links for 2009-04-26

Religious people like cops and judges and professors, are just people the same as the rest of us. They aren't somehow perfect.

"In both cases, the boards voted to close one of the local schools. In both cases, one reason given is declining enrollments because so many local families now send their children to yeshivas. In both cases, the decision was made by boards dominated by Orthodox Jews who are running the public schools but don’t send their own children to them." That seems wrong on a certain level.

"Finance ministers from both wealthy and developing nations have called for an urgent reform of banking systems in developed countries."

"And that's how a decentralized community solved a security threat in an open identity spec, quickly. One company (Twitter) took a risk at implementing a new technology advocated by an employee of another company (Yahoo's Hammer-Lahav), then an engineer at yet another company found the beginning of the security hole, then news of the whole problem was sent out to contacts on a Wiki, an email list was formed, companies donated their employees valuable time to aid in the effort, everyone more or less kept their mouths shut (including the unfairly criticized Twitter) and then everyone worked together to find a solution just in time. I think that's a pretty cool story."

"US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has urged North Korea to return to its obligations to rid the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons." Doubt it will do anything.

"The police expelled David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader, from the Czech Republic on Saturday, his lawyer said. Mr. Duke was detained Friday on suspicion of denying the Holocaust, an offense punishable by up to three years in prison if a violator is convicted under Czech law."

What can you design when all you use is black, white and gray?

"At an extraordinary moment when the global financial crisis has put governments, rather than auto executives, in the driver’s seat, Mr. Marchionne may have found a way to build an empire with — almost — no money down." How could Fiat make a profit with Chrysler?

"An Iranian-American reporter jailed by Iran for espionage has gone on hunger strike and says she will not stop until she is released, her father said Saturday."

"Play word association with most developers and the response to 'offshore' will most likely be a city in India. Starting my career in the oil and gas game meant offshore development has an entirely different connotation." This was a lot of fun to read.

Good and simple code to deal with code on the JavaScript side.