links for 2009-02-24

The 13 sentences that your startup should follow through on.

Do we finally have a Commerce Secretary, in the form of Former Washington Governor Gary Locke?

The whole problem with this book and thus the article is the idea that science doesn't answer questions, or science somehow makes non-absolute statements. People don't understand that science's role isn't to guess or base decisions on the basis of someone's political/personal/etc belief, it makes a decision regardless of what the person believes or thinks.

Listing of the weapons used by Israel in the most recent Gaza conflict and the human rights issues it brings up along with the violations in international law.

As the censorship increases the more the kids know.

"The Obama administration told a federal court late Friday that military detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their detention." ACLU predictably upset.

The Pentagon has requested that the detainees not be kept in their cells 23 hours a day.

Useful for both Cake and plain PHP.

"The study, funded by the National Institute of Justice, examined the cases of 550 sex offenders who were broken into two groups—those released from prison before the passage of Megan's Law and those released afterward. The researchers found no statistically significant difference between the groups in whether the offenders committed new sex crimes." Megan's Law does nothing basically.

Spain may start to make abortion legal in the first trimester.

Pretty firm rebuking of Techcrunch's story that last.fm was handing over listening data to the RIAA.

Thank goodness someone got some common sense about this packaging.

"This we did. So the deal is that Evan has to fight according to the rules of the Geneva Convention. If his team-mates violate the Convention then play stops and Call of Duty goes away for a while."