Monthly Archives: August 2009

My good friend Adrienne offers a personal perspective on the fight for marriage equality in Maine. When two of her female friends wanted to get married, they were forced to go to Canada to secure legal recognition of their relationship. … Continue reading →

As we’ve seen, one of the most common accusation that mainstream media outlets level against bloggers is that they simply re-print mainstream content without adding any value. A couple of weeks ago, I linked to Spencer Ackerman’s post giving an … Continue reading →

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an article by my friend Katherine Mangu-Ward about RECAP: Last week, a team from Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy took a pot shot at legal secrecy, setting in motion a scheme to filch protected … Continue reading →

This post by Ali Savino perfectly illustrates the point I made on Wednesday: These are the same people who pay large sums for a pint of organic strawberries, laughing off or even defending the “Whole Paycheque” label. They tell themselves: … Continue reading →

Bill Zeller points me to this rant by Jason Scott about Wikipedia. Scott basically tried being a Wikipedia editor, didn’t enjoy the experience, and concluded that it was “a failure.” He has various complaints about the way the Wikipedia process … Continue reading →

Some progressives are pledging to boycott Whole Foods over an op-ed that CEO John Mackey wrote about the health care debate. Radley and Julian have made some great points on the subject. Like Julian, I was surprised by the vitriol … Continue reading →

I’m late to the party, but I wanted to weigh in on the vital question of whether the human race (specifically, unskilled workers) are in danger of being rendered useless by robots. Greg Clark says yes. Ryan Avent says no. … Continue reading →

I was listening to today’s episode of “Fresh Air,” which featured the journalist and publisher Alex Jones (not the crackpot radio host). Jones is worried about the future of the newspaper business, and in his interview he made an argument … Continue reading →

Kevin Donovan points me to this article about last summer’s “cyber-attacks” against Georgian websites during the South Ossetia War: what I don’t really understand is why it’s so hard to accept the fact that a bevy of nationalistic Russians may … Continue reading →

In earlier posts I’ve linked to Climbing Mount Improbable, Richard Dawkins’s excellent explanation of the theory of evolution. One of my favorite chapters was Chapter 7, titled “Kaleidoscopic Embryos.” It surveys some of the striking regularities in the body plans … Continue reading →