Clipmarks | RayWatkins's clips

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:10:50 GMT

clipped by: RayWatkins
clipper's remarks: Founded in June 2004, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America is the nation's first and largest group dedicated to the Troops and Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the civilian supporters of those Troops and Veterans

Clip Source: www.veteranreportcard.org

The IAVA Action Fund is the foremost nonprofit, non-partisan advocate for our nation's returning warriors and their families. Our 2008 Veteran Report Card, based on the key veterans' legislation that came to a vote during the 110th Congress, grades every Senator and Representative on their level of support for our troops.

Online Literacy Is a Lesser Kind

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:03:35 GMT

clipped by: RayWatkins
clipper's remarks: Slow reading counterbalances Web skimming
By MARK BAUERLEIN

Clip Source: chronicle.com

What we are seeing is a strange flattening of the act of reading. It equates handheld screens with Madame Bovary, as if they made the same cognitive demands and inculcated the same habits of attention. It casts peeking at a text message and plowing through Middlemarch as subsets of one general activity. And it treats those quick bursts of words and icons as fully sufficient to sustain the reading culture. The long book may go, Price concluded, but reading will carry on just as it did before: "The file, the list, the label, the memo: These are the genres that will keep reading alive."

Verbage: The Republican war on words.

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:38:00 GMT

clipped by: RayWatkins
clipper's remarks: by James Wood October 13, 2008

Clip Source: www.newyorker.com

Doesn’t this reflect a deep suspicion of language itself? It’s as if Republican practitioners saw words the way Captain Ahab saw “all visible objects”—as “pasteboard masks,” concealing acts and deeds and things—and, like Ahab, were bent on striking through those masks. The Melvillean atmosphere may not be accidental, since, beyond the familiar American anti-intellectualism—to work with words is not to work at all—there’s a residual Puritanism. The letter killeth, as St. Paul has it, but the spirit giveth life. (In that first debate, McCain twice charged his opponent with the misdeed of “parsing words.”) In this vision, there is something Pharisaical about words. They confuse, they corrupt; they get in the way of Jesus.

Stocks Approach a Grim Milestone

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 20:19:02 GMT

clipped by: RayWatkins
clipper's remarks: By David Leonhardt

Clip Source: economix.blogs.nytimes.com

At 2:15 this afternoon, the Standard & Poor 500-stock index was trading around 1,026. That left it 47 percent below its inflation-adjusted high, which it hit in the summer of 2000. If shares keep falling and the index hits 967, it will be a remarkable 50 percent below its peak. That has happened only two other times since 1929 — during the Great Depression and during the 1970s.

It is easy to overlook just how steep the decline in stocks has been in the last eight years. Stock prices and indexes tend to be described in nominal terms, rather than inflation-adjusted terms. (In nominal terms, the S.&P. 500 is down about 30 percent from its peak.) But it makes much more sense to adjust share prices for inflation, just as it makes sense to adjust the price of just about anything — food, houses, incomes — for inflation.

Study: Facebook profiles can be used to detect narcissism

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 16:50:44 GMT

clipped by: RayWatkins

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

A new University of Georgia study suggests that online social networking sites such as Facebook might be useful tools for detecting whether someone is a narcissist.

"We found that people who are narcissistic use Facebook in a self-promoting way that can be identified by others," said lead author Laura Buffardi, a doctoral student in psychology who co-authored the study with associate professor W. Keith Campbell.

The researchers, whose results appear in the October issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, gave personality questionnaires to nearly 130 Facebook users, analyzed the content of the pages and had untrained strangers view the pages and rate their impression of the owner's narcissism.

Saul Friedman: What Hath Deregulation Wrought?

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 13:10:17 GMT

clipped by: RayWatkins
clipper's remarks: Posted at 6:25 pm, September 29th, 2008

Clip Source: blog.niemanwatchdog.org

Anyone think there are too many commercials on network television, and that some of them cross the line of decency and good taste? It wasn’t always that way. Or do you think that all those commercials for this drug or that one are unseemly and possibly dangerous? That wasn’t always permitted. Are you as confident as you once were that the Food and Drug Administration’s approval meant that drugs were are and effective? The recent record says otherwise.

Do you sometimes wonder why some television commentators can get away with such scurrilous, personal and libelous attacks? That wasn’t always so. And are you sure that your airline reservation will be honored at the price and with the seating you expected or even that the airline will still be in business when you get to the airport? Not too long ago flying was more predictable, convenient and even enjoyable.

Ask about McCain’s Navy career, aside from the POW part of it

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 13:03:14 GMT

clipped by: RayWatkins
clipper's remarks: ASK THIS | September 02, 2008
By Barry Sussman
bsussman@niemanwatchdog.org

Clip Source: www.niemanwatchdog.org

McCain has made his military experience a key reason to vote for him. Reporters should examine his military records, including reports on air mishaps he was involved in before he was shot down over Hanoi. And McCain should see to it that all reports are made public.

