Mar
13
2014

URLs du Jour

2014-03-13

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  • Well, Arthur Chu finally lost on Jeopardy! after a remarkable 11-game winning streak, netting just shy of $300K. He liked to bet big on Daily Doubles to build an unsurmountable lead; that worked well, until it didn't. He was soundly beaten by Diana Peloquin, a bubbly young women who seemed shocked and amazed by her triumph.

    If you'd like to look at what Arthur got wrong and right last night, the WaPo has the answers and questions.

  • For Granite Staters: the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance has issued their 2013 Liberty Rating document, reporting on how NH legislators voted on freedom-relevant issues.

    The record for my "representatives" was abysmal, as usual. In the House: Reps Berube, Rollo, Spainhower, and Ward earned (respective) grades of D, D, C-, and C-. My senator (and University Near Here prof), David Watters, scored a D+.

  • Kevin D. Williamson enjoys the … what is it, irony? of Senator Diane Feinstein being pretty much OK with executive branch snooping, until they started snooping on Congressional computers.

    Congress has not been very interested in the abuses of the imperial executive when its victims were ordinary American citizens, or even Congress’s own constitutional turf. But now that the CIA is making the matter personal, we ordinary citizens might have some hope that Congress will be spurred into action by its members’ vanity, if not by their sense of duty.

  • Via Nadia Drake at Wired, the Washington D.C. forecast for last evening contained:

    WE SOMETIMES SAY THE FORECAST HAS SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE. I THINK WE CAN TAKE THAT LITERALLY AT THE MOMENT . . . AS THIS FORECAST HAS ALMOST EVERY POSSIBLE WEATHER TYPE/HAZARD . . . IN THE FIRST 36 HOURS. STRONG TO SEVERE STORMS . . . SNOW . . . WIND CHILLS. . . STRONG WINDS . . . UNSEASONABLY WARM TEMPS . . . UNSEASONABLY COLD TEMPS . . . POTENTIAL FIRE WEATHER CONCERNS . . . MINOR COASTAL FLOOD POTENTIAL . . . THERE IS NOT MUCH LEFT.

    I'm generally OK with cutting the Federal Government down to the bone, but I'd make an exception for the person who wrote that.

  • Randall Munroe of xkcd fame has announced a new book coming out in September; it is a spinoff from his wonderful "What If" feature. (And the cover seems to illustrate the query: what if you fed a T. Rex to a Sarlacc? I can't say if I ever wondered that myself, but now I'm intrigued.

    If you buy it via Amazon ad/link over there on the right—no, your right—Pun Salad gets a cut. So don't be shy: click away.


Last Modified 2024-01-27 5:50 AM EDT