Quotes

When I walked into the offices of Dr. Ken Cirka, I was looking for cleaner teeth, not material for an Ars Technica story. I needed a new dentist, and Yelp says Dr. Cirka is one of the best in the Philadelphia area. The receptionist handed me a clipboard with forms to fill out. After the usual patient information form, there was a “mutual privacy agreement” that asked me to transfer ownership of any public commentary I might write in the future to Dr. Cirka. Surprised and a little outraged by this, I got into a lengthy discussion with Dr. Cirka’s office manager that ended in me refusing to sign and her showing me the door.

Doctors and dentists tell patients, “all your review are belong to us”

But the show isn’t actually about the competing social styles of Leslie Knope, an optimistic and sometimes naive city administrator, and Ron Swanson, a skeptical libertarian, and what those styles say about their commitment to their politics. Instead, Parks and Recreation asks a more fundamental and bipartisan question: can government accomplish anything meaningful?

Yglesias » Parks and Recreations and Politicians and Bureaucrats

So you come here to take Amina. Let me tell you something though. She is not the one you should fear; you should be heaping praises on her and on people like her. They are the ones saying alawi, sunni, arabi, kurdi, duruzi, christian, everyone is the same and will be equal in the new Syria; they are the ones who, if the revolution comes, will be saving Your mother and your sisters. They are the ones fighting the wahhabi most seriously. You idiots are, though, serving them by saying ‘every sunni is salafi, every protester is salafi, every one of them is an enemy’ because when you do that you make it so. “Your Bashar and your Maher, they will not live forever, they will not rule forever, and you both know that. So, if you want good things for yourselves in the future, you will leave and you will not take Amina with you. You will go back and you will tell the rest of yours that the people like her are the best friends the Alawi could ever have and you will not come for her again. “And right now, you two will both apologize for waking her and putting her through all this. Do you understand me?

A Gay Girl in Damascus: My father, the hero

At least six cities in North Carolina have passed resolutions against cable-backed state legislation that would hamstring new municipal broadband projects. The dissenters include Chapel Hill, Greensboro, Raleigh, Momeyer, Asheville, Rockingham, and Bladenville.

North Carolina cities mobilize against anti-muni broadband bill

¶Congress set aside $50 billion for foreclosure prevention, amid administration projections that three million to four million homeowners would benefit from modifications. So far, the Treasury Department, which oversees the program, has spent slightly more than $1 billion, and just 607,000 homeowners have received permanent loan modifications (of those, 11 percent have defaulted).

Foreclosure Aid Fell Short, and Is Fading – NYTimes.com

High school teacher Joel Rogness lets students in his honors world language class blog as their literary heroes. Instead of making them write essays about the themes of The Catcher in the Rye, Rogness’ students can pretend to be Holden Caulfield writing a blog post, and then get feedback via comments from their peers around the world.

Could Blogging Be the Key to Raising a Generation of Great Writers? – Education – GOOD

I can’t take any more options. I’ve already spent weeks comparing sets of features I’m pretty sure I’ll never need. I tried out at least fifteen applications on my desktop, phone and on the web. I was completely overwhelmed by choices. The process began to take over my life. I spent hours in front of my laptop, I’d demo various features for my wife and kids, and my quest quickly became the only topic I could focus on when interacting with friends.

Tweetage Wasteland : Buried Under an Avalanche of Options

Lately, I’ve come to realize that I hate doing research like this. I can’t (for instance) read lifehacker, or tips on the perfect naming scheme for text files.

The closest I come to research is asking someone who knows {travels,listens,cooks} what they like, then I go with that.

If I start researching, I don’t stop until I have a 100% solution (which I never find). If I buy something that gets my 90% of the way there, I really don’t mind compensating for that 10%.

This secret shift to full-on entanglement is also, to my mind, a well-meant but ill-conceived undermining of the Arab Spring. Regime change by force of foreign arms is not a democratic revolution; it is the imposition by foreign powers of their agenda in the service of groups we do not know or understand – and will never know and never fully understand. It actually wrests power away from Libyans and gives it to Westerners, perpetuating a dependency the Arab spring has finally been able to break from. It is, to put it simply, messing with the momentum of history, the real balance of power in the region. And if this has been done covertly already, if the president has bypassed Congress, the American people, and the UN and has already secretly armed the rebels, then we need to get more than angry. To have a third war foisted on us – this time by by secretive fiat – requires serious protest from the president’s core supporters more than anyone. This nascent war needs to be nipped firmly in the bud.

Shoes – Not “Boots” – On The Ground – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Transforming the most creative strategies of the tax team into law is another extensive operation. G.E. spends heavily on lobbying: more than $200 million over the last decade, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Records filed with election officials show a significant portion of that money was devoted to tax legislation. G.E. has even turned setbacks into successes with Congressional help. After the World Trade Organization forced the United States to halt $5 billion a year in export subsidies to G.E. and other manufacturers, the company’s lawyers and lobbyists became deeply involved in rewriting a portion of the corporate tax code, according to news reports after the 2002 decision and a Congressional staff member.

G.E.’s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether – NYTimes.com

In today’s opinion, written by Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the appeals court went further by reversing the habeas win outright. In doing so, the court determined that circumstantial evidence, such as a detainee being in the same location as other al-Qaeda members, is enough to meet the standard to hold a prisoner without charge.

Appeals Court Makes it Easier for Gov’t to Hold Gitmo Detainees – ProPublica