Around the Blogroll and Elsewhere

It's a snowy day here in New Jersey, and I would like nothing better than to be able to work from home today. This is not so much about concerns about getting to work, or even about getting back to the town in which I live. It's about the hill up to my house, where neighborhood kids decide to go sledding when it snows. The problem is that the hill is the street, and if you have to worry about kids and dogs darting into the street or sledding, there's no way you can get enough momentum to get up the hill. And don't think I'm being overly dramatic, because at the foot of this hill is a cross-street. Traffic going down my street has the right of way, but those traversing the cross-street rarely, if ever, obey the stop sign. Mr. Brilliant reports that during the December storms, kids were sledding DOWN THE HILL, IN THE STREET, TOWARDS THIS CROSS STREET. This in a world where kids have to wear body armor before getting on a bicycle. Sometimes I think parents really are out to get their kids killed.

I'm waiting for the OK or nay on the work at home thing, and there are all kinds of fresh horrors being covered around the Intartoobz today.

Who's "plagiarizing" now? Check this out over at HuffPo. It looks like Hillary is now "plagiarizing" John Edwards. But did she get permission? It's too bad, too, that this whole "plagiarism" issue is even there, because the snark factor associated with her use of the "We'll be fine" statement detracts from what a lovely moment this was for her:

Perhaps if Hillary did more of her own talking and used her own instincts instead of blowing $33 million on incompetent hacks who insist on reinforcing everyone's worst views of her, more of us would be positively inclined to support her.

Cernig on former military prosecutor Air Force Col. Morris Davis deciding to be a defense witness for Salim Ahmed Hamdan and other atrocities being committed by the Bush Administration as part of their so-called War on Terror (or as Borat would say, "War of Terror").

Jurassicpork on how merely voting isn't enough.

The Political Cat on the guy working for Grover Norquist who's in the U.S. illegally. But he's a white guy from Australia, so the IOKIYAR Rule applies.

Darkblack tells us (h/t Ornery Bastard) what the Revolution WON'T be.

TRex makes the case that the longer Hillary Clinton stays in and the uglier the tactics to which she's resorting, not only do her chances for the nomination and eventual victory fade ever-faster, but her ability to be an effective Senator will be damaged as well.

Bill Heffner makes the case that the issue of Saint John and the Lobbyist IS important -- because it's part of an overall career-long pattern by McCain of exerting influence in exchange for cash donations. And if you're going to paint yourself as some sort of "straight-shooter", we're going to nail you on your hypocrisy. Andy Ostroy concurs. Sauce for the goose, baby.

Kevin Hayden on yesterday's New York Times article revealing that teenaged girls outnumber their male counterparts in the creation of web content. Kevin (rather snottily, in my opinion), makes the point that "Content creation is a whole different animal than the nuts and bolts of code crunching at the heart of the computer industry", which is sort of like saying that working on cars is too dirty and complicated for girls to do, but then also makes the point that if content creation is different, women shouldn't be as underrepresented in the design, writing, and related fields as they are either. The larger point, if we extrapolate outside the teen age group, is that many companies still believe that code jockeying and content creation are part of the same skill set, and that's why you see jobs posted that want advanced Photoshop skills AND 2-3 years of C#, ASP.Net, and Java programming (and some even throw in network administration in the bargain, but those are jobs clearly designed to NOT find qualified American workers). The larger question, of course, is that the whole issue of Web code vs. content is yet another example of the stuff men do better being ranked higher than that at which women excel, because it's men who do the relative ranking of skills. If you've ever tried to navigate a web site put together by someone more concerned with code than content, you know how undervalued a flair for user interface is.

DistributorcapNY takes a cruise and confirms why I will never in a million years be able to talk Mr. Brilliant into taking one unless somehow by some miracle Air America Radio puts the Morning Sedition team back together, and ALL of those guys, plus Rachel Maddow and Sam Seder, does one that leaves from the New York Area, goes to interesting places in the Caribbean, and still manages to do it in only 8 days. The music in that pool video is a deal-killer for me.

Do you live in New Jersey? Do you trust the voting apparatus here just because we haven't been in the news? Well, Brad Friedman says, "Guess again."

Stay tuned for more must-reads!