— Inside the Beltway — The Washington Times Who better than Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the Senate’s subcommittee on Public Health, to convene hearings this week on the nation’s “obesity epidemic”? At least he’s not giving swimming lessons. Next week: the Clinton Commission investigates sexual harassment.
— Inside the Beltway — The Washington Times
Who better than Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the Senate’s subcommittee on Public Health, to convene hearings this week on the nation’s “obesity epidemic”?
At least he’s not giving swimming lessons. Next week: the Clinton Commission investigates sexual harassment.
— Andrew Olmsted: Holding on to Federalism Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura makes a wise request of the Bush Administration regarding welfare reform. Ventura correctly points out that welfare reform is not the job of the federal government (and, in fact, is wholly unconstitutional based on a strict reading of the Constitution). My litmus test for … Continue reading “Welfare”
— Andrew Olmsted: Holding on to Federalism
Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura makes a wise request of the Bush Administration regarding welfare reform. Ventura correctly points out that welfare reform is not the job of the federal government (and, in fact, is wholly unconstitutional based on a strict reading of the Constitution).
My litmus test for federal judges: “What do you think about the erosion of federalism since that communist FDR screwed it all up in the ’30s?”
— Finding the Speed of Light The activity requires a microwave oven, a microwave-safe casserole dish, a bag of marshmallows, and a ruler. (The oven must be of the type that has no mechanical motion-no turntable or rotating mirror. If there is a turn-table, remove it first.) First, open the marshmallows and place them in … Continue reading “Fun with science”
The activity requires a microwave oven, a microwave-safe casserole dish, a bag of marshmallows, and a ruler. (The oven must be of the type that has no mechanical motion-no turntable or rotating mirror. If there is a turn-table, remove it first.) First, open the marshmallows and place them in the casserole dish, completely covering it with a layer one marshmallow thick. Next, put the dish of marshmallows in the microwave and cook on low heat. Microwaves do not cook evenly and the marshmallows will begin to melt at the hottest spots in the microwave. (I leaned this from our Food Science teacher Anita Cornwall.) Heat the marshmallows until they begin to melt in four or five different spots. Remove the dish from the microwave and observe the melted spots. Take the ruler and measure the distance between the melted spots. You will find that one distance repeats over and over. This distance will correspond to half the wavelength of the microwave, about 6 cm. Now turn the oven around and look for a small sign that gives you the frequency of the microwave. Most commercial microwaves operate at 2450 MHz.
All you do now is multiply the frequency by the wavelength. The product is the speed of light.
I’ve often wanted to measure the speed of light with a ruler, and now I know how.
— President holds tough stance on Cuba President Bush on Monday refused to lift the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba unless Fidel Castro first releases political prisoners, conducts independently monitored elections and accepts a list of tough new U.S. conditions. “Freedom sometimes grows step by step, and we will encourage those steps,” the president said, … Continue reading “Cuba”
— President holds tough stance on Cuba
President Bush on Monday refused to lift the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba unless Fidel Castro first releases political prisoners, conducts independently monitored elections and accepts a list of tough new U.S. conditions. “Freedom sometimes grows step by step, and we will encourage those steps,” the president said, outlining his new U.S. policy on Cuban Independence Day.
Naked pandering to Miami Cubans. Castro isn’t going along, and he doesn’t want the embargo lifted – the US is more valuable to him as a scapegoat than as a trading partner.
These are the RoboPundit sources: Andrea Harris Bellicose woman blogdex daypop Electrolite Evhead News is Free Headlines Ken Layne lgf Matt Welch Moira Breen Moreover More Than Zero Fredrik Norman Olmstead Patio Pundit Peerkat PhotoDude Political Wire Craig Schamp O’Reilly Weblogs Works in Progress Rand Simburg Protein Wisdom and Scripting News have errors in their … Continue reading “RoboPundit sources”
These are the RoboPundit sources:
Andrea Harris
Bellicose woman
blogdex
daypop
Electrolite
Evhead
News is Free Headlines
Ken Layne
lgf
Matt Welch
Moira Breen
Moreover
More Than Zero
Fredrik Norman
Olmstead
Patio Pundit
Peerkat
PhotoDude
Political Wire
Craig Schamp
O’Reilly Weblogs
Works in Progress
Rand Simburg
Protein Wisdom and Scripting News have errors in their feeds and don’t presently register. Some sites don’t use titles, which causes Peerkat big problems, since it can’t generate a link without a title. It looks like Peekat needs re-writing.
