* New constitution in North Korea, dropping 'Communism' and enshrining Kim's role as leader. His father's role as president had been left "eternally vacant" in the 1998 constitution, not clear if that changed.
* In American dynastism, Liz Cheney carries on her father's advocacy of torture and fearmongering, along with not contesting an assertion that Obama isn't American.
* One thing about religions, they often introduce holidays for the poor. Maids in Jakarta get Ramadan off, with rich families having to cope with fetching their own glasses of water. Or check into luxury hotels.
* The standoff in Honduras continues, with the ousted President Zelaya having slipped somehow into the Brazilian embassy. I've been sympathetic to the 'coup', but closing radio stations and cracking down on civil liberties burns that up.
* Why is the Supreme Court hearing half as many cases as it used to?
* State Republicans want to contest a health insurance mandate via amending state constitutions. Unclear on the concepts of the supremacy clause or how health reform can work.

* Logicomix, a comic book about Bertrand Russell and the quest for certainty in mathematics.
* Modern miracles: helping the blind see.
* The new education fad: teaching executive function, aka self-control

* SF geek: Animation of multiple-star systems. (From a Firefly thread.) How to show time-lagged STL comms on screen.
* Cute studies: Children of lesbian mothers less susceptible to mental illness. Take with as much salt as a single study deserves, but cute result anyway given the debates.
* Politics geek: Overseas departments of France. Unlike the American empire, or the American capital, they get representation in the legislature.
* Hope: Confucian enviornmentalism?
* Less Hope: Spain limits universal jurisdiction.
* Tech: Bicycle cars!
* Human interest: Gay Iraqi Jew Israeli who helps Palestinians.
* Current events: Honduran 'coup'. You've probably seen the standard version (military coup!), see the other side. I've been looking at bad translations of the Honduran Constitution (Google Translate is a bit less bad than Babelfish) and yeah, it *does* look like the President disqualified himself from office -- and that there's no formal impeachment mechanism. Noel Maurer
* RPG geek: 4e D&D for taking a shit
* Rainbow flag: not just for gays
* "Gayby boom": the wave of kids who've grown up with gay parents.
* How the media incorporates blogs on Iran.
* Corporate crooks: travel protection fraud. Bankrupted with health insurance.
* Freedom, Environment: now legal to collect rainwater in Colorado
* Mad Science!: hot rock projects underway, and causing earthquakes. Geo-engineering. The global ant super-colony.
* Retro-tech: 13 year old experiences Walkman.
* Interrogating Saddam Hussein
* Gay sex decriminalized in India for now. Illegal (10 years in prison) under British colonial law; Delhi High Court has overturned. Religious leaders object; case may be appealed to the Supreme Court.
* Forced marriages and Britain
* CBO analyzes plan with public option, hey, this time it works. President of the AMA comes out in support, sort of.
* Swine flu: US deaths (updated Fridays). Spread in Argentina.

Iran may have a decades-long democratic past but it's looking bad at the moment. Ahmadinejad had been polling at 40%, but the gov't claims a 60% win. Fraud seems likely given various factors, analogous to Obama winning Arizona or McCain winning Chicago.

* In other news, GOP denounces climate change plan as an energy tax. Half-right: we need a *fossil carbon* tax, to harness market forces in making people use it less. They propose

In the GOP's weekly radio and Internet address, Indiana Rep. Mike Pence said Congress should instead open the way for more domestic oil and natural gas production and ease regulatory barriers for building new nuclear power plants.

Nukes are fine (though "easing regulatory barriers" needs a wary eye), but encouraging more oil and gas production? No, that's the exact opposite of what you need in a climate-change bill. We need to replace production, not expand it.

* Voting in Iran. Mousavi, the reformer, has claimed victory though it's not official. 538 calls this a maturing of Iran's democracy, though let's remember history: Iran had a Parliament from 1911 ending in 1953 thanks to a CIA coup. The next time you hear someone say Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, remind them (a) of Turkey and (b) that Iran was democratic and *we broke it*. And then funded their dictatorship and state terror structure, making us calling them "Axis of evil" and "terrorist state" now a real laugh.

