They Drove Them Insane (4)
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Andrew Sullivan (864)
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The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan (828)
1 day
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The torture techniques deployed against anyone George W. Bush unilaterally labeled an enemy combatant drove some of them insane:A U.S. military officer warned Pentagon officials that an American detainee was being driven nearly insane by months of punishing isolation and sensory deprivation in a U.S. military brig, according to documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and provided to The Associated Press... They were deprived of natural light for months and for years were ...
Nate Adjusts The Model (2)
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Andrew Sullivan (864)
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The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan (828)
1 day, 22 hours
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Assessing the Senate polling, Nate Silver makes two telling adjustments:I have also made a couple of changes to the regression model. Firstly, we are replacing the partisan ID variable with a variable indicating Obama's current standing in our presidential projections. Evidently, there are some coattails/synergies with Obama's ground game in states like North Carolina. And secondly, I have introduced a variable for the number of Southern Baptists -- our "scientific" way to demarcate the South ...
Mufin: An Automated Music Recommendation Engine That Actually Works (21)
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Jason Kincaid (1103)
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TechCrunch (7862)
3 days
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Whenever we get introduced to a site that features some kind of “digital fingerprinting technology” to power a music recommendation engine, it’s hard not to be skeptical. Fingerprinting works well for identifying the same song in multiple places - for example, duplicate songs in a music library. But when it comes to music recommendations, automated systems rarely work well, which is why Pandora relies on a team of 50+ analysts to drive its recommendation engine, ...
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kmohr25 said:
Matt, this is for you.
[Time]: They Liked Him, They Really Liked Him (1)
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3 days, 1 hour
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Greenberg's assessment of the evening is a partisan one, but a plausible explanation for the lop-sided response. "McCain is just not wearing well with intense exposure," he says. "But Obama wears very well."
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arsalan said:
Before the debate, McCain had a 48/46 favorability rating; that improved to 56/36 by the end. But that’s about where Obama started the evening—54/36. After an hour and a half, Obama’s favorability numbers were 80/14. As Joe Biden would say, let me repeat that: 80% of the undecided voters had favorable views of Obama and only 14% saw him negatively for a net rating of +66. Not even Bill Clinton got such a warm response in town hall formats.
Off the Tracks (1)
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The Places We Live (2)
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Andrew Sullivan (864)
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The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan (828)
3 days, 16 hours
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From the artist's website: In 2008 more people live in cities than in rural areas. One third of city dwellers, more than a billion people, live in slums. In The Places We Live, Magnum photographer Jonas Bendiksen presents sixteen homes in four different slum areas: Caracas, Venezuela; Mumbai, India; Nairobi, Kenya; and Jakarta, Indonesia.More images here. (hat tip: Diana Jou)
Cafardi Resigns (3)
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Andrew Sullivan (864)
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The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan (828)
3 days, 17 hours
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Nick Cafardi, a leading Catholic supporter of Obama and former dean of the Duquesne University Law School, recently wrote a provocative op-ed arguing that Catholics should vote for Obama on pro-life grounds other than the policy of criminalizing all abortion. He cited torture as a moral issue that Catholics should be more concerned with as a practical matter since the goal of criminalizing all abortion is, in his view, a lost cause. He has now ...
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arsalan said:
Any pro-life readers of my shared items (not naming any names here) should definitely read the op-ed linked here. It's a good alternative take. :)
Foodie Culture Wars (2)
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Why Facebook is foundering (5)
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Owen Thomas (347)
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Valleywag: Top (15)
3 days, 21 hours
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The great hope of the Valley, the startup everyone thought was the next Google, the company whose IPO might restart the stock-market gold rush for everyone, is not well. Why? Look to its founder. Mark Zuckerberg is mismanaging his creation's transition to greatness. In Facebook's own parlance, the company's plight is "complicated." It will take in $300 million to $350 million in revenue this year, thanks in part to a lucrative ad deal with Microsoft. ...
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Carl said:
The picture is funny
Zeitgiest Quote (4)
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Marc Ambinder (73)
3 days, 23 hours
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From one of Ben Smith's sources who's canvassing for Obama in working class white Philly suburbs: "What's crazy is this," he writes. "I was blown away by the outright racism, but these folks are f***ing undecided. They would call him a n----r and mention how they don't know what to do because of the economy." Remarkably, the intense cross-pressures of economic anxiety are so strong that they're literally bringing racism to the fore and then ...
