Another month, another article on the imminent demise of the laptop. Look, the desktop isn’t even dead yet. Beyond that, the notion that because laptop design has been perfected means it’s dead is a pretty dumb argument.

The case for saving ugly buildings. Go brutalism! More seriously, I ultimately take an “out with the old…” perspective, provided that it makes economic sense to replace a particular building. I just don’t trust what the tastemakers call cool or ugly.

When you define half of Americans as poor or low-income, it says more about the metrics used than the state of our nation.

Should Hollywood go back to using miniatures? I’m for anything that would hold costs down.

One of the interesting things that jumped out at me when I originally moved north was the number of people who left their cars running while they went inside. I even did it myself sometimes. In Milwaukee, it’s causing the predictable problems. Not of theft, but “unlawful usage.” Kids stealing a ride to school. Apparently it’s illegal to leave your car running. It reminds me of the town I was raised in where it was illegal to leave your bikes out because you were in effect giving escapees from the local juvenile hall a free ride.

In Illinois, you now need ID to buy drain cleaner.

Atlantic Cities makes the case for strong urban cores. I actually agree! The problem is when people think that the way to do this is to kneecap suburbs. Atlanta has apparently accomplished a downtown renewal despite its outward expansion. The fact that the urban cores were lost in the rust belt, and that the rust belt is struggling, and that the former is the cause of the latter, has a causation-correlation problem.

From the files of near self-parody, Conservapedia wants a bible without all that liberal stuff. I’ve heard some conservatives say that Conservapedia is parody, but I’ve seen little reason to believe that’s actually the case.

This is the stuff of jetpacks and flying cars, but more fun to think about.


Category: Newsroom

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12 Responses to Linkluster: Federal Judicial Districts

  1. Brandon Berg says:

    The devil’s in the details, of course, but in principle the description of the conservative bible project sounds reasonable to me. Most of those sound like translation issues on which there’s legitimate room for disagreement. The part about “later-inserted liberal passages” sounded a bit suspicious, but apparently the example they give really is absent from the earliest known manuscripts.

  2. trumwill says:

    Fair point.

  3. Peter says:

    A brothel named “La Petite Aroma?” Good God.

  4. dufu says:

    How can there be one more federal judicial district than US attorneys? There should be equal since there is a US attorney assigned to each district.

  5. trumwill says:

    Guam & Northern Mariana are separate districts, but have the same US Attorney.

  6. Samson J. says:

    One of the interesting things that jumped out at me when I originally moved north was the number of people who left their cars running while they went inside.

    Ha, ha… it’s so funny that you find this interesting. But then again, I find this funny:

    It reminds me of the town I was raised in where it was illegal to leave your bikes out because you were in effect giving escapees from the local juvenile hall a free ride.

    And anyway, I seem to remember leaving the car running – for the air conditioning – when I’ve been in Texas and New Mexico.

    Conservapedia wants a bible without all that liberal stuff.

    Well, several of their premises *are* valid: that a translation is subject to the translator’s bias, and that the ancient semitic worldview was very different than ours in certain respects. (Not to say that their idea as a whole isn’t silly; some of the translations we have today are pretty darn good already.)

    I guess Brandon already said this.

  7. Samson J. says:

    Beyond that, the notion that because laptop design has been perfected means it’s dead is a pretty dumb argument.

    Yeah, Will, this is an absolutely hysterical look into the consumerist, “planned obsolence”, poor-quality-so-you’re-forced-to-buy-a-new-one-in-3-years mentality.

    From the article:

    But it means the laptop is dead. There’s literally no place left to take it, innovatively.

    Say it with me: only if you’re the type who just so absolutely “needs” the latest gadget, all the time. As far as I’m concerned, if it’s perfected, perfect – I’ll buy one… and then I’ll buy another of the same when it breaks.

  8. Samson J. says:

    Oh, and this sounds like a hilariously dangerous and bad idea:

    They have been studying how a functional magnetic resonance machine (FMRI) can ‘induce’ knowledge in someone through their visual cortex by sending signals that change their brain activity pattern.

  9. trumwill says:

    And anyway, I seem to remember leaving the car running – for the air conditioning – when I’ve been in Texas and New Mexico.

    Huh. I never did that when I lived either off the Gulf Coast or in the southwest. On the other hand, I never lived in a small(ish) town in either place. the places I did live, theft was always an issue. Back in Colosse, I left my car unlocked simply to save myself the repair costs of a shattered window.

    Say it with me: only if you’re the type who just so absolutely “needs” the latest gadget, all the time. As far as I’m concerned, if it’s perfected, perfect – I’ll buy one… and then I’ll buy another of the same when it breaks.

    I think that IBM perfected the basic design of the laptop back in the 90’s. As far as performance goes, I don’t think we’ve reached the point where more/better processors are a waste of money (it was looking like we had, for a little while) due to the increased resource-intensiveness of the Internet.

    Which is actually another argument against the death of the laptop. Laptops are better equipped for better resources than their proposed successors.

    Oh, and this sounds like a hilariously dangerous and bad idea:

    It reminds me a bit of Batman Forever.

  10. Samson J. says:

    It reminds me a bit of Batman Forever.

    Well, but even before that, how many people’s brains will they fry trying to get the process right?

  11. trumwill says:

    Good point.

  12. rob says:

    Arguendo the “throw the first stone” adultery story isn’t in the earliest Johns [haha], that doesn’t nec. mean it wasn’t part of the oral tradition of early Christianity. Even if it was made from whole cloth later, it stuck around because it’s congruent with Christianity. How many Christians would read John and think the story struck a false note on?

    Pre-apologizing for the sacrilege:
    Consider the joke: the story starts the same. when Jesus says “Let ye who have no sin cast the first stone” a little old lady in the back picks up a rock, slowly walks to the front of the crowd, and bashes the adulterous woman’s head in. Jesus says, “Dammit mom, sometimes you really piss me off!”

    If that had actually been part of the story in later versions of John, it probably would have been lost or edited out because it doesn’t fit in with the rest.

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