Series finale review: How I Met Your Mother - Last Forever: How they conned us all

Series finale review: How I Met Your Mother - Last Forever: How they conned us all: I can imagine Bays and Thomas back in 2005 or 2006 trying to figure a way out of the narrative straightjacket they created for themselves in the pilot, and maybe even doing a High Infinity upon coming up with this solution. I can even imagine that moment being so euphoric that it blinded them to a lot of what was happening on the show over the remaining 7 or 8 years. Back then, maybe it was a great plan. Back then, when I was talking to them at the press tour party, if one of them had asked me to turn off the tape recorder and promised me off the record that Ted and Robin would somehow end up together, I'd have been feeling some euphoria of my own. But stories change. Characters change. Shows change. And plans have to change to accommodate that.

This plan didn't. So instead of a bumpy final few years being redeemed by a finale that at least resulted in our hero winding up with a woman we all liked, and who seemed a perfect match for him, we have a finale that turns the title and narrative framework of the show into a case of Bays and Thomas following the letter of the law rather than the spirit, without the slightest bit of recognition that Ted and Robin had become toxic for each other by this season

The actual United States of Baseball via Imgur and Facebook

jTzApLH.jpg (JPEG Image, 959�נ551 pixels)

Other People's Pathologies - Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Atlantic

Other People's Pathologies - Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Atlantic:

People who take a strict binary
view of culture ("culture of privilege = awesome; culture of poverty =
fail") are afflicted by the provincialism of privilege and thus vastly
underestimate the dynamism of the greater world. They extoll
"middle-class values" to the ignorance and exclusion of all others. To
understand, you must imagine what it means to confront algebra in the
morning and "Shorty, can I see your bike?" in the afternoon. It's
very nice to talk about "middle-class values" when that describes your
small, limited world. But when your grandmother lives in one hood and
your coworkers live another, you generally need something more than
"middle-class values." You need to be bilingual.

Why Dianne Feinstein Can’t Control the CIA | The American Conservative

Why Dianne Feinstein Can’t Control the CIA | The American Conservative: Edward Snowden, addressing the controversy from Moscow, noted correctly that the Senate committee is hypocritical in that it and Feinstein have never objected to mass spying and other indignities inflicted on ordinary American citizens as byproducts of the “global war on terror.” Feinstein’s concern only becomes acute when she and her colleagues are themselves being scrutinized. As Ron Paul explained, Feinstein “doesn’t care about our privacy, but, lo and behold, she does care about her own.”

Is Air Travel Too Safe? - Businessweek

Is Air Travel Too Safe? - Businessweek: That’s not true for driving. While it’s widely known that flying is statistically safer than driving, just how much safer varies from country to country. Data from the World Health Organization and the World Bank suggest that, in the U.S., there are 1.4 fatalities per year for every 10,000 cars on the road. In Malaysia, there are seven; in Kenya, 87—more than 60 times the rate in the U.S., compared with about a fivefold gap in air safety. Given how often people drive, and how indispensable car travel is in most countries, the gap in developing countries’ road safety records is far more troubling than their air safety records are impressive.

an addendum on social justice and free expression | Fredrik deBoer

an addendum on social justice and free expression | Fredrik deBoer:

Please believe me when I say: it is not at all unusual, for me, to
encounter liberals and leftists who speak out about issues of social
justice like feminism and racism and similar who do not believe that
controversial speech (what they call hate speech) should be legally
expressible. You are free to question how prevalent that view is. But I
encounter it all the time, and not just online. Being in a PhD program
in the humanities, I have regular exposure to people who feel that the
right to free expression does not or should not include racist, sexist,
or homophobic ideas. And their definition of racism, sexism, and
homophobia tends to be expansive. Indeed, I was motivated to write in
large part because I just came from a large, national conference. I met
lots of cool people, like I always do, and came away inspired, as I
always do. But I was also disturbed, because of the casual way in which
some people asserted their belief that people who express beliefs they
abhor– that I abhor, that I hope all good people abhor– should be
shouted down, should be coerced into silence, should be barred from
entry into public forums, should be legally or otherwise prevented from
expressing those beliefs. I cannot tell you how small their relative
number is. I can only tell you that they exist, in my communities, and
they are not alone.

