blivet 2.0

• Class, Not 'Race'
  Alterman on Gates and Crowley. He is putting the 'socio' back into this socio-economic discussion.
  (tags: alterman gates race class crowley)
• It's Single Payer Day in Washington, DC | AfterDowningStreet.org
  The State of Healthcare in Our Capital. Public option hanging by a thread. Single payer hanging by a noose. What went on today, who's calling the shots, and what people can do in August
  (tags: activism singlepayer healthreform Obama)
• Little Creatures Can Stir Big Oceans — Berardelli 2009 (729): 2 — ScienceNOW
  Jellyfish locomotion as possible accessory mechanism for unexplained oceans acting as a carbon sinkdue to CO2 mixing.
  "[R]esearchers recorded the water-mixing effects of the jellyfish by placing a harmless dye near the creatures and tracking how the dye moved with video cameras. Then the team analyzed the results using computer simulations and calculated the amount of energy produced. The observations showed that despite water viscosity, Mastigias jellyfish mixed a surprising volume of water. So much, based on estimates of the number of living creatures in the ocean and their collective efforts, that the mixing is comparable to that of the winds and the tides, the researchers will report tomorrow in Nature.
  The results "open up fascinating possibilities" for how the marine biosphere can create more favorable conditions for itself."
  (tags: science oceanography co2 jellyfish carbonsink)
• Speechless – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com
  Krugman: "Bill O’Reilly explaining that of course America has lower life expectancy than Canada — we have 10 times as many people, so we have 10 times as many deaths.
  I need a drink."
  Why do people pay still attention to O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, etc.? I can understand the TV being on at the Day Room at the treatment clinic, but really…
  (tags: economics O’Reilly krugman healthreform)
• City Brights: Howard Rheingold : Crap Detection 101
  Harold Rheingold's article in SFGate.
  (tags: research web learning information criticalthinking rheingold information_literacy crap)
• How to tell if the Internet is lying to you :: Rebecca Blood
  Essential, really essential if you do no already have well developed critical thinking skills… Thank you, Rebecca.
  "Howard Rheingold has written a terrific primer on evaluating Internet information, Crap Detection 101, which contains quite a number of resources I'd never heard of – for example, the Dispute Finder. It's required reading for anyone who uses the Web, or even email." [via Garret]
  (tags: RebeccaBlood Rheingold criticalthinking internet)
• Real Time New Rules June 19, 2009 | Video Cafe
  Maher: This is because we don't have a left and a right party in this country any more. We have a center right party, and a crazy party. And over the last thirty odd years, Democrats have moved to the right, and the right has moved into a mental hospital.
  (tags: politics economics culture progressive maher humor democrats)

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• Quit Whining 2 | David Frum
  Frum opines: "[S]uddenly we Republicans cannot seem to remember who preceded Barack Obama in office. To listen to us, you’d think that the bailouts and takeovers started on January 20, 2009, not the previous March. You’d never know that TARP was supported by almost every Republican commentator, including the editors of National Review. Or that Vice President Cheney argued urgently in favor of the rescue of the Detroit automakers. Or that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac enjoyed the backing of Republican as well as Democratic lawmakers.
  One bad election converts us from ardent admirers of the American people to glum declinists who can see only a miserable moldering of a once great nation. I should have thought that conservative patriotism was made of stronger stuff."
  (tags: politics conservatism palin 2008+election Frum)
• Respect For the Fungus Overlords | The Loom | Discover Magazine
  "I assumed that creatures as freakish and wonderful as Cordyceps and company would attract enormous amounts of scientific attention. Yet I was frustrated to discover that hardly any research has been carried out on their powers of manipulation. That’s a shame, because you cannot assume that these parasites are indeed manipulating their hosts. It’s possible, but it’s just a hypothesis that requires testing. One alternative explanation might be that when insects get infected with these parasites, they just lose their bearings. What looks like an adaptation to us–-getting your host to a good place for spreading your offspring–-may just be a coincidence.
  So it is with great delight that I see that David Hughes of the University of Exeter and his colleagues are bringing some real science to bear on these X-Files creatures. Based on their research, these creatures have indeed evolved finely tuned adaptations for using their hosts."
  (tags: loom parasites science zimmer)
• What the Hell is Max Baucus Thinking !?!
  60 Democrats are not really 60 Democrats…
  (tags: progressive healthreform obama)
• Robin Wells: Hard Truths and the Teachable Moment: The Gates-Crowley Saga
  I'm thinking about this…
  (tags: police race discrimination gates crowley)
• Arianna Huffington: More Pigs at the Trough: What Enron and WorldCom Can Teach Us About Goldman and AIG
  Do I really need to comment here…?
  (tags: economy AIG Enron HuffPo financialcrisis progressive corruption)

