2013-05-17
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Paper Bits: Tumblr Backup python script (GitHub)
Mainly reblogged for the benefit of iamdanw.
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Not to be confused with: a social gathering of invited guests, typically involving eating, drinking, and entertainment: an engagement party. ”
2013-05-15
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CHENEY: I think it’s very dangerous. I can’t believe some guy down in the bowels of the organization in Cincinnati set this up. It would require, I would think, because of the sensitivity of it, somebody pretty high up to sign off on it. ”
Yes, the IRS as a political witch-hunt would be terrible, wouldn’t it? Good thing nothing like that happened while Cheney was VP.
In 2004, the IRS went after the NAACP, auditing the nation’s oldest civil rights group after its chairman criticized President Bush for being the first sitting president since Herbert Hoover not to address the organization. “They are saying if you criticize the president we are going to take your tax exemption away from you,” then-chairman Julian Bond said. “It’s pretty obvious that the complainant was someone who doesn’t believe George Bush should be criticized, and it’s obvious of their response that the IRS believes this, too.”
Then, in 2006, the Wall Street Journal broke the story of a how a little-known pressure group called Public Interest Watch — which received 97 percent of its funds from Exxon Mobile one year — managed to get the IRS to open an investigation into Greenpeace. Greenpeace had labeled Exxon Mobil the “No. 1 climate criminal.” The IRS acknowledged its audit was initiated by Public Interest Watch and threatened to revoke Greenpeace’s tax-exempt status, but closed the investigation three months later.
(Source: foxnews.com)
2013-05-14
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Tom Standage: How commonplace books were like Tumblr and Pinterest, drawing from the research for his forthcoming book.
See also: the distractions of social media, 1673 style.
2013-05-10
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Ashlee Vance in Bloomberg Businessweek. via Tom Insam, who comments
This is presented to make the point that “Netflix use a lot of space”. But I see it more as “Facebook is already 50% the size of all of Hollywood’s output ever”.
(via tominsam)
2013-05-08
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Battlefield 4 Uses New AMD Bird Rendering Technology: PecksFX at Play4Real.
Yes, AAA games studios are now spending their time worrying about rendering birds, and no, this isn’t an Onion article.
2013-05-07
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Planners also failed to consider that authorities might balk at an experimental nuclear reactor located under a planned flight path. The reactor in Berlin’s southwest Wannsee district is operated by the Helmholtz Zentrum, a materials and energy research institute. The Wannsee route was declared illegal by an administrative appeals court in a Jan. 23 ruling.
“The risk of a plane crash and an aviation terrorist attack and the release of ionized radiation from the research reactor was insufficiently considered,” the court said in a statement issued with the ruling, in which it scolded airport planners for failing to recognize and evaluate the risks.
”2013-05-06
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Sharing his secrets for “abundant living,” Romney urged the new grads to go out, get married, and procreate like crazy.
‘Get married,’ he said, and “Have a quiver full of kids if you can.”
Also, hurry. Staying single until your thirties could be a big mistake. A quiver full of kids aren’t born over night.
“Some people could marry but choose to take more time, they say, for themselves. Others plan to wait until they’re well into their 30s or 40s until they think about getting married,” he said, “They’re going to miss so much of living, I’m afraid.”
”