A death sentence not just for hundreds of Islamists, but Egypt's democratic future | Magdi Abdelhadi | Comment is free | theguardian.com

A death sentence not just for hundreds of Islamists, but Egypt's democratic future | Magdi Abdelhadi | Comment is free | theguardian.com: Ever since the interim government in Egypt declared war on the Muslim Brotherhood and designated it a terrorist organisation, it has pursued a course of action that has swelled the ranks of the government's detractors, even among those who are sympathetic to its declared objective of suppressing the Islamist group.

The sentencing to death yesterday of more than 500 Brotherhood supporters on charges related to the violence that followed the overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi in July last year belongs to that class of action: preposterously self-defeating.

Why Ukraine’s Euromaidan is not spreading to other post-Soviet states

Why Ukraine’s Euromaidan is not spreading to other post-Soviet states:

Over the years, the ruling regimes in Azerbaijan, Belarus and Russia
adjusted their repression strategies and adopted new ones to squash any
signs of a color revolution. All three regimes were “late risers” during
the color revolution wave. As Mark Beissinger shows,
state elites in “later risers” have an advantage over those in “earlier
risers” in that they know about actions and strategies used by
protesters in the initial wave and therefore can adapt.



Institutional screws were tightened as post-Soviet autocrats took preemptive measures. Russia played a leading role in spreading various diffusion-proofing strategies. Examples include Russia’s restrictive legislation on non-governmental organizations in 2006 and the 2012 law requiring foreign-funded NGOs to register as “foreign agents”. Such measures foreclosed the success of anti-Kremlin mass rallies on the Bolotnaya Square in Moscow. And as Julia Ioffe rightly noted,
“much of the stringency and verticality of the Russian political system
is a direct result of [reaction to] Ukraine’s Orange Revolution.”

Raffi Khatchadourian: Can an Audacious Plan to Create a New Energy Resource Help Save the Planet? : The New Yorker

Raffi Khatchadourian: Can an Audacious Plan to Create a New Energy Resource Help Save the Planet? : The New Yorker:

Two dozen engineers were seated around tables arranged in a
horseshoe, and the mood was sombre. A sense of crisis has come to
surround ITER like the concentric nebulae
of a dying sun. The project has been falling behind schedule almost
since it began—in 1993, it was thought that the machine could be ready
by 2010—and there will certainly be further delays. Morale is through
the floor, and one can expect cynicism, disagreements, black humor.
“There is anxiety here that it is all going to implode,” one physicist
told me. Many engineers and physicists at ITER
believe that the delays are self-inflicted, having little to do with
engineering or physics and everything to do with the way that ITER
is organized and managed. Key members of the technical staff have left;
others have taken “stress leave” to recuperate. Not long ago, the
director-general, Osamu Motojima, a Japanese physicist, who has run the
organization since 2010, ordered workmen to install at the headquarters’
entrance a granite slab proclaiming ITER’s presence. People call it a tombstone.

Biggert-Waters and NFIP: Flood insurance should be strengthened.

Biggert-Waters and NFIP: Flood insurance should be strengthened.: Enter the 2012 Biggert-Waters law. Its stipulations were firm: Properties built before the NFIP were no longer grandfathered into the program; homes that flood repeatedly (“Repetitive Loss Properties”) were denied coverage; and insurance premiums would be recalculated to accurately reflect real actuarial risk. The law further mandated the formation of a Technical Mapping Advisory Council, a body of experts empowered to advise FEMA on best practices in floodplain mapping. Biggert-Waters marked a rare moment in American disaster politics: enlightenment. Local interests were sacrificed for something bigger—preparing the nation for the storms on the horizon. And therein was the problem.

Even before Biggert-Waters passed, Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu began a crusade to “repeal it, radically amend it, or delay” the law. She claimed the bill would make insurance premiums unaffordable and chastised FEMA for not conducting an effective assessment of the law’s impact on consumers. The construction-lending-real estate complex, led by the National Association of Home Builders also came out strongly against the law, citing possible negative impacts on home sales and housing starts. Even California Rep. Maxine Waters, the co-sponsor and namesake of the law, turned on it, lamenting its “unintended consequences.”