— High-Tech companies in Sonoma County’s Telecom Valley find venture capitalists want a bigger piece of the action now that the economy’s in the dumper. This article explains the moral clarity of investors (Signs of life return) But the decline in valuations is not necessarily bad, said Winston Fu, general partner at U.S. Venture Partners, … Continue reading “Venture capitalists fight Filthy Lucre”
— High-Tech companies in Sonoma County’s Telecom Valley find venture capitalists want a bigger piece of the action now that the economy’s in the dumper. This article explains the moral clarity of investors (Signs of life return)
But the decline in valuations is not necessarily bad, said Winston Fu, general partner at U.S. Venture Partners, a Menlo Park venture capital firm. Investors want to fund companies that are focused on building a real business, not just becoming rich.
What we have here is the beginnings of an explanation for the Dot Com Swindle, in which VC firms and Investment Bankers took the public for a ride. “It’s good that we fleeced you,” they’re saying, “because you should be more concerned about your soul than your bank account.”
Isn’t it good that they’re looking out for us?
— Kevin Hoover’s police blotter in the Arcata Eye is really one of the best examples of good, local, journalism in existence, and the story of how the Eye came into existence is a model of entrepreneurial excellence. But even Hoover has his critics, as we learn from this story in the Frisco Comical today: … Continue reading “Arcata police blotter”
— Kevin Hoover’s police blotter in the Arcata Eye is really one of the best examples of good, local, journalism in existence, and the story of how the Eye came into existence is a model of entrepreneurial excellence. But even Hoover has his critics, as we learn from this story in the Frisco Comical today:
“He makes up little poems and little sarcastic remarks about the common folks, street people and traveling kids who are the most common targets of the Arcata police state,” Wakan said. “Hoover . . . encourages the people of Arcata to laugh off oppression as they go about their middle- to upper-class day.”
The Comical is jealous, of course.
— We have a new feature here at the Navel called “RoboPundit.” This is a little bit of technology that features summaries and links to recent articles from a number of different blogs that I enjoy reading. The summaries are assembled automatically, hence the name. This works through Peerkat, which grabs the summaries automatically generated … Continue reading “RoboPundit”
— We have a new feature here at the Navel called “RoboPundit.” This is a little bit of technology that features summaries and links to recent articles from a number of different blogs that I enjoy reading. The summaries are assembled automatically, hence the name. This works through Peerkat, which grabs the summaries automatically generated by Movable Type and some other blog tools (but not by Blogger, alhough Mr. Blogger has an RSS feed on his personal blog), and makes an RSS feed out of them. This feed is then grabbed by a server that converts the feed into Javascript. The blogs are scanned every hour, but the service that converts the feed only runs once a day, unless I force it to refresh more often (or unless somebody else does, because anybody can force a re-build of the RoboPundit feed.)
All of this software is flakey, pre-release stuff, so I expect a little randomness, which we can pretend is punditry. I just did this to do it, not because I think it’s Really Cool or anything like that. Of course.
UPDATE: To force an update of the RoboPundit feed, just click here.
— Peerkat is a little Python application that scans websites for new entries and collects them for you to browse and edit. It does some of the scut-work for the blog-fetcher I was speculating about recently. Click here to see an automatically-assembled blog raw material page.
— Peerkat is a little Python application that scans websites for new entries and collects them for you to browse and edit. It does some of the scut-work for the blog-fetcher I was speculating about recently. Click here to see an automatically-assembled blog raw material page.
— The Alexa system has revised its rankings, and they appear much more accurate (according to my intuition), with one caveat: they now throw away sub-domain information, so all Blogspot-hosted sites have the same ranking, 2098, all weblogs.com sites rank 8663, and all weblogger.com sites rank 28,054. Redirected sites flash different numbers as they redirect, … Continue reading “Alexa”
— The Alexa system has revised its rankings, and they appear much more accurate (according to my intuition), with one caveat: they now throw away sub-domain information, so all Blogspot-hosted sites have the same ranking, 2098, all weblogs.com sites rank 8663, and all weblogger.com sites rank 28,054. Redirected sites flash different numbers as they redirect, like Kausfiles, which ends up lower on Slate than at the original domain. Tech blogs generally do better than they should. Here are some of the rankings for blogs with unique domains:
NRO 4,693
Arts and Letters Daily 11,657
Andrew Sullivan 14,875
Daypop 15,249
James Lileks 18,495
Corante 38,001
Den Beste 63,313
LGF 67,691
Josh Marshall 78,461
Kausfiles 84,276
Tony Pierce 84,425
Matt Welch 100,843
Ken Layne 105,125
Va. Postrel 109,420
Omphalos 131,874
Bill Quick 139,748
RageBoy 151,041
VodkaDude 159,358
Nick Denton 178,128
Suman Palit 208,531
Rand Simberg 214,935
Protein Wisdom 226,392
Joanne Jacobs 253,214
Jeff Jarvis 286,929
More Than Zero 320,194
The Number One web site: Yahoo; number one newspaper: N. Y. Times, 82 overall.