* US and UK deregulated finance and got a bust. Canada didn't and has stable banks. Hmm.
* Effect of minority judges on the Court.
* Outline of Predictably Irrational, a collection of cognitive bias experients and results.

* AMA continues the fight against reform, has contributed heavily to the GOP.
* US care as viewed by a Canadian. Supplements an older piece in the opposite direction. And a comparison with France.
* Tobacco to be more regulated now. Also.

* Militants respond positively to Obama's speech

* Scott Roeder warns of more murders of abortion doctors. Can we call him a terrorist yet? Should we waterboard him?

* Would gay marriage support be higher if framed as "should the government have the power to prevent gays from marrying?"

* From Randy: Portugal's empire superimposed on Europe.
* Moonshine resurgence. Article ends covering the one legal moonshiner. Authorities were pretty helpful when someone asked how to make corn whiskey legally. *shock*

Must read
* Letter from an ex-slave to his master. A thing of beauty.
** Tolkien's reply to Nazi Aryan inquiries
* Girly editions of Scrabble, Monopoly, Uno et al.

History
* 25 May was the 40th anniversary of the decriminalization of gay sex in Canada.
** Like Orson Scott Card, John Wright apparently misses those days.

( mercy cut )

* Evil chicken

Torture
* Pressure mounts to investigate and prosecute Bush admin torture. McCain disagrees: "Look, in banana republics they prosecute people for actions they didn't agree with under previous administrations. To go back on a witch hunt that could last for a year or so, frankly, is going to be bad for the country, bad for future presidents," McCain said on CBS Right, because prosecution for illegal torture is politicising things.
* FBI agent speaks out about torture and it's ineffectiveness. Says the FBI refused to torture, creating a wall between the CIA and FBI, inhibiting cooperation on terror investigation. Also claims that it was contractors more than long-term CIA officials pushing for torture. (Plus, of course, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.)

Gay marriage
* 53% of New Yorkers polled support gay marriage
* New Jersey, too 49-43.
* Connecticut's governor signed a gay marriage bill, putting into law what the supreme court had decreed.

Misc
* Rise in housecalls. Article also mentions that they save the system money -- but the particular hospital loses ER fees. Reminds me of Krugman's point about how the US system inhibits preventive care. Insurance company paying for prevention now may save money for some other insurance company or Medicare, so why do it?
* Geocities closing. If there's content you want, go download it.

* That commie rag The Economist calls for higher taxes on the rich, suggests a financial-transactions tax, and various pragmatic and moral justifications. Actually it's a hosted debate, I'm not sure if the Economist is taking a stand, though "this house..." suggests that. Proposer is from CPER, a rare progressive think-tank; defender is a professor at the Paris School of Economics, the attacker is from Cato, one of the right-wing's hydra of think-tanks.
* The trials of having only $250,000 a year (probably an ephemeral link)

* Torture memo fun: NYTimes, and long term effects.
* The pirate economy: Why the US Navy can't win
* 10 year anniversay: the myths of Columbine

* Christianity Today article defending belief in God; I link to page 2 for the lols. The article starts by claiming a renaissance of Christian philosophy... and starts with a poor form of the cosmological argument. Page 3 invokes Roger Penrose as supposedly launching "powerful arguments against any appeal to a multiverse as a way of explaining away fine-tuning." but does not even hint as to the arguments. Then the moral argument, and the ontological argument. "Most philosophers would agree that if God's existence is even possible, then he must exist."

* 1960s D&D. Pretty awesome.
* Roman socks with sandals. The article makes fun of them, rather than wondering if sartorial fashion maybe isn't a universal absolute.

* Cheap solar methane?

I just had some of this, from Kroger -- "homemade marinara". This is the first jarred or restaurant red sauce I've had that approaches the family recipe in addictiveness. And there isn't even any cayenne in it! Has wine, though.

