Bill Weye

Category: Daily Links (page 1 of 5)

The links I collect and archive for your pleasure.

The original Constitution was simply filed away and, later, shuffled from one place to another. When City Hall underwent renovations, the Constitution was transferred to the Department of State. The following year, it moved with Congress to Philadelphia and, in 1800, to Washington, where it was stored at the Treasury Department until it was shifted to the War Office. In 1814, three clerks stuffed it into a linen sack and carried it to a gristmill in Virginia, which was fortunate, because the British burned Washington down. In the eighteen-twenties, when someone asked James Madison where it was, he had no idea.

In 1875, the Constitution found a home in a tin box in the bottom of a closet in a new building that housed the Departments of State, War, and Navy. In 1894, it was sealed between glass plates and locked in a safe in the basement. In 1921, Herbert Putnam, a librarian, drove it across town in his Model T. In 1924, it was put on display in the Library of Congress, for the first time ever.

The battle over the Constitution : The New Yorker

“Fraternity life is at the core of the college’s human and cultural dysfunctions.” Lohse concluded by recommending that Dartmouth overhaul its Greek system, and perhaps get rid of fraternities entirely.

This did not go over well. At a college where two-thirds of the upperclassmen are members of Greek houses, fraternities essentially control the social life on campus. To criticize Dartmouth’s frats, which date back more than 150 years, is tantamount to criticizing Dartmouth itself, the smallest and most insular school in the Ivy League.

[…]

In response to Lohse’s op-ed, the Dartmouth community let loose a torrent of vitriol against him on The Dartmouth‘s website. Lohse, it was decided, was “disgruntled” and a “criminal.” His “blanket and bitter portrayal of the Greek system” was not only false, complained one alumnus, “but offensive to tens of thousands of Dartmouth alumni who cherished the memories of their fraternities.”

Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy: Inside Dartmouth’s Hazing Abuses – Rolling Stone

Chief Justice John Roberts initially sided with the Supreme Court’s four conservative justices to strike down the heart of President Obama’s health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, but later changed his position and formed an alliance with liberals to uphold the bulk of the law, according to two sources with specific knowledge of the deliberations.

Roberts then withstood a month-long, desperate campaign to bring him back to his original position, the sources said. Ironically, Justice Anthony Kennedy – believed by many conservatives to be the justice most likely to defect and vote for the law – led the effort to try to bring Roberts back to the fold.

“He was relentless,” one source said of Kennedy’s efforts. “He was very engaged in this.”

Roberts switched views to uphold health care law – CBS News

“There’s really only about 25 of us doing this,” Steve Milloy says, shortly after sitting down at Morton’s, a Washington, D.C., steakhouse favored by lawyers and lobbyists. “A core group of skeptics. It’s a ragtag bunch, very Continental Army.” Milloy, a Fox News commentator and former tobacco-industry advocate, runs a website called JunkScience.com that is an outlet for attacks on those he calls “global-warming alarmists.” Many of those who question mainstream climate science resent being called deniers; they say it unfairly equates them with Holocaust deniers. They prefer doubters, skeptics or realists. “Me, I just stick with denier,” Milloy says. “I’m happy to be a denier.”

Milloy is dressed in a striped pink button-down shirt and khaki pants, classic Potomac prep. He moved into climate denial in the 1990s as funding from the tobacco lobby began to dry up. At the time, conservative and libertarian think tanks were just starting to take aim at climate science. Milloy, who has received funding from entities controlled by oil billionaires Charles and David Koch, helps them get their message to the masses.

The Battle Over Climate Science – Popular Science

Making Twitter Follow Friday Useful

Apr 9, 2010 /

Following on the heals of Chris Brogan and moving his Twitter follow Friday meme to his blog, here’s my shout out to people whose blogs or Tweets I read mostly religiously. I like Chris’ logic in moving these little promotions to a blog post format: trying to put all this information into 140 characters strangles the language and creates a 140 character mess.

  • @HolyokeHome — Their blog originates in Holyoke, Massachusetts (The Paper City), about the renovation of a new/old row house.
  • @WritersVoice — A book radio show that I listen to. Great interviews, including this one I did with Chris Brogan!
  • @StoneGreg — Co-founder of craft beer brewer Stone Brewing Co. Always has great links to interesting articles.
  • @CenterOnBudget — The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is a non-partisan institute that’s always publishing great information about how the government is spending our money. If you want to be informed and don’t mind being sort of a geek, check them out.
  • @dankennedy_nu — Dan Kennedy is a journalism professor at Northeastern University and writes the blog Media Nation. A good source of information about the media business in general, especially around Boston.

