Painfully Obvious

Quotation: Joel Stein

Andrew — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:03:17 +0000

For those of you who have never seen one, the placenta is to the baby what Stephen Baldwin is to Alec Baldwin. It's what your liver would look like if it got into an accident on the autobahn with one of those aliens from Mars Attacks! and their bloody carcasses threw jellyfish at each other.

— Joel Stein

Quotation: Roger Cohen

Andrew — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:53:27 +0000

I looked up through the smoke and saw a poster of the stern visage of Khomeini above the words, “Islam is the religion of freedom.” Later, as night fell over the tumultuous capital, gunfire could be heard in the distance. And from rooftops across the city, the defiant sound of “Allah-u-Akbar” — “God is Great” — went up yet again, as it has every night since the fraudulent election. But on Saturday it seemed stronger. The same cry was heard in 1979, only for one form of absolutism to yield to another. Iran has waited long enough to be free.

— Roger Cohen

Quotation: An Iranian blogger

Andrew — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 10:19:08 +0000

I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children.

— An Iranian blogger

Link: TPMDC

Andrew — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:50:09 +0000

I’m proud of Twitter and those who use it for many reasons, not the least of which is the merciless mocking of Pete Hoekstra for comparing House Republicans to oppressed Iranians.

Quotation: Robert Farley

Andrew — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 22:26:05 +0000

So, I'm trying to find out something about what's going on in Iran, and on CNN I can watch a rerun of Larry King interviewing several gentlemen without shirtsleeves who apparently assemble choppers. On Fox Mike Huckabee is trying to explain why Jesus hates credit card relief. MSNBC is rerunning something about a prison in New Mexico. CNBC is evaluating whether college students should be able to afford Chanel tote bags.

— Robert Farley

Quotation: Saul Alinsky

Andrew — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 10:25:31 +0000

One of the most important things in life is what judge Learned Hand described as "that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're right." If you don't have that, if you think you've got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated.

— Saul Alinsky

Link: Apps for America 2

Andrew — Sat, 23 May 2009 07:07:42 +0000

Yesterday, Sunlight Labs announced Apps for America 2. The follow-up contest marks the recent launch of data.gov
by soliciting apps that find interesting ways to crunch that site’s numbers. (Not sure if I’ll enter yet; I haven’t had much time to see what data.gov has to offer.)

Link: Dollar ReDe$ign

Andrew — Tue, 19 May 2009 21:24:46 +0000

Michael Tyznik’s entry in The Daily Blend’s Dollar RedDe$ign Project. This is currency triumph: eliminate the penny and the dollar bill, introduce $1 and $2 coins, and get people talking about the Bill of Rights. Oh, and it uses Stag, the goddamned excellent font that I use on this here weblog.

Quotation: Matthew Yglesias

Andrew — Fri, 08 May 2009 20:16:38 +0000

[T]he underlying assumption that the United States of America is incapable of building a secure prison physically located on the North American continent is really strange. If there’s anything we know how to do in the USA it’s lock people up. Everybody knows that.

— Matthew Yglesias

Link: InfoQ

Andrew — Fri, 08 May 2009 17:06:07 +0000

InfoQ posted a “virtual panel” in which framework authors answer questions about HTML5. Thomas Fuchs and I, among others, answer questions about how (if?) HTML5 will make our lives easier, and what more we want out of JavaScript in the future.