The Warden

White House budget director: Affordable Care Act does not include a tax

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 10:50:36 -0500

White House budget director: Affordable Care Act does not include a tax:

Which is problematic because, you know, the whole mandate issue is framed as a tax issue for constitutional purposes.

Mr. Zients: “Well, this is—” Mr. Garrett: “A moment ago you said there’s no tax increase.” Mr. Zients: “There aren’t.” Mr. Garrett: “So that’s not a tax?” Mr. Zients: “No.” Mr. Garrett: “That’s not a tax. Okay. I just want to be clear on that because that’s not the argument the Administration is making before the Supreme Court.”

NYC: Schools in churches, but no churches in schools?

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 09:48:49 -0500

NYC: Schools in churches, but no churches in schools?:

New York City does not want churches and other religious groups meeting in public schools because they are concerned that impressionable youth will be confused and wrongly think that the public school endorses the church meeting there on Sunday mornings.

So it greatly surprised me to learn that the NYC Department of Education rents Roman Catholic schools to hold public school classes. On Sunday morning, I learned about P.S. 133 in Brooklyn, a public school that meets in a Catholic parochial school building. I was so surprised to learn of this, that I walked over to the school to see it for myself. This building has large crosses extending from the edges of the roof, yet NYC public schools hold classes there for children of all faiths.

Jeremy Lin's non-recruitment

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 01:19:26 -0500

Jeremy Lin's non-recruitment:

Some coaches have wondered whether Lin, who is of Taiwanese descent, did not receive a closer look by recruiters because of his ethnicity. Coaches have said recruiters, in the age of who-does-he-remind-you-of evaluations, simply lacked a frame of reference for such an Asian-American talent.

Why we have /bin and /usr/bin

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 11:30:25 -0500

Why we have /bin and /usr/bin:

Late last week, I came across a link at HackerNews giving some intriguing insight into how /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, and /usr/sbin came to be. Many of you will be surprised to learn that no, there is no divine plan behind all this separation.

Drones and the "anxiety" of disincentives

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 16:17:15 -0500

Drones and the "anxiety" of disincentives:

Anxiety is not a policy. It might be and, I think, in this case is an admirable sentiment, and a useful way of focusing on the basic question of the use of force. But ultimately, having anxieties about the implications of one’s weaponry and one’s political leaders who make decisions about how to use it is not the same as actually making a decision about what to do. When anxiety has to give way to actually deciding whether to use a weapon, or whether to develop a weapon system, someone has to decide: is the possibility that political or military leaders might decide to unjustly to overuse a weapon a reason to not use the most precise weapon available to commanders? Or not to develop greater precision in the first place?

Electoral College scenarios for Gingrich and Romney

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:35:18 -0500

Electoral College scenarios for Gingrich and Romney:

Romney, were he the nominee, could potentially make this generic map even better for Republicans. He has no obvious weaknesses in any of the swing states, at least as measured by head to head polling, which we fully grant is not necessarily all that predictive at this stage. Also, he could potentially make some of the competitive states harder for Obama: he could mobilize the not-insignificant Mormon population in Nevada to help in that state and play off his relative home field advantages in Michigan (his father was governor of the state he grew up in) and New Hampshire (he served as governor of neighboring Massachusetts and has built deep bonds with the Granite State, which paid off in his recent primary romp there). In fact, if Romney were the nominee, we’d likely switch New Hampshire to “leans Republican” from toss-up. While this only represents four electoral votes, consider this: take another five Obama states that went for George W. Bush twice (Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia) and put them in Romney’s column, and then add New Hampshire and all of John McCain’s states, and Romney is president.

Unlike Romney, we don’t see any competitive state where Gingrich would potentially perform better than a generic Republican. And, based on polling and our own thinking about the individual state-by-state contests, at this point we think he’d do worse than a generic Republican or Romney.

Discipleship vs. evangelism

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:28:22 -0500

Discipleship vs. evangelism:

What’s more important? Reaching the lost or growing the reached? Over the past two weeks, the ongoing debate between discipleship and evangelism took center stage during one megachurch’s Code Orange Revival.

The SOPA and PIPA protests in numbers. (via Fight for the...

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 12:48:47 -0500

The SOPA and PIPA protests in numbers.

(via Fight for the Future)

Iowa caucus recount still has issues, doesn't really matter anyway

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:09:39 -0500

Iowa caucus recount still has issues, doesn't really matter anyway:

So apparently Santorum did win the Iowa caucus. Maybe. Eight precincts’ numbers can’t be certified.

