"You want to know why the left has ideas and the right has discipline? Because people who like ideas and dislike authority tend to identify with the Democratic left, while people who feel threatened by new ideas and more comfortable in a disciplined and ordered world tend to identify with the Republican right."

"Also unlike traditional unions, the Freelancers Union does not negotiate salaries or organize strikes. It does, however, work with politicians to win better protections for free agents. A recent advocacy triumph for the Freelancers Union came on March 23, 2009, when New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that he would seek a new federal unemployment benefit for freelancers, who make up 15 percent of New York City’s workforce. The Freelancers Union designed the proposed Unemployment Protection Fund, which would require the federal or state governments to match $300 for every $1,000 a Freelancers Union member voluntarily pays into a designated fund. Members could draw upon these funds to pay for college tuition, housing, education, or other needs in case of unemployment."

"Reader John O pointed us to a very good post from the Economic Policy Institute which gives a thorough analysis of recent unemployment data and puts it in a broader historical context. Bottom line: it is not pretty. The fixation with looking for a turn in initial jobless claims as a sign of recovery seems to have diverted attention from how deep the unemployment hole is this time around."

"We learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are."

"Lesson learned: Don’t be so quick to dismiss the old in favor of the new just because the new seems like it should be better. There’s a lot of subtlety that can be communicated in a pen stroke that can’t be fit into a rigid digital rule."

"For me personally, if I had to predict, I'd guess that this escalation will ultimately get me out of the writing/blogging/activism game at some point in the future. Ultimately, enough gray hair, chest pain, and hurt feelings just gets tiresome – and dangerous to one's health. But my personal decisions are not really important to anyone other than me and my family. What's significant in the broader sense, I think, is the overall trend and what it means for our country.

I'll put it bluntly: We are becoming a nation of haters – a nation, really, of assholes, or at least dominated by assholes. And sure, maybe we've always been that way – but what's different is that it's become almost impossible to pretend otherwise. There's no more delusions, no more fantasies. Despising one another and ignoring the substance of issues has become the defining mark of Americanness in the 21st century – and that's a tragedy."

"I was a little frightened of this craft. What if I opened it up and found a big, black, slimy….errrghhhh!!! What if I got sick from eating something that had sat around for 2 weeks? "

"The discoveries continue to surprise for a team of UC students digging in Shawnee Lookout Park, with a major new mound being located and a rare kiln used to fire pottery excavated in recent weeks, along with even more evidence emerging to support the theory that the site could be the largest continuously occupied hilltop Native American site in the United States.

But perhaps most importantly from this year's work, evidence was also found to bolster the theory that Shawnee Lookout was the largest continuously occupied hilltop settlement established by any Native American group. The dating of recent evidence found argues for cultural continuity at the site, meaning the Hopewell who lived at Shawnee Lookout up to 2,000 years ago are showing direct links to the Shawnee people who were living on the site less than 300 years ago."

"Corridors make science-fiction believable, because they're so utilitarian by nature – really they're just a conduit to get from one (often overblown) set to another. So if any thought or love is put into one, if the production designer is smart enough to realise that corridors are the foundation on which larger sets are 'sold' to viewers, movie magic is close at hand."

"The following groups strengthen Open.Michigan through related efforts, resources, input, and ongoing discussion around the initiative."

"Where do we need to go from here? We need to break the link that says (wrongly) VCs, like mutual fund managers and hedge funds, should be paid on the basis of assets under management. Venture fund complexity and cost do not rise linearly with assets, so we need to stop pretending they do. There are many way to fix this, but the easiest would be to make GP budgets a negotiated item with limited partners rather than being tied to assets. As a side effect, it would make more palatable and economical smaller funds, like those running under $30m, that cannot be operated at all on a 2% of assets basis."