The Effectiveness of Political Assassinations

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/title-2/

Particularly ominous are Jordan's findings about groups that, like Al Qaeda and the Taliban, are religious. The chances that a religious terrorist group will collapse in the wake of a decapitation strategy are 17 percent. Of course, that’s better than zero, but it turns out that the chances of such a group fading away when there's no decapitation are 33 percent. In other words, killing leaders of a religious terrorist group seems to increase the group's chances of survival from 67 percent to 83 percent.

The Best Part Is The Other Contestants

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1918045

Dragster

There is little doubt that Dragster was the best game for the Atari.  You are going to want to train for it day and night.  Here's some info that should help:
http://www.atariage.com/manual_html_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=1050

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L64-DpklZrw


I think this is my personal best:

Google Backs Yahoo In Privacy Fight With DOJ

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/16/1352209/Google-Backs-Yahoo-In-Privacy-Fight-With-DOJ

PatPending sends in CNET coverage of Yahoo's new allies in its fight with the DoJ to protect the privacy of its customers' email stored in the cloud. Google, the EFF, the CDT, and others have filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that the DoJ should be required to obtain a search warrant signed by a judge in order to compel Yahoo to turn over users' email messages. "Does email stored in the cloud have the same level of protection as the same information stored by a person at home? No, according to the Obama administration's Assistant US Attorney Pegeen Rhyne, who wrote in a government motion filed last month, 'Previously opened e-mail is not in "electronic storage." This court should therefore require Yahoo to comply with the order and produce the specified communications in the targeted accounts.' (The Justice Department's position is that what's known as a 2703(d) order — not as privacy-protective as the rules for search warrants — should let police read email.)"

Piano Chat Improv

http://www.youtube.com/user/PianoChatImprov

This guy is really good.

Nein

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/22103dea0f/rammstein-vs-cookie-monster

THE Definitive Guide To Single-Serve Website Awesomeness

http://yepyep.gibbs12.com/2010/03/the-definitive-guide-to-single-serve-website-awesomeness/

I could post each one of these individually.  They are all great.

Beating Hoses To Death

Schneier on "Security, Privacy, and the Generation Gap"

http://www.indiana.edu/~video/stream/launchflash.html?format=FLV&folder=vic&filename=higher_ed_cybersecurity_summit_20100401.flv&start=10380&end=14034&plugins=viral-2

Should Kids Be Bribed To Do Well In School?

http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/04/10/2049216/Should-Kids-Be-Bribed-To-Do-Well-In-School

"Harvard economist Roland Fryer Jr. did something education researchers almost never do: he ran a randomized experiment in hundreds of classrooms in Chicago, Dallas, Washington and New York to help answer a controversial question: Should Kids Be Bribed to Do Well in School? He used mostly private money to pay 18,000 kids a total of $6.3 million and brought in a team of researchers to help him analyze the effects. He got death threats, but he carried on. His findings? If incentives are designed wisely, it appears, payments can indeed boost kids' performance as much as or more than many other reforms you've heard about before — and for a fraction of the cost."

Schools in Dallas got the simplest scheme and the one targeting the youngest children: every time second-graders read a book and successfully completed a computerized quiz about it, they earned $2. Straightforward -- and cheap. The average earning would turn out to be about $14 (for seven books read) per year.

And in Dallas, the experiment produced the most dramatic gains of all. Paying second-graders to read books significantly boosted their reading-comprehension scores on standardized tests at the end of the year -- and those kids seemed to continue to do better the next year, even after the rewards stopped.

One clue came out of the interviews Fryer's team conducted with students in New York City. The students were universally excited about the money, and they wanted to earn more. They just didn't seem to know how. When researchers asked them how they could raise their scores, the kids mentioned test-taking strategies like reading the questions more carefully. But they didn't talk about the substantive work that leads to learning. "No one said they were going to stay after class and talk to the teacher," Fryer says. "Not one."

We tend to assume that kids (and adults) know how to achieve success. If they don't get there, it's for lack of effort -- or talent.