…

getting the caucus vote margin right down to every last vote isn’t really necessary. After all, the caucus vote doesn’t directly determine the number of Iowa delegates that the candidates will receive. Even if the caucus vote did determine delegates, no voting technology is going to make the process perfect. In fact, paper ballots and human counting might even be more accurate than more sophisticated kinds of voting technology.

Google, SOPA, and Citizens United

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 20:41:00 -0500

Google, SOPA, and Citizens United:

Interested, unorthodox perspective.

Today, Google’s U.S. query page features an anti-Stop-Online-Piracy-Act statement from Google. Say that Congress concludes that it’s unfair for Google to be able to speak so broadly, in a way that ordinary Americans (including ordinary Congressmen) generally can’t. Congress therefore enacts a statute banning all corporations from spending their money — and therefore banning them from speaking — in support of or opposition to any statute. What would you say about such a statute? Again, I limit the question to those who think corporations generally lack First Amendment rights.

(via John Samples)

Flickr's creative SOPA protest

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 20:32:16 -0500

Flickr's creative SOPA protest:

For a 24-hour period, starting today, Flickr is letting its members darken their own photos in an effort to raise awareness about the proposed, highly damaging legislation. But that’s not all – Flickr is going a step further, and will allow users to darken other members’ photos, too. Now that’s what censorship really feels like.

"These blocks are nothing. People adapt, as they’ve always done. They learn to use new methods, they..."

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:36:49 -0500

“These blocks are nothing. People adapt, as they’ve always done. They learn to use new methods, they discover new websites, they circumvent… Loads of money are thrown into lobbying and legal action and nothing else is accomplished but limitations to civil rights and preliminary structures for a police state.”

- Harri Kivistö

Forbes: Startup incubators are better than business schools

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:48:18 -0500

Forbes: Startup incubators are better than business schools:

Let’s get this straight: If you want to work at Goldman Sachs, McKinsey or General Electric, an MBA is a handy scrap of paper.

But if you’d prefer to bypass the corporate ladder and actually build something of your own, spending upwards of $140,000 and two years without pay is just about the worst way to go about it. Because looming outside those classroom walls is a creature far less merciful than any b-school professor: the market. Customers, you may be surprised to find, don’t give a damn about your degree—and the market will fire you faster than any ungrateful boss.

GOP Veepstakes

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 10:31:14 -0500

GOP Veepstakes:

Sure, we don’t have a presidential nominee yet. But that’s not stopping pundits from starting to pencil in the bottom half of the GOP ticket

"The Yankees moved like Michael Corleone in Godfather II. All family business settled in one day."

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 10:19:35 -0500

“The Yankees moved like Michael Corleone in Godfather II. All family business settled in one day.”

- Buster Olney

(via Quickish)

Just like that, New York Yankees upgrade their starting rotation

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 10:13:28 -0500

Just like that, New York Yankees upgrade their starting rotation:

So think through what just happened here. For 12 relaxing months, any time all of us baseball geniuses were asked what we thought about the Yankees, we could just push our favorite knee-jerk-analysis button and answer: “Who the heck’s going to pitch on the nights CC Sabathia doesn’t?”

Uh-oh. So much for that.

(via Quickish)

Tebow and expectations

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:53:03 -0500

Tebow and expectations:

If the Broncos lose tomorrow, it doesn’t mean anything about Tim Tebow. It doesn’t mean he sucks, it doesn’t mean he isn’t an NFL QB and it doesn’t take away from what happened last week and all season — it means the Broncos lost on the road to the bye-week-rested No. 1 seed in the AFC. Yeah, losing under those conditions would be humiliating. Come on.

Romney and free enterprise

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 08:23:01 -0500

Romney and free enterprise:

Whatever you think of Romney’s record, I think Roy hits it spot on — because Santorum and Gingrich did most of the things that Romney did, the only thing they can attack him for is his private sector career — something neither of them really know anything about.

A number of commentators have been remarking on how rarely Mitt Romney gets attacked by his opponents in the GOP debates. What’s even more remarkable is what the other candidates are attacking Romney for. Instead of calling Romney to account for his health-policy mistakes, they’re going after him for his … successful business career?

US debt equals GDP

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 10:58:52 -0500

US debt equals GDP:

The soaring national debt has reached a symbolic tipping point: It’s now as big as the entire U.S. economy.

(via The Freeman)

Ubuntu TV

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:08:09 -0500

Ubuntu TV:

Ubuntu TV is to be the first proof point of this new strategy. Silber says that you’ll be able to watch your own media files, streaming media, or broadcast media. The goal is to combine all of these media sources without radically changing user behavior. Specifically, Ubuntu TV is not simply a Linux desktop on your TV. Canonical, says Silber, does not believe in the “browser on your TV” experience. “Browsers belong on secondary devices — tablets, phones, etc,” Silber told me.