Here it is: bedbugregistry.com.
From the incomparable Evgeny Morozov at Foreign Policy:
This summer was full of technology & geopolitical news — BlackBerry, WikiLeaks, North Korean tweets — but I wasn’t exactly shocked by any of the developments. The recent announcement that Iran is working on their own national search engine did not exactly shock either but it gives your humble blogger a good excuse to reflect on the growing politicization of the Internet in general and of search space in particular.
I’ve tracked the idea of national search engines for some time — see my coverage of Russia’s plans to do the same here and of Turkey’s plans here; this summer we also heard some noises from China on that front.
From Los Tiempos de Nueva York, a story suggesting the Obama administration will do nothing more about the housing crisis because it simply doesn’t know what more to do:
“The administration made a bet that a rising economy would solve the housing problem and now they are out of chips,” said Howard Glaser, a former Clinton administration housing official with close ties to policy makers in the administration. “They are deeply worried and don’t really know what to do.”
My sense is that the article’s suggestion that the president will take the risk of doing nothing is correct. And it seems to me that had the administration decided to take this free market approach from the get-go we’d be moving into market recovery rather than tick-tick-ticking up to the top of the roller coaster for another scary dip towards the ground.
(H/T to el Instapundita, one of my all-time favorite bloggers, for alerting me to this one.)
Once again we see bloggers treated as second-class journalists.
Police have seized computers and servers belonging to an editor of Gizmodo in an investigation that appears to stem from the gadget blog’s purchase of a lost Apple iPhone prototype.
Deputies from the San Mateo County Sheriff’s office obtained a warrant on Friday and searched Jason Chen’s Fremont, Calif., home later that evening, Gizmodo acknowledged on Monday.
California has laws that protect journalists from this kind of search and seizure, but those protections don’t seem to apply to blogger journalists.
This isn’t just unjust. It’s also a form of competitive advantage for traditional media outlets. With cops going after bloggers, will the next Deep Throat feel more comfortable going with her info to a guy from Gizmodo or a reporter from the New York Times?
McClatchy (always loved the name) on Friday published a great article on the increasing efforts by Russia, China, and Iran to build stronger bonds with the nations of Latin America.
There are growing questions . . . as to whether China’s huge appetite for soy and iron ore, Russia’s vigorous sale of weapons or Iran’s search for allies in the Western Hemisphere is ultimately good for the region — and whether the United States is missing out.
Read the whole thing here.
So, on Thursday I read a news headline that made me think “this is a welcome change”: “Obama Alters Hospital Rules For Gay Rights.”
The Tiempos Nuevos de Nueva York article’s second paragraph states:
The White House announced the rule changes, which will also make it easier for gay men and lesbians to make medical decisions on behalf of their partners, in a memorandum released Thursday night. In it, the president said the new rules would affect any hospital that participates in Medicare or Medicaid, the government programs to cover the elderly and the poor.
“Great,” I thought. “Interesting that this wasn’t part of the health care reform Frankenstein, but this is a very good thing.”
But then, seven paragraphs into the article, the following revelation: “The rules will take time to draft and put in place, and so Mr. Obama’s order will have no immediate effect.”
Here’s the thing. When people in the conservative community talk about media bias they’re often blown off by the nation’s elite and by many whose politics are left-of-center. But the fact of the matter is that it’s this kind of reporting that raises red flags.
Why not report from the outset that President Obama had merely instructed the Secretary of Health and Human Services to promulgate a rule on the issue of visitation and medical decision rights? Why report it as something that’s already done, only to clarify later on that the president’s order really doesn’t do anything other than start a process?
I love the NYT, but I find this kind of thing annoying.
Looks like it’s time for the Greeks to start living like Spartans (from the Huffington Post, which is growing on me):
[New austerity measures] include trimming civil servants’ annual salaries with a 30 percent cut in their holiday bonuses, freezing pensions and imposing further cuts on stipends and bonuses.
Greece also increased the sales tax from 19 percent to 21 percent and hiked taxes on alcohol, cigarettes, luxury cars, yachts, precious stones and leather goods.
From a very worthwhile read at Slate:
“The writer Douglas Adams observed how technology that existed when we were born seems normal, anything that is developed before we turn 35 is exciting, and whatever comes after that is treated with suspicion.”
In my experience, there’s some truth to this!
Tim Shriver on the use of the word “retard” (published in the Washington Post).
This is a complicated issue, and I don’t impute ill will on everyone who uses the word. But words do matter, and replacing “person with x condition” with “retard” has the simple effect of dehumanizing the individual in question.
I suspect some people chafe at criticism of the use of “retard” as political correctness — those would be some of the right-of-center folks. I get it, but if there’s an exception to the rule against PC it seems to me that this one’s it.
From the always-excellent Instapundit blog.
Looks like there’s some speculation about a presidential run, but it seems to me that what’s really going on is that it’s increasingly difficult to be a centrist Democrat in the Senate.
For a while it’s been difficult to be a centrist Republican in the cooling saucer of Congress. In fact, the Democrats picked off the moderates one-by-one, leaving only the two Maine senators and one or two others.
But the moderate Republicans were often replaced by moderate Democrats — or moderate Dems took over the role previously played by the so-called RINOs.
Now the trend is going in the other direction, and the leading indicators are Bayh’s retirement and Brown’s election.
