Archive for December, 2011

“YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF:” Don Surber vs. Amory Lovins. “Climategate proved climatology is fraud. If it were true, the proof would be easy picking and scientists would not have to manipulate data and dodge Freedom of Information requests.” See, once you start lying and fudging data, it’s hard to wrap yourself in the mantle of science.

FACEBOOK IS DOOMED BECAUSE OF TIMELINE. Not due to privacy concerns, but because the new Timelined pages look like nothing so much as old MySpace pages.

WHY WOMEN lowball other women. “Read any site devoted to women and business, and you’ll stumble across various essays, articles, and posts in which it’s underscored how women must stick up for other women in the workplace. The reality is that it doesn’t happen. Rather than cry for a sisterhood that doesn’t exist in reality, women would be better off accepting that the dog-eat-dog mentality of business is as pervasive among women as it is among men. Everybody lowballs. Everybody who thinks they can get away with it, that is.”

CHINA’S PARALLEL ONLINE UNIVERSE: “China is increasingly operating an online parallel universe where social media clones ‘mimic the functions of the most popular, internationally recognized social media applications, such as Facebook and Twitter. The replicas, however, come with a major catch: they systematically comply with the Chinese Communist Party’s strict censorship requirements.’ They are satisfying the growing demand of hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens for social media tools, reducing incentives for them to circumvent the ‘Great Firewall,’ Freedom House warns. Testing by researchers found that a search for the names of seven prominent Chinese lawyers, activists, and journalists on Sina Weibo returned no results, only an Orwellian notice that ‘According to related laws and policy, some of the results are not shown here.'”

READER JOHN STEAKLEY WRITES:

Would you happen to have ANY leads on anyone who might be able to get a 100-year-old, almost-functioning typewriter back into working order? Keys work. Tab works. Shift and shift-lock works. Backspace works. Even the little return bell sounds as good as new (I imagine).

Spacebar doesn’t work, and it won’t advance with keystrokes.

I feel like I’m looking for a buggy whip repairman.

Any suggestions?

UPDATE: No more, no more! I’ve passed on dozens of emails — I’m sure he’ll solve his problem now.

FASTER, PLEASE: Searching the Sea for Scum-Busting Cholera Killers. “Bacteria-scanning robots have helped researchers discover scum-busting chemicals that could potentially cut rates of cholera infection. The robots are part of an award-winning system developed at the University of California, Santa Cruz that fuses fast-paced automatic screening techniques and neon bacteria with undersea hunts for new disease-fighting bugs.”

THOUGHTS ON muzzling men.

THE SPECULIST: The Coffee Shop Is Taking Over Education. “Let’s say all other things between the candidates are equal. Which should be chosen? It’s true that an online education is not the same as the college experience. The candidate who went to college probably enjoyed his experience more, but how much is that experience worth to a potential employer? Unless he’s a member of the same fraternity, probably not as much as the college candidate would hope. And here’s the reality: the student debt of the college candidate controls, to some extent, his salary requirements. Since the MITx candidate appears to have the knowledge required, and has no student debt, he probably can be hired cheaper.”

And that’s not all it’s taking over.

ARS TECHNICA: SOPA Faces Growing Opposition On The Right. “In short, the fight over SOPA is less about left versus right than it is about declining industries—Hollywood and major labels—versus the Internet community.” Note to Tim Lee, though: I’m one of those “libertarian counterparts.” Just sayin’. . . .

DESPITE ALL THE DEMOCRATIC ELECTORAL HAPPYTALK, where the rubber meets the road it’s still time to retire. That pro-ObamaCare vote cost Ben Nelson his seat, “Cornhusker kickback” notwithstanding.

UPDATE: A Ben Nelson farewell video.

NEW F.I.R.E. VIDEO: How Firefly Fans Saved Free Speech On Campus. With a Neil Gaiman appearance. Plus an Orwellian line from U. Wisconsin-Stout Chancellor Charles W. Sorenson: “This was not an act of censorship. This was an act of sensitivity.” What a disgrace. But a victory for F.I.R.E.!