Shooting From the Hip, With a Smile to Boot

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 13:49:10 GMT

clipped by: RayWatkins
clipper's remarks:
BY LIBBY COPELAND - WASHINGTON POST STAFF WRITER | WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2008

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Wait, did you see that? There! She did it again: wrinkled up her nose in a way that either looks like a sneer or is adorably reminiscent of Samantha from "Bewitched." Depending on whom you talk to.

Next time you see a clip of the Republican vice presidential nominee, try this exercise. Mute your TV and just watch that face. How often do you see someone in political life so extravagantly expressive? The eyebrows go up, the shoulder leans in, the thumb jauntily gestures backward, the tongue actually fixes in the cheek. To mock Barack Obama, she licks her finger and holds it to the imaginary wind! And that smile, that nearly ever-present smile, which either indicates -- oh, dear, here we go again -- that she's sarcastic and dismissive or that she's letting you in on a very clever joke.

The Mark of Zotero

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 20:14:01 GMT

clipped by: RayWatkins
clipper's remarks: Posted by Barbara Fister on September 28th, 2008

Clip Source: acrlog.org

This just in, via beSpacific - Reuters is suing George Mason University for violating the Endnote TOS. Apparently (though I’m not sure I really understand the issue - this news story is very cryptic) Reuters claims the organization violated the terms of service when they analyzed ways to convert style files from Endnote to Zotero. Reuters (parent company of ISI, parent company of Endnote) accuses Zotero’s programmers of reverse-engineering Endnote files to make the conversion possible and that this threatens to destroy their customer base.

Are You Better Off in 2008 Than You Were in 2000?

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 18:33:46 GMT

clipped by: RayWatkins
clipper's remarks: 23 out of 25 selected economic indicators worse now than 8 years ago

Clip Source: www.cepr.net

Washington, DC- During the final presidential debate of the 1980 election, Ronald Reagan, running against Jimmy Carter, turned to the camera and asked “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” The debate took place against a backdrop of spiraling inflation and rising unemployment. A week later, Reagan won the election by one of the largest margins in recent history. Now, with the 2008 presidential election just weeks away and the economy once again in turmoil, a new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) updates the Reagan question by comparing economic indicators in 2008 and 2000, and finds that most indicators suggest that voters are worse off now than they were eight years ago.

A Conservative for Obama

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:26:29 GMT

clipped by: RayWatkins
clipper's remarks: Leading Off By Wick Allison, Editor In Chief

Clip Source: www.dmagazine.com

Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.

Stanford Engineering offers open courses

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 02:50:50 GMT

clipped by: RayWatkins
clipper's remarks: Open Access News

News from the open access movement

Clip Source: www.earlham.edu

The Stanford School of Engineering today announced the debut of Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE), the pilot of a free online service that provides Stanford’s popular introduction to computer science and other computer science and electrical engineering courses. Each consists of complete video lectures and materials such as handouts, assignments, exams and transcripts. With SEE, Stanford Engineering is releasing the courses under a Creative Commons license, explicitly encouraging educators and learners around the world to incorporate the video courses and materials into their educational endeavors and to form virtual communities around the classes. ...

SEE is produced by the school’s Stanford Center for Professional Development (SCPD), which will use its 40 years of distance education expertise to provide an anywhere/anytime open access learning experience. ...

Map Gallery of Ethnic Groups in the United States

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:18:50 GMT

clipped by: RayWatkins
clipper's remarks: Created by JTK. Last revised August 25, 2004.

Clip Source: www.valpo.edu

American Ethnic Geography

A Cultural Geography of the United States and Canada

Map Gallery of Ethnic Groups in the United States

The Whiners' Recession

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 01:08:44 GMT

clipped by: RayWatkins
clipper's remarks: By Dean Baker

September 8, 2008, Truthout

Clip Source: www.cepr.net

Senator McCain and his friends no doubt still believe that the economy's fundamentals are strong, but Friday's jobs numbers clearly show how bad things have gotten. The 6.1 percent unemployment rate reported for August is almost as high as the worst levels from the last recession. A broader measure of labor market weakness, that includes people who can only find part-time work or who have given up looking for jobs, is higher than at any point in the last recession.

When the labor market weakens, workers have less bargaining power with their employers. As a result, wages are trailing more than 2 percentage points behind inflation over the last year.

Wages are virtually the entire income for most workers. If the purchasing power of their wages falls by 2 percent, this is the equivalent of a 2 percentage point increase in their tax rate.

Dolphin serial killers?

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 18:22:10 GMT

clipped by: RayWatkins
clipper's remarks: Thursday, September 04, 2008

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

Scientists who autopsy cetaceans that wash up dead on British beaches have come to a grim conclusion: some species are being killed by bottlenose dolphins.

Dead porpoises (and other cetaceans) turn up regularly on beaches around Britain. According to a Defra report last year (pdf), the cause of death of 15 out of 56 porpoise bodies found - the majority - was "physical trauma (bottlenose dolphin attack)". The photo above shows the rake marks on a harbour porpoise caused by a bottlenose dolphin.

The killings were first reported from the north-east coast of Scotland, then off the coast of Wales, and this week the body of a Risso's dolphin was found further south still, in Cornwall. The Risso's dolphin (see photo below) was said to have been killed over food shortages and dolphins were described as being so hungry they are turning on each other.