Linkee-poo, every dog must have its day

Justine Larbalestier on writing to the market. Or, as Stephen King said in On Writing, write the first draft with the door closed. You're writing just for yourself (hmmm, he said to himself). Then open the door and rewrite for the world.

What? There's also no "Crackers for Obama" merchandise either. And I think by the end of this I'll have given more than $25 to his campaign. There's no "Muslims for Obama" campaign merchandise? Really, this is a criticism? Now just imaging if there were such merchandise. Imagine the "ZOMG, he really is a sekret mooslim" pandering by the conservative media. (Grokked from Jay Lake)

"Dude. You’re seriously trying to tell us that you answered a private email from a worried dad asking about his young daughter’s private sexual promiscuity with a random public tweet sent out with no title or handle or context to your tens of thousands of followers?" I'm not sure I could say it better. Seriously, Pastor Warren, are you that much of an idiot, or do you just think we are?

Well, if you have enough of a social media following you can shame insurance companies into doing the right thing. Note that Aetna is making the mote to eliminate life-time caps because of the ACA, not because of their generous hearts. OKay, I'm willing to give Aetna the benefit of the doubt that they really do want to help their customers, and as a business with stockholders they need to show profits. But why be a business with shareholders (that's a relatively recent event in business history, most health insurance companies were non-profit before 1990, not all)? Why pay executives millions of dollars in compensation (plus stock incentives)? Why wait for someone to start a campaign, don't you know when your customers reach their lifetime limits? Think maybe getting in contact with them then might be helpful? (Grokked from Jay Lake)

Do you think music these days sounds all the same, but louder? Now you have scientific evidence to support that. Sigh, kids and their music. "Hey, Angus, key of C again?" (Grokked from Dan)

Now that the Berkley Earth Surface Temperature Project is completed, lo and behold, it confirms pretty much what everybody else knew in the early 2000s. Yes, global climate change is real and yes, it is mostly cause by humans burning carbon rich fuels and pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. Richard Muller then goes on to make excuses for his earlier skepticism, debunk radical and future claims, remind us that weather isn't climate, and try to reclaim the mantle of serious scientist. Good luck with that. Yes polar bears aren't having mass die offs (yet), but their behavior is changing. The question is can it change fast enough for them to survive (the current thinking is no, the climate is changing to fast for species to adapt). Yes the warm weather in the US this summer is offset by cooler temps elsewhere in the world (just like our recent cooler summers were offset by higher temps elsewhere). But the overall trend of the climate is getting hotter and what we're experiencing is exactly what our future holds for us. More hurricanes aren't hitting land, but they're getting bigger and stronger out in the Atlantic. Dr. Muller is attempting to thread the needle with his camel. It's a shame because his old friends probably won't invite him to brie parties anymore, and those of us who already knew what he's just coming to accept probably won't invite him either. (Grokked from Jay Lake)

Ubisoft goes rogue. I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason that the ubisoft game extension has for installing a rootlet on your machine without telling you. I'm sure it's a perfectly good, completely dickish reason. (Pointed to by Dan)

Mitt Romney continues on his roll. He praises Israel for their lower cost health care system (compared to GDP) and better outcomes compared to the US. Obviously he didn't know that Israel has a national health insurance with an individual mandate (and I believe single-payer, although there's four private companies you can purchase your insurance through, but you taxes pay for all of it). Seriously, who the hell is doing research for the Romney Campaign? While you shouldn't start and end here, it's called Google. You might want to try it. (Grokked from Tobias Buckell)

Alligator Quotient: I think we're all swimming in the same direction.