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This weekend we had a significant weather event as a tornado blew through and caused a lot of damage. In a lot of areas, tornadoes caused power outages and a number of traffic lights were out, even after power was restored in some cases. I was surprised to see that many, many drivers did not treat intersections with disabled traffic signals as four way stops. I don’t know whether people don’t know that’s the law, or they just don’t care, but I repeatedly saw people blowing through intersections without even slowing down. ...

Tyler Cowen positions himself as pro-choice when it comes to health insurance. Here’s his basic proposal: When people turn a certain age, allow them to trade in the current benefits package for a minimalistic package (set broken limbs and offer lots of potent painkillers), plus some of the rest in cash, doled out over the years if need be. For some people, medical tourism will fill the gap. But if a person wishes, he or she can keep the extant benefit structure and forgo the cash altogether. No one is forced to take this deal. ...

Andre Torrez takes issue with the excessive carping about products we see on Twitter and in other outlets: I think making the right choices when you face them is the best way to say how things should be done. Having empathy for people doing what you are doing is as important as having empathy for your own users. Path dependence is as operative in software development as it is anywhere else. Most developers aren’t doing things that seem stupid or wrong because they themselves are stupid, but rather because decisions previously made reduce the options that are available to them. ...

Marco Arment’s theory on why Facebook “open sourced” their data center design via the Open Compute Project makes a lot of sense to me: My best guess is that this is primarily for recruiting engineering talent. There’s no shortage of engineers, but there’s always a shortage of great ones, especially in Silicon Valley. Google has been a talent vacuum for a long time since it’s so appealing for most engineers to work there. ...

Guardian.co.uk Switching from Java to Scala – Interview with techies from the Guardian. Here’s a counterpoint. The Health Care Difference – Matthew Yglesias explains concisely why technological change is unlikely to lower health care costs over time. Critics’ review unexpectedly supports scientific consensus on global warming – Being a real scientist is about going where the facts take you. GOOD Asks the Experts: Is The “Paleolithic Diet” Really Better? – Humorous interview with experts on prehistoric man. I, for one, am sick of hearing about the Paleo Diet. Brian Aker explains Memcached – Short and useful. Slow Firefox? Mozilla Says Add-Ons Are to Blame – Firebug is a killer. Summer Express: 101 Simple Meals Ready in 10 Minutes or Less – A ton of good, adaptable ideas for dinner. I am a 91-year-old bodybuilder – Inspirational.

It’s important to remember that the reason patents and copyright are included in the Constitution is to “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.” Keep that in mind when you read the following two blog posts. One, from Alex Tabarrok, looks at why DVDs of “WKRP in Cincinnati” can’t be released with the original music. The other, by Matthew Yglesias, looks at why Google would bid $900 million for Nortel’s patent portfolio. ...

A few links that caught my eye: Securing Arizona – If Arizona is a microcosm of America, we’re in big, big trouble. The state has huge financial problems brought on by the real estate bubble and recession, and the right wing government is looking for solutions in all the wrong places. Music industry will force licenses on Amazon Cloud Player—or else – Jacqui Cheng explains why record companies aren’t going to accept Amazon’s new Cloud Player without a fight. App Store Shenanigans – Chris Dixon looks at a few ways iOS App Store vendors game the review process and trick people into downloading their applications. Even with Apple’s restrictions on what gets published on the App Store, it’s amazing how much total crap makes it in. Why Paying Bribes Should Be Legal – Kaushik Basu argues that bribes can be prevented if you legalize paying bribes. Then you can enlist people who are being solicited for bribes into the enforcement process. This reminds me of an old Bruce Schneier piece, Aligning Interest with Capability. Number of the Week: PCs Make Americans $500 Billion Richer – Economists try to estimate the value delivered by personal computers. Shooting an Elephant: Why GoDaddy’s CEO Was Wrong – You may have seen this on Twitter. Basically, GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons wanted to shoot an elephant and found a loophole that would enable to do so. He made a video of his hunting trip I because he was so proud of himself. TMI: Fear, Fukushima and Facts – Anil Dash with the one post you have to read about the risks of human exposure to radiation.

Like many people who spend too much time online, read fewer books than I’d like. It’s not that I don’t read as many words as I once did. I read blog posts in Google Reader, updates on Twitter, message board posts in many places, email, and long articles in Instapaper. And my temptation is often to play a computer game, watch a TV show, or catch up on various online reading when I have leisure time. While I enjoy all that stuff, it’s just not the same as diving into an interesting nonfiction book or a gripping novel. ...

First, Blaine Cook says that ragged right is an abomination. Now Tim Bray jumps on board. Have I been conditioned by reading things on screen for so many years to prefer the old ragged right treatment? Will all of us soon be updating our blogs to hyphenate and justify our text? If I were going to go that route, I’d probably have to switch back to a serif font. I think that sans serif and right justified just look wrong together. ...

When Google announced their new +1 feature, which enables end users to recommend things, I was mainly struck by the incredible geekiness of it. Everybody understands “Like,” whereas +1 was taken from the Apache open source community and its history probably isn’t known to even 5% of Google’s users. Kellan at Laughing Meme digs into the history and finds what is, perhaps, the first mention of +1 style voting. I love it. ...