19 December 2009

Link roundup for 19 December 2009

Austrian cartoonist Manfred Deix has upset the Catholic Church.

The quality of insults is declining these days. Here are some good ones.

German food can be dangerous.

Here's the worst Christmas present ever.

Jon Stewart looks at Glenn Beck and gold.

This business will probably get a different kind of customers than it expects (sent by Ranch Chimp).

It's been a good week for topical humor.

Was God really such a hard act to follow?

These church signs contain much truth, inadvertently.

It's beginning to look a lot like fishmen (found via Mendip).

If you use Facebook, read this.

(O)ct(o)pus passes along a call for help.

Was Christine Cayton wrong to do what she did?

James Bain spent 35 years in prison for a crime it has now been proven he did not commit.

Cannonfire debunks the myth that Bill Clinton was responsible for de-regulating the banks.

Teabaggerdom has growing ties with reconstructionism.

A libertarian finds what may be the best health care in the world. Analysis here (I already did the fire thing), and read this too.

The hard-line right is still trashing the Republican party's hopes of winning elections.

Paul Krugman explains why the disappointing Senate health bill is still worth passing (if you get a registration screen instead of the article, Liberal Values re-posts some of Krugman's points here). Victoria Kennedy reminds us that lives are at stake (found via Oliver Willis, whose own views are worth reading). Those who seek to kill the bill are betraying the uninsured. Its flaws are basically the fault of one person and it's not Lieberman.

"Pro-life" is a misnomer.

The Copenhagen climate agreement reflects Obama's style of deal-making -- disappointing compared with what was hoped for, but still better than the status quo. I liked the cartoons here and here.

Deployment of clean-energy technology in the Third World will probably prove more important than official agreements.

An Irish bishop resigns.

Iranian opposition figure Mehdi Karroubi says that Ahmadinejad's administration will not last out its four-year term.

A member of the Iranian regime's brutal Basìj militia has defected to Britain, and gives an interview about the stolen election and the violence against protesters he saw.

An iceberg twice the size of Manhattan is heading toward Australia (sent by Ranch Chimp).

Bay of Fundie continues reporting from a creationist conference, with a cat video.

PZ Myers held a contest to write responses to two common creationist talking points. Here are the winning replies.

7 Comments:

Blogger mendip said...

Another nice collection - thanks. And the Church Signs link is a hoot!

19 December, 2009 06:19  
Blogger Eric said...

While I enjoy your link round-ups, the 'facebook panic' article is horse pucky. While facebook does allow search engine indexing, it only allows indexing of that which is already publicly visible(so only things anyone could find by searching facebook itself) and the option to allow indexing of your data is off by default as well.

19 December, 2009 08:48  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

According to the article, the default search engine accessibility options were recently changed in an underhanded and deceptive manner. That's something that users ought to be made aware of.

19 December, 2009 09:53  
Blogger Ranch Chimp said...

Good Morning Mr.Infidel!

Nice compilation of coarse ... I reckon what really got me going this morning was those damn political humor piece's compiled by Daniel Kurtzman ... I absolutely loved them!!

The story about Mr.Bain in Florida getting freed after 35 year's goes to show what is going on all over the nation ...especially even in Dallas County Texas ...several have been cut loose after DNA evidence came into play. And I know damn well that this run's rampant in our country, because I know how the system worx, and the prison industry and the money to be made off of incarceration ... especially those with low income folk's and juvenile's, there is also a big racket in that,that I'll spare you the detail's. This is also even though I have alway's been pro death penalty, simply for the sake of the victim's families, why I would like a freeze put on all death penalty conviction's in the state of Texas for one ...because Texas is one of the most corrupt of the bunch. All these guy's are happy when they get out and hold no grudge's,which is natural when you get freed from the concrete and steel ... but after your out on the street awhile ...it cant help to sink in what happened to you and how so many of your prime year's were taken ... I could go on and on since I dealt so much with the prison system and offender's, but I'll cap it.

Cannonfire on debunking of Clinton and deregulation. I havent kept up on that much... so that was interesting. For me the main culprit of deregulation disaster's in this last century would be GW Bush. I mean this crap goes back so long, if you recall what started the regulation policies after the Great Depression in the early 1930's, yet these financial boom and bust's seem to happen every goddamn 20 year's or so. The reason I posted so much about this myself...is because it is more dangerous now than the past strictly because of the interdependency internationally in today's economy, and how easy it is to set up ponzi scheme's on hedge fund's and so forth, I feel much more stricter regulation is needed today. And I am far from anti-business, I even voted for Bush. I am just more supportive of the smaller companies and investor's and believe in an even playing field... and what we have today is VERY uneven! That is also why I said that this whole system need's to collapse once and for all and just readjust and modify, it's a much different global market these day's and many new player's... and this continuing support for these to big too fail asshole's is going to get old with folk's ...I'll bet my paycheck that if many of these giant's failed ... it may be tough for a few year's ...but better in the longrun. The mindset with some of those who are for deregulation is that business is good .. to let business do what it does best, and gvmnt to stay out, that's the root of capitalism, but what's wrong is you simply cant police everywhere all the time either, and the insider shit that goes on is really very unfair to smaller investor's. Then you have folk's like Madeoff who was burning all the inverstor's from China to USA and in between, there were red flag's all over this guy for a goddamn decade presented even to the Hill ... and none of it was held on to.We can blame this crap on whoever till we are blue in the face ...but we need to do something.

Washington Post piece on clean tech to poorer nation's is a plus in my opinion.Actually I dont worry about China and India as much as I used to, I think they want to be major player's in the green tech movement, because it will be a big market,beside's, China has been trying to be less commi and more player, though they wont admit it. But folk's demand will be what the king's supply, it's not a one way street.

Thanx Guy .............

19 December, 2009 10:13  
Blogger Eric said...

Yes, according to the article. While I do find it entirely possible that the initial default setting was 'on'(facebook loves that as a default setting, or so says the number of useless email updates I get) I do have to point out once again that the data being oh-so-sneakily indexed is data that is set by the user to be public. How one can NOT be upset about such data being available from the search box at facebook.com but upset at it showing up at google.com is beyond me.
However, while it may be believable that for a short time indexing was on by default, it was indeed a short time because when the rumor of this swept around facebook, I instantly checked and it was off. This was the same day as said article. Is this sneaky? I don't know, one could say that, or one could call it a prompt fix of a mistake. Either way, I'll once again point out that article is wrong, and it is only public data that is being indexed. I've seen no evidence of private data being indexed. I have seen evidence of people being unaware of what they have set to be viewable by the public, but facebook has provided a handy link next to the option that will show you precisely what will be indexed should you choose to be indexed.

And of course I will also point out that if you're so paranoid of your personal data, and you use a website like facebook and put lots of personal data on it, you're suffering from some serious cognitive dissonance.

19 December, 2009 11:04  
Anonymous rita said...

Interesting & entertaining links. Loved the Austrian cartoons.

19 December, 2009 23:23  
Anonymous Hugo Grinebiter said...

Insults:
Point of information, the Gladstone-Disraeli exchange is misattributed. I know it as John Wilkes v. the earl of Sandwich, but Wiki says it's been attributed to all sorts, including Frenchmen. Older than Disraeli, anyway; but Dizzy, bless him, got off plenty of zingers of his own.

And the original "the pox" is a lot snappier than "unspeakable disease". A pox on euphemism!

25 February, 2010 04:25  

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