Huckleberry Hart

#goodreads 30 May 2012

Wed, 30 May 2012 09:57:44 -0700

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel endorsed Scott Walker in his recall campaign. Readers responded in kind, filling up an entire page with letters criticizing the decision. You can read them here.

Three things we learned about Tony Blair’s relationship with the media | Oliver Wright | The Independent | 29 May 2012

According to the former British PM, he was only a business acquaintance with Rupert Murdoch — until he left office, that is. After that, the relationship became more personal, to the point where Blair became the godfather of Rupe’s daughter. Really.
Even when it was strictly a business relationship, Blair saw “nothing odd” about calling up Murdoch in the hours before the Iraq War began and giving him personal briefings on the mission. Because, you know, whatever! Just business.
Blair’s family has had its own struggles with the media. His wife, Cherie, reportedly has filed (or considered filing) over 30 lawsuits against media outlets in a five year period, in what Blair claims was a “personal vendetta.”

Negative Equity Visualization by Stamen Design and Zillow: Slick interactive infographic showing you what percentage of homes in your area are underwater.

All readers have prejudices. It’s futile to try to transcend them. So authors and publishers should take an easier route: trick the audience.

Spain’s Lost Generation: What Do You Do When Half Your Country’s Youth is Unemployed? | Jonathan Blitzer | The New Republic | 29 May 2012

The Globalisation of U.S. Special Operations Forces IPS News (Valissa)

#goodreads 29 May 2012

Tue, 29 May 2012 09:52:54 -0700

How FBI Entrapment Is Inventing ‘Terrorists’ - and Letting Bad Guys Off the Hook | Rick Perlstein | 15 May 2012

It’s a perfect example of how post-9/11 fear made law enforcement tactics seem acceptable that were previously beyond the pale. Previously, however, the targets have been Muslims; now they’re white kids from Ohio. And maybe you could argue that this is acceptable, if the feds were actually acting out of a good-faith assessment of what threats are imminent and which are not. But that’s not what they’re doing at all.

The spy who came in from the code | Mathieu Adkins | Columbia Journalism Review | May/June 2012

How a filmmaker accidentally gave up his sources to Syrian spooks

“I think that the journalism community in the US, and to some degree elsewhere, is just beginning to grasp the fact that they need to protect their information and, by extension, their sources,” said Frank Smyth, who is the senior adviser for journalist security at the Committee to Protect Journalists and also runs a private company, Global Journalist Security. “It’s just too easy to get in and lift their information or monitor their communications without them ever knowing they were compromised.”

Don’t Get Your Sources in Syria Killed | Eva Galperin/CPJ Guest Blogger | Committee to Protect Journalists | 21 May 2012

The al-Assad regime’s surveillance of telecommunications–cell phones, text messages, email, and Internet traffic–is remarkably extensive. Using equipment built in the West by companies such as BlueCoat, the Syrian government censors the Internet, blocks websites, and snoops on traffic using Deep Packet Inspection (DPI).

What Higher Education Should Look Like | Roshaun Paul | Stanford Social Innovation Review | 25 May 2012

Like so many present-day thought leaders, THNK believes that we are living in an era of accelerating change; that our technologies are moving our lives and bodies beyond our physical evolution’s capacity to keep up with the changes; that resources of all types are depleting faster than our political systems’ ability to address the losses; and that our education systems don’t help students prepare for these new realities.

Twenty academic studies on file-sharing that are mostly at odds with music industry’s claims.

Visualization.ch put together a selection of data visualization tools that they use the most and that they enjoy working with. It includes libraries for plotting data on maps, frameworks for creating charts, graphs and diagrams and tools to simplify the handling of data. Even if you’re not into programming, you’ll find applications that can be used without writing one single line of

#goodreads 28 May 2012

Mon, 28 May 2012 09:59:54 -0700

Cyberwar: China’s move discovered

Revolutionary hardware backdoor discovered in China-made military-grade FPGA chips. Claims were made by the intelligence agencies around the world, from MI5, NSA and IARPA, that silicon chips could be infected. We developed breakthrough silicon chip scanning technology to investigate these claims. We chose an American military chip that is highly secure with sophisticated encryption standard, manufactured in China. Our aim was to perform advanced code breaking and to see if there were any unexpected features on the chip. We scanned the silicon chip in an affordable time and found a previously unknown backdoor inserted by the manufacturer. This backdoor has a key, which we were able to extract. If you use this key you can disable the chip or reprogram it at will, even if locked by the user with their own key. This particular chip is prevalent in many systems from weapons, nuclear power plants to public transport. In other words, this backdoor access could be turned into an advanced Stuxnet weapon to attack potentially millions of systems. The scale and range of possible attacks has huge implications for National Security and public infrastructure.