• John Dawson, Founding Member of New Riders of Purple Sage, Is Dead at 64 – Obituary (Obit) – NYTimes.com
  “Dawson, a singer and songwriter whose band New Riders of the Purple Sage began as a country-rock offshoot of the Grateful Dead but had a long life of its own, died on Tuesday in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where he lived. He was 64.
  …Mr. Dawson, known as Marmaduke, founded New Riders of the Purple Sage in 1969 with David Nelson and Jerry Garcia, whom Mr. Dawson had known from Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Band Champions, a Grateful Dead predecessor formed in 1964.
  New Riders released a dozen albums into the early ’80s. One, “The Adventures of Panama Red,” from 1973, went gold, and a track from that album, “Panama Red” — a novelty song about marijuana, not so thinly veiled — became a staple. With Mr. Garcia and Robert Hunter, the longtime Grateful Dead lyricist, Mr. Dawson also wrote the song “Friend of the Devil,” which appears on the Grateful Dead’s 1970 album “American Beauty.” [via Eliot]
  (tags: NRPS Dawson music obituary Dead via:eliot)

• An 18-Minute Plan for Managing Your Day – Peter Bregman – HarvardBusiness.org
  More GTD for later.
  (tags: gtd timemanagement productivity)
• Turn Gmail Into Your Ultimate GTD Inbox – Gmail – Lifehacker
  For me, to read later…
  (tags: tips gtd gmail)
• NASA – Hubble Space Telescope Captures Rare Jupiter Collision
  Hubble pic of the results or something BIG hitting Jupiter.
  (tags: space astronomy Jupiter Hubble nasa)
• The Birthers of a Nation | The Nation
  Leslie Savan deconstructs the Birther movement
  (tags: politics commentary wingnuts conservatives)
• Top 35 Ways to Succeed at Organic Gardening : Planet Green
  There are many good suggestion here. Many are common sense, but common sense is learned, yes? via @novenator
  (tags: gardening organic green)
• Bill Maher: New Rule: Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit
  Too true.
  "It used to be that there were some services and institutions so vital to our nation that they were exempt from market pressures. Some things we just didn't do for money. The United States always defined capitalism, but it didn't used to define us. (…)
  If conservatives get to call universal health care "socialized medicine," I get to call private health care "soulless vampires making money off human pain." The problem with President Obama's health care plan isn't socialism, it's capitalism.
  And if medicine is for profit, and war, and the news, and the penal system, my question is: what's wrong with firemen? Why don't they charge? They must be commies. Oh my God! That explains the red trucks! "
  Not everything in America has to make a profit, like municipal power, or prisons. I just sayin'. Let's roll back the Regan programs.
  (tags: maher government business economics capitalism profit progressive)
• FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: The Healthcare Timeout is Fine.
  I hope you're right, Nate. I hope you're right.
  "To hear the defeatism and paranoia on some liberal blogs this afternoon, the "timeout" that Harry Reid and the Senate called on health care today — they won't vote on the measure before the August recess — is just about the stupidest thing since Chris Webber, pictured at left, called a phantom timeout in the 1993 finals, costing his team a technical foul and the Michigan Wolverines the national championship.
  It isn't. It is, first of all, inevitable, and second of all, about as likely to do the Democrats some good as some harm, although that may depend on certain exogenous factors that are relatively outside of their control."
  (tags: politics obama democrats healthcare)

• Officer says he'll 'never apologize' for Harvard professor arrest – CNN.com
  I do not know how may of you have been abused by the police, but I have had my wrist forced up between my shoulder blades multiple times though I have never been charged, never with an apology. The Police are fighting an undeclared war against an enemy only they can see. You are guilty until proven innocent. To pretend otherwise is to be, …, naive. I am unsure how to pass this along to my 7 year old who thinks, "policemen are my friend!"
  Crowley has been trained to *diffuse* antagonistic situations and he chose not to even after ID was provided. Sgt, Crowley, you have a problem.
  ""That apology will never come from me as Jim Crowley, it won't come from me as sergeant in the Cambridge Police Department," Sgt. James Crowley told Boston radio station WEEI. "Whatever anybody else chooses to do in the name of the city of Cambridge or the Cambridge Police Department which are beyond my control, I don't worry about that. I know what I did was right. I have nothing to apologize for.""
  (tags: stupidity racism law gates)
• Bob Cesca: Crazy Wingnut Healthcare Attacks Exposed
  Because the public option would make health care be 'like the DMV…' What?
  "Predictably, as healthcare reform grows larger in the window, the claims from the far-right are becoming increasingly bizarre and ridiculous, topping, in some cases, the psychotic claims of, say, the Obama birthers."
  (tags: politics news healthcare wingnuts)