Feb
12
2009

URLs du Jour

2009-02-12

  • Happy 200th birthday to Abe and Chuck. The Google went with Chuck for its logo-altering honor:

    [Chuck]

    Know what kind of birds those are, science trivia buffs?

    You'd have thought, on this special day, the bright kids at Google might have figured out how to set up two images and flutter between them, but they didn't. America-hating jerks.

  • Granite Stater Fred Tausch of Nashua has started up STEWARD (Stimulating The Economy Without Accumulating Record Debt), a spiffy website devoted to opposing the "stimulus" package.

  • I wish Fred luck, but a Stimulus of Record-Debt-Accumulating flavor seems to be inevitable. So, if you're deficient in the scruples department, you might as well try to get something out of it. And happily, the good folks at Reason have built their own automatic stimulus request generator. Here's mine:

    For necessary and unnecessary expenses related to the Wireless and Broadband Deployment Grant Programs established by section 6002 of division B of this Act, $2,825,000,000, of which $1,000,000,000 shall be for Wireless Deployment Grants and $1,825,000,000 shall be for Broadband Deployment Grants: Provided, That an additional $100,000,000 shall be paid directly to Paul Sand in the form of subsidized loans that do not require repayment. Provided Further, That the funds be used by Paul Sand to write insightful blog posts or for whatever. Provided Even Further, That Paul Sand will receive free Red Sox tickets for life. Provided Even Further Still, That Paul Sand shall be treated as a cabinet-level appointment for the purpose of income tax reporting, and therefore no taxes shall be paid on any of the aformentioned benefits. And one more thing: Carol Shea-Porter is hereby expelled from Congress, effective immediately upon enactment.

    I am suddenly filled with hopeful changiness.

  • NPR has the story of how the—um—whimsical names fruit fly geneticists give genes they discover are being brutally supressed by the (totally not made up) Human Genome Organization Gene Nomenclature Committee. Apparently, they dread the day that some doctor has to tell a patient the dread news that he or she has, or lacks, the "Groucho Marx" gene. (Via BBSpot.)


Last Modified 2012-10-08 7:50 PM EDT