There’s a Mormon running for president… of Mali. (via Abel)

Alan Jacobs discusses the benefits of the traditional publishing route. David Ryan goes a step further and declares self-publishing dead.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn is right: TSA officials have no business wearing badges unless they have actually gone through actual law enforcement training. Security guards wear badges they didn’t earn quite that way, but it’s different when we’re talking about actual government officials. (And honestly, if your job is to observe-and-report, I don’t think you should get a shiny badge, either.)

The Great Scout Divide.

New Army guidelines are making it tougher for NCO’s to re-enlist. It wasn’t that long ago when we had to take measures to prevent them from leaving.

Piracy marches ever-forward. The Pirate Bay has found a way to host a searching mechanism and provide (a) some legal distance for themselves and (b) some anonymity for users. Meanwhile, the powers-that-be behind BitTorrent (who knew that such a thing would have PTB?) are changing formats for their videos, and their customers aren’t happy about it. Out of curiosity, I compared them side-to-side and determined that the new video is noticeably better even while being smaller. However, the new standard doesn’t play on my phone.

Via Web, an article about actors that are hired to call-in to radio shows and help create content.

A look at urbanization and the absence of middle class in China. Also, China is building a city to be four times the size of New York.