New Zealand, Fresh From Its Service to Mexican Drug Lords, Helps Out the Russian Mafia | Richard Smith | 27 May 2012

Emergency weather alerts coming soon to a cell phone near you | Dan Stillman | Washington Post Capital Weather Gang | 23 May 2012 has a few more details.

Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) are a new service from U.S. weather service and FEMA. Starting in June, they will send a text message with a strange tone to your mobile device if you are in range of a Tornado Warning, Tsunami Warning or other major event (in the U.S. only). Major events include “Presidential Alerts.” You do not need to sign up.

You can identify poor neighborhoods from space | Grist

Next to U.S. firing range in Afghanistan, a village of victims | Kevin Sieff | Washington Post

But in the past year, civilians have been maimed and killed on or near NATO firing ranges in provinces of Ghazni, Paktia and Kabul, according to MACCA. One of the agency’s incident reports, obtained by The Washington Post, includes graphic photos of a de-miner taken seconds after an American 40mm grenade tore off his arm and leg while he was clearing Russian anti-personnel mines near a range in Kabul.

Three things we can do to keep survey research relevant for democracy:

1. Remember why random samples are important

2. Defend yourselves (and others) in the industry

3. Promote transparency in the use of the new methods… and the old ones

Survey Research, Its New Frontiers and Democracy | Scott Keeter | Pew Research | 24 May 2012

#goodreads 27 May 2012

Sun, 27 May 2012 09:40:00 -0700

Criminals have electronically filed thousands of false tax returns with made-up incomes and withholding information and have received hundreds of millions of dollars in wrongful refunds.

From 2008 to 2011, the number of returns filed by identity thieves and stopped by the I.R.S. increased significantly, officials said. Last year, it was at least 1.3 million, said Steven T. Miller, deputy commissioner for services and enforcement at the agency.
This year, with only 30 percent of the filings reviewed so far, the number is already at 2.6 million. The bulk are related to identity theft, Mr. Miller said.

With Personal Data in Hand, Thieves File Early and Often | Lisette Alvarez | The New York Times | 26 May 2012

Introducing XOXO – Waxy.org

“Who knew people were so interested in commas?” Ben Yagoda has written three NYT pieces on correct comma usage: Fanfare for the Comma Man, The Most Comma Mistakes, and Some Comma Questions.

At Clifton’s Cafeteria, someone left a light on. For 77 years. A downtown Los Angeles landmark, the Clifton’s Cafeteria, has a storied past. Recently sold, it was established during the Great Depression, with a mission to provide affordable coffee and food - a pledge that was honored for decades. While remodeling, the new owners made an astonishing discovery: hidden behind a partition, a neon lamp that was switched on during the Great Depression and it’s been on, continuously for 77 years. The owner estimates it’s generated more than $17,000 in electric bills. [LATimes]

“Louisiana is the world’s prison capital. The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its U.S. counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana’s incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran’s, seven times China’s and 10 times Germany’s. The hidden engine behind the state’s well-oiled prison machine is cold, hard cash.” Louisiana Incarcerated is a tour de force eight-part series on the Louisiana prison system. NYTimes op-ed.]

The E-Book Wars: Amazon Versus the Rest. Publishers, distributors, booksellers, and authors weigh in on Amazon’s ever-increasing presence and influence in the electronic publishing world. The author also takes a stab at forecasting the future for the major players in the e-book industry.

#goodreads 26 May 2012

Sat, 26 May 2012 07:58:16 -0700

David Lowery on the Internet illusion of internet democracy.

In the last few years it’s become apparent the music business, which was once dominated by six large and powerful music conglomerates, MTV, Clear Channel and a handful of other companies, is now dominated by a smaller set of larger even more powerful tech conglomerates. And their hold on the business seems to be getting stronger.

Meet The New Boss, Worse Than The Old Boss? | David Lowery | The Trichordist | 15 April 2012

New Orleans, newspapers and the beginning of the end | Mathew Ingram | GigaOm | 25 May 2012

David Carr on the media:

The other thing is, now that there’s Twitter and the fights over scoops … no one cares. When the metrics of scoops get down to seconds and milliseconds, I don’t think it’s meaningful.

