A pro-wikipedia article at scienceprogress.org.

A whistle blower site gets taken offline in a very perverse demonstration of why you can't fight city hall. Here's a sample from the Wired news story:

Wikileaks, the whistleblower site that recently leaked documents related to prisons in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, was taken offline last week by its U.S. host after posting documents that implicate a Cayman Islands bank in money laundering and tax evasion activities.

So while everyone is watching the primaries, as am I, I just thought I'd add this into the mix, because it's sure to get ignored. Bush just unveiled a 3.1 Trillion dollar budget plan rife with tax cuts for the rich and aggressive foreign policy. So while we think about who's going to run this country next, Bush is still busy running it into the ground.

Here's a short and witty article on U.S. currency (pdf), written by Ha-Joon Chang, from the most recent issue of the New School Economics Review. It discusses how, despite current U.S. free-trade bolstering, every single president portrayed on our currency was an avid protectionist. The argument of this incredibly short piece, slightly veiled by its clever usage of images on currency to point it out, is that upcoming industrialist states tend to be rigidly protectionist, but once they arrive at full industrialization, they turn to free trade in order to benefit from the exploitation of other countries. Britain, Korea, Taiwan, Switzerland, and the Netherlands have all followed this pattern. This quote from general-turned-president Ulysses S. Grant (whose burly, bearded face beams from the fifty-dollar bill), in response to British pressure for the U.S. to adopt free trade, says it all:

Within 200 years, when America has gotten out of protection all that it can offer, it too will adopt free trade.

I am a little bit disappointed in myself. When I started this blog (a long three weeks ago), I told myself that I wouldn't allow myself to give snide commentary, but rather, stick to useful links and informative posts. I believe I broke my rule in every single post to date (this one excepted).

So I'm surprised that this didn't get picked up on anyone's radar last year. I was reading through hate crimes databases and came across an incident from February 2, 2007, in which two teenage girls in Des Moines hit a gay teenager over the head with a bottle, stabbed him with a plastic fork, stole $5, an ATM card, and his wallet, and lit fire to his backpack. They were charged with burglary and arson. Something seems to be missing in the charges. Via splcenter.org.

When I was your age, they were playing an augmented g minor triad

This is old news, but a conversation tonight reminded me of it. A new performance of John Cage's As Slow As Possible, slated to last for the next 635 years was kicked off in Halberstadt, Germany on the 5th of February, 2003. The last note change was on May 5, 2006, and the next is scheduled for July 5, 2008, but the piece then picks up its tempo, because the subsequent note change will occur on November 5, 2008. Wikipedia has a schedule. The piece is being played on an organ, for obvious reasons.