links for 2009-05-04

"The rising tab has prompted warnings from the Treasury that the Congressionally mandated debt ceiling of $12.1 trillion will most likely be breached in the second half of this year." Which was raised to that amount under W. Bush.

"Colleges have dismissed athletic staff, reduced hours for pools and practice courts, and increased equipment and facility fees. Some have also cut the size of their travel squads, eliminated trips requiring air travel and done away with housing teams in hotels the night before home games." Those poor athletes.

An outstanding author.

"Trent Reznor, the leader of the band Nine Inch Nails is pretty upset that Apple has rejected the latest version of his iPhone app. And rightfully so, the reason for the rejection once again points to Apple’s inconsistencies when it comes to the App Store approval process. While we pointed that out yesterday, Reznor pulls no punches in pointing it out today, in the NIN’s forums." Rock on NIN and Trent, rock on.

Talking about Facebook and grades, more data shows that more Facebook use equals higher grades.

"Financier Warren Buffett has said the US government is generally taking the right steps to aid economic recovery." Okay I was right Buffet is generally in favor of what the government has been doing.

"One conclusion our data suggests is that those justices often considered more "liberal" – Justices Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and John Paul Stevens – vote least frequently to overturn Congressional statutes, while those often labeled "conservative" vote more frequently to do so. At least by this measure (others are possible, of course), the latter group is the most activist."

"However, as Media Matters for America has repeatedly noted, a 2005 study by Yale University law professor Paul Gewirtz and Yale Law School graduate Chad Golder showed that among Supreme Court justices at that time, those most frequently labeled "conservative" were among the biggest practitioners of at least one brand of judicial activism — the tendency to strike down statutes passed by Congress." If judicial activism is striking down laws passed by Congress then conservative judges are the most active.

Some good work to try and clean up space in future mission.

"Despite his defection to the Democratic Party last week, Senator Arlen Specter said on Sunday that he would not simply rubber-stamp White House policies and would instead vote against his new party on “matters of conscience” like health-care reform. Aside from voting for the economic stimulus package earlier this year, Mr. Specter has sided with Democrats on issues of abortion rights, gay marriage and embryonic stem cell research. He has been at odds with Democrats on such issues as the war in Iraq and school vouchers. " Specter has never been a party line voter.

"The Pentagon has done little to collect at least $100 million in overcharges paid in deals arranged by corrupt former officials of Kellogg Brown & Root, the defense contractor, even though the officials admitted much of the wrongdoing years ago, two senators have complained in a letter to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates."

"On Sunday, Warren E. Buffett attacked the government’s stress tests of 19 large banks, saying they failed to properly assess the industry’s health, but still said he would expand his company’s stakes in three big banks." And Buffet's been pretty supportive of the government bailout program, if my memory is correct (though I could be wrong).

"The administration is expected to make the case that the needs of the troubled banks can be met with the bailout funds that Congress has already approved. That would be a departure from what administration officials were saying as recently as March and evidently reflects the recent improvement in banks’ conditions." Good to hear.

New Kindle anyone?

"Yet another example of the skewed gender politics in the world of technology in this sexually explicit software presentation at the GoGaRuCo (Golden Gate Ruby Conference) by Matt Aimonetti." Really, was it that explicit, the version that I saw was not really that bad. Tasteless and stupid yeah, but not quite as bad as they seem to make it out to be.

"O'Reilly Factor guest host Laura Ingraham presented clips of Al Gore's recent congressional testimony that had been edited to remove his statements that he donates the money he makes from his climate-related work to a non-profit organization."

"It's probably also the case that whether Republican party identification is in fact continuing to decline or merely flatlining at a low number is somewhat immaterial from the standpoint of the party's strategy." The Republican party has been losing people who identify with the party.

"A few weeks ago I was having lunch with a friend who is a very successful entrepreneur. He told me he'd been having some problems recently with American Express. They'd been denying charges and giving him all sort of grief. Our lunch turned into a support group. Because I've been having the same experiences. We shared our horror stories and I felt a bit better about it." Wow, considering the people that I know who use AmEx and what good feelings they have about the company, that's bad.

"Swine flu in Mexico, the epicentre of the world outbreak, has peaked, the Mexican health minister has said." That's pretty good news.

"Italian carmaker Fiat has confirmed for the first time that it is interested in a takeover of Opel – the German business of General Motors (GM)." Right after Fiat is in the process of buying out Chrysler. NYT talked about this last week.

FogBugz is apparently worse than 37Signals. See here for more info: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8hbte/37signals_stores_passwords_in_plaintext/c09afrh