Transcript: Desmond Tutu — A God of Surprises | On Being

Transcript: Desmond Tutu — A God of Surprises | On Being:



Archbishop Tutu: I think, I
mean, that we have very gravely underestimated the damage that apartheid
inflicted on all of us. You know, the damage to our psyches, the damage
that has made — I mean, it shocked me. I went to Nigeria when I was
working for the World Council of Churches, and I was due to fly to Jos.
And so I go to Lagos airport and I get onto the plane and the two pilots
in the cockpit are both black. And whee, I just grew inches. You know,
it was fantastic because we had been told that blacks can't do this.




Ms. Tippett: Right.




Archbishop Tutu: And we have a
smooth takeoff and then we hit the mother and father of turbulence. I
mean, it was quite awful, scary. Do you know, I can't believe it but the
first thought that came to my mind was, "Hey, there's no white men in
that cockpit. Are those blacks going to be able to make it?" And of
course, they obviously made it — here I am. But the thing is, I had not
known that I was damaged to the extent of thinking that somehow actually
what those white people who had kept drumming into us in South Africa
about our being inferior, about our being incapable, it had lodged
somewhere in me.

'Ambassador, dear, you are lying' - John F. Harris - POLITICO.com

'Ambassador, dear, you are lying' - John F. Harris - POLITICO.com: A few moments later, a top official with the Ukrainian ministry of foreign affairs, Vasyl Filipchuk, turned to the Russian. He allowed that “I sincerely respect you” as a “very skillful diplomat,” then got to the point: “Ambassador, dear, you are lying.”

“You are calling white as black and black as white,” the diplomat said.

Next up at the gathering of trans Atlantic policymakers and intellectuals was the former president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili. Unlike his Ukrainian counterpart, he said, “I have no respect for Ambassador Chizhov. He reminds me of a character from Dr. Strangelove.”

The Importance of Our Evolution Beyond Killing for Food | Bob Comis

The Importance of Our Evolution Beyond Killing for Food | Bob Comis: As a pig farmer, I live an unethical life shrouded in the justificatory trappings of social acceptance. There is more, even, than simple acceptance. There is actually celebration of the way I raise the pigs. Because I give the pigs lives that are as close to natural as is possible in an unnatural system, I am honorable, I am just, I am humane -- while all the while behind the shroud, I am a slaveholder and a murderer. Looking head on, you can't see it. Humanely raising and slaughtering pigs seems perfectly normal. In order to see the truth, you have to have to look askance, just like a pig does when it knows you are up to no good. When you see out of the corner of your eye, in the blurry periphery of your vision, you see that meat is indeed murder.

A Soviet Jewish �migr�Decides To Teach Her American Daughter Russian – Tablet Magazine

A Soviet Jewish �migr�Decides To Teach Her American Daughter Russian – Tablet Magazine: To be honest, Russian is not a language I’m proud to know. When strangers marvel at my bilingualism, I defensively counter with the fact that I have no ties to the country I left as a child. I feel lucky to have escaped from what is now the former Soviet Union, where Jews like me were subject to plenty of anti-Semitism. Like many of the other 1.6 million Soviet Jews who emigrated, we broke all ties when we left.

Or so I thought, until my daughter was born and I realized my ties to Russian run deeper than I knew.

There’s No Substitute for the Government | The Baseline Scenario

There’s No Substitute for the Government | The Baseline Scenario: This shouldn’t come as a surprise. There are basic economic reasons why public social insurance is superior to voluntary charity. The goal here is to protect people against risk: of unemployment, of health emergency, of outliving one’s savings, and so on. For a risk-mitigation scheme to work, there are a few things that are necessary. One is that people actually be covered. This is something you can never have with a private system (unless it’s regulated to the point of being essentially public), since charities get to pick and choose whom they want to help.

