Waldo Jaquith

Archive for June 2010

links for 2010-06-30

In ShortLinks on 30 June 2010 with Comments Off

Mark Bittman: 101 Fast Recipes for Grilling I love Bittman's "101 Fast Recipes" series—it has served me well. There are some great, simple, seasonal grilling ideas here that I intend to put to work immediately. (tags: cooking recipe) Mother Jones: A Supreme Court Nominee Walks Into a Bar… I think there is a lot in [...]

links for 2010-06-29

In ShortLinks on 29 June 2010 with 5 comments

Montréal Gazette: Lost in translation—The cultural divide over Valentine's Day In Japan, Christmas Eve is celebrated as we celebrate Valentine's Day. Complete with chocolate hearts. (tags: japan culture christmas) New York Times: In Suit Over Faulty Computers, Window to Dell's Fall It is a truth almost universally acknowledged among technology professionals that Dell computers were [...]

links for 2010-06-28

In ShortLinks on 28 June 2010 with 16 comments

Wikipedia: Japanese Hearse Everything is weirder in Japan. (tags: japan) The Onion: Abstinence-Only Lunch Programs Ineffective At Combating Teen Obesity "True lunch waits." (tags: humor sex) New York Times: Tuna's End Tuna turns out to be a great deal more interesting than I thought. Bluefin are warm-blooded. The Japanese didn't eat them until a couple [...]

links for 2010-06-18

In ShortLinks on 18 June 2010 with 8 comments

Wall Street Journal: Few Are Coming to See Greece's Modern Olympic Ruins Every two years the Olympics are held. And every following year there are plenty of news stories about how much the host city is in debt, how many huge buildings that they have no use for, and what a big mistake that it [...]

Hurt will, won’t debate his opponents.

In Virginia Politics on 18 June 2010 tagged clark, congress, hurt, perriello with 3 comments

Republican congressional nominee Robert Hurt can’t seem to make up his mind as to whether he’s going to debate his challenger from the right, Jeff Clark. In a recorded interview with The Daily Progress a week ago, he had this exchange with the paper: DP: [Are you] going to be willing to debate Jeff Clark [...]

links for 2010-06-17

In ShortLinks on 17 June 2010 with 2 comments

NBC29: JMU Wind Facility Gets Funding The Department of Energy is giving an $800,000 grant to JMU for their Small Wind program. That's great news—I'm a big fan of their work. They're the folks doing the research about where wind energy is viable in Virginia. Particularly sensible is their anemometer loan program, which I gather [...]

links for 2010-06-16

In ShortLinks on 16 June 2010 with 7 comments

Virginia Coalition for Open Government: Nope to scope A reminder about the fundamentals of FOIA in Virginia: You don't have to invoke FOIA, the scope of the request can be as broad as you want. (tags: foia government sunlight) Prof. Phil Meyer: The Gary Hart Story—How It Happened This journalism professor has a great description [...]

links for 2010-06-14

In ShortLinks on 14 June 2010 with 1 comment

Astronomy Picture of the Day: Retrograde Mars I've seen diagrams of planets' retrograde motion, but this time-lapse photo of Mars, complete with dates, really helps me understand it. (tags: space mars astronomy science) Washington Post: 'Tea party' candidates hurt by lack of organization in movement National disapproval of teabaggers has climbed sharply, from 39% to [...]

Laurence Verga’s got junk.

In Photo, Virginia Politics on 12 June 2010 tagged congress, perriello, verga with 9 comments

How we got our mortgage. Or: Why so many people bought houses they couldn’t afford.

In House on 12 June 2010 tagged economy, finance, mortgage with 14 comments

Our loan officer was insistent: we’d be nuts not to get an adjustable rate mortgage. It was October of 2007. We’d met with this SunTrust loan officer—I’ll call him “Jim”—a couple of times so far, and we were moving ahead with a construction loan to be rolled into a permanent loan when our new house [...]

links for 2010-06-11

In ShortLinks on 11 June 2010 with Comments Off

The New Republic: Lamar And The Magic Climate Plan Sen. Lamar Alexander is rushing to the rescue of the environment. He's got a great idea: "Find a way for utilities to make money from the CO2 produced by their coal plants." The good people of Tennessee must be honored to have such a brilliant mind [...]

links for 2010-06-10

In ShortLinks on 10 June 2010 with 1 comment

Foretean Times: Look Out Below! Sometimes, huge chunks of ice fall from the sky. These are some of the reasons why. (tags: mystery nature space airplane) Radio Shack Catalogs All of them, going back to 1939. Every page is scanned. I love it. I used to fawn over their CB radios, CD players, and…well…everything. (tags: [...]

links for 2010-06-09

In ShortLinks on 9 June 2010 with 3 comments

Mother Jones: Who Really Owns the Gulf of Mexico? You and I look at the Gulf and see blue ocean. Oil execs see the entire thing carved up and claimed by oil companies. (tags: oil ocean business) Steve Almond: Remembrance of Candy Bars Past A primer on the delight on regional candy bars from the [...]

Learn about Cuccinelli v. UVA at this Tuesday night event.

In Virginia Politics on 6 June 2010 tagged cuccinelli, loc with 9 comments

I’m putting on an event for Left of Center on Tuesday night that I want to make sure to invite y’all to, “The ACLU on Attorney General Cuccinelli, UVA, and ‘Climategate’.” Kent Willis, the longtime executive director of the Virginia ACLU (and a guy who has saved my bacon three times, including last year), will [...]

links for 2010-06-04

In ShortLinks on 4 June 2010 with 6 comments

FactCheck.org: Arizona's Papers Please' Law Like a lot of people, I've ready Arizona's new anti-brown-people law, but not being an attorney, I couldn't understand it fully. Luckily, FactCheck.org has analyzed it. Unsurprisingly, they've found that the claim that it just "mirrors federal law" is not true, and that it's premised on racial profiling. (tags: arizona [...]

links for 2010-06-03

In ShortLinks on 3 June 2010 with 2 comments

Student Press Law Center: Agreement ends battle over seized Breeze photos Rockingham County Commwealth's Attorney Marsha Gast has apologized for illegally seizing photographs taken by the staff of JMU newspaper The Breeze. They had 962 pictures of the Harrisonburg street party-turned-riot back in April, and the prosecutor's office seized all of them based on a [...]

links for 2010-06-02

In ShortLinks on 2 June 2010 with 4 comments

Daily Kos: Booming School This description of the right way and the wrong way to put down oil booms is really interesting. I first read it last week, and I keep telling people about it, so I guess that means I ought to write about it. After you read this, every picture you see of [...]

links for 2010-06-01

In ShortLinks on 1 June 2010 with 5 comments

New York Times: Follow My Logic? A Connective Word Takes the Lead In my own writing, I have just recently noticed a tendency towards beginning sentences with the word "so." It turns out that I'm not alone—this is a wider trend than just me. (tags: language writing culture)