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Today I actually get to vote in the Democratic primary. I’ll be voting for Barack Obama.

Let me explain briefly why I’m for Barack. Aside from the fact that his ideas for what we need to do as a country are roughly compatible with my own, it is his philosophy of how to govern [...]

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Tyler Cowen links to a comment on the FT Economists’ Forum by author Paul Collier on rising food prices and the political problems that prevent us from addressing them effectively. Collier’s argument is that we’re failing largely due to resistance to industrial agriculture and genetically modified crops.

First, here’s why food is getting more expensive:

[...]

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Since it was initially disclosed that the White House had lost millions of emails that were required by law to be archived, I’ve been wondering whether they were lost due to technical ineptitude or “lost” for political expedience. Ars Technica published an article today looking into that question.

It looks like incompetence may have played a [...]

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Tyler Cowen in a post entitled Can we learn anything from the Democratic spat?:

Nonetheless constructivist attempts to remake America will, by political debate, be reshaped along traditional fault lines. That means your good idea — be it libertarian, progressive, or whatever — had better be pretty robust to mangling by the stupid, [...]

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This morning my wife and I attended the Democratic county convention. The main purposes of the convention are to nominate delegates to the district and state conventions, and to adopt a platform to be submitted for inclusion in the state party platform. It’s also a place for candidates and activists to show up and meet [...]

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Michael Coté: Getting “Love” (and Attention) for Your Whizbang 2.0 Application - Fast, Frequent Features. Thoughtful musings on development models, community-related features, and social marketing. O’Reilly Radar: Publishers Beware: Amazon has you in their sights. I think you have to take what you see in 10K filings with a grain of salt. Financial Times: Google faces loss [...]

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Stephen O’Grady: Clouds Rolling In: The Google App Engine Q&A. Great rundown. Bruce Schneier: The Feeling and Reality of Security. Understanding the differences and how to manage them is the key to successful security policy. FP Passport: The Olympic torch’s mysterious companions. The torch escorts are members of a paramilitary group sponsored by the Chinese government. Their [...]

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gourmet.com: Betting the Farm. Great article on agriculture policy and how one family farm in South Dakota is bucking the trend of cashing in on ethanol money and government subsidies. Rogers Cadenhead: Washington Post Wins Another Phony Pulitzer. I loved the Washington Post article about the violinist planted in the DC subway, but Rogers argues that [...]

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Scott Horton: Worst. President. Ever. What interests me most about the list is that every President other than Bush (43) who could be described as the worst ever was a single termer. Bush’s main competition, Millard Fillmore, was not elected in the first place (he took over for Zachary Taylor, who died after 16 months [...]

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The Quick and the Ed. How class (or income bracket) affects college admissions. Usually it’s better to be a rich idiot than smart and poor. O’Reilly Radar: Review Board is good software. Software for managing code reviews. David Pogue: Can Blogger-Bashers Predict the Success of a Product? Unlikely. I find the gadget blogs to be nearly useless. FP [...]

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