TPM Interview: New York Times Media Columnist David Carr | David Taintor | @TPM | 25 May 2012

None of the directors on JPMorgan’s risk committee have worked at a bank or as financial risk managers.

Researchers push for end to publishers’ default ban on computer scanning of tens of thousands of papers to find links between genes and diseases

some of the commercial restrictions from publishers seemed not only to be restricting access to the scientific community, but also hindering the work of researchers. “Elsevier needs to take a much harder look at what it is doing to work well with the academic community at large, since it believes that its future lies in tapping the funding for science,” he wrote.

Text mining: what do publishers have against this hi-tech research tool? | Alok Jha | Guarian | 23 May 2012

To keep you going through campaign season, campaignsick.tumblr.com.

#goodreads 25 May 2012

Fri, 25 May 2012 13:50:00 -0700

#Grexit stage left: @mjbommar visualizes the online discussion around Greece’s possible Euro exit. /@rrichard09

Chris Matthews and Newt Gingrich.

MATTHEWS, impatiently: OK, favorite snake.

GINGRICH: Uh, probably a python.

MATTHEWS: Why? It’s a constrictor, right?

GINGRICH: It’s big and passive. It sits there.

Chris Matthews and Newt Gingrich: The Most Entertaining (and Reptile-Centric) Political Interview Ever | Molly Ball | The Atlantic | 24 May 2012

On the Front Line: The Collected Journalism of Marie Colvin 1986-2012 | guardian.co.uk | 19 May 2012

Forget Rachel, Bill, Anderson, and Sean. The broadcaster who will most determine the 2012 elections is Jorge Ramos.

“We are constantly balancing domestic and international stories that cover the home countries of our viewers,” he says. “If we don’t include these stories, they wouldn’t watch us. They could go someplace else.”

The Anchor | Laura M. Colaruss | washingtonmonthly.com

Andy Carvin (@acarvin) interviewed by Mathew Ingram (@mathewi) at Mesh.

Mathew: You were posting faster than news media do. They do more verification.

Andy: Which is why I get uncomfortable when people prefer my twitter feed as a newswire. It’s not a newswire. It’s a newsroom. It’s where I’m trying to separate fact from fiction, interacting with people. That’s a newsroom.

[2b2k][mesh] Andy Carvin | David Weinberger | hyperorg.com | 24 May 2012

How French theorist Roland Barthes gave us the modern TV recap.

Can trees deter crime?

#goodreads 24 May 2012

Thu, 24 May 2012 10:00:00 -0700

Madeline Albright’s life as a diplomat is somehow less exciting than her family’s remarkable history.

Born in Prague in 1937, Albright was the eldest child of Joseph and Anna Korbel. Her father was press attaché to the Czech delegation assigned to Belgrade, where she spent most of her first year. As tensions mounted, Madeleine and her parents returned to Prague, and then, in 1939, escaped to England.

Review: Albright’s ‘Prague Winter’ mixes the personal, historical | Carolyn Kellogg | LA Times | 13 May 2012

Hockey fans throwing weird stuff on the ice. | John Metcalfe | The Atlantic Cities | 12 May 2012

Readlist is a group of web pages—articles, recipes, course materials, anything—bundled into an e-book you can send to your Kindle, iPad, or iPhone.

Screens

A very comfortable interview with Bill Murray in anticipation of Moonrise Kingdom.

“I don’t like to have a situation placed over my head.”

Matthew Weiner of Mad Men, Vince Gilligan of Breaking Bad and David Milch of Deadwood talk to GQ about writing for television.

“TV is where writers get to tell interesting stories right now, because writers, for the most part, run television.”

The New Rules of TV everything you need to know about the Golden Age of Television.

RULE 1. NO CHANNEL SURFING

#goodreads 23 May 2012

Wed, 23 May 2012 09:50:38 -0700

Twitter is really revolutionizing Bollywood.

Twitter represents for these celebrities a certain refuge from both the constraints that held them back. It maintains a comfortable distance from the media and its manipulations and, simultaneously, from the diktats of propriety—because, presumably, unless it is said to the press, it is not official. But the truth is that their audience, following their beloved stars in lakhs-strong throngs, is watching them closely and judging them by their tweets.

Is Twitter changing the Hindi film industry’s long-held moral code? | Snigdha Poonam | Caravan Magazine | May 2012

Bad times at the top of the world.

The scene here over the last couple of days has resembled the aftermath of a battle.

Four confirmed dead in two days on Everest | Grayson Schaffer | Outside Online | 21 May 2012

The number of children biking to school has diminished to the point that at least one school wouldn’t allow them on campus.

