Linkee-poo, you thought nobody cared, but we did, we could tell

Only a couple days left of the MacHeist bundle which includes Scrivener and Evernote Premium for only $29. There's a bunch of other software in there, but just the Scrivener for $29 is a great deal. (Grokked from Elizabeth Shack)

Mary Robinette Kowal on the difference between your audience and your market.

Eight movies made possible by incompetent background characters. Otherwise known as the plot motivators. See also if I ever become the Evil Overlord. (Grokked from Tor.com)

Voting is open in the latest Jay lake poll. As they say in politics, "Vote for me!" Actually, there's a lot of good captions there.

All our president's doodles. Who knew that doodling would be a presidential qualification? (Pointed to by John)

"The site was a covert burial ground where the unfortunates who died in the hospital, having been dissected illegally in the adjoining anatomy school, were buried by night." An exhibition of some of the darker secrets of the London Hospital. Also, in case you were wondering, those "grave robbers" were called resurrectionists (note, not to be confused with the Catholic order of the same name). (Grokked from Matt Staggs)

The Rise and downward trend of Venice in the 14th Century and how it relates to modern America. Only, the article doesn't tell you how the story of Venice came to end that chapter. It wasn't pretty. As they say, history may not repeat, but it often rhymes. (Grokked from Jay Lake)

Someone in VA threw out a bag of completed voter registration forms. Rumor has is, Strategic Allied Consulting is involved. Those wonderful people who have brought you election shenanigans for 12 years now.

Just some thoughts for 1) those people who think the President is doing nothing about Iran and 2) those people who think going to a gold standard would be a good thing. Seems Iran is running out of physical currency with their hyper inflation. And because they don't control their own currency printing, the sanctions are throwing a big monkey wrench in printing more (or getting presses to do it themselves). There's an easy fix, print money with standard lithographic techniques, but the results of that would be disastrous (and they know we'd take advantaged of the weakness in that plan). (Pointed to by Dan)

What happens to Medicaid under Obama and Romney. Look at that line dive. Just so you know, that diving line means people dying for preventable problems, all while driving up unrecoverable costs at hospitals (read: your tax money in direct payments). "This gives the lie to partisan claims that Romney would save Medicare from insolvency — his plan would hasten the exhaustion of Medicare’s part A trust fund by eight years, potentially triggering deep, automatic cuts to the program in 2016."

Turns out the other half of that "Binders Full of Women" line doesn't quite remember it that way. "Prior to the 2002 gubernatorial election, MassGAP approached the campaigns of candidates Shannon O’Brien and Mitt Romney and asked them both to commit…" Which they did. And then there's the way it ended. "'Subsequently, however, from 2004-2006 the percentage of newly-appointed women in these senior appointed positions dropped to 25 percent,'" MassGAP said. She he didn't quite "go out and find" women and women's groups, and then after the spotlight was off, he didn't keep the initiative going.

"The problem was that Republicans had a very strong point they could lean on heading into the debate… But because of Romney’s clear slip on the specific wording of an Obama speech, they were forced to either prove that Crowley was wrong on less-than-compelling technicalities or admit Romney blew it on the facts." Here's the damage control aspect, let it drop. However, conservatives think they have some fire here so they continue to defend their position without realizing the President's handling of the situation dosed the fire and now they just come across as peevish.

Also, I just want to point out again, it only took two weeks to correct that story. It took GW Bush a year to admit the WMD failure, and it took Mitt Romney a month to realize his 47% argument was "completely wrong" (which was actually something like 6 months after he stated it).

The drone wars in Pakistan and counting the civilian death toll. (Grokked from Jay Lake)

Alligator Quotient: Well, at least they're taking turns today. I expect that to change by tomorrow.