Monday, August 31, 2009

It's time to embrace American royalty (salon)
Foreigner admissions to U.S. grad schools are way down (techcrunch)
It’s happening: Lou Dobbs’ dream come true and Silicon Valley’s worst nightmare. We’re already seeing the reverse brain drain as smart immigrants take their US educations and experience building companies and creating technology back to their home countries. But now, xenophobia and the lack of any sensible H-1B visa policy is keeping the world’s brightest minds from coming to the U.S. in the first place.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009



Personal space protector
Edward Kennedy, RIP
How did I miss wuchess.com - the world's only online Wutang hip-hop/chess portal?

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

The snakehead has nothing on this. Indiana fisherman catches pirahna. In Indiana.
Hard Crime rebrands Sherlock Holmes. Great cover!

Monday, August 24, 2009

The social history of the mp3 (pitchfork)

Thursday, August 20, 2009

A nice online James Ensor collection from the MoMA
Nice bike: Core77's Dutch Master
Why AT&T killed Google Voice (wsj)

Apple has an exclusive deal with AT&T in the U.S., stirring up rumors that AT&T was the one behind Apple rejecting Google Voice. How could AT&T not object? AT&T clings to the old business of charging for voice calls in minutes. It takes not much more than 10 kilobits per second of data to handle voice. In a world of megabit per-second connections, that's nothing—hence Google's proposal to offer voice calls for no cost and heap on features galore.

What this episode really uncovers is that AT&T is dying. AT&T is dragging down the rest of us by overcharging us for voice calls and stifling innovation in a mobile data market critical to the U.S. economy.


Tracking Dylan's talk
The Atlantic "makes a pilgrimage to Bob Dylan's hometown in search of the source of his bizarre accent."


Rat-eating plant discovered in Philippines
Boycott Fiji Water
(motherjones)
Finding new meaning in thrift store items at Significant Objects
EW embeds a video ad in print magazine. That had to be pretty pricey.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

5000th Daily Jive post!!
since blogger started tracking posts. Site has been up since 1999, and on blogger since '02. Here's to another 5000!

Your pal,
Joe

Target table

The Monster Cereal Blog is pretty self-descriptive
Despite his intentions to the contrary, Barney Frank does indeed argue with a dining room table. (youtube)

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

The Atlantic: How American Healthcare Killed My Father

Indeed, I suspect that our collective search for villains—for someone to blame—has distracted us and our political leaders from addressing the fundamental causes of our nation’s health-care crisis. All of the actors in health care—from doctors to insurers to pharmaceutical companies—work in a heavily regulated, massively subsidized industry full of structural distortions. They all want to serve patients well. But they also all behave rationally in response to the economic incentives those distortions create. Accidentally, but relentlessly, America has built a health-care system with incentives that inexorably generate terrible and perverse results. Incentives that emphasize health care over any other aspect of health and well-being. That emphasize treatment over prevention. That disguise true costs. That favor complexity, and discourage transparent competition based on price or quality. That result in a generational pyramid scheme rather than sustainable financing. And that—most important—remove consumers from our irreplaceable role as the ultimate ensurer of value.
citysounds.fm - a city-by-city survey of current music
thegreatflu.com - online flu pandemic video game.
New low of PETA offensiveness? That should only last a week or so.

Monday, August 17, 2009

The Swiss Menace
NYTimes Paul Krugman on how Obama's healthcare plan would look less like Soviet socialism and more like the plan that Switzerland has in place.

If we were starting from scratch we probably wouldn’t have chosen this route. True “socialized medicine” would undoubtedly cost less, and a straightforward extension of Medicare-type coverage to all Americans would probably be cheaper than a Swiss-style system. That’s why I and others believe that a true public option competing with private insurers is extremely important: otherwise, rising costs could all too easily undermine the whole effort.

But a Swiss-style system of universal coverage would be a vast improvement on what we have now. And we already know that such systems work.


Thursday, August 13, 2009

North Korea's Dollar Store (vanityfair)

Office 39, North Korea’s billion-dollar crime syndicate, pays for Kim Jong Il’s missiles and cognac. Why did the Bush White House choose not to shut it down?


Les Paul, RIP

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

100 Photographs of Hiroshima taken in the days after the bombing in 1945
(designobserver)

Monday, August 10, 2009

Robots to get their own operating system (newscientist)
I knew it. Bush was batshit.

Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.

Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.


Friday, August 07, 2009

You do not have health insurance (baseline scenario)

That’s why, when shopping for insurance, you are supposed to look for a company that is financially sound – so they will be there when you need them.

If, like most people, your health coverage is through your employer or your spouse’s employer, that is not what you have. At some point in the future, you will get sick and need expensive health care. What are some of the things that could happen between now and then?


Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Japan's robot ramen chefs
pr*ttysh*tty - highlighting bad design with a focus on corporate rebranding.

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Lowest of the low: Scary Republican "info"-graphic on healthcare reform (hosted, of course, by brownshirt provocateur foxnews)
Meanwhile, the wsj has seen the enemy in the Dem's difficult battle to win mindshare in overhauling our broken healthcare system, and it is us.
Interesting NYTimes interactive graphic on how Americans of different demographics spend every minute of every day.
Further guaranteeing her unemployablity, a recent grad has sued her alma mater because she's unemployable.

She suggested that Monroe's Office of Career Advancement shows preferential treatment to students with excellent grades. "They favor more toward students that got a 4.0. They help them more out with the job placement," she said.

Obviously not an English major.

Sunday, August 02, 2009

The 1930 Brough Superior SS100 motorcycle on Jay Leno's Garage (thanks, Mike!)

Saturday, August 01, 2009

BBC Four doc on Tony William's Factory Records (Durutti Column, Joy Division, Happy Mondays)
(google video 90mins)