian Over at Crooked Timber, Chris Bertram riffs off of the recent badminton game throwing scandal at the Olympics to offer support for an organizing principle of discretion by law enforcers.  There are people who devise and employ elaborate schemes to evade or avoid (I never know which is which) their taxes whilst staying … Read more

by Doctor Science As abi sutherland said on Making Light, It’s been a heck of a week for feminism in our neck of the internet. Or maybe month. Or year … The particular items I’m considering at the moment have to do with women being harassed at geek cons. Specifically: Readercon is a very bookish … Read more