Climate denial activists’ parallel to anti-relativity movement of 1920s | Joss Garman

Climate denial activists’ parallel to anti-relativity movement of 1920s | Joss Garman: "“This world is a strange madhouse. Currently, every coachman and every waiter is debating whether relativity theory is correct. Belief in this matter depends on political party affiliation.”

So wrote Albert Einstein in a letter to his one time collaborator, the mathematician Marcel Grossmann in 1920."

TAPPED Archive | The American Prospect

TAPPED Archive | The American Prospect: "I'm not really a fan of beauty contests, but the tone and substance of the fever swamp's reaction to an Arab-American winning a beauty contest is at least useful for pointing out how some people's political opinions aren't based so much in questions of policy as anti-Muslim animosity. The level of anger is just so plainly disproportionate to the matter at hand as to be self-implicating. These people aren't worried about terrorism -- they're offended by the idea of Muslims being integrated into the most mundane and banal aspects of American society"

Jobs: Apple Offers 'Freedom from Porn' | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

Jobs: Apple Offers 'Freedom from Porn' | News & Opinion | PCMag.com: "'Yep, freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a changin', and some traditional PC folks feel like their world is slipping away.'"

The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment | The New York Review of Books

The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment | The New York Review of Books: "Many of Israel’s founders believed that with statehood, Jews would rightly be judged on the way they treated the non-Jews living under their dominion. “For the first time we shall be the majority living with a minority,” Knesset member Pinchas Lavon declared in 1948, “and we shall be called upon to provide an example and prove how Jews live with a�minority.”

But the message of the American Jewish establishment and its allies in the Netanyahu government is exactly the opposite: since Jews are history’s permanent victims, always on the knife-edge of extinction, moral responsibility is a luxury Israel does not have. Its only responsibility is to survive. As former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg writes in his remarkable 2008 book, The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From Its Ashes, “Victimhood sets you�free.”"

The man behind Abercrombie & Fitch - Salon.com

The man behind Abercrombie & Fitch - Salon.com: "Mike Jeffries, the 61-year-old CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, says 'dude' a lot. He'll say, 'What a cool idea, dude,' or, when the jeans on a store's mannequin are too thin in the calves, 'Let's make this dude look more like a dude,' or, when I ask him why he dyes his hair blond, 'Dude, I'm not an old fart who wears his jeans up at his shoulders.'"

Well, These New Zuckerberg IMs Won't Help Facebook's Privacy Problems

Well, These New Zuckerberg IMs Won't Help Facebook's Privacy Problems: "According to SAI sources, the following exchange is between a 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg and a friend shortly after Mark launched The Facebook in his dorm room:
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask.

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?

Zuck: People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don't know why.

Zuck: They 'trust me'

Zuck: Dumb fucks."

Op-Ed Columnist - Divorce and Abortion - Red States and Blue States - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - Divorce and Abortion - Red States and Blue States - NYTimes.com: "The teen pregnancy rate in blue Connecticut, for instance, is roughly identical to the teen pregnancy rate in red Montana. But in Connecticut, those pregnancies are half as likely to be carried to term. Over all, the abortion rate is twice as high in New York as in Texas and three times as high in Massachusetts as in Utah.

So it isn’t just contraception that delays childbearing in liberal states, and it isn’t just a foolish devotion to abstinence education that leads to teen births and hasty marriages in conservative America. It’s also a matter of how plausible an option abortion seems, both morally and practically, depending on who and where you are."

book notes

Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad ... By Stephen Fried


Part of the reason people liked to slaughter buffaloes en masse was to deny Indians their food supply

Pullman exclusively hired dark-skinned black men to provide service on his train cars. The idea seemed to be that these men would blend into the furniture in this enclosed environment. For blacks, these high-paying jobs provided the first entree into middle class.

book notes

Book Review - Ill Fares the Land - By Tony Judt - NYTimes.com: "But enough of the fact-slinging. The central problem with “Ill Fares the Land” is a classic fallacy of the liberal-left intelligentsia, more in Europe than in the United States. Call it the “Doctor State Syndrome.” The individual is greedy, misguided or blind. The state is the Hegelian embodiment of the right and the good that floats above the fray. But the state does not. It is a party to the conflict over “who gets what, when and how,” to recall Harold Lasswell’s definition of politics. It makes its own pitch for power; it creates privileges, franchises and clienteles. This is why it is so hard to rein in, let alone cut back. The modern welfare state creates a new vested interest with each new entitlement. It corrupts as it does good."