Earmarks are back. Now they’re in the form of specific funding riders attached to spending bills. Congress’ budget for the Army Corps of Engineers had $507M tacked on for 26 separate projects that were not requested by the Army, not part of the president’s budget, and weren’t previously part of the spending bill. →
Category Archives: ShortLinks
The AP demonstrates how to point out an untruth.
I have recently been lamenting the media’s habit of allowing subjects’ false statements to stand, without challenge. This morning I spotted a great example of the right way to handle this, in a story about Mitt Romney from the AP’s Kasie Hunt: “‘I will never apologize for America,’ Romney says often—suggesting that Obama has done …
Continue reading “The AP demonstrates how to point out an untruth.”
The USDA has mapped out food deserts.
Using public records of grocery store locations and vehicle ownership, the USDA has mapped the locations of “food deserts,” regions where people lack access to decent food. Such areas have been popular to talk about and speculate about, but this is the first effort that I’m aware of to actually locate and measure them. →
Records about those pardoned Mississippi killers have gone missing.
Earlier this month, in the last few days of his term, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour pardoned five men, including four convicted murderers, who worked in his mansion. The AP FOIAed the records about their pardons and—darnedest thing—there aren’t any. The attorney general says that they’re nowhere to be found. This is headed to court in …
Continue reading “Records about those pardoned Mississippi killers have gone missing.”
VDOT tracking snowplows via GPS, sharing their position.
Chicago recently announced that they’d be sharing the GPS-tracked positions of snowplows online, for people wondering when their neighborhood would be plowed, and what roads are cleared. Now VDOT is doing the same in Virginia, although only upstate. →
The Chicago Sun-Times will no longer endorse candidates.
The 71-year-old paper isn’t convinced that endorsements mean much anymore, and are worried that the practice gives the appearance of bias in their coverage of politics. So they’re giving it up. I wonder if this is the beginning of a trend, or of the Sun-Times will stand alone? →
Disqus research finds that “pseudonyms drive communities.”
Discussion hosting service Disqus has crunched the numbers on their enormous database of comments and found that people writing under pseudonyms (as opposed to anonymously or under their real name) contribute substantially more comments than others, and those comments are rated more highly than others. People writing under a real name are a close second, …
Continue reading “Disqus research finds that “pseudonyms drive communities.””
Scientific American: The Impracticality of a Cheeseburger
Remember that blog entry I wrote last month about trying to make a cheeseburger from scratch? Scientific American has a short article based on it in their February issue. Page 24. I haven’t picked up a copy yet, but I’m sure going to. →
New York Times: Inside the Fed in 2006—A Coming Crisis, and Banter
“The transcripts of the 2006 [Federal Reserve] meetings, released after a standard five-year delay, clearly show some of the nation’s pre-eminent economic minds did not fully understand the basic mechanics of the economy that they were charged with shepherding.” It’s a significant understatement to say that they didn’t “full understand” the economy. Their discussions make …
Continue reading “New York Times: Inside the Fed in 2006—A Coming Crisis, and Banter”
The New York Times is wondering if they should provide the truth.
The Times’ public editor is asking, in the form of a blog entry, whether the media should be in the habit of pointing out when a subject is lying. That is, a politician says that black is white, should the reporter covering it point out that, in fact, black is black? It’s shameful that this …
Continue reading “The New York Times is wondering if they should provide the truth.”