On the impracticality of a cheeseburger.

Waldo Jaquith:

Further reflection revealed that it's quite impractical--nearly impossible--to make a cheeseburger from scratch. Tomatoes are in season in the late summer. Lettuce is in season in spring and fall. Large mammals are slaughtered in early winter. The process of making such a burger would take nearly a year, and would be wildly expensive--requiring a trio of cows--and demand many acres of land. There's just no sense in it.

via Daring Fireball

A Christmas Carol As Resistance Literature

Richard Beck:

O Holy Night, it turns out, was a song of political resistance and protest. Imagine Americans singing in the years leading up to the Civil War the lyrics: "Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother; And in His name all oppression shall cease."

O Holy Night is a political protest. A Christmas carol as resistance literature.

This is as it should be. Advent is a call to Christian anarchism…

Awesome! I love learning things like this.

The abusive teachings of Michael and Debi Pearl hurt both women and children

Rachel Held Evans:

Why bring this to your attention? Because the Pearls are inexplicably popular in certain Christian circles, and abuse in the name of God must be spoken against.

If your church is considering using books by the Pearls as part of its curriculum, please say something. If you see friends or family employing their tactics, confront them. This is not simply a matter of different parenting methods or relationship styles—like Sears vs. Ezzo, or cloth diapers vs. disposable diapers, or complementarianism vs. egalitarianism—it’s a matter of abuse.

There can be no more beatings, no more deaths…especially not in the name of Christ.

I’m about to become a parent, so I’ve been reading as much on the subject as I can. Just about all the authors disagree with each other on some points, so I’m reading to backfill my mind so I can come up with my own style. I like parts of almost everything I’ve read, but every once in a while I see something that is just shocking.

What I Learned About Dallas From Watching Top Chef: Texas

Jason Heid collects some choice quotes from various national media outlets discussing last night’s episode of Top Chef: Texas which was filmed in Dallas. It’s a wonderful collection of gems such as

What we learned here is that rich people in Dallas are freaking weird.

Thank you Bravo, for bringing this wonderful attention to my beloved city.

You Are Facebook’s Product: That’s Why You Don’t Pay to Use it

Adrian Hon:

... it's not as if you pay to use Facebook. You're the product, and the advertisers are the buyers!

via Dave Winer

How Does SOPA Threaten Stack Overflow

Joel Spolsky

If we took down everything somebody wanted us to take down, the Internet would be worse. Right now, under the DMCA, we require the person making the complaint to send us a complete DMCA take down notice. ... We respond by notifying the person who posted the material, giving them a chance to make a case for why the material is non-infringing. ... The SOPA dramatically alters the careful balance in favor of "alleged" copyright holders.

In other words, it will make the Internet worse and put good sites like this out of business.

Pizza Hut Now Serving Vegetables

Nick Rallo:

Before we all stuffed our bodies with Thanksgiving last week, Congress declared pizza a vegetable. Only not really. Tomato paste, which is obviously associated with pizza, was declared a vegetable. ... Meanwhile, in San Antonio, where the above photo was taken (via Reddit's San Antonio page), Pizza Hit is enjoying Congress's findings.

So You Want to be an Entreprenuer

Dave Winer:

I'm afraid the adults are not levelling with the young folk. And we should be. Even the universities glorify the idea of being the next Zuck. That's like betting your future on winning the lottery. And you're not going to win the lottery. And you're not the next Zuck.

Whatever Works For You

Marco Arment:

Previous-me tried to persuade everyone to switch to my setup, but I now know that it's not worth the effort. I'll never know someone else's requirements, environment, or priorities as well as they do. I don't know shit about Windows or Outlook or architecture.

You should use whatever works for you. And I no longer have the patience or hubris to convince you what that should be. All I can offer is one data point: what I use, and how it works for me.

My thoughts exactly. His post could have been a page right out of my own journal.

“The End of Local Radio”? Reports Say Clear Channel May Be About to Go All “Robotics."

Robert Wilonsky:

Clear Channel owns and operates six radio stations in the Dallas-Fort Worth market: KDGE-FM, KDMX-FM, KEGL-FM, KFXR-AM, KHKS-FM and KZPS-FM. But several times this morning, Friends of Unfair Park have sent this piece from Time Out Chicago that says at any moment, any or all of them could lose their local voices.

Rick Perry’s Balanced-Budget Illusion

Jim Schutze:

...if you want to know what a state really owes, you have to add up all of what it owes to its own pension funds and other public obligations, as well as gimmicks like the ones reported in the Star-Telegram. When you do that for Texas, we're in the top five debtor states in the country with California, New York, New Jersey and Illinois. We're actually in 48th place -- with California in 50th as the most debt-ridden. Our debt per capita ranking is not great -- 29th place.

And Perry’s holding this up as a model of a well balanced budget? Remind me again, why we didn’t tell him to “Adios, mofo” in the last gubernatorial election.

