July 2012
Analysis: Evidence for climate extremes, costs,... →
U.S. fears Syria preparing for massacre in Aleppo... →
President Bashar al-Assad’s forces renewed a ground and aerial bombardment of Aleppo on Friday, extending efforts to crush rebels in Syria’s commercial capital in what the United States said it feared could become a massacre.
Insurgents targeted army roadblocks and security installations, with both sides avoiding close-quarters warfare in the city of 2.5 million people,...
“Consists of (i) 1,849,036 shares of Class A-1 Common Stock owned by
Bain...”
– Campaign 2012: That’s some footnote… | footnoted.com
Since we know a thing or two about SEC filings, we thought we’d try to clear the air [around the filings indicating when Romney left Bain Capital], or at least shed some new light. In doing so, we came across a very complicated footnote in this...
WatchThe Trailer Park | POWDER Magazine
Ski movie trailer season—in July, of course. These production companies are getting good. TGR’s my favorite since you learn stuff, too. And there’s an ice-wall 360 hand-plant or two. (Via my brother, naturally.)
How Much Has Citizens United Changed the Political... →
The reason for this exponential leap in political spending, if you talk to most Democrats or read most news reports, comes down to two words: Citizens United. The term is shorthand for a Supreme Court decision that gave corporations much of the same right to political speech as individuals have, thus removing virtually any restriction on corporate money in politics. The oft-repeated narrative of...
From the forthcoming debut LP “The...
Syria regime officials killed in Damascus attack
breakingnews:
AP:
A suicide bomber struck the National Security building in the Syrian capital Wednesday, killing the defense minister and President Bashar Assad’s brother-in-law - the harshest blow to the Syrian regime since the uprising began.
Syrian state-run TV says the blast came during a meeting of Cabinet ministers and senior security officials in Damascus, where four straight days of...
Mitt Romney's 'Merit-Based Society' - NYTimes.com →
Rather remarkable piece for its wide-angle (somewhat partisan) POV:
Richard Freeman, an economist at Harvard, argued in an email to the Times that a merit based system can quickly convert into an entrenched hierarchy as a result of the accumulation of excessive wealth and income:
The greatest danger is that high inequality creates a society in which wealthy ‘crony capitalists’ dominate...
Are Millennials the Screwed Generation? - Newsweek... →
The screwed generation also enters adulthood loaded down by a mountain of boomer- and senior-incurred debt—debt that spirals ever more out of control. The public debt constitutes a toxic legacy handed over to offspring who will have to pay it off in at least three ways: through higher taxes, less infrastructure and social spending, and, fatefully, the prospect of painfully slow growth for the...
“Corn sex is complicated. As Michael Pollan observes in “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,”...”
– Opening to “The Big Heat” by Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker. Chilling (no pun intended). Scary. Necessary. It’s short. Read it. (via changetheratio)
This is a lede.
(via motherjones)
A World Without Coral Reefs - NYTimes.com →
We have less of a handle on pollution. We do know that nutrients, particularly nitrogenous ones, are increasing not only in coastal waters but also in the open ocean. This change is accelerating. And we know that coral reefs just can’t survive in nutrient-rich waters. These conditions only encourage the microbes and jellyfish that will replace coral reefs in coastal waters. We can say, though,...
A Woman Scorned (by Fans) | Christopher Lirette →
Massacre Reported in Syria as Security Council... →
Syrian opposition activists said more than 200 people were killed in a Sunni village on Thursday by government forces using tanks and helicopters, which, if confirmed, would be the worst in a series of massacres that have convulsed Syria’s increasingly sectarian uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
We’re getting wildly differing assessments :... →
In the press room, the CNN producer is still on the conference call with the network executives. Within moments of having confirmed that the mandate was invalidated – a couple of seconds, at most – he reads two-thirds of the way down page 3 of the syllabus, “Chief Justice Roberts concluded in Part III-B that the individual mandate must be construed as imposing a tax on those who do not have...
“At one point, Mr. Romney declared that “I would probably bring in McKinsey,” the...”
– the last act of classic leadership considered as a service delivered by management consultants. shoot me… (via rickwebb.net)
Syria Comment » Archives » Wikileaks, Assad and... →
TheWikileak articlesare beginning to come out in greater numbers. At least one of the president’s emails discussed articles published on Syria Comment. –this is one, for example, is a comment by Elie Elhadj, who wrote about Syria’s very serious water crisis on the pages of SC –hereandhere.This is a small bit of the original article:
“Investment in irrigation agriculture, which uses huge...
Fat Humans Are The Equivalent Of An Extra Half... →
North America has just 6% of the planet’s population, but 34% of its biomass comes from obesity. For some perspective, Asia has 61% of the world’s population and just 13% of biomass from obesity.
WikiLeaks Releases 'Syria Files': 2.4 Million... →
futurejournalismproject:
Via Forbes:
The gargantuan new release, which WikiLeaks has titled the Syria Files, was announced in an event at the London Press Club Thursday morning by Sarah Harrison, a WikiLeaks staffer and sometimes-assistant to the group’s founder Julian Assange, who remains hidden in London’s Ecuadorean embassy seeking asylum to avoid extradition to Sweden to face questioning...
“Everyone knows that the key to winning as a big-time coach is keeping your...”
– Joe Paterno’s Legacy: Protect Players At All Costs by Frank Deford (via npr)
Is Our Patriotism Moral? - NYT →
Turing Centenary Speech (New Aesthetic) | Beyond... →
At its basis it’s an Alan Turing issue: what’s the relationship between the cognition systems of these artists, who are human beings, and the computational systems that are their means of artistic expression?
In some ways it’s a traditional art-critic problem, like with, say, two violinists. You’ve got the elderly virtuoso violin player who’s flawless but kind of sawing away, and his nephew the...
Internet Girls, Mad Men, and Why the 'Greatest'... →
Gawker, so YMMV.
This is the ugly side of the Greatest Generation. The time of Emmet Till‘s slaughter, and even before it, is the time in America for which Sorkin and Romney unthinkingly pine as being the best we can do, America at her pinnacle. They fetishize the old days as being some idyllic wonderland when everyone was strong, honest, and hardworking. They complain that they are too good and...
Syria Comment » Archives » What Came out of the UN... →
Beyond the commentary and analysis above, I have to also link NYT’s Watching Syria’s War browser app my colleagues put together. It’s online media from the conflict, what’s known about the context and what isn’t.
