Good Times, Good Links

This weekend was great. Saturday evening went to the Sunset Catina with DJ for some excellent food and drink. Sunday I went to Tropic Thunder with film club, which was good dumb fun.

A variety of things to comment on:

• I've heard some people suggest John McCain secretly wants to overturn Roe vs. Wade. That's simply not the case; it can hardly be secret when it's on his website. Not worried though, as Obama continues a solid campaign while McCain continues to kick himself in the mouth repeatedly.
• sabotabby presents a parable about US healthcare. Also interesting is this libertarian essay on how the government created this healthcare crisis by "solving" the last one. While I'm on a libertarian bent, here's another interesting one on fiat money and why it seems to work. Really interesting history.
• Bill Nye has a new TV show. Bill Nye. The Science Guy. I'm excited.
• Two blog posts on ampersands. Seriously.
• A post on why the SAT is still useless crap that colleges should drop like a bad habit.
• United Airlines bumps a family from a flight, ruining a $10k+ vacation (to visit a dying relative, among other things), lies about it, finally gives the family a refund, but refuses to write a letter allowing the family to claim the insurance on their trip.
• An immigrant dies in US custody with undiagnosed spinal cancer, deported because papers were sent to the wrong address.
• A recipe for Avocado Lime Pie with Coconut Cream.
• A bunch of MIT students ended up in a legal controversy for revealing security vulnerabilities of the MBTA payment system. The MBTA management is showing their usual preference for security theater over real security.
• A court ruled that violating copyleft licenses is copyright infringement, not contract violation. Good decision, to be applauded. Copyleft licenses are not contracts, the are unilateral statements by the copyright holder of which copyright rights they relinquish under which conditions.