[Salon]: Palin faking her accent? You betcha (4)
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NewsJunk.com (29)
4 days, 1 hour
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Check out this video montage of the Alaska governor turning her accent on and off.
Ah, Cable (1)
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myglesias (279)
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Matthew Yglesias (304)
4 days, 1 hour
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I guess a close election would be good for cable news ratings and that explains why every cable network is now broadcasting a Sarah Palin stump speech live, in its entirety, even though ever cable network broadcast an identical Palin stump speech live, in its entirety, just yesterday. Certainly I don’t imagine they’re planning to start extending the same courtesy to Joe Biden.
What To Look For Next (16)
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Fred (665)
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A VC (433)
4 days, 5 hours
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Image by Getty Images via Daylife The Treasury, the Fed, and Warren Buffet have been the only buyers in this meltdown and have been largely focused on financial companies. Meanwhile the rest of the market has gone down 30% year to date and very few, if any, stocks have been spared. What do we look for next? Does the market just keep going down endlessly? What will bring this to an end? Clearly not government ...
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Jonathan said:
Key insight towards the end: "Eventually this market meltdown will be over and stability will return. But things will not be the same. There will be big winners and big losers. We have already seen many of the big losers emerge, but we have not yet seen the big winners emerge."
Breakthrough in Holographic Tech Makes 3D Sets 5 to 10 Years Away [Hologram] (9)
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Elaine Chow (347)
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Gizmodo (6046)
4 days, 7 hours
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Holographic television sets may be only a few years off thanks to a new breakthrough in 3D technology. Researchers at the University of Arizona said they had made the first updatable 3D displays with memory, a prerequisite for getting any holographic image to move. With the new technology, displays can now be erased and rewritten in a matter of minutes. Though that's still far slower than the refresh rate of normal 2D television sets, the ...
Stupid Season (1)
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Will Wilkinson (24)
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Will Wilkinson (24)
4 days, 12 hours
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I must say I agree wholeheartedly with David Friedman: One interesting–and irritating–feature of online argument, especially in an election year, is the routine assumption that everyone is on one side or the other and that which side you are on determines what you say. If you say something favorable about Governor Palin you must be a Republican supporter and are therefor obligated to respond to any argument offered against Senator McCain. If you say something ...
Down In The Muck (1)
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4 days, 16 hours
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Jason Zengerle is unsure it's wise for Obama to raise Keating:...at a time when voters are freaking out about losing their life savings, the candidate who makes a point of not playing politics--or at least of seeming not to play politics--is the candidate who's making the smart political play. Obama's made a lot of smart political plays up to this point; I'm surprised he didn't make this one.Noam Scheiber agrees. I have to say I'm ...
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arsalan said:
One critical point Sully misses: playing some offense on this requires McCain to play defense and squander some time and resources.
Google Has Changed Political Debate Forever (54)
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Marshall Kirkpatrick (1120)
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ReadWriteWeb (4895)
4 days, 17 hours
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When I was on the high school debate team, about 15 years ago, using the Internet was considered strange, if not cheating. We used photocopy machines, print magazines and academic journals almost exclusively. That time in the world's history is now gone forever. When Sarah Palin and Joe Biden debated in front of one of the largest TV audiences in US election history last week, they might not have been Googling things during the debate, ...
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Paul S said:
I think this could have important implications for how we watch television, a la Joost. We don't want lean back, or lean forward, we want intelligent. Of course the definition of intelligent changes with each person, but none the less....
The Decent Republican (2)
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4 days, 17 hours
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A faithful Mormon and a real conservative, Gordon Smith runs an ad touting his inclusiveness. I'd like to vouch for him, especially on gay and HIV issues. He's one of the good guys. The Senate would be poorer without him in it:
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arsalan said:
I love Gordon Smith. He is truly one of the last decent Republicans left.
Taegan Goddard's Political Wire (101) permalink
Gallup finds that only 9% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the United States -- the lowest such reading in Gallup Poll history.Shared by arsalan (30)Contribute comment
