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starting from 5 May. Yeah.
Geek stuff
* PRNG for in your head
* >Creeks and Crawdads RPG
* David Brin's "Lungfish" is online. It's a cool SF story.
* Neanderthal DNA in humans after all?
* Debunking GRRM on Lovecraft and fanfiction. And complications about the usual MZB-based anti-fanfiction fable. Authors who block fanfiction.net but arguably write derivative fiction themselves. Butcher and Lackey change stance on fanfic.
* http://www.comicsalliance.com/2010/05/06/the-racial-politics-of-regressive-storytelling/
Economics and history stuff
* Housing bubble: Flatland vs. the Zoned Zone
* Mass. legal challenge to DOMA
* Canada, piracy, and copyright
* A link or two on Puerto Rico's finances and statehood. Author doesn't like it. Me, I moved from thinking they had a sweet deal to feeling more they should go for statehood when I realized the only tax they get out of is Federal income -- which as PR income levels they wouldn't be paying much anyway. They still get to pay payroll tax, despite not getting as much back from Medicare, or SSI, or as much Medicaid (admittedly costs are probably lower and 'aid is probably funded by income tax so getting any is a step up of sorts.) I suspect lack of statehood helps the PR elites more than the masses, apart from getting to have their own Olympic team.
* Engels and others predicting WWI
* Failure of Ireland's business-friendly taxes. (Also failure of Ireland to budget through a boom. I begin to think democracies need a separate body, like the Fed or a restricted Senate, whose sole job is to manage the overall size of the budget, authorize borrowing and rainy-day withdrawals, and changes to the tax code.)
* Interesting if badly written: Hawaii Democratic Revolution of 1954
* 19th century USA as single currency area, vs. the euro. Greece vs. California
Conservative stuff
* Katrina timeline
* The new gay stereotype.
* The rentboy scandal caused someone to say "I'm starting to get the impression that someone out there has a found a Death Note, only instead of killing you it makes you have ill-advised gay sex."
* Lieberman, Scott Brown, and Pelosi on stripping citizenship from terrorism suspects. Suspected
* Tea Party outs Bob Bennett. Bob Bennett, not conservative enough?
* Japanese wartime graffiti:
Kill the Emperor! Why does our fatherland dare to commit aggression? Stop the war. Kill the dumb emperor. Rid Japan of the war-mongering military. Anglo-American victory, Japanese-German defeat.
I am the child of someone killed in the war in North China. It is the army and navy ministers, starting with Tojo, who cruelly killed my precious family and elder brother on the battlefield. Fools! What do you mean by holy war and peace? Look at how miserable my family is. My father died in the desolate fields of North China. My brother is unemployed. My grandmother can barely swallow the wretched rice she is forced to eat. Our baby is skinny as a praying mantis and cries piteously. – letter addressed anonymously to Tojo in 1943.
In reports gathered by the political police, the Emperor was described as afool (baka), stupid fool (bakayaro), big stupid fool (daibakayaro), a spoiled child (bochan), figurehead (kazarimono), good-for-nothing (gokutsubushi), icon (guzo), and as ‘an expensive rubber stamp’ (keihi no kakura ingyo.)
- all from John Dower, Japan in War and Peace. Liberal ideals were actually quite widespread in Japan at various points, though often tied in with Japanese imperialism (to save them from themselves/the Western powers) in China and Korea
This got me up *to* 9 May.
Geek stuff
* PRNG for in your head
* >Creeks and Crawdads RPG
* David Brin's "Lungfish" is online. It's a cool SF story.
* Neanderthal DNA in humans after all?
* Debunking GRRM on Lovecraft and fanfiction. And complications about the usual MZB-based anti-fanfiction fable. Authors who block fanfiction.net but arguably write derivative fiction themselves. Butcher and Lackey change stance on fanfic.
* http://www.comicsalliance.com/2010/05/06/the-racial-politics-of-regressive-storytelling/
Economics and history stuff
* Housing bubble: Flatland vs. the Zoned Zone
* Mass. legal challenge to DOMA
* Canada, piracy, and copyright
* A link or two on Puerto Rico's finances and statehood. Author doesn't like it. Me, I moved from thinking they had a sweet deal to feeling more they should go for statehood when I realized the only tax they get out of is Federal income -- which as PR income levels they wouldn't be paying much anyway. They still get to pay payroll tax, despite not getting as much back from Medicare, or SSI, or as much Medicaid (admittedly costs are probably lower and 'aid is probably funded by income tax so getting any is a step up of sorts.) I suspect lack of statehood helps the PR elites more than the masses, apart from getting to have their own Olympic team.
* Engels and others predicting WWI
* Failure of Ireland's business-friendly taxes. (Also failure of Ireland to budget through a boom. I begin to think democracies need a separate body, like the Fed or a restricted Senate, whose sole job is to manage the overall size of the budget, authorize borrowing and rainy-day withdrawals, and changes to the tax code.)
* Interesting if badly written: Hawaii Democratic Revolution of 1954
* 19th century USA as single currency area, vs. the euro. Greece vs. California
Conservative stuff
* Katrina timeline
* The new gay stereotype.
* The rentboy scandal caused someone to say "I'm starting to get the impression that someone out there has a found a Death Note, only instead of killing you it makes you have ill-advised gay sex."
* Lieberman, Scott Brown, and Pelosi on stripping citizenship from terrorism suspects. Suspected
* Tea Party outs Bob Bennett. Bob Bennett, not conservative enough?
* Japanese wartime graffiti:
Kill the Emperor! Why does our fatherland dare to commit aggression? Stop the war. Kill the dumb emperor. Rid Japan of the war-mongering military. Anglo-American victory, Japanese-German defeat.
I am the child of someone killed in the war in North China. It is the army and navy ministers, starting with Tojo, who cruelly killed my precious family and elder brother on the battlefield. Fools! What do you mean by holy war and peace? Look at how miserable my family is. My father died in the desolate fields of North China. My brother is unemployed. My grandmother can barely swallow the wretched rice she is forced to eat. Our baby is skinny as a praying mantis and cries piteously. – letter addressed anonymously to Tojo in 1943.
In reports gathered by the political police, the Emperor was described as afool (baka), stupid fool (bakayaro), big stupid fool (daibakayaro), a spoiled child (bochan), figurehead (kazarimono), good-for-nothing (gokutsubushi), icon (guzo), and as ‘an expensive rubber stamp’ (keihi no kakura ingyo.)
- all from John Dower, Japan in War and Peace. Liberal ideals were actually quite widespread in Japan at various points, though often tied in with Japanese imperialism (to save them from themselves/the Western powers) in China and Korea
This got me up *to* 9 May.
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no subject
Date: 2010-06-12 19:21 (UTC)From:Thank you for that laugh-out-loud moment of the morning!
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Date: 2010-06-13 06:58 (UTC)From: