Yostivanich

“Mr. Lewis, who helped build Bank of Amer­ica into the nation’s largest bank, was stripped of his chairman’s title — a sting­ing blow that leaves his stew­ard­ship and legacy in doubt. At a con­tentious annual gen­eral meet­ing, angry investors held him account­able for what they view as a series of mis­steps that forced the once-mighty bank to accept not one but two gov­ern­ment bailouts.” Wow.

“By adopt­ing the meth­ods of Rea­sons to Believe, you are forced to dis­miss all of this schol­ar­ship and miss the real mean­ing of the Bible. The Bible is about how peo­ple should get along with one another and about moral­ity and ethics and mean­ing. By try­ing to make the Bible fit the cur­rent esti­mates of the Hub­ble con­stant (to pick just one among many exam­ples), me thinks you are miss­ing the point of the book, and thus (in your world view) you are miss­ing God’s message.”

“Indus­trial out­put in Japan rose in March for the first time in six months, accord­ing to gov­ern­ment fig­ures.” Up by 1.6% since Feb­ru­ary, good to hear for Japan.

Updat­ing all those pro­files is so exhausting.

101 down, 15 up, for only $100, sign me up.

“The UN’s World Health Orga­ni­za­tion has raised the alert over swine flu to level five — one short of a full-blown global epi­demic, or pan­demic. A phase five alert means human-to-human trans­mis­sion in at least two countries.”

“They are visual imag­in­ings built from the raw stuff of com­puter pro­gram­ming – dis­as­sem­bled code, API calls, mem­ory addresses and sub­rou­tines.” Art made from com­puter viruses.

“Gay vic­tims of vio­lence would gain new fed­eral pro­tec­tions under a revived and expanded hate crimes bill passed by the House. The House bill added pro­tec­tions based on sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion, gen­der, gen­der iden­tity and dis­abil­ity.” Good news.

“Mexico’s army is com­mit­ting human rights vio­la­tions while engaged in anti-narcotics activ­i­ties as an arm of the police, a human rights group says. The armed forces are involved in rape, mur­der and tor­ture, accord­ing to Human Rights Watch (HRW).” I’m not all that sur­prised, Mexico’s army is given a lot of power to tackle the drug prob­lem, this is going to give rise to peo­ple who will take advan­tage of that power.

The Beta design is now launched to everybody.

“Brain scans reveal that peo­ple believe they are talk­ing to some­one when they pray.” Interesting.

“Nate Sil­ver has answers to con­tro­ver­sial ques­tions about race in pol­i­tics: Did Obama’s race hurt his votes in some places? Stats and myths col­lide in this fas­ci­nat­ing talk that ends with a remark­able insight on how town plan­ning can pro­mote tol­er­ance.” Racism is predictable.

“The New Hamp­shire Sen­ate voted nar­rowly on Wednes­day to legal­ize same-sex mar­riage, paving the way for the state to poten­tially become the fifth in the nation — and the third this month — to allow gay cou­ples to wed.” Wait­ing on the Governor.

“A mem­ber of the World Health Organ­i­sa­tion (WHO) has dis­missed claims that more than 150 peo­ple have died from swine flu, say­ing it has offi­cially recorded only seven deaths around the world.” Oops?

“Split­ting 5–4, the Supreme Court on Tues­day upheld the government’s power under exist­ing law to ban the use on radio and TV of even a sin­gle four-letter word that is con­sid­ered inde­cent — but left open the ques­tion of whether the ban might vio­late the First Amend­ment, at least in some situations.”

“The US Fed­eral Reserve has kept inter­est rates on hold at its cur­rent range of between zero and 0.25%, and sug­gested the reces­sion may be eas­ing. Will the DSCC and DCCC reject dona­tions from exec­u­tives of bailout recip­i­ents such as AIG, the way you did for Enron? Will you require can­di­dates you sup­port to pub­licly endorse the real solu­tion to special-interest influ­ence: pub­lic fund­ing of con­gres­sional elections?”

“The US Fed­eral Reserve has kept inter­est rates on hold at its cur­rent range of between zero and 0.25%, and sug­gested the reces­sion may be easing.”

“Today the White House launched an offi­cial col­lec­tion of pho­tos depict­ing Obama’s first 100 days in office on Flickr. The Cre­ative Com­mons Foun­da­tion asks why these pho­tos are licensed as Cre­ative Com­mons Attri­bu­tion (mean­ing you have to credit the source) instead of being in the Pub­lic Domain free for use in any con­text, as data cre­ated by the Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment usu­ally is. The answer to the ques­tion? The pho­tos aren’t Pub­lic Domain because Flickr doesn’t offer Pub­lic Domain licens­ing as an option.”