links for 2009-07-13

"I just thought I should tell you because the fat man standing behind me at Starbucks today shouted it so loud into his cell phone that I figured he must have wanted all of you to know. He certainly wanted all of Starbucks to know." Rethink talking loud on your cell phone people.

"A gay couple says they were detained by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints security guards after one man kissed another on the cheek Thursday on Main Street Plaza." What happens when religion is allowed to police the general public?

"This is not one of those stories about old media going all-digital — The Chronicle, owned by the Hearst Corporation, still comes out daily on paper. But it has become the biggest newspaper in the country to outsource all of its printing, to Transcontinental Printing, a Canadian company that produces The Chronicle at a new plant in Fremont, Calif." Hint it won't help.

Creationist Response Dice Game.

Atheism is apparently dangerous, wtf sums it up.

"Mr. Fairey pleaded guilty to three charges of vandalism, including defacing property and wanton destruction of property under $250; 11 other charges were dropped. He was also fined $2,000 to pay for graffiti removal. Mr. Fairey was arrested in Boston in February as he arrived at the Institute of Contemporary Art for the opening-night party for a retrospective of his work."

Thank goodness the first was stupid and not really all that interesting, the second is much of the same.

A fascinating look at the legal battle for a single Senate seat.

Asbestos at Texas Tech.

"Want to cause chaos at an airport? Leave a suitcase in the restroom:"

"There is a communications revolution happening right now. It crosses generations, and it scares the absolute shit out of a lot of people who benefit from ignorance and the control of information." Wil Wheaton wrote this 2 years ago and he is still right.

"For the most part, the traditional news outlets lead and the blogs follow, typically by 2.5 hours, according to a new computer analysis of news articles and commentary on the Web during the last three months of the 2008 presidential campaign." Makes sense since most (though not all) blogs are adding commentary to news articles.

"Millions of Americans have bought musical ringtones, often clips from favorite popular songs, for their mobile phones. Mobile phone carriers pay royalties to song owners for the right to sell these snippets to their customers. But as part of a ploy to squeeze more money out of the mobile phone companies, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) has told a federal court that each time a phone rings in a public place, the phone user has violated copyright law. Therefore, ASCAP argues, phone carriers must pay additional royalties or face legal liability for contributing to what they claim is cell phone users' copyright infringement." ASCAP are morons.

Stats on Twitter including: "# 72.5% of all users joining during the first five months of 2009.
# 85.3% of all Twitter users post less than one update/day
# 21% of users have never posted a Tweet
# 93.6% of users have less than 100 followers, while 92.4% follow less than 100 people.
# 5% of Twitter users account for 75% of all activity"

"Nuclear negotiators from China and South Korea have opened talks in the South Korean capital, Seoul, about how to handle the threat from the North."

"After being scarce for the first couple of weeks following the new iPhone 3.0 software rolling out, apps with Push Notifications are now rolling out at a healthy clip. And that’s great, because the feature is really useful. To a point. The issue I’m noticing now is that if you have too many apps with Push Notifications turned on, the whole system becomes a lot less useful. You see, Push Notifications are basically Apple’s way to get around allowing third-party apps to run in the background of the iPhone. So apps can now send these push messages to your phone to let you know if there’s some kind of message or update that you should open an app for. But if you have a lot of push messages coming in, I’m finding that you either have to pull out your phone every couple minutes, or risk still missing notifications that you probably want to see." A failure of the system.

"The UK must invest more in nuclear and clean coal energy and put less emphasis on wind power if it wants a secure low-carbon future, business leaders say."

"Bing, the new Microsoft search engine, captured slightly more United States searches than Yahoo in the first eight days of June, according to StatCounter Global Stats, a firm that tracks Web use. That is a milestone for Bing, whose share of the search pie has been slowly rising since it was unveiled on June 3."

"The political news Web site Talking Points Memo this weekend completed a round of investment, of $500,000 to $1 million. The move is intended to increase the number of employees, to roughly 20, from the current 11, in the next 10 months."

"But interviews in Alaska and in Washington show that a seemingly relentless string of professional and personal troubles quickly put that goal out of reach. Almost as soon as she returned home, the once-popular governor was isolated from an increasingly critical Legislature. Lawmakers who had supported her signature effort to develop a natural gas pipeline turned into uncooperative critics. Ethics complaints mounted, and legal bills followed. During the campaign, an investigation by the Republican-dominated Legislature found that Ms. Palin had abused her office by leaning on subordinates to get her former brother-in-law fired from his job as a state trooper. She was forced to pay back taxes after it was disclosed that she had billed the state for thousands of dollars in per diem expenses meant to cover travel costs while staying in Wasilla. Still, of the 19 ethics complaints filed against her, most have been dismissed."

"Hundreds of ultra-orthodox Jews have clashed with police in Jerusalem for a third consecutive Saturday over a car park which opens on the Sabbath. The row has highlighted tensions between Jerusalem's ultra-orthodox Jews, known as Haredim, and the majority secular population. "

"The Church of England's ruling body, the General Synod, is to debate whether to reduce the number of bishops in a bid to save money. The plan's supporters say the Church could use teams of more junior parish clergy to do the work of bishops. But bishops say their workload is larger than ever and cutting their numbers would be problematic. There are currently 114 bishops in the Church of England, including the 44 most senior who head the country's dioceses. Together with deans and canons of cathedrals and archdeacons they make up a body of senior staff that has remained largely unchanged in number for 50 years. However, in the same period the number of junior clergy has plummeted and forced some parishes to merge."

"You may have heard that California is broke, and is sending out IOU slips instead of checks for income tax refunds. I thought that I would be safe as I usually owe taxes, but due to an amendment of my return, I ended up getting one in the mail as well. Here is a scan for historical preservation"

"Rosetta Stone Inc, a provider of language-learning software, said it filed a lawsuit against Google Inc in a U.S. federal court, alleging trademark infringement." Another lawsuit against Google's practice of allowing competitor's trademarks. Let me put this simply, Google is in the right, you should be able to purchase advertising against your competition even using their trademark.

"There is a strong link in obesity between mothers and daughters and fathers and sons, but not across the gender divide, research suggests. A study of 226 families by Plymouth's Peninsula Medical School found obese mothers were 10 times more likely to have obese daughters. For fathers and sons, there was a six-fold rise. But in both cases children of the opposite sex were not affected." Interesting.