More links since my last post:
* Chimps trade meat for sex. Not old news in that it's long-term relationships, even when female isn't in estrus, not just "meat now for sex now".
* Effects of drug decriminalization in Portugal. Though since I'd be skeptical of Cato if they were claiming something I didn't like, I should note that it's Cato even when they claim something I do.
* Stargate cakes
* 538 regression model on gay marriage support
* Wizards of the Coast has apparently frozen all PDF sales of their products -- and downloads of products already purchased, which sounds contractually dodgy. White Wolf gleefully takes advantage. WW has crap editing and other problems, but I've admired how they make nearly all their material available online. Exalted 1e? Mage 2e or Revised? Yep. (Mage 1e, no, that I can tell.) -- Steve Jackson Games twitters humorously.

* Iowa's Senate majority leader rules out an amendment to ban gay marriage. We learn that Iowans get to vote on having a constitutional convention every 10 years -- nice touch along Jefferson's ideas of permanent revolution. We also get:

Former state legislator Chuck Hurley, president of the conservative Iowa Family Policy Center, said gay marriage opponents would step up the pressure on Gronstal.

"He is denying 2.1 million Iowans of voting age of the right to vote on an issue of great importance to 550,000 schoolchildren,"

Schoolchildren? What? I can only think he's blowing on the "pedophile" dog whistle, in a spectacularly illogical fashion. -- Gronstal's speech is online, I'm told it's moving.

* In other Iowa news, the Senate votes to provide health care to nearly all children. The Republicans say... absolutely nothing new.
* The state supreme court eviscerated standard talking points. Pandagon samples Free Republican and legislative responses.
* In today's news, Vermont's legislature overrode the governor's veto of gay marriage legalization, making it the first state to pull that off. (Lost in the Prop 8 hoopla is that California's legislature had legalized it -- but Arnold vetoed, claiming he wasn't opposed but the voters or courts should make a decision like that. Way to go, they split the difference. (ETA: ah, he had a point of sorts, conflict with Prop 22.) DC's council voted unanimously to recognize gay marriages from other states, though I don't know if that takes effect -- Congress gets to run DC. I predict California will be the first state to have the voters legalize gay marriage; Prop 8 only got 52% after all, and the trends are against bigotry. (Though reportedly there's a bias to vote "No" on any amendment.)
* Overseas, Sweden voted for gay marriage the same day of the Iowa decision.

* Journalists allowed to cover returning dead soldiers
* Senate Republicans seek to keep torture memos secret.
* Obama defends and expands Bush wiretapping policies, invoking a hugely broad interpretation of sovereign immunity. The EFF calls his DoJ worse than Bush.
* Red Cross indicts medical role in CIA torture; article also notes the "disappearance" done to our captives, where we wouldn't tell governments or families who we'd taken.

* Black soldiers were kept out of the liberation of Paris. The Pope didn't want them in Rome, either. That's Piux XII.
* 'Sexting' hysteria extends to teachers.
* Boys being abducted in China.

* NYC to try to reduce salt intake, in what might be a big uncontrolled experiment. Lots of links in that article; this is Gary Taubes' article debunking salt and CVD in Science in 1999.
* Temperature/climate variation, and why a steady average temperature for the past 10 years doesn't disprove long-term warming trends. Look on the pictures.
* People who feel good about themselves may misbehave more
* CO2 air capture

Hey Ai! Got your letter. Took me a while to figure out how to open the Japanese envelope. :)

I had my first Balboa swing lesson tonight. I feel like a newb all over again. I'm reading Krugman's Pop Internationalism, on the myths and ignorance about international trade. It's good. Catchphrase: "A country is not like a corporation." Countries can't go bankrupt (in the close up shop sense), and corporations basically "export" everything. More later.

* Wired discovers Settlers of Catan, calls it a Monopoly killer, talks about German board games in general.
* Palestinian orchestra performs for Holocaust survivors. Outrage ensues.
* Mayotte votes to become fully French, abandon Islamic law.
* Waterboarding's failure. I'm sure we're all so shocked.
* New law on Afghan women passed. The patriarchy is dead, long live the patriarchy.
* Federal pension insurer switched to stocks before the crash.. Head was from Lehman, denied any additional risk. Fox, meet henhouse.
* ETA: I haven't been keeping up with the flap about Dawkins speaking at Oklahoma University. The legislature (of both parties) is still buzzing in outrage at his coming "to indoctrinate students in the theory of evolution."