“A story like Jaycee Dugard’s will always loom larger in our brain than statistics. We live in a society that tells parents if they aren’t afraid every second of the day, they aren’t good parents—and the magical way to keep [kids] safe is to worry about them all the time. Many places now won’t allow a bus to drop a kid off unless a parent is waiting at the bus stop.”

Why Johnny Can’t Ride | David Darlington | Bicycling | 2012 April 27

Oglala Sioux tribe Attorney General Rae Ann Red Owl, Discussing the South Dakota tribe’s unusual method of sentencing people convicted of crimes in the community.

“It’s a lot like a talking circle. Everybody gets a chance to talk without interruption. It’s done in a respectful way. It’s confidential.”

How Gawker wants to monetize comments.

Denton’s vision for Gawker Media’s editorial product is very much moving towards comments and away from posts, and he reckons that advertisers will follow him in that direction if he blazes the trail. Expect Gawker’s blog posts to get shorter, in future, and sometimes just be a headline, at least in the first instance, so that the conversation can get going before a pretty post can be put together. And if Denton’s scheme goes according to plan, when you follow a link to a Gawker website, it will often — or maybe even usually — be a link to a comment, rather than to an original post. Eventually, it’s possible to envisage a world where the distinction between the two is erased completely.

How Gawker wants to monetize comments | Felix Salmon | Reuters | 22 May 2012

Kickstarted: Om Malik interview Kickstarter co-founder Perry Chen.

“Members of the class of 2012 … You’re f*cked” – Robert Reich

SIGGRAPH 2012 : Technical Papers Preview Trailer (by...

Tue, 22 May 2012 23:11:19 -0700

SIGGRAPH 2012 : Technical Papers Preview Trailer (by ACMSIGGRAPH)

Wild. The SIGGRAPH Technical Papers program is the premier international forum for disseminating new scholarly work in computer graphics and interactive techniques. SIGGRAPH 2012 brings together more than 20,000 professionals from 5 continents, 5-9 August 2012 in Los Angeles, California, USA. Learn more at www.siggraph.org/s201

#goodreads 22 May 2012

Tue, 22 May 2012 09:57:13 -0700

Your Brain on Facebook | David Rock | Harvard Business Review | May 18th, 2012

By way of The New Inquiry:

Congressional Data: conservative outside money 4X greater than liberal. [@WashingtonPost, /@FrankPasquale,
Search as speech; the irony of free speech; the tragedy of free speech. [/ @FrankPasquale]
OccupyData. [/@FrankPasquale]
When high tuition drives resident students away: …university dependence on private money — student tuition in particular — has pushed a huge portion of the higher ed sector into manipulating exactly the young people they are charged to enlighten.
Former terror suspect graduates from college. [Daily Beast]
How FBI Entrapment Is Inventing ‘Terrorists’ – and Letting Bad Guys Off the Hook [Rolling Stone]
Bumper sticker of the month: MY OTHER CAR IS A STUDENT LOAN.
Inside Halden, the most humane prison in the world. [Guardian]

#goodreads 21 May 2012

Mon, 21 May 2012 08:50:35 -0700

Being a journalist in Mexico can be deadly. [@TheAtlanticWire]

In China, Fear At The Top | Roderick MacFarquhar | NYT | 20 May 2012

Why has ownership of wealth become so important for the Chinese elite? It’s not just an economic cushion, or pure greed. “One answer surely is that they lack confidence about China’s future.” It’s a political hedge

All The World Is Staged | Brett Forrest | ESPN | 18 May 2012

World’s most popular sport is deeply corrupt. Football (soccer) “match fixing has become a massive worldwide crime, on par with drug trafficking, prostitution and the trade in illegal weapons.” A key fixer says he’ll lift the lid.

Chinese students are tapping IVs to help them study.

Wrongful Convictions: A New Exoneration Registry Tests Stubborn Judges | Andrew Cohen | The Atlantic | 21 May 2012

A joint project administered by the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, the Registry profiled 873 specific cases of exoneration from 1989 through March 1, 2012. Not surprisingly, most of the men and women who were wrongfully convicted (61 percent) were black or Hispanic. As a group, the 873 exonerated defendants spent more than 10,000 years in prison — an average of more than 11 years each. And of the 873 exonerees, nearly half, 416 to be exact, were wrongly convicted of murder. Of those, 101 were sentenced to death.

