The Senate Finance Committee’s version of the health care bill is out, but only as a 223‐page PDF. OpenCongress has translated it to HTML, but David Moore rightly complains that the whole damn process is too convoluted. Because it hasn’t yet been introduced, it’s not available in THOMAS, and even if it were, we’d need the kind souls at OpenCongress and GovTrack to convert it into a usable format. (Even worse: the way we write legislation is stupid. Why do we need three different versions of the bill if they’re all going to be reconciled in conference committee anyway?)
Category: Tumbles
Dr. Norman Borlaug, agronomist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, is dead at 95. By developing strains of wheat and rice that could grow much more densely, he helped Mexico and South Asia increase crop yields by staggering margins, and in turn saved more lives than any other person in the 20th century. The Times has written a lovely obituary; it reminds me that science is a force for optimism and can help us solve the problems that we ourselves create.
Helen Thomas & Barack Obama
Taken a few weeks ago in the briefing room. Obama and Thomas share a birthday. (It’s most excellent that The White House is on Flickr.)
I don’t spend much time comparing blogs — favorably or unfavorably — to the mainstream media. But Deadspin’s feature on how NBA stat crews pad their own teams’ stats is far more newsworthy than anything that happens in (for example) The Brett Favre Saga.
Innsbruck Old Town
The Golden Roof in the distance. (Went through my photos from last month’s trip and saw a few that had failed to catch my eye the first time around.)
How did LaRouche’s ideas make his way to that town hall? Well, his followers are the most interesting part. They are young, usually college aged. They are articulate, and they will present LaRouche’s ideas in what seems to be an intellectually viable light. If you question them, they will become extremely angry. They will not defend their ideas with logic. Instead, they will call you ignorant. They will tell you that their ideas are the only thing in between America and certain doom. They will tell you the only way to learn their ideas is to buy a DVD. The DVD is $25.
The Onion makes me so happy sometimes.
Apple requires you to be 17 years or older to purchase a censored dictionary that omits half the words Steve Jobs uses every day.
Seegrube Café
Saw this guy at a small eatery halfway up a mountain near Innsbruck. He and his dog soon left to descend the mountain — on foot. I took the cable car.
Sam & Mislav
Earlier this week, Prototype Core gathered in Vienna to refine our plans for world domination. But first we went to the amusement park.