* What if Atlas Shrugged were a trilogy?
* A thread started on pre-Flood Creationist Earth as an RPG setting. That led to this, which ascends to new levels of bizarre. Who knew the antediluvian Sun was hot pink?

* Scalzi on Modern YA SF
* http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/1714965.html
* Speaking of mellow anime, we seem to have found something with less plot or action than even Aria: Bartender. And I thought Aria was bad enough as "Maria-sama without the dramatic tension". Actually Bartender seems a bit like a cross of Master Keaton and Aria: the odd ubercareerist of one, the lack of... anything... of Aria. Except Aria had stunning visuals, cute girls, and the puzzle of "what the hell is that thing?", and the hints of science fiction (it's a flooded Mars, with what *has* to be a genetically engineered supercat.)

* A summary of Jane Jacobs economics. Recommended.

* Oh no! Michelle Obama shows muscle! For mlc23.
* Obama to speak at Notre Dame, bishop to boycott.
* Budget reconciliation -- a way around filibuster abuse?
* Conservapedia on Mars and Velikovsky. Oy.
* Comments on the Prometheus Awards
* 538 on Wall Street overpay
* Tom Kratman: experimenting with women in the military is like unethical medical experiments.
* CFL bulbs that don't work.

* Zero fare public transit
* The Nation's shifting stance on public transit.

* Rolling Stone on AIG. Long and alarmed. And Salon on new populism. "A 2003 Gallup poll found that 31 percent of Americans believed they would become "rich" someday, including more than 20 percent of people who made under $30,000 a year." "In 2005, the top 1 percent of Americans made almost 22 percent of the nation's reported income, and the top 10 percent made half of it." "In 2007, the average S&P 500 CEO made 344 times what an average worker made. The top 50 investment fund managers made 19,000 times more than the average worker."
* The missing millionaire tax bracket. Plus household debt.
* Sweden's strong support for research, and willingness to let Saab fail. Who's the socialist country?

* Charles Schumer switched to supporting gay marriage.
* ACLU sues DA over "child porn" charges.

* An Afghan TV station was raised for not censoring "uncovered" women.
* Israel using white phosphorous in Gaza.
* Scalia's homophobia
* Morocco's crackdown on feminists, gays, Shiites

* Malnutrition in India
* Racial gap continues

* Darwin, statistics, and experimental design
* Voting rational -- if you're an altruist. My first thought was that this means most voters are altruists or out for their local benefits. Bad news for libertarians.


* Interesting links on myths about medieval Europe and the Renaissance

* Exalted sesseljae: "puppies that swim through organs".

Hmm, when I follow actual news sites, rather than picking up random links, I get a lot more things I want to share. Funny, that.

* Leaked Red Cross report alleges torture in CIA camps.
* GOP chairman Rush Limbaugh Michael Steele hosts Bennett's radio show, comparing Obama to Nixo and denying global warming. A critique.

* Europe's crackdown on prostitution, vs. New Zealand's legalization. Despite claims, the number of women working under force doesn't seem much different. 80% of workers may be foreign but only 4% seem forcibly trafficked. High, but not the epidemic perceived.
* Self-immolation by Afghan women

* Israel's post-Gaza isolation, and Jewish anti-Zionism.

* Bill Richardson abolishes the death penalty in New Mexico but only for newly convicted criminals. So, no new additions to Death Row, but if you're already on it they'll take their chances on killing you anyway? What?
* Waterless urinals

* The most religious -- those who most believe in Heaven? -- fight hardest to stay alive, dying in more pain and further from their homes. My atheist parents died at home, in hospice. Something's wrong with this picture.
* El Salvador's evangelicals shift left. The FMLN did win, leftist president now. Time will tell if he's more like Chavez or Lula.
* US evangelicals allegedly collapsing. Christine Wicker tracks them.