Real big data: From the year 2003 and working backwards to the beginning of human history, we generated, according to IBM’s calculations, five exabytes–that’s five billion gigabytes–of information. By last year, we were cranking out that much data every two days. By next year, predicts Turek, we’ll be doing it every 10 minutes. […] It’s the latest example of technology outracing our capacity to use it. In this case, we haven’t begun to catch up with our ability to capture information, which is why a favorite trope of management pundits these days is that the future belongs to companies and governments that can make sense of all the data they’re collecting, preferably in real time. [Smithsonian]

The patent wars are nothing new, but, in the technology sector, they stand to have a significant impact on the future of innovation.

A recent report reveals that an average woman working full time from the age of 18 to 59 years is estimated to lose out on £361,000 over the course of her working life compared with an equivalent male. This article considers the implementation in the UK of the Equality Act 2010 and its impact. [SAGE]

The Gobi March: 250 kilometers spread over seven days, where runners carry everything they need themselves.

#goodreads 20 May 2012

Sun, 20 May 2012 11:42:53 -0700

“When people realize they’re being listened to, they tell you things.”—Richard Ford, whose dyslexia forces him to listen more closely when people are talking

More…

Six Degrees of Aggregation | Michael Shapiro | Columbia Journalism Review | May 2012

Jonah Peretti on Arianna Huffington: “She makes her weak ties feel like strong ties.” And that, he recognized, “creates a large network of all kinds of people who feel close to you. That’s really important for power.”

20-somethings go home to regroup | Sonia Krishnan | The Seattle Times | 19 May 2012

Because that is how they got here. Cannonballed from university life into the recession. Rejected from jobs they never imagined they’d want.

At USA Today, Larry Kramer jumps back into fray of digital journalism | Steven Mufson | washingtonpost.com

“You have got to have original content in tone or voice, otherwise you’re spinning your wheels. Don’t give me two paragraphs on the Giants game. Tell me what’s wrong with that pitcher’s arm.”

Why Kael is Good for You | Armond White | Columbia Journalism Review | April 2012

Mainstream criticism today misses an authoritative voice that can demolish sacred cows and build a case for unappreciated artists—or, maybe to put it another way, a critic who is respected rather than scorned for his or her idiosyncratic tastes. Attaching the contrarian label to Kael suggests a willful attempt to dismiss her judgments and criticisms as arbitrary; different just for the sake of being different. And in so doing, the reviewers avoid having to grapple with what she actually represented.

Pacifists in the Cross-Fire: The Kabul Hospital That Treats All Sides | Luke Mogelson | New York Times | May. 20, 2012

What is our responsibility to the Afghans who are maimed, burned, disabled and disfigured by a war we started and can’t seem to end?

Can London Afford the $14.5 Billion Price Tag of the Summer 2012 Olympic Games? | Michael Joseph Gross | Vanity Fair | June 2012

London must set aside, and pay for, 40,000 hotel rooms, including 1,800 four- and five-star rooms for the I.O.C. and its associates, for the entire period of the Games. London must cede to the I.O.C. the rights to all intellectual property relating to the Games, including the international trademark on the phrase “London 2012.”

1932 promotional film for Sonoma County poultry industry featuring young women making an extremely large omelet.

Sat, 19 May 2012 15:31:09 -0700

1932 promotional film for Sonoma County poultry industry featuring young women making an extremely large omelet.

#goodreads 19 May 2012

Sat, 19 May 2012 08:16:39 -0700

Israel in Peril | David Shulman | The New York Review of Books

How the Jewish state is hastening its own demise.

How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet |Mat Honan | Gizmodo

What happens when a nimble startup gets gobbled up by a behemoth that doesn’t share its values.

Blogger Shines Light on U.S. Shadow War in East Africa | Wired

If you are very lucky you may see a fire rainbow once or twice in your life.

Shush, a powerful blog entry by a student who will not be graduating this year because her university shut her down when she reported being sexually assaulted.

How Fast Do You Read? Compare yourself with national averages. Compare yourself with Anne Jones, a Champion Speed Reader who consumed the last Harry Potter book in 47 minutes, about 1 page every 3.75 seconds.

#goodreads 18 May 2012

Fri, 18 May 2012 18:20:55 -0700

The Listener Who Made Talk Radio | Gideon Haigh | Global Mail | 17 May 2012

Remembering Studs Terkel, historian and broadcaster, born 100 years ago. “He never lost his excitement at the thought that there was a world out there just waiting to be heard, and ready to be opened by the simplest of questions”

Preying On The Poor | Barbara Ehrenreich | Huffington Post/TomDispatch | 17 May 2012

Individually the poor are not too tempting to thieves.Collectively, they provide a juicy target. “The trick is to rob them in ways that are systematic, impersonal, and almost impossible to trace to individual perpetrators”

Americans getting “more liberal” on gay marriage, “more conservative” on gun rights.

