Thursday link roundup

• This Agitator post illustrates in perfect detail why it's not even worth trying anymore. Short version, a noble citizen does soemthing that would save the fovernment 2.2 million dollars and deliver a higher quality. The feds refuse, and take years in doing so. Your tax dollars at sloth.
• Putin's Rise to Power
• MaoPost.com - really cool
• Oil Econ 101 - and oldie but a goodie
• This little nugget from Marginal Revolution

  In Brazil, they segregate their prisons according to gang membership. No exceptions. Not even for individuals who in fact are not members of any gang.
  
  How does that work? Easy. Upon being admitted to the prison system, unaffiliated prisoners are required to join a gang.
  

Random Photo

From my visit to the Commuter Art Gallery

Double weirdness

• The quest for alternative energy seems to have caused an earthquake. In Switzerland no less. Overall it's cool though.
• The dirty car art gallery - a guy actually does fine artwork on dirty cars. See to believe.
  

RIP Ingmar Bergman

Tyler Cowen has a short write-up here. He made two of my favorite movies of all time in The Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal, both Symphonies in black and white. All very gloomy and subtitled, but magnificently done. His passing leaves the world without one of the best visual storytellers of all time.

Quick Friday roundup while uploading

• Cool new wind turbines
• A good article on insanity and Angela Yates
• Oil from Algae!
• 15 year old performs surgery in India
• The art of the doable to do list
• The greatest sidewalk artist ever
  

Monday round up

• GM has built a plug-in hybrid
• I like this guy

  Indian Hill lawyer and former congressional candidate Paul Hackett -- armed with a loaded assault rifle -- chased down three men in a car after it crashed into a fence at his home in the early morning hours of Nov. 19.

• I'm going to order this and this
• Tamara de Lempicka made some beautiful art deco paintings
  

Soon you shall all see....

This week I'm going to post short summaries of all my book ideas and hold a vote for which one I should actually start, should anyone care. I have about five fleshed out ideas I've accumulated over the past ten years or so.

Wednesday round up

1. Torture Warrants - it deals with everything honestly I suppose.
2. Google founders buy a private jet - and yet "We've worked very hard to make sure our [net] impact on the environment is positive"
3. The gutlessness of the Republican party is amazing.
4. Kinky!
5. Topless protesters - though after a certain age one's cause doesn't really break even in effectiveness. The organization is called "Breasts not bombs" though I see no reason why we can't have both.
6. Ayn Rand's cover illustrator is still alive and has some wonderful art on his site. I highly recommend it. His prints are exhorbitantly expensive sadly.
7. Wonderful pulp art (the Shadow) from Micah Wright, who it would seem is a fraud in his other endeavors.
8. Twinsparc has released SaySo.org