links for 2009-06-15

"As President Obama and Congress intensify the push to overhaul health care in the coming week, the political and economic force of that industry is well represented in the financial holdings of many lawmakers and others with a say on the legislation, according to new disclosure forms." I can't say I'm that surprised.

"Up to 100 members of Iranian reformist groups have been arrested, accused of orchestrating violence after the disputed presidential election result." Depressing.

"That a new information technology could be improvised for this purpose so swiftly is a sign of the times. It reveals in Iran what the Obama campaign revealed in the United States. You cannot stop people any longer. You cannot control them any longer. They can bypass your established media; they can broadcast to one another; they can organize as never before." Twitter is the medium for the next revolution.

"Where Hovind is stupidly wrong is that he looks at that diagram, and baldly claims that the "concept of evolution has never gotten passed the Hypothesis stage". Ridiculous. All those papers being constantly published in the scientific literature are tests of the theory. The primary research literature is crammed full of tests of evolution, and more keep coming. You have to be profoundly ignorant of the state of biology to be able to make such a ludicrous claim." Well said.

"Even if we weather this increase, though, the problem won’t go away: unlike past oil spikes, which were the result of supply disruptions, today’s oil prices are driven mainly by the rise in demand from places like China and India, so, unless the economy falls back into the abyss, they’re unlikely to decrease sharply. What we’re hoping for is a Goldilocks solution, where the economy starts to boom again but the price of oil doesn’t. Perhaps we’ll get it. But, rather than leave so much of our fate to chance, we’d be better off doing what politicians always say they want to do: lessen the U.S. economy’s dependence on oil." You think?

"Then I.B.M. declared that it would back Linux with investment, research and marketing, and the technology moved swiftly into the corporate mainstream. Starting this week, I.B.M. is returning to the same playbook, introducing some initial products and services and a roadmap for its stable of corporate and government customers to comfortably embrace cloud computing." IBM takes on cloud computing for the enterprise market.

"For this is the third time in history that a major economy has found itself in a liquidity trap, a situation in which interest-rate cuts, the conventional way to perk up the economy, have reached their limit. When this happens, unconventional measures are the only way to fight recession. To sum up: A few months ago the U.S. economy was in danger of falling into depression. Aggressive monetary policy and deficit spending have, for the time being, averted that danger. And suddenly critics are demanding that we call the whole thing off, and revert to business as usual. Those demands should be ignored. It’s much too soon to give up on policies that have, at most, pulled us a few inches back from the edge of the abyss." Krugman argues for keeping up with the Obama plan more or less.

"It's examples like this that led to the newest project from New York-based photography duo Loreffrey. Their "Nipple Non Grata" series features shots of topless women whose nipples have been digitally removed in an effort to find out if censoring them does, in fact, desexualize the women." Interesting question. Somewhat NSFW depending on your place of business.

"ASHINGTON — The American Medical Association has long battled Democrats who oppose protecting doctors from malpractice lawsuits. But during a private meeting at the White House last month, association officials said, they found one Democrat willing to entertain the idea: President Obama."

"The next leader of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, Gen Stanley McChrystal, is due to take over command there. He takes over from Gen David McKiernan, who was sacked by the US defence secretary after one year and whose time coincided with a surge in violence. Afghan President Hamid Karzai told Gen McChrystal the priority would be to reduce civilian casualties." Fun times.

"When Google representatives recently invited dozens of prominent artists to contribute work to be featured on its new Web browser, the company enthusiastically sold the idea as an opportunity to have artwork shown to millions." Except Google wouldn't pay. Umm Google, seriously that's dumb.

You addicted to the internet?

"Iran is bracing for more protests over its presidential election results after defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi called for them to be annulled. His supporters are planning a large rally on Monday, after two days of unrest sparked by the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."

Hehe, The New Yorker Cartoon's because you know it's The New Yorker.

"This year marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s start of the war on drugs, and it now appears that drugs have won."

"Super small & simple plugin. When a user clicks a link, the link text changes to “Loading…” so the user doesn’t keep clicking. The link text is the only optional argument." Useful and open source, just the way I like it.

"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced he will back a Palestinian state – but only if it is completely demilitarised.
He said a Palestinian state must have no army, no control of its air space and no way of smuggling in weapons. In a landmark speech, weeks after the US president urged him to agree a two-state plan, he said the Palestinians must accept Israel as a Jewish state. Palestinian leaders reacted angrily, accusing him of sabotaging peace plans." The part of being demilitirized ok I get, but no control of it's air space and no way of smuggling in weapons is going to be hard for anyone to accept.

"The prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, on Sunday endorsed the principle of a Palestinian state alongside Israel for the first time, but on condition that the Palestinian territory is demilitarized and that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people. Responding to American pressure and reversing his earlier staunch opposition to Palestinian statehood, Mr. Netanyahu, who leads the conservative Likud Party, outlined his vision for peace in a much-anticipated policy speech that was meant in part as an answer to President Barack Obama’s historic address in Cairo earlier this month." That's a huge forward step from the right-wing of Israel politics.

"Europe's new billion-euro Herschel space observatory, launched in May, has achieved a critical milestone. The telescope has opened the hatch that has been protecting its sensitive instruments from contamination. The procedure allowed light collected by Herschel's giant 3.5m mirror to flood its supercold instrument chamber, or cryostat, for the first time." The next great telescope starts a working.

"The alleged top al-Qaeda financier in Yemen has been arrested, security officials say." Impressive.

"Twenty years ago CNN's coverage of Tienanmen Square made its reputation. If in twenty more years it has become consensus that real-time, online, crowdsourced media is the best place to keep up with current events, this incident could be an important part of that history unfolding."

"Yet even as word of the urban strife, seemingly led by those posting to Twitter, spread next around the world on news networks like the BBC, NPR, and the Times, CNN remained mostly mute." CNN didn't cover the Iran Election and the protesting thereby failing it's audience.

6 stages of technological grief.

"Over the past few months, TechCrunch has experienced the power of this micro-media firsthand as the percentage of traffic we get from Twitter has grown to the point that it is now our second largest source of outside traffic after Google. In the past 30 days, Twitter accounted for 9.7 percent of all traffic to Techcrunch.com, up from 1.8 percent six months ago. This is out of millions of visits. For us, and I’d argue increasingly for other large Websites as well, Twitter is not just about micro-media. The most powerful Tweets are those which point elsewhere. Or to put it another way, the shortened link may just be the most powerful type of micro-media there is. Those retweeted links are turning Twitter into a social broadcast media that rivals any other on the Web." The real potential of twitter as a traffic driver?

Selling laptops.

"But for many of the area’s non-Amish residents, the impasse represents a test case over whether laws will be bent in the face of religious principles." This is an interesting dilemma, I would generally say to let them do what they want, but in this case their religious beliefs are effecting other people and their health.

For Reagan's tax cuts it took about a 15 months before a drop in the enemployment (which went in that time from 7.5ish to 10.75ish).

"Tens of thousands of people have joined a rally in central Tehran to celebrate the re-election of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The president's closest opponent in the election, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, has lodged an official appeal against the result amid continuing angry protests. Security forces have arrested up to 100 members of reformist groups, accusing them of orchestrating the violence."