* "...the company commander ordered that an elderly Palestinian woman be shot and killed..." Ha'aretz analysis, also.
* World's biggest military spenders

* Provigil/Modafinil may be addictive

* Australia's internet censorship allegedly includes Wikileaks, gambling sites, regular porn and a dentist. ACMA claims it was a fake, re-iterates secrecy of the blacklist, $11,000 fines for illegal links. Wikileaks.
* Internet breaking juries, or at least the rules to keep them in the dark.

* Iceland's libertarian anarchy.
* Hunter-gatherer monumental complex. This is unexpected.
* Photos of abandoned Detroit schools. The ruins of Detroit.
* Modern fatwas on sex

* Utah tops online porn subscriptions.

* Sci Fi Channel to become "SyFy". Trademarkable, but they say outright they've been moving away from science fiction.
* Tropicana OJ gets change of packaging, changes back due to protest.. Also.. I'd noticed the change and didn't like it, though didn't protest or care that much. I hadn't even noticed that the change was to look more generic.
* Package sizes shrinking.

Especially at Sahara Mart, where tofu prices are now $2.39/12 oz or $2.99/14 oz. Bfoods had $1.69/14 oz, though. I'm not sure if these used to be 16 oz packages.

* Infant hyperthermia due to parents forgetting their kids.
* Pope re-iterates ban on condom use, even in preventing AIDS.
* Arab League rejects request by the International Criminal Court to arrest Bashir, president of Sudan, on charge of war crimes in Darfur. Earlier related article.

* Economist debate: This house believes that we are all Keynesians now..

* Blind painter

* Next-gen OLPC, two touchscreens joined like a book, holdable in either orientation. This would be awesome.
* How doodling lets you pay attention
* Old comments on Vinge's Singularity. Bostrom and Hanson in particular still seem good.
* Argument from evil as type of and response to argument from design
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmicism
* Republic of Vermont
* Real zeppelins did over 100 km/hour.
* Mars scorecard
* Doctor Who AMV


* Dipping into libertarian thought again reminded me of something: government is great at providing public goods, which is one reason I swung to social democratic, but good government -- especially good democratic government -- is itself a public good, with voters being rationally ignorant and apathetic. Bit of an internal contradiction there, which doesn't seem easily resolvable. Of course, competitive markets have their own contradiction, in that everyone involved wants to become less subject to competition.
* Table of private, public, common and club goods. I hadn't seen the second two categories before.
* Assurance contracts, and particularly the dominant assurance contract; possible way of funding public goods effectively, without recourse to a government. This is the cool side of libertarianism, where they try to think of ways to do things in the market, rather than just asserting markets are always better. Applications. I think there's still a free rider problem, in that if I think it very likely a good will get funded, I don't have much reason to sign the contract. But maybe it'd still be useful.
* Old David Friedman essay on Ronald Coase winning the Nobel Prize
* How de Beers created demand for diamonds. Also wikipedia and book.

* Doctors excommunicated for giving a 9yo an abortion to save her life. Also. The Church had tried to stop the abortion with a lawsuit, even though it's a 9yo with twins and they'd all die.
* GOP: Health care is a privilege, oh no class warfare
* Bobby Jindal, secret Muslim. Stay class, GOP!
* Don't Ask, Don't Tell supposedly backed at the time by bad-faith arguments by military leaders, and suppression of evidence.
* Licoln Chafee was a cool Republican. Why wasn't he on a list of progressive Senators I saw? Oh right, because he lost his re-election, then left the GOP.
* Private health insurance at work
* Former Republican: GOP is dedicated to sabotaging the American future

* UK hacking into computers without a warrant and tracking Internet use.

* You have to be born in America to be President -- US Senator Richard Shelby, R-Alabama. He notes the US being the world's biggest debtor nation; I'd note we became that under Ronald Reagan.
* A list of the 'progressiveness' of the US Senate. There's a big gap between the Democrats and even the most progressive Republicans... and between those 3 and the rest of the GOP.
* Blogs, newspapers, and journalism
* Sean Hannity and "socialism"
* Obama to use more honest budgetting
* 40% support legalizing pot. This is more than approve of Republicans.
* Krugman wonders if the right-wing job network is in trouble.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States#Income Look at those mean/median spreads!

* Singular they, and in the Bible. How 'they' became 'him'.