August 2012
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Race and the presidential race →
A debate is percolating over whether the Mitt Romney campaign has tried to stoke racial resentments, primarily through television ads attacking the Obama administration over welfare policy. Republican leaders deny it. President Obama and his aides have been largely silent on the issue.
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WHEN I ORDER IN&OUT USING SECRET MENU VERBIAGE
wheninla:
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Ideological differences threaten GOP unity →
A party civil war could be looming over abortion, immigration and gay rights, especially if Romney fails to defeat Obama.
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“I’ve known eight presidents. Three of them intimately.”
– Vice President Joe Biden, while talking about how President Obama makes decisions. (via officialssay)
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Americans toss out as much as 40% of their food,... →
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Mental benefits of music lessons echo years after... →
Lapsed musical instrumentalists (and their disappointed parents): Take heart! The child that gets even a few years of formal musical training before quitting those weekly lessons continues to show evidence that his or her brain has been changed in ways that improve mental function, says a new study.
Yes! So those two years of orchestra in elementary school despite showing little musical...
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Tumblr Tuesday
Two essential links for Angelenos:
L.A. Streetsblog: The “lite” version (they’re their* words!) of the transportation and community blog.
L.A. Mayor’s Office: Mayor Villaraigosa’s official Tumblr.
* Updated at 1:45 p.m.: ARGHHHH
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Mindset list for the college class of 2016 →
What kind of world does this year’s incoming class of freshmen live in?
Your Tumblr host’s favorites:
8. Bill Clinton is a senior statesman of whose presidency they have little knowledge.
12. For most of their lives, maintaining relations between the U.S. and the rest of the world has been a woman’s job in the State Department.
27. Outdated icons with images of floppy discs for...
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U.S. intelligence tests crowd-sourcing against its... →
Might large groups be better predictors of wars and terrorism than analysts in government spy services?
Crowd-sourcing would mean, in theory, polling large groups across the 200,000-person intelligence community, or outside experts with security clearances, to aggregate their views about the strength of the Taliban, say, or the likelihood that Iran is secretly building a nuclear weapon.
Whoa.
Alissa Walker: Rolling on the LA River →
spiegelman:
Check out Alissa Walker’s photo essay on kayaking down the Los Angeles River
A few months ago I emailed a bunch of friends asking if they wanted to do this. They were too scared.
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Rep. Todd Akin sits on the House Committee on... →
Really.
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Opinion: Funding cuts threaten U.S. science... →
kateoplis:
“On Aug. 5, I was among those who witnessed the rover Curiosity landing on Mars in real time at NASA’s Caltech-managed Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The excitement was overwhelming: The one-ton Mars Science Laboratory broke through the Red Planet’s atmosphere, slowed its speed from 13,000 mph to almost zero and touched down. One glimpse of those first images from more than 100 million...
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FYI:
evanfleischer:
The Mars Curiosity team is doing an AMA on Reddit.
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Op-Ed: Obama's slave link →
Tracing a line from the first black slave to the first black president.
“Two of the most historically significant African Americans in the history of our country are amazingly directly related,” declared genealogist Joseph Shumway. “John Punch was more than likely the genesis of legalized slavery in America. But after centuries of suffering, the Civil War and decades of civil...
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Did you feel that?
[Updated at 9:41 a.m.: Here’s the USGS link.]
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More triple-digit highs as Southern California... →
The heat wave is expected to last through Saturday, with the highest temperatures likely from Thursday on. But the differences between Wednesday and the rest of the week may be slight.
… “It may be hotter later in the week but you’re not really going to be able to tell,” National Weather Service meterologist Rich Thompson said.
[I know this happens every year, but ARGH. —S.]
