interesting things
PAPER: Millions improperly claimed ‘Obamaphone’; program cost $2.2 billion…
via DrudgeSiren.com – All Stories http://www.drudgesiren.com/allhl.php?id=159760&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+drudgesiren%2FoGpG+%28DrudgeSiren.com+-+All+Stories%29#h159760
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida declared himself “honored†to be asked to give the Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night. Given the sorry history of partisan rebuttals of presidential remarks, though, he just might want to reconsider.
In the 47 years since Republicans hatched the idea, Rubio is the 120th officeholder to tackle what most politicians consider an impossible task: to try to top a president of the United States on a night when the perks of the office are very much on display.
“It is actually an awful job to have,†said Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who is an expert on Congress. “You are either speaking to the camera with no audience, or with an audience a media person conjured up. Either way, you look so much smaller than the president standing in the House chamber behind the presidential seal.â€
via Homepage http://www.nationaljournal.com/daily/marco-rubio-s-state-of-the-union-rebuttal-may-be-a-tall-order-20130212
The narrative surrounding the dramatic demographic shifts in the U.S. that The Next America covers starts with a dominant white, aging population that gives way to a young, diverse cohort.
The changes had been happening slowly but steadily. Then, between 2004, when George Bush was reelected, and 2008, when Barack Obama handily defeated Sen. John McCain for president, becoming the first African-American president in U.S. history, something happened. Traditionally red states started turning purple. Minority and youth voters came out in droves. Demographers and experts alike who had been predicting generational shifts between the gray and the brown for quite some time were getting more attention.
Now, using raw population data released by the Census Bureau, we’ve mapped these shifts of the voting-age population and the ensuing changes between non-Hispanic white shares and, well, everyone else.Â
April Winchell is shutting down Regretsy, the site where she has tirelessly cataloged the most horrible things on Etsy, from “an oil painting of a couple copulating inside a burger bun, called Sex Burger; a vulva-faced zombie ornament; a custom unicorn hoodie and a cat hairball necklace.” She explains to Wired UK what it was like to run the site:
You would think that a joke and a photo wouldn’t take that long to crap out, but this site was a time suck like you would not believe. There would be days when I would be on the couch with my laptop for 16 hours, just exhausted and in tears.
First, you have to find the stuff. And you have find great stuff. And that gets harder because the shock needle keeps moving. After a year or two you’re like, “Eh, another teddy bear with a vagina, who cares.” Bad crafts are like drugs; you have to keep upping the dose to feel anything.
Then you have to write the joke or do the Photoshop or come up with the contest. You do the coding and resize the images and read hundreds of emails every day. We mailed thousands of books and packages, we fulfilled hundreds of charity requests, we did sales and fundraising and fan meet-ups and Secret Santa for underprivileged kids, and at one point I was writing four posts a day. I loved every second of it. But you can’t do that forever.
Regretsy closes, the world mourns the end of DIY meets WTF [Wired/Olivia Solon]
(via Beyond the Beyond)
Researchers who sought to determine whether pricing information for a total hip replacement could be obtained from hospitals and physicians found getting such information was often difficult and that there were wide variations in the quoted prices, according to a new report.
via ScienceDaily: Latest Science News http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130211110845.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29
Concerns and anxieties about one’s close relationships appear to function as a chronic stressor that can compromise immunity, according to new research.
via ScienceDaily: Latest Science News http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130211110847.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29
Her suit contends that the grade was part of an attempt to force her to abandon her graduate degree.
via Yahoo! News – Latest News & Headlines http://news.yahoo.com/lehigh-university-student-got-c-124956418.html
NBC recently brought to light the Obama Administration’s policy of conducting drone attacks on civilians “even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack …
via Runnin' Scared http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2013/02/obamas_drones_t.php
via Vanity Fair | VF.com http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2013/02/oscar-2013-seth-macfarlane-voting-begins-today
A New Museum show makes the argument that the innocuous-seeming, which-year-was-that-again? year, may, in fact, have changed absolutely everything.
via nymag.com: Art http://nymag.com/arts/art/features/1993-new-museum-exhibit/
