July 2013

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) Some real American history 
Neuro-scientists able to create false memories in mice.
Game over for Zynga? Firm loses 25 percent of daily active users in one quarter 
 Doctor Who actor warns against using social media. It makes you into a phony he says.

Det News critic: Bob Dylan's voice is shot, performances lackluster.  I found this out back in '07 myself. 

"Smart guns" not selling: Who wants one that can be hacked, won't work if the battery is dead, or that can be remotely tracked. disabled? 
More collateral damage from the drug war: Local idiot blows up his house trying to make hash oil via the butane extraction method.
Nate Silver leaving NYT for ESPN: Called Times style political reporting "useless". 
Pentagon discovers that buying weaponry from your enemies is a bad idea, even if it's cheaper.   
Book review: This Town dissects the ecosystem of America's gilded capitol city and its haughty in-crowd
Goodyear to replace its blimps with zeppelins 

 

The mindset of the professional foreign policy-types in Washington

"At the actual substance of strategy," says strategist William Lind @ American Conservative, " they are incompetent—which matters not a whit at [Washington, D.C.'s imperial] court. In fact, any skill at the substance of policy easily becomes a disadvantage at court because it can lead to saying things people further up the ladder do not wish to hear. At that point, your ladder becomes a chute. And so Washington bungles on, winning less important battles at the expense of losing more important ones, and with them wars. Failure brings no reform: the Establishment just moves on to do the same thing in a new venue.",

weblog

10 Signs The U.S. is Becoming a Third World Country - Activist Post

weblog

Another view of the "changing face of America" - ann arbor.com

School maintenance guy fired after 30 years for being white. As white people slip from majority to minority status over the next decade or so, look for stuff like this to get more and more commonplace and obscenely obvious.

A new sex text scandal emerging from the top levels of the Detroit PD - Detroit News

This is both funny and sad. Maybe Detroit needs to follow the lead of that city in California that also had a scandal-tainted police force and just disband the DPD completely and contract with the sheriff's office for police services. Seriously.

Flint area serial killer suspect is arrested - Detroit Free Press

Hmm...I hope so. Let's see the evidence though first.

On behalf of a grateful empire - KTVB-TV

Medal of Honor winner's widow can't afford the cost of attending the award ceremony in Virginia,

What American conservatives can learn from the anarchists - The American Conservative

What indeed?

weblog

Washtenaw county, Michigan listed as the 17th most "liberal" county in America - The Daily Caller

Why is novelist William Gibson so obsessed with branding? - (via io9)

"Whatever will America do without our key base in Kyrzygsrgtz?" - iSteve

The unwinding of the American Empire continues. A photo montage of the uprising here.

University of Michigan lecturer's union rep: "We're just as credentialed and 'pot-bellied' as professors" - Michigan Daily

A large indentured class of workers is struggling to escape debt rather than build a better life. - The American Prospect (Sasha Abramsky)

Math teacher attaches McDonald's job applications to returned tests with a failing grade - boing boing