The Federal Communications Commission is inviting comments on support for or against Net Neutrality, which basically would ensure that federal policies act to preserve user freedom over the Internet. Information on the concept is here and here and here (scroll down to February 2007). It’s dry but important so take a moment to weigh in today (here via an interest group).
Here are a few disaster relief sites (most seem to still be getting ramped up):
Care, https://my.care.org/site/Donation2?5000.donation=form1&df_id=5000
Miami Herald’s list, http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/haiti/story/1421696.html.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
TNR’s Jonathan Cohn talks today about what’s likely to be a key point of negotiation between the House and Senate as the two bodies craft a final health care deal: a national insurance exchange, a provision in the House bill, or state-based exchanges, as the Senate wants. His post includes a chart by Wonkroom’s Igor Volsky that compares the two provisions, but here is a link to Volsky’s post as well.
I got a kick out of this correction, published yesterday in the New York Times Week in Review (with all due respect to the deceased who are mentioned):
An article on Dec. 27 about the death of Edward M. Kennedy in August referred incorrectly to the assassination of his brother President John F. Kennedy, and a correction in this space last Sunday erroneously corrected the length of his tenure in the Senate. The president was assassinated in 1963, the year after Edward Kennedy was elected to the Senate — not the same year. And as the article correctly reported, Senator Kennedy served 46 years — not 47 as the correction said. (The correction also erred in stating that the length of tenure was incorrect in Mr. Kennedy’s obituary, in two other articles on Aug. 27 and Aug. 28 and in an editorial on Aug. 28. All four correctly reported the tenure as 46 years.)
Is it snowing where you are? If so, see what the crystals really look like up close.
Below and here.
Support Science Friday.
Check out Youth Today’s coverage (in an article written by yours truly) of a new federal teen pregnancy program and the elimination — for the time being — of abstinence-only education.
The Franklin Institute’s Derrick Pitts on all the new planets being discovered by NASA.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Here’s an article, via Boing Boing, on a random but all-too-common problem: What to do with your old compact discs now that music has gone mostly digital. I have mine in the back of a cabinet in an old J Crew shopping bag. Why? No idea. A mix of reasons, I guess: laziness, fear that I’ll miss them if they get tossed, my inability to figure out iTunes, etc.
I was surprised at the range of different ideas offered in the comments. It may be time to act on dealing with my own collection. It would free up room in the cabinet for more, um, toilet paper.
The Washington Post recently went through a very painful (to its readers) redesign, adding all sorts of brain-addling fonts, reducing sections, and generally seeming to change the layout constantly. Most of the people I have talked to dislike it and seem to feel it’s emblematic of deep-seated problems at the paper. Book World is gone; Outlook is a mix of reviews and inside-the-beltway retreads of old ideas; the magazine is an unreadable joke. Whatever; I still subscribe. My beef is with the few sentences that appear in the upper left-hand corner of the print edition’s weather page. I can’t believe–refuse to believe–an editor is giving these items a second look. Because surely they’d stop them from appearing.
Here is today’s “forecast,” retyped word for word, since the text doesn’t appear online:
“Maybe a small bit warmer Tuesday than Monday, but not by any means warm. Just because it might be a few degrees above freezing, that doesn’t make it warm. It will be windy, but not as windy as previously; only about 10 mph today. But gusts could be stronger. Sun, maybe, but clouds, too.”
Now, not only is this an example of piss-poor writing–and this is a typical example of what appears in this space daily–it tells me almost nothing about the forecast. I’m not a total weather nerd, but give me a little science behind the forecast, will you? Low pressure, high pressure? Will it remain cold or start getting warmer?
It’s like someone is given the choice of using just a few words (work in “warm” and “windy” and “maybe” please!); of a certain length (use words with no more than eight letters please!); and was challenged to write a “forecast.” The sentences seem to argue with each other in the most annoying way. And, it’s either going to be a bit warmer or slightly warmer; what does “a small bit warmer” mean? Here’s just one way to say the same thing:
“Tuesday will be a bit warmer than Monday, but still brisk as temperatures remain in the thirties; a slight, though occasionally gusty wind and intermittent cloud cover will make it feel even colder than the expected high of 38 degrees.”
Done. One sentence. Was that so hard? I don’t blame the writers of this stuff, but I do blame the editors for letting these foolish forecasts appear in my morning paper. They are distracting and make me want to cry (or bang head against the wall like bunny here). Please, oh WaPO, fix it!
