links for 2010-01-13

Published by Waldo Jaquith

Waldo Jaquith (JAKE-with) is an open government technologist who lives near Char­lottes­­ville, VA, USA. more »

12 replies on “links for 2010-01-13”

  1. Offset versus Tax, dumb. Like Republicans raising fees to pay for roads is somehow not a tax. So, we need a vastly more complex system to appease the silliness of voters. Nice!

    On states w/o recognition, Nagorno-Karabakh has been around for sometime. That was a 1980s ethnic flare up in the USSR (and I’m sure before then too). Abkhazia is the North Western neighbor of South Ossetia, over which Georgia fought a stupid war with Russia recently. Ah, but this is only because I once was a Russophile that I know this. So, I guess that doesn’t classify as common knowledge. Though I did know about most of the others too. I didn’t know about Pakistan not recognizing Armenia. That is obscure.

  2. This just in — An enormous percentage of Americans (including bloggers) believe that global climate change is a result of human action. Most of them don’t have so much as an undergraduate degree in a related field, but often present themselves as experts in the. What’s going on here?.

  3. Most of them don’t have so much as an undergraduate degree in a related field, but often present themselves as experts in the [field].

    “Most of” “an enormous percentage of Americans” present themselves as experts on global climate change? I want names. Lots of them.

  4. This just in — An enormous percentage of Americans (including bloggers) believe that the earth orbits the sun. Most of them don’t have so much as an undergraduate degree in a related field, but often present themselves as experts in the field. What’s going on here?

  5. For some of us, it’s kind of gotten to the point where Ken Cuccinelli cheapening something doesn’t actually seem newsworthy anymore.

  6. Interestingly, a survey conducted a few years ago (results of which were tacked to a bulletin board at NRAO for awhile) determined, among other things, that fewer than 50% of Americans[1] could correctly identify that one year was the time required for the Earth to complete a single orbit around the sun.

    [1] No word on whether that figure included bloggers. :)

  7. Well, isn’t it technically one year + 1/4 of a day? 365.25? that’s why we do leap-year every 4 years, etc?

    but yes, I should hope that at least 50% of Americans could at least get in the range of “one year” in answering that question… actually, now I’m curious to see what their answers actually were.

  8. Incidentally, I’m reminded of the survey which states that a significant percentage of Americans knew that Barack Obama was from Hawaii, but believed that Hawaii was not a US state. Oddly, this survey took no note of whether these folks were Obama supporters or not … I’m still willing to believe there’s at least a few people who fell into both categories.

  9. James: No, it’s simply one year. The fact that one year does not equal an integral number of days (rotations) doesn’t mean that a year isn’t an integral number of revolutions.

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