Assorted Links 6/11/09 Archives

Assorted Links 6/11/09

How to Slice and Dice an Onion Like a Pro
See also "How to Chop a Red Onion"

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
Drafting Effective Federal Legislation and Amendments, July 29, 2009
Preparing and Delivering Congressional Testimony, July 30, 2009
Advanced Federal Budget Process, August 3-4, 2998
Advanced Legislative Strategies, August 5-7, 2009
State-run health insurance plans - "1. Three dozen state governments currently run such plans and they do not in general drive private insurance companies out of business. In California, the largest such plan, two-thirds of all eligible people choose the privately-run health insurance plans."
Facebook Used to Nail Bail Violator in DUI Case
Thomson Reuters Lawsuit Against Competing Software Product Dismissed - "wouldn't it be nice if the company focused on competing by innovating on tools and features, rather than trying to sue competitors out of existence?"
Arizona Judge Throws Out Political Arrest Based on Photo Ticket - "Judge Keegan took the case as an opportunity to reinforce his previous judgment that the Arizona law governing freeway speed cameras is unconstitutional."
Judicial "Activism" Isn't the Issue - "Jeff Rowes of the Institute for Justice has an important op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal: Judicial 'Activism' Isn't the Issue: Liberals and conservatives both show too much deference to Congress."
Race: Sotomayor And Obama Versus Voters
Apparently If You Work For The AP, You're Not Allowed To Criticize Newspaper Management
Remembering Tiananmen, 20 years later - photos
Was the TARP a Ruse? - "What was that explanation? In Bailout Nation, we discuss the possibility that The TARP was all a giant ruse, a Hank Paulson engineered scam to cover up the simple fact that CitiGroup (C) was teetering on the brink of implosion. A loan just to Citi alone would have been problematic, went this line of brilliant reasoning, so instead, we gave money to all the big banks."
600,000 jobs “saved or created”
Price, Demand, and Money Supply as They Relate to Inflation and Deflation - "Is money supply growing faster than real per capita GDP? Yes, decidedly so. And unless this trend changes significantly we will face a whopping monetary inflation."
I am afraid I no longer believe . . . "That we have an inquisitive American media as we once knew it. There has emerged something as bad as state-sanctioned coercion--which we could at least identify, and thus struggle against."
Beyond graduation - "Only seven in 10 students finishes high school in four years. Is college a realistic goal for all students?"
Lawrence H. White joins GMU faculty
Ask the Best and Brightest: International House Of Penske Lineup?
Cash for Clunkers
Earmark My Words - "What do top earmarkers talk about in Congress? Does our money go where their mouths are?"
My talk on economics for university administrators - "4. The higher education bubble has burst. The expiration of stimulus funds in 2011 will be a crushing event for many public sector universities."
John Viega Talks About Beautiful Security - "The average home user, as long as they are not doing anything dangerous that leaves them prone to social engineering or out in a very hostile environment like potentially a conference, they're usually okay. So on your home network, you're behind a NATing firewall usually. So there's really little threat from the outside world, except what the user browses to. And then there are tools like Site Advisor that can help make the browsing experience a lot more safe as well. ... When you're on any open wireless network, you should assume that the security problems on your computer might be accessible to other people."
Use Microsoft Outlook with Google Apps for email, contacts, and calendar
30 Rock = The Muppet Show rebooted
Education: Another Money-Saver - "more education about diabetes is associated with fewer hospitalizations down the road. ... the hospitalization rate for people who had had at least one educational visit was 34% lower than for those people who had had none. And the cost savings were considerable: Having had any type of educational visit was associated with $11,571 less in hospital costs per person. All types of education were effective, but nutritionist visits were associated with the greatest reduction in hospitalizations and costs."
PDF Transformer 3.0: Read Our Exclusive Report - "The new version of PDF Transformer doesn't just convert PDF files into an editable Word or Excel file, but it retains all the formatting as well thanks to ABBYY's Adaptive Document Recognition Technology, which it initially developed for its OCR software. This technology preserves footnotes, tables, fonts, headers, footers, page numbers, and more."
Health-Monitoring Football Helmets Take All the Fun Out of Death Sports
Tall Tales About Exercise - "So after carefully thinking through all the evidence, I came to the obvious conclusion: playing basketball makes you tall. And the longer you play, the taller you become. Nothing else can explain why the players become taller as they move from high school, to college, to the pros."
Tech Upgrades: GPS Quest
How 18th Century Technology Could Down an Airliner - "While the mystery of what caused Air France Flight 447 to vanish into the Atlantic Ocean is far from solved, preliminary reports suggest equipment first developed in the 18th century may have contributed to the crash of one of the most sophisticated airliners ever built."
One-Third of U.S. Doesn’t Have Broadband
The meaning of the $99 iPhone 3G to Pre and RIM - "The point I’m trying to make is that Apple really nailed it with the price on the iPhone 3G 8GB model [$99]. Now not only do they have models competing in the more expensive smart phone market but the average consumer market as well."
Sirius XM Passing Music Royalty Rates On To Subscribers, Raising Lots Of Questions