UPDATE: Rob McGuire on how to recommend people and make yourself look good.

    Do you have any suggestions but don’t have a blog to publish them at? Leave them in the comments below.

    Weekend Reading – Links For February 13, 2010

    Feb 13, 2010 /

    How the David Letterman, Jay Leno, Oprah Winfrey Super Bowl ad got made. All kinds of disguises and hijinks.

    A chronology of Einstein’s life in 1905 when he was 26 years old. How is it possible that one man could do so much in a year? Stories like this, and watching The Cove this week, make me worry that my life is less than it should be.

    If you ever wanted to figure skate and do a triple lutz-triple toe loop, here’s a video for your reference. Pretty cool with slow motion and graphics for details.

    As the resident of a quiet village in Oxfordshire with a plummy accent to match, she makes an unlikely revolutionary. But she has become a key player in the unrest that is shaking Iran and is such an irritant to PresidentMahmoud Ahmadinejad that she has been subjected to a propaganda campaign by the regime’s henchmen. [full story]

    Can gay footballers ever come out? Story from the U.K.

    Fill You Up With Smarts – Weekend Links For January 30, 2010

    Jan 30, 2010 /

    UMass Amherst has a new branding effort. Why don’t they just improve the University instead of worrying about the brand message? How about stop cutting tenure track faculty? Considering one of your brand themes is “smart”, you might want to stop the faculty slide. Tenure faculty at UMass Amherst has dropped nearly 250 since 1988 (pdf).

    Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens is probably going to retire this year. At 90 years old, his work is going to be hard to replace. He’s had some full throated opinions lately … on the campaign finance law that was overturned, Stevens said the current court was blazing through case law precedent. The final sentence of his dissent: “While American democracy is imperfect, […] few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.”

    PGA tour starting to pay for the transgressions of Tiger Woods. – “It is a harbinger of what the PGA Tour may be without its most popular player. Three of the Tour’s 46 tournaments scheduled for 2010 don’t have a lead corporate sponsor, nor do 13 of next year’s tournaments. Television viewership of the first two events of this year’s Tour tumbled.”

    Margaret Talbot of The New Yorker is blogging the same sex marriage trial in California, Perry v. Schwarzenegger.

    Terrorist Carlos The Jackal is in a French prison for life, but he’s suing a film company for final cut of a documentary they are making of him.

    Vermont has suffered more deaths per capita in the Iraq war than any other state. The state has a rate of 3.54 deaths per 100,000 residents, which dwarfs even those that follow right behind: Montana (2.87), Wyoming (2.57), Nebraska (2.50) and South Dakota (2.46). Why is the rate so hight? A few reasons, one of which is that their National Guard gets a lot of tough assignments.

    After Three Months, Only 35 Subscriptions forNewsday‘s Web Site. After moving the newspaper Web site behind a pay wall ($5 a week), site traffic has dropped off a cliff; in December 2009 the web site had 1.5 million unique visits, a drop from 2.2 million in October.

    Transcribing everyday conversations of Al Qaeda members. Other than the terrorism they like, they’re regular guys!

    Fill You Up With Smarts – Weekend Links For January 16, 2010

    Jan 16, 2010 /

    Looks like a good coffee maker, but not entirely environmentally friendly – do we really need to fill up the planet with unrecyclable trash, just for a tasty, convenient cup of coffee?

    Funny photos of Jack Nicholson at basketball games. For Jack Nicholson, going to a Laker’s game isn’t just an event to watch. With seats that good, you’ve got to participate!

    The Bogus Flight 253 ‘One-Way Ticket’ Meme: Anatomy Of A Myth – From the beginning of attempted x-mass bombing story, I read stories how the Nigerian fellow bought a one-way ticket (which would have been a red flag … if true!). Here’s how that false story took on its own life.

    How a group of Texas conservatives is rewriting your kids’ textbooks. –  This is problematic because Texas’ textbook buying power influences what books get published, which in turn influences the buying choices other states.

    Why Hurricane Katrina Looms Over Obama’s Relief Efforts in Haiti – Dumb pundits on parade! Apparently Howard Fineman from Newsweek doesn’t know that Haiti isn’t the 51st state, therefore we don’t have both a legal and moral obligation to help Haiti, just a moral obligation.

    Top 10 Places You Can’t Go – I’ve walked by the number 2 place on the list, Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center. In 1990, I walked the Appalachian Trail, which follows the fence line for a bit. All very hush-hush, you know.

    links for 2008-03-15

    Mar 15, 2008 /
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