From the category archives:

The Current Situation

My Question About the Twitter/Facebook DDOSing

August 7, 2009
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When I read that Twitter and Facebook were attacked for the sake of targeting one guy, my first thought was “Who is this guy, Jason Bourne?”

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The Tragedy of the Coffee Shop

August 6, 2009
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Over at my Coffee and Code blog, I write about a topic close to home for me: cafe owners in New York, fed up with laptops users lingering but not buying anything, are shooing them away.

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The Toronto Garbage Song

August 4, 2009

The Toronto Garbage Strike of 2009 may be over (as might be David Miller’s reign come election time next year) and garbage collection is resuming today, but that’s no reason not have a song about it. The Toronto Star posted a story today about The Toronto Garbage Song (a.k.a. Flush Your Garbage), which was written [...]

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FOX News Doesn’t Know Where Iraq Is

July 28, 2009

In a comment to an earlier article of mine showing FOX News’ tendency to mislabel badly-behaving Republicans as Democrats, “RODAN” pointed me to this map of the middle east shown on FOX News in segment where Neil Cavuto interviewed John Bolton on Monday – note the country marked “Egypt”:

The problem is: that’s not Egypt, that’s [...]

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City of Toronto and Unions Made a Deal

July 27, 2009

…which means that if it’s ratified on Wednesday, the strike will well and truly be over. If that happens, garbage collection and other services provided by the people represented by CUPE Locals 416 and 79 could theoretically be back by Thursday. For reasons unknown and unfathomable to me, it has been said that services [...]

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“Because ‘White Male’ Equals Default Human ‘Normal’, See?”

July 15, 2009

Michael Tomasky nails the real issue of the Sotomayor confirmation hearings perfectly:
Greg Sargent makes a great point about Jeff Sessions getting his knickers all in a twist about the "wise Latina" comment. Sessions said to Sotomayor this morning:
You have evidenced, I think it’s quite clear, a philosophy of the law that suggests that the judge’s [...]

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Where Does the Money Go?

July 13, 2009

Here’s a chart that shows where the average American’s money goes (click to see it at full size):

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Iran is Taking Marc Stiegler’s Final Exam

June 25, 2009

Here’s another article that would normally just stay in my tech blog, Global Nerdy. However, it covers the intersection of life, politics and technology, which I think would also appeal to non-techies, which is why I’ve reposted it here. Enjoy!
Marc Stiegler
I met science fiction author, software developer and computer security guy Marc Stiegler at [...]

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FOX News’ Democratizing Effect

June 25, 2009

When missing Republican South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford turned up – he went missing last week, and it was thought he might be hiking the Appalachian Trail – he held a press conference in which he announced that he had been cheating on his wife. FOX News, when covering the story, did what it often [...]

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Ben Bernanke’s Commencement Speech for the 2009 Boston College Law Graduates

May 23, 2009

First, a quick “congratulations!” to my brother-in-law on graduating from Boston College’s School of Law! Law School ain’t easy, and graduating cum laude is even tougher. Well done – I salute you with a filet mignon on a flaming sword!
The graduation ceremony took place on the Boston College campus. BC has considerable “juice”, and [...]

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Then and Now

May 22, 2009

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Party Schools and Media Training

May 14, 2009

Forget whether or not you think Arizona State University’s decision not to give President Obama an honourary degree because he hasn’t achieved enough yet was a mistake. The real lesson to learn from the whole affair is that you should never do an interview with a journalist, even a “fake news show” journo, unless:

You’ve given [...]

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The First Celebrity Swine Flu Casualty

April 30, 2009

Found via Reddit.

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A Wall Street Trader Tells All

April 30, 2009

The Independent has a great article by former Wall Streeter Philipp Meyer titled American Excess: A Wall Street Trader Tells All. I’ve included some snippets from the article below, but you really should read the whole thing.

I didn’t fit the typical profile of a trader. I was an English major working on a novel [...]

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The New Republican Party Logo

April 30, 2009

It’s a much more appropriate animal than the elephant, and as you can see in this article, quite intelligently designed:

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