links for 2010-06-18

  • 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 was for them to host the Olympics. There's no learning going on here. When governments compete for the attentions of private enterprise, citizens lose.
  • One guy plays SMB, another plays violin as a real-time soundtrack. Clever!
  • I'm headed out on a Charlottesville->NYC->Connecticut->Boston->Montréal->Charlottesville road trip tomorrow morning, and intend to rely on this series of Montréal dining recommendations for my two night stay there.
  • Google at the command line. This might just seem goofy, but for batch operations, or anything automated, this is really important. Sure, Google has APIs, but it's a lot faster to type something at the command line than whip up a whole script.
    (tags: google api cli)
  • Rep. Cantor has invested $15,000 selling short U.S. government bonds. Yes, the Republican Whip intends to personally profit from long-term failure of the federal government that he helps oversee. I've long suspected that some conservatives seek to destroy government institutions in order to "prove" that they don't work, but this is the first time I've heard of somebody so powerful actually betting on it.

Published by Waldo Jaquith

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

8 replies on “links for 2010-06-18”

  1. There’s no learning going on here. When governments compete for the attentions of private enterprise, citizens lose.

    And that is the singular reason that Los Angeles does not have an NFL football team. They’ve been smart enough to promote packages that consisted entirely of private investors without any Government participation. And were turned down each and every time.

    Re: Eric Cantor short selling U.S. bonds. It isn’t surprising. I’ve known for years- without documentable proof- that Republicans make decisions that are detrimental to the U.S. and it’s citizens- simply so that they might be able to prove a point. Evil B@st@rds.

  2. Re: Cantor’s investment… of course, it could have nothing to do with wise diversification, i.e. some investments that bet on bonds going up, others on them going down. Nah, that couldn’t be it at all.

    BTW, I’ve known for years — without documentable proof — that Democrats make decisions that are detrimental to the U.S. and it’s [sic] military – simply so that they might be able to prove a point. Evil B@st@rds. (Psssst — it’s a moronic statement, either way.)

  3. Actually, given that Democrats are in control, it means that Cantor is simply putting his money where his mouth is in that Democratic policies are harmful to the US. If Republicans gain power, it would be logical for him to go long on US Bonds.

  4. So Democrats care about the US and its citizens, and Republicans care about the military?

  5. That depends on how you define the military, I think. If you’re talking about the people that make up most of the military? No.

    ~

    Publius, you’re hilarious. We could find pictures of Cantor dropping puppies off a cliff, and you’d find a way to defend it.

  6. I find it interesting that the most universally-reviled summer Olympic host city of the past twenty years just happened to be the only one that didn’t leave its city and country holding the bag for a massive bill.

    Maybe all that oh-so-awful commercialization at the Atlanta Games was good for something after all.

  7. Far more to it than that, Josh. Atlanta was in an excellent position to take advantage of the Olympics (a third tier city needing an excuse to take a swing at the big leagues), and did okay. But it fell far short of what it could have done, in no small part due to the constant whoring out of the Olympics (and really, I say that with the view that the IOC is a truly execrable collection of old men who feed off of the vitality of youth.).

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