Check It Out

Links to cool places or things.

There are 1,524 posts filed in Check It Out (this is page 85 of 153).

North Carolina Is Going Out Of Its Mind – Esquire

Esquire takes a look at the craziness that has been the North Carolina General Assembly under GOP rule.

I have a number of very close friends in North Carolina whom I love dearly, so I ask this in all Christian charity.

WHAT IN THE NAME OF THE LIVING, BREATHING, TATTOOED GOD IS GOING ON DOWN THERE?

Whom did you people elect? The people with the brightest bulbs for a nose? The people with the biggest, floppiest shoes? Does every member of the Republican majority in your legislature all arrive at work every morning in the same tiny car? First, we had the We-Can-Establish-A-State-Religion bill, and then we had the Tax-Yo-Mama-If-You-Vote-Obama bill. Caligula would be ashamed to bring his horse before these people for a vote. And now, because everybody went back to the big steaming bowl of stupid for seconds — and thirds — they have decided to put the force of law and the power of the state behind The Palmer Method.

via North Carolina Cursive Writing Bill – North Carolina Is Going Out Of Its Mind – Esquire.

Gideon v. Wainwright – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Today is the 50th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court case, Gideon v. Wainwright. This case established the right of everyone to counsel during a criminal trial, regardless of one’s ability to pay.

My Great Uncle Fred was Gideon’s lawyer for his retrial, during which Gideon was acquitted.

Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), is a landmark case in United States Supreme Court history. In the case, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that state courts are required under the Fourteenth Amendment to provide counsel in criminal cases for defendants who are unable to afford to pay their own attorneys, extending the identical requirement made on the federal government under the Sixth Amendment.

via Gideon v. Wainwright – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us

Out healthcare system is so very, very broken. I hate patronizing businesses who I know are fleecing me blind.

Stephanie was then told by a billing clerk that the estimated cost of Sean’s visit — just to be examined for six days so a treatment plan could be devised — would be $48,900, due in advance. Stephanie got her mother to write her a check. “You do anything you can in a situation like that,” she says. The Recchis flew to Houston, leaving Stephanie’s mother to care for their two teenage children.About a week later, Stephanie had to ask her mother for $35,000 more so Sean could begin the treatment the doctors had decided was urgent. His condition had worsened rapidly since he had arrived in Houston. He was “sweating and shaking with chills and pains,” Stephanie recalls. “He had a large mass in his chest that was … growing. He was panicked.”

via Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us | TIME.com.

Mosquito Photonic Fence

Here’s a novel new twist on the old “bug zapper” concept: a laser-shooting Death Star against mosquitoes. Of course Bill Gates had to be involved, right?

In 2007, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation asked Intellectual Ventures to create new technologies that will not only fight malaria but will eventually eliminate this scourge of humanity altogether. Already our team of entomologists, epidemiologists, physicists, and other scientists have come up with innovative approaches that attack the parasite that causes the disease from several angles. Some make it easier to diagnose the disease quickly and accurately. Others destroy the parasites directly. Still others target the mosquitoes that serve as hosts to the parasites and spread malaria from person to person

via Malaria » Intellectual Ventures Lab.

Marissa Mayer doesn’t get it

Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer recently nixed the company’s work-from-home policy in an effort to build camaraderie:

“Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home,” read the memo to employees. “We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.”

The goal of Mayer to cure what ails Yahoo: Reviving a moribund and enervated workforce that has struggled to innovate and excel over many years. One of the many problems has been the liberal use of work-from-home policies that have been woefully mismanaged to create a culture that is simply not energized.

Mayer is supposedly some kind of whiz kid, and I’d be more open-minded about this move if it weren’t for one thing: this is an asinine way to lead if I ever heard of it. There’s no shared sacrifice. Mayer doesn’t have to worry about balancing her work and home lives because she brings her home with her to work:

Many others at Yahoo’s Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ pointed to the nursery Mayer had built — for which she paid personally — next to her office as a perk others at Yahoo do not get.

“I wonder what would happen if my wife brought our kids and nanny to work and set em up in the cube next door?” joked a husband of another employee who will be losing her work-from-home privileges.

The story quoted an anonymous Twitter user agreeing with this tactic …

“Marissa is doing what good leaders do,” wrote one person on Twitter. “Making sure her Yahoo team is communicating & working TOGETHER.”

… but the likely reason this user was not named is because this person doesn’t have a fucking clue what leadership is.

Leadership is not a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do thing. If you ask your team to sacrifice and yet your Little Dumpling gets a playpen palace in your office your team will be stampeding for the exits in a New York second. If Queen Yahoo isn’t willing to set the example for her team then she’s not a good leader.

I don’t know what work-from-home policy is best. Each company and each situation is different. I do know that if you make a drastic change to your employee’s arrangements and continue feathering your own nest then soon you won’t have a team left to lead.

via Despite Yahoo Ban, Most Tech Companies Support Work-From-Home Policies – Kara Swisher – News – AllThingsD.

BREAKING: Huge Meteor Explodes Over Russia.

Meteor explodes over Russia


Yesterday, a huge meteor exploded 12 miles over the heads of the Russians citizens of Chelyabinsk.
Watching all the videos on Slate’s Bad Astronomy page, I was struck by how frightening it must’ve been to witness this event. It’s pretty sobering to see this rock hurtling towards you, knowing there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

It made me wonder how close this was to what the dinosaurs saw right before their world ended. I also wondered if this was a preview of how our world might end.

Apparently, at about 09:30 local time, a very big meteor burned up over Chelyabinsk, a city in Russia just east of the Ural mountains, and about 1500 kilometers east of Moscow. The fireball was incredibly bright, rivaling the Sun! There was a pretty big sonic boom from the fireball, which set off car alarms and shattered windows.

via BREAKING: Huge Meteor Explodes Over Russia..

Do We Really Want to Live Without the Post Office? – Esquire

This is a wonderful but sobering look at all our postal service does for us, and the potential cost if we lose it.

“This is the time collectively to think about the postal service,” Adra says from his office in Arlington, Virginia. He’s an assistant inspector general and heads the postal service’s internal think tank, the Risk Analysis Research Center. “This is a transformative moment. We’re like Kodak, Polaroid, IBM with mainframe, and if we don’t plan for this disruptive technology, if we ignore it, we’ll be in trouble.”

via Print – Do We Really Want to Live Without the Post Office? – Esquire.

The Baffling Economics Of The Island Of Sodor – Forbes

Having spent many nights reading Thomas the Tank Engine to the kids when they were young, I found this pretty amusing.

Being the father of a toddler, I spend a lot of time watching Thomas the Tank Engine. As a writer for a business magazine, my mind can’t help but be puzzled by how the economy of the Island of Sodor actually functions. It seems to me to be dreadfully inefficient, and for the life of me I can’t figure out how anyone on the Island turns a profit – especially the railways.

via The Baffling Economics Of The Island Of Sodor – Forbes.