Putin Puts Obama in No-Win Situation in Iran - The American Interest

Putin Puts Obama in No-Win Situation in Iran - The American Interest:



After all, if Russia did manage to stop the talks dead, the result
wouldn’t automatically be an Iranian bomb. The first result would be to
put Obama into the horrible, no-win situation he has spent his whole
presidency working hard to avoid: where his only two choices are
military action against Iran and accepting an Iranian nuclear weapon. If
(as the White House has continually insisted that he would) he goes for
force, the United States gets involved in another Middle Eastern war,
and Russia enjoys a huge financial windfall as oil prices skyrocket and a
propaganda windfall as the United States (without a UN mandate, which
Russia would take care to block) takes on yet another preventative war
in a Middle Eastern country.




Or, alternatively, the United States endures its most humiliating and
devastating foreign policy defeat in decades, leaving its prestige in
tatters and its global alliance system fundamentally weakened as yet
another of President Obama’s red lines, this one much brighter and
deeper than the one in Syria, gets crossed—with impunity.




Either way, a rational Russian might see gains that would offset the
consequences of an Iranian nuclear weapon—and, again, Russia’s core
strategic goal is to weaken and damage American power as a necessary
step in overturning a post-Cold War order that Putin and his associates
hate.

Revealed: Apple and Google’s wage-fixing cartel involved dozens more companies, over one million employees | PandoDaily

Revealed: Apple and Google’s wage-fixing cartel involved dozens more companies, over one million employees | PandoDaily: Back in January, I wrote about “The Techtopus” — an illegal agreement between seven tech giants, including Apple, Google, and Intel, to suppress wages for tens of thousands of tech employees. The agreement prompted a Department of Justice investigation, resulting in a settlement in which the companies agreed to curb their restricting hiring deals. The same companies were then hit with a civil suit by employees affected by the agreements.

This week, as the final summary judgement for the resulting class action suit looms, and several of the companies mentioned (Intuit, Pixar and Lucasfilm) scramble to settle out of court, Pando has obtained court documents (embedded below) which show shocking evidence of a much larger conspiracy, reaching far beyond Silicon Valley.

MetaPhone: The Sensitivity of Telephone Metadata � Web Policy

MetaPhone: The Sensitivity of Telephone Metadata � Web Policy:

• Participant A communicated with multiple local neurology groups, a
  specialty pharmacy, a rare condition management service, and a hotline
  for a pharmaceutical used solely to treat relapsing multiple sclerosis.
  
• Participant B spoke at length with cardiologists at a major
  medical center, talked briefly with a medical laboratory, received calls
  from a pharmacy, and placed short calls to a home reporting hotline for
  a medical device used to monitor cardiac arrhythmia.
  
• Participant C made a number of calls to a firearm store that
  specializes in the AR semiautomatic rifle platform. They also spoke at
  length with customer service for a firearm manufacturer that produces an
  AR line.
  
• In a span of three weeks, Participant D contacted a home improvement store, locksmiths, a hydroponics dealer, and a head shop.
  
• Participant E had a long, early morning call with her sister.
  Two days later, she placed a series of calls to the local Planned
  Parenthood location. She placed brief additional calls two weeks later,
  and made a final call a month after.
  

Don't Help Your Kids With Their Homework - Dana Goldstein - The Atlantic

Don't Help Your Kids With Their Homework - Dana Goldstein - The Atlantic: What they found surprised them. Most measurable forms of parental involvement seem to yield few academic dividends for kids, or even to backfire—regardless of a parent’s race, class, or level of education.



 Do you review your daughter’s homework every night? Robinson and Harris’s data, published in The Broken Compass: Parental Involvement With Children’s Education, show that this won’t help her score higher on standardized tests. Once kids enter middle school, parental help with homework can actually bring test scores down, an effect Robinson says could be caused by the fact that many parents may have forgotten, or never truly understood, the material their children learn in school.

Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters: Show love to Fred Phelps's family instead of hatred

Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters: Show love to Fred Phelps's family instead of hatred: We have been the better people in this story. Now is the time to show it wasn’t just in adversity that we can show dignity. We know how to end a battle with dignity as well. My suggestion will not be the popular one. It will not derive satisfaction or vengeance, but it is the one that will show the world exactly how wrong he was for starting the church of hate.