Assorted Links 5/29/09 Archives

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Assorted Links 5/29/09

• Congress in a Nutshell: Understanding Congress, June 4, 2009
• Congressional Dynamics and the Legislative Process, June 5, 2009
• Capitol Hill Workshop, June 10-12, 2009
• Tracking and Monitoring Legislation: How to Find and Use Congressional Documents, June 25, 2009 - with WiFi Classroom
• How to Research and Compile Legislative Histories, June 26, 2009 - with WiFi Classroom
• Crisis spurs spike in 'suburban survivalists'
• Early retirement claims increase dramatically: Instead of working longer as the economy worsens, more Americans are calling it quits before age 66. The ramifications could be profound for the retirees, families, government and social institutions.
• Waxman-Markey cost-benefit calculations
• Evasive tactics on global warming won't help Obama
• New at Reason: Shikha Dalmia on Why the GOP Should Embrace Liberty
• 10 Ways To Make Yourself (And Everyone Around You) Miserable
• Apple Drops Another Arbitrary Rejection On An E-Book App, Because Somebody Might Read The Kama Sutra With It
• The North Korean nuclear test: What the seismic data says - ht The Browser
• Product Review: SmartCover
• The Impact of Judicial Power on Gay Marriage Revisited
• Fascinating fights over how to pass the prison buck in California
• Housing: More problems ahead for the low end?
• Editorial: General Motors Death Watch 254: All That You Dream - "Government Motors doesn’t have the vehicles it needs to survive.
  ...
  The idea that the United States government will reform GM’s way of being and reverse the curse is completely preposterous. It’s like asking a cocaine dealer to sponsor a crack addict."
• After FEC Eviscerates Bundling Disclosure Law, Only One Bundler Discloses
• Mute Testimony
• How Much Will Universal Coverage Cost?
• The Cost Conundrum: What a Texas town can teach us about health care. - "The place [Doctors Hospital at Renaissance, in Edinburg, Texas, one of the towns in the McAllen metropolitan area,] had virtually all the technology that you’d find at Harvard and Stanford and the Mayo Clinic, and, as I walked through that hospital on a dusty road in South Texas, this struck me as a remarkable thing. Rich towns get the new school buildings, fire trucks, and roads, not to mention the better teachers and police officers and civil engineers. Poor towns don’t. But that rule doesn’t hold for health care.
  ...
  McAllen costs Medicare seven thousand dollars more per person each year than does the average city in America. But not, so far as one can tell, because it’s delivering better health care.
  ...
  Compared with patients in El Paso and nationwide, patients in McAllen got more of pretty much everything--more diagnostic testing, more hospital treatment, more surgery, more home care.
  ...
  The primary cause of McAllen’s extreme costs was, very simply, the across-the-board overuse of medicine. This is a disturbing and perhaps surprising diagnosis. Americans like to believe that, with most things, more is better. But research suggests that where medicine is concerned it may actually be worse.
  ...
  Woody Powell is a Stanford sociologist who studies the economic culture of cities. Recently, he and his research team studied why certain regions--Boston, San Francisco, San Diego--became leaders in biotechnology while others with a similar concentration of scientific and corporate talent--Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York--did not. The answer they found was what Powell describes as the anchor-tenant theory of economic development. Just as an anchor store will define the character of a mall, anchor tenants in biotechnology, whether it’s a company like Genentech, in South San Francisco, or a university like M.I.T., in Cambridge, define the character of an economic community. They set the norms. The anchor tenants that set norms encouraging the free flow of ideas and collaboration, even with competitors, produced enduringly successful communities, while those that mainly sought to dominate did not."
• Need A Witty “App For That” Phrase? There’s An App For That.
• A brief history of presidential spin on female court nominees from O'Connor to Sotomayor
• Bailout Watch 538: Feds to “Buy” Delphi for GM for Undisclosed Billions
• Collateral Damage
• And Yet Another 'Anonymous' Dataset Proves To Be Not Anonymous
• The Curse (Blessing) Of Anonymous Speech
• 25 And Over - "If you have reached the age of 25, I have a bit of bad news for you, to wit: it is time, if you have not already done so, for you to emerge from your cocoon of post-adolescent dithering and self-absorption and join the rest of us in the world. ... Grow up. ... You must, however, stop viewing carelessness, tardiness, helplessness, or any other quality better suited to a child as either charming or somehow beyond your control. A certain grace period for the development of basic consideration and self-sufficiency is assumed, but once you have turned 25, the grace period is over, and starring in a film in your head in which you walk the earth alone is no longer considered a valid lifestyle choice, but rather grounds for exclusion from social occasions." - ht Kottke
• Amazon Takes Personal Kindle Notes, Ratings Online
• Why advertise the public schools? - "Who funds the Fund for Public Schools? We do not know, for the organization has made the most of a loophole that exempts it from disclosing such information."
• The Power of Red (red kale, red grapes and bing cherry green smoothie)
• The Dearth of Move Up Buyers
• Digital Location Independent Lifestyle Designing NuNomads
• Magazines Giving Readers A Real Reason To Buy
• Wireless Data Costs - Kindle Economics #1
• More Privacy Laws Don't Mean More Privacy

May 29, 2009 07:37 AM    Caught Our Eye