Book critic Michael Dirda—“best-read man in America”—answers questions from Reddit members.

Why did Zynga drop after Facebook’s IPO?

#goodreads 17 May 2012

Thu, 17 May 2012 20:57:54 -0700

#video Ken Burns on storytelling. Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg has an interview with the filmmakers.

“One thing I’ve noticed about many of the people whose creativity inspires me is that they seem to be obsessed with something.” On @draplin.

Waxy.org on Untangling Cover Song Licensing on YouTube.

What it is like to get bitten by a shark.

The Internet at the dawn of Facebook. Featuring Lycos, Ask Jeeves, Friendster, and more. /@alexismadrigal

@peretti on why social is good for journalism, and why @BuzzFeed is investing in journalism.

#video on China’s prison factories that led to @AlJazeera being told not to report in the country.

The Merger Music Fans and the Government Should Fearl /@jhweissmann

50 years of government spending, in one graph /@NPR

Three steps for great storytelling. /McSweeney’s

Traffic.

Digging this. picturedept: Hello World PICTURE DEPT is a new...

Wed, 16 May 2012 23:21:08 -0700

Digging this.

picturedept:

Hello World

PICTURE DEPT is a new venue for photography presented by the award-winning Newsweek & The Daily Beast photo teams. As photo sharing has exploded online with services like Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook, and others, there has never been more content available for viewing. But as more great, new photography venues are created, it is increasingly hard to keep up with the seemingly endless stream—and to find the very best of what’s out there. PICTURE DEPT is designed to both filter and condense this information into a single resource. The site includes curated photo features and recommendations of the best of what is happening in photography—not just from Newsweek & The Daily Beast but also from Tumblr, around the Web, and the world beyond the computer screen.

About the name:

When we decided to create a photo Tumblr, we turned to the amazing Newsweek archives for inspiration, and there we discovered a battered metal box that contained hundreds of faded yellow 4 x 6 note cards. On each card was the date of an issue of the magazine and the complete listing of its photo spreads. And they were all titled “PICTURE DEPT”, the original moniker of the photo department. The cards ranged in date from the 1930’s - 1970’s and reminded us of the amazing legacy of the magazine. So we decided to resurrect Picture Dept for the 21st century.

Follow us!

Pari passu

Wed, 16 May 2012 22:35:25 -0700

Pari passu:

Tomorrow’s goal is to add this my lexicon.

Pari passu is a Latin phrase that literally means “with an equal step” or “on equal footing.” It is sometimes translated as “ranking equally”, ^[1]“hand-in-hand,” “with equal force,” or “moving together,”^{[citation needed]} and by extension, “fairly,” “without partiality.” In some culture’s, it is also a form of dessert, combining Tiramisu and cheesecake.

#goodreads May 16, 2012

Wed, 16 May 2012 07:49:07 -0700

Report on a government-subsidized non-profit that collects on student debt. /@BloombergNews

Healthcare costs for family of four with insurance exceed $20,000 per year. /@HuffingtonPost

Default now or later? Greece’s four options – /@FTalpha

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the State Department is poised to do something that could increase the chances of war with Iran.

For Google, people are clicking on about 1 of every 250 ads they see while searching. For the average, it’s 1 out of every 1,000 ads. And for Facebook, people are only clicking once every 1,961 ads they see. /@alexismadrigal

Twitter can’t predict election results. /@alexanderfumas

Have we forgotten about the Wal-Mart bribery scandal? /@tnr

“I feel the same way about the New York Times writing about video games as I do NPR talking about hip-hop: it’s always awkward.”

— dansinker (@dansinker) May 15, 2012

PubliCola, 2009-2012: How a Seattle news startup built an audience but not a business. /@NiemanLab

Cy Young, meet John Roberts: The Supreme Court’s “umpire” has become its pitcher. /@bostonreview

Thing of the day: 15 May 2012

Tue, 15 May 2012 22:23:25 -0700

This tweet, from @wsdot_traffic, the most entertaining government account out there.

We know it’s sunny out, but this isn’t a safe place to get a tan #pleasedontwalkonthefreeway yfrog.com/oes3ubuwj
— WSDOT Traffic (@wsdot_traffic) May 15, 2012