Ten years of Windows XP

Peter Bright:

But in many ways, the thing that cemented Windows XP's status wasn't Windows XP itself: it was the lack of any successor. Microsoft's Longhorn project, an ambitious plan to radically rework Windows, with an all-new set of APIs and a database-like filesystem, was delayed and ultimately abandoned entirely. Windows Vista, a massively scaled back, more conservative release, eventually arrived in 2006, but by this time Windows XP had become so dominant that users, particularly business users, didn't want a new operating system. That Windows Vista had trouble in its early days, thanks to its steeper hardware demands, its polarizing appearance, and display driver issues--mirroring, in many ways, Windows XP's own introduction--just served to entrench Windows XP further. Business users stuck with Windows XP, and Windows Vista struggled to ever make a serious dent in its predecessor's market share, peaking at just 19 percent in the final days before Windows 7's release.

Nest: The Learning Thermostat

If Apple were to make a thermostat, it would be like this.

UPDATE: It’s made by the guy who created the iPod.

Quicksilver Roars

Solid update to a great productivity tool that, although I’ve used it for years, I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of it’s potential.

On Parenthood

Jeff Atwood:

As an adult, you may think you've roughly mapped the continent of love and relationships. You've loved your parents, a few of your friends, eventually a significant other. You have some tentative cartography to work with from your explorations. You form ideas about what love is, its borders and boundaries. Then you have a child, look up to the sky, and suddenly understand that those bright dots in the sky are whole other galaxies.

Posts like this both excite and freak me out. My Henry is coming at the end of this year, and the only thing I seem to know is that I don’t really know what I’m in for.

Talk the Talk: Mayor Mike’s Pals Shovel Up the BS at Council Retreat

Jim Schutze:

I feel sorry for the rest of the city council having to sit through this kind of goofy-ass bullshit. I wish we could have a mayor who knows how to be mayor instead of how to do Ouija-board tricks for out-of-it corporate Moonies still high from their last group herbal massage and martini hours.

Schutze sure has a way with words.

Slowly But Surely, Elm Street’s History is Being Erased One Old Building at a Time

Robery Wilonsky:

Those buildings are just two being added to the growing pile of rubble up and down Elm, which is slowly but surely being shed of whatever history that remains: "In the course of eight months," writes Noah, "807 Elm, 1600 Elm, 1604 Elm, 2222 Elm, 2224 Elm and 2226 Elm will have been leveled."

In case you forgot why we’re called the city with no history.

Oracle JDK7 Mac OS X Port Developer Preview Release

java.net:

The Developer Preview should work on any Intel-based Mac, and has been tested on Mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.0.

This is an important first step in the new world order for Java and Mac OS X. Java 7 will be the first Java release for the Mac not released by Apple. Once upon a time, the Mac was considered the best platform for Java. When Apple announced it would discontinue official support for Java, many began to question the future of Java on the Mac.

As a Java developer, I hope Oracle will continue to put out a quality product so that I can continue to make my living on my platform of choice.

Paul wants to phase out federal student loans

Associated Press:

Republican presidential contender Ron Paul said Sunday he wants to end federal student loans, calling it a failed program that has put students $1 trillion in debt when there are no jobs and when the quality of education has deteriorated.

When you consider that the average student that graduates with a Bachelors degree has $23,186 in student loan debt, and that the unemployment rate for recent graduates is on the rise, this sounds like a pretty good idea.

(via Slashdot)

1/2 of US Qualifies for Affordable Housing

Larry James:

So, over one half of all working Americans are eligible to occupy one of our [low-income] apartments!

The Ad Man Cometh

Anna Merlan:

[Frank Lutz offered] the city council members [a list of] "good" words versus "great" words. Don't say "sustainability," but use terms such as "cleaner, safer and healthier." Instead of saying "working together," say "partnership." In place of "sacrifice," use, "We're all in this together." Don't "inform" the public, "educate" the public. (So if you notice a sudden shift in city council's vocabulary, that would be why.)

I’m so glad they spent $15k of our tax money on this. (Plus another $15k private donation.)

Meanwhile, my council person, Angela Hunt, had this to say:

I think we just wasted $30,000 on a banal presentation that could have been provided as a handout ... I'm not interested in how we develop better messages to better manipulate the public's perception, or learning buzzwords to prompt the most visceral reaction.

It’s moments like this that make me glad I voted to re-elect her.

Love among the poor

Dean Brackley:

The problem for us is that the new freedoms and economic security have distanced the non-poor from the kind of daily life-and-death struggle that has been the daily fare of the poor of all times right up to today. Maybe 90 percent of all the people who ever lived have struggled every day to keep the household alive against the threat of death through hunger, disease, accidents and violence. By distancing the non-poor from the daily threat of death, the benefits of modernity have induced in us a kind of chronic lowgrade confusion about what is really important in life, namely life itself and love.

What’s Better than One Giant Ferris Wheel?

Because: “Why not?”

J.L. Long library mural painted by Hall of State artist

Rick Wamre:

Few people know that J.L. Long Middle School and the Texas State Fair Hall of State building have something in common. In 1934, students watched as well-known local Dallas artist from the era, artist Olin Herman Travis (1888-1975), painted the “Food” mural in the school library. It was one of the WPA arts projects produced in Dallas during the Depression. Mr. Travis is also known for two murals he painted in the Hall of State at Fair Park.

Women’s Museum in Dallas to close

Gaile Robinson:

The 11-year-old institution, located in Dallas' historic Fair Park district, will close its art deco doors after the State Fair.