Miscellaneous: November 2014 Archives
Huh, Google Fonts is pretty kewl.
http://www.google.com/fonts#ChoosePlace:select 
Someone just told me that the Republicans trying to defeat President Obama's policies isn't "governing." Well ... yeah. Only the executive governs. Obama is the President. He governs. The GOP -- in the federal context -- has no executive power, and therefore does not govern.
Shouldn't everyone know this?
My favorite part of Obama's speech last night is where he said this:
"To those members of Congress who question my authority to make our immigration system work better, or question the wisdom of me acting where Congress has failed, I have one answer: Pass a bill."
This argument can be read in the form of: "To people who say 'A' or 'B', I say: 'yo mama.'" It's a complete non sequitur. It has no power of reason or logic behind it.
But it's worse than that, in a way: because Obama is literally saying that it does not matter if he is violating the Constitution. He is saying that if Congress doesn't act, then they somehow lose standing to assert that he can't break the law.
I don't think Obama is violating the Constitution -- and I agree that we should have some sort of comprehensive immigration reform, and I was disappointed that the House GOP didn't do that, just as I am disappointed that Obama and the Democrats didn't even attempt to do anything until last year -- but this is just another example of President Obama hating the rule of law. Rule of law is not about what the law is, it's about your willingness to be bound by the law rather than doing whatever you want, and Obama is saying -- in no uncertain terms -- what I've been saying of him all along: that he does not care what the law requires of him, or prohibits to him. The ends justify the means.
President Obama hates the rule of law, and loves the rule of man ... especially when he is The Man. And for a Democratic Party that (mostly incorrectly) complained about Bush's "imperial presidency," it's startling to see them cheerlead Obama's massive expansion of Presidential overreach.
President Obama displayed years of frustration with congressional gridlock as he asserted the powers of the Oval Office to reshape the nation’s immigration system.
Obama is asking illegal aliens to register, telling them they will not be deported, but that promise is only good for two years. After he leaves office, the next President could deport everyone who registered. They should think on it long and hard before they decide to open themselves up to deportation by registering.
My pet peeve: people pronouncing the "k" in "a.k.a."
Jonathan Gruber Embraced Misleading the Public About Obamacare Even While It Was Still Being Debated
In the week since video surfaced of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber saying that "lack of transparency" and "the stupidity of the American voter" were
Clearly, the Patriots should have caught this before posting it. That's ridiculous.
But even more ridiculous is that The Independent put a "[sic]" after the word "apologize," implying that there is something incorrect about the spelling or use of the word. British language fascists!
The New England Patriots have apologised after a gesture on Twitter to celebrate their 1,000,000th follower saw the NFL franchise create a shirt for a user with the Twitter handle ‘@IHATEN****RSS’.
This is great. Too bad I didn't see it before the election; maybe it could've been used to convince people to vote against it. Regardless, it shows what we've known all along: not only is I-594 very complex, but it criminalizes what almost everyone considers to be legitimate activity.
Here's what Shark Tank star Mark Cuban has to say about Net Neutrality and the push to regulate the Internet under Title II of the Telecommunications Act.
Entrepreneur, NBA team owner, and Shark Tank star Mark Cuban has this to say about Net Neutrality and the push to regulate the Internet under Title II
Chaparral is BACK!
One of the most famous names in motorsport returns to the track for the Vision Gran Turismo project.
PSA from Fred Armisen about Steve Taylor & The Perfect Foil.
Our friend Fred shares some wise words and plays some cool chords.
"... call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for the thing to pass."
-- Jonathan Gruber, President Obama's architect of the Affordable Care Act
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Jonathan Gruber was, by most accounts, one of the key figures in constructing the Affordable Care Act,
Supporters of I-1351 are correct: its passage sends the signal WA needs better education. How else to explain passage of an initiative that will make education cost more, without improving it at all?
"The last pieces are finally falling into place. After years of design and implementation, 2015 will be the year that Perl 6 officially launches for production use.
"In this talk, [Larry Wall] the creator of Perl reflects on the history of the effort, how the team got some things right, and how it learned from its mistakes when it got them wrong. But mostly how a bunch of stubbornly fun-loving people outlasted the naysayers to accomplish the extraordinary task of implementing a language that was so ambitious, even its designers said it was impossible. Prepare to be delightfully surprised."
In this talk, the creator of Perl reflects on the history of the effort, how the team got some things right, and how it learned from its mistakes when it got them wrong. But mostly how a bunch of stubbornly fun-loving people outlasted the naysayers to accomplish the extraordinary task of ...
Nate Silver's analysis misses a big point: just because the final polls were off from the final result doesn't mean the polls are wrong.
Polls are a snapshot in time, and things change between the final poll and the actual election. Case in point is Virginia, where the final polls showed a big gap, but over the next few days, internal polling by the parties reported a significant closing of the gap. It could very well be that the polls weren't wrong, but that people changed their minds in the closing days.
In elections that are big for (or against) a particular party, you tend to have lots of folks who are undecided go for that party, or even people who were decided for one party switch to that party, in the final days. That may be part of why 538 reports the polls were skewed GOP in 1998, 2006, and 2012 (significant anti-GOP years), and skewed Dem in 1994, 2002, and 2014 (significant anti-Dem years): not because of "herding" but because of voting behavior.
The interesting thing to me is that all the biggest anti-party years are midterms, except 2012.
For much of this election cycle, Democrats complained the polls were biased against them. They said the polls were failing to represent enough minority voters and applying overly restrictive likely...
"... many of the possible high-energy physics experiments and astronomy observations relevant to cosmology are now in essence nearly complete. ... barring something very unforeseen, the possible tests of the very large and the very small are coming towards the limits of whatever will be possible." -- George Ellis
Biologist Rupert Sheldrake, whom I interviewed in my last post, wasn't the only fascinating scientist I hung out with recently at Howthelightgetsin, a festival hosted by ...
Wow. PolitiFact's "Lie of the Year" in 2010 was not only true, but we knew it was true at the time.
They bemoan that "few in the press challenged their frequent assertion that under Obama, the government was going to take over the health care industry." But that's what happened. They say, "The phrase is simply not true." But it was, and is, true.
Politifcat says the phrase "conjures up" a system of government ownership, and that's why it's "incorrect." But while the phrase might mean that to some people, to me it just means control, and it's dishonest to say that something is "simply not true" based on subjective connotation rather than denotation. The fact is that at some point, government control becomes great enough that there is no practical distinction to whether the government actually owns the thing being controlled, and in my view -- and the view of many -- that is largely what the ACA does.
My favorite part is where they quote a professor saying, "The label 'government takeover' has no basis in reality, but instead reflects a political dynamic where conservatives label any increase in government authority in health care as a 'takeover.'"
I want to know what world they live in where government taking over control of something is not a "government takeover" of that thing.
In the spring of 2009, a Republican strategist settled on a brilliant and powerful attack line for President Barack Obama's ambitious plan to overhaul America's health insurance system. Frank Luntz, a consultant famous for his phraseology, urged GOP leaders to call it a
I am so into F1 that I will be watching the U.S. Grand Prix at 1:30 p.m. instead of the Patriots/Broncos game. But as soon as Lewis Hamilton crosses the finish line in first place, I'll start watching the game (on DVR delay).
Circuit of The Americas is a world-class destination for performance, education and business. It is the first purpose-built Grand Prix facility in the United States designed for any and all classes of racing, from motor power to human power, and is home to the FORMULA 1 UNITED STATES GRAND PRIXª while also hosting MotoGPª, V8 Supercarsª, GRAND-AM Road Racingª, American Le Mans and the World Endurance Championships.
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."
