March 2011
50 posts
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Gender Pay Gap Underestimates Economic Inequality →
swirlspice:
The old-fashioned gender pay gap statistic embeds the assumption that it is somehow “natural” and uncontroversial to impose sharp penalties on those who don’t work “full” time. But what, after all, is “full” time? As Alice Kessler-Harris pointed out long ago, its definition has changed a lot. The one thing that has remained constant is that “full time” has always been defined as the...
February 2011
46 posts
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Ezra Klein: Wisconsin is about power, not money →
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Our media are failing us →
mnpublius:
Despite the fact that the battle in Wisconsin is one of the most important things to happen to organized labor in years, last weekend not a single national Sunday news show featured any labor representative. This weekend, they were planning to repeat that glaring omission, until intense pressure convinced one single network to invite a single labor leader.
These days, there is...
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Once Popular, Car Pools Go the Way of Hitchhiking →
“Remember the 1970s? Watergate, disco, oil embargoes and, of course, car-pooling. Many big companies organized group rides for their employees, and roughly one in four Americans who drove to work shared a ride with others.
“But now far more people are driving alone, as companies have spread out, Americans are wealthier and cars have become cheaper to own. The percentage of workers...
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“[T]he government wants the next generation of bulbs to be measured by their...”
– Juliet Eilperin, “Lighting switch requires a change in mind-set”
It’s about time! Wattage has always been a loose estimate of what you really care about in a light bulb - how well does it light the room? With incandescents, CFLs, halogens, and LEDs on the market, the correlation...
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Old Weather →
Contribute to scientific understanding of climate change by reading WWI-era ships’ logs and turning them into computer-usable data. See also data.rescue@home, which is digitizing weather records from the Solomon Islands and WWII Germany.
(via Skeptical Science)
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The Less Discussed Part of Walker’s Wisconsin... →
Ed of ginandtacos: “It’s like a highlight reel of all of the high-flying slam dunks of neo-Gilded Age corporatism: privatization, no-bid contracts, deregulation, and naked cronyism. Extra bonus points for the explicit effort to legally redefine the term ‘public interest’ as ‘whatever the energy industry lobbyists we appoint to these unelected bureaucratic positions...
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Four things people mostly aren’t saying about the... →
Jordan Ellenberg: “Let me emphasize for those not from Wisconsin that what I’m about to say is actually true: the Governor has the power to veto individual sentences and even words out of bills, thus enacting into law assertions entirely of the executive’s creation…. Scott Walker won’t hesitate to slice and dice what the legislature sends him until it says what he wants it to say — and...
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Skyrocketing food prices fueled by unusual extreme... →
For the “up sides to climate change” file, I guess.
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For all my Minneapolis and greater Minnesota... →
So yeah, uh, this rally is on Tuesday. Which I figured out from my smartphone on the capitol steps. Whoops.
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“It is time to stop politicizing women’s health. For some, describing a...”
– Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA)
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For all my Minneapolis and greater Minnesota... →
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Rightbloggers Welcome Gay, Muslim Diversity at... →
“Perhaps hoping to convince people in preparation for a 2012 Obama challenge they weren’t all uptight white guys, CPAC threw a little multiculturalism into its mix, with gays and Muslims gaining a sliver of representation. You can guess what followed — some of the brethren accused CPAC of selling them out to the gay/Muslim enemy.”
Roy Edroso hits the highlights, if you...
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McCollum receives death threat over NASCAR bill →
isopod:
iteeth:
MnIndy:
Rep. Betty McCollum received a death threat on Wednesday over her amendment to a spending bill to end Pentagon funding for NASCAR, Talking Points Memo reports.
This is sickening.
I guess it’s good to be reminded that sickening things exist. I guess. In my regular reading I get exposed to just a tiny bit of this kind of thing. It’s still too much.
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Northern Spark nuit blanche →
“For one night only, more than 60 regional and national artists together with the Twin Cities’ arts community will display new art installations at public places and unexpected locations throughout the city. Directed and produced by Northern Lights.mn, Northern Spark takes place this summer from sunset on June 4 (8:55 p.m.) until the morning of June 5, 2011 (sunrise 5:28 a.m.).”
...
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Shock Doctrine Wisconsin Style →
Eric Ferguson: “Abolishing the right to organize for public employees (anyone think abolishing the right for private sector workers is far behind?) doesn’t help solve the budget crisis —- that’s merely an excuse. The giveaway is Walker is willing to back off a bit on the measures that actually cost money for employees, even though that makes the immediate budget crisis worse, but won’t back...
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“At first we were looking for a big feature to put along the river. Then we...”
– Tom Leader, whose team won the Minneapolis riverfront design competition
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WatchI don’t remember where I got this link, but it’s pretty great: Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity, and on genius not as something you are but something you have (at least for a little while).
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South Dakota Moves To Legalize Killing Abortion... →
(via alicublog)
And there’s more.
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“[T]he United Kingdom would have to cover its entire landmass with wind turbines...”
– David Biello, “Green Energy’s Big Challenge: The Daunting Task of Scaling Up”
(via Social Design Notes)
It probably won’t happen, but what a beautiful thought.
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Goodbye, Mubarak: Hope, Fear and Mahir Çağrı →
Three thoughts from Ethan Zuckerman, including this: “It is unlikely that protests in Gabon and Yemen will receive the same attention as those in Egypt – these are smaller countries with a lower profile on a global scale. It’s critical, though, that the world doesn’t turn a blind eye to the protests in these countries, or it is far more likely that they will be violently put down. This is...
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The EPA has secret agents. →
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Minnesota Health Plan →
Health insurance that covers everyone in Minnesota for less than we pay now sounds like a good idea. If you live here and you agree, maybe you’d like to write to your state legislators — especially if you live in Northeast Minneapolis, where our representative is on the Health and Human Services Reform committee.
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Google Art Project: does the Internet really need... →
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“Clearly, however, lion-think prevails, because wind-think is so unsatisfying.”
– James Gorman, “Mass Animal Deaths - An Environmental Whodunit”
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“If you position yourself on the left and stand up for Democratic policies, you...”
– Jeff Rosenberg, “Some advice for Democrats running in 2012”
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WatchI’m not sure how audible we were at the actual performance, but I’m still really proud of the music we made for The Museum Proper last June. You can hear some of it in this video. Thanks to Dax Tran-Caffee for inviting me to be a part of this madness.
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MPLS TUMBLR MEETUP! →
am-neubs:
Don’t forget to RSVP or at least swing by Dusty’s tomorrow at 7! If the nerdery gets too large and in charge, we’ll be heading to Psycho Suzi’s down the street.
I basically want to skip Dusty’s and go straight to Psycho Suzi’s. So please, nerdery, get large early.
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Polar bear makes marathon swim 426 miles across... →
edkohler:
cajunboy:
“A polar bear in Alaska swam nine days across the Beaufort Sea before finding a piece of ice to haul out on, scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the University of Wyoming have learned. Her yearling cub didn’t make it.”
Enjoy your automobiles, everyone!
She lost 100 pounds over the 9 days at sea.
For comparison, I walked like...
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“Instead, both parties decided to back off. There were hard decisions to be made,...”
– Ezra Klein on the retreat from filibuster reform
If you set this to music it could be the national anthem of Congress.