Sunshine

Spy Chips Guiding CIA Drone Strikes, Locals Say It sounds like a tinfoil hat nightmare, come to life: tiny electronic homing beacons, guiding CIA killer drones to their targets. But local residents and Taliban militants in Pakistan’s tribal wildlands say that’s exactly what’s happening. Tribesman in Waziristan are being paid to “ plant the electronic devices ” near militant safehouses, they ...

In which I get ranty and use too many italics.

Christopher Bradley writes I'm not a fan of lotteries for a whole lot of reasons, but they're pretty regressive and they're also gambling. It's regressive because millionaires don't play the lottery - it is designed to take advantage of poor people's hopes and desperation. Which I think stinks. State lotteries are callous attempts by the state to capitalize on poverty by tricking the poor into...

cpxbrex   has an interesting post on grading and education up. The context is a critique of PZ Meyers , but I found the post thought-provoking in ... like, particularly at middle school level. I also think that education has been moving away from the medieval model cpxbrex   describes, with varying degrees of success as far as engaging students. I don't know. What do you think?...

Notes on Fifty Degrees Below and Sixty Days and Counting by Kim Stanley Robinson

I recently talked about Forty Signs of Rain , the first book in the series that ends with Fifty Degrees Below and Sixty Days and counting. Pretty much everything I said with Forty Signs of Rain is still true, but to which I'll add that the series, in general, is red hot liberal porn . Oh, I guess another way of saying things is that the series is optimistic. That our problems are big but so ...