mrclay.org

I can’t remember where, but I’m fairly certain I saw compelling evidence that nations with universal access to healthcare, contraceptives, and abortions have the lowest rates of abortions. Let’s assume this is true.
Also assume that the U.S. military, as well as foreign militaries aided by the U.S., engage in a perhaps small but non-zero number [...]

Flipping through the radio I heard “Fire” and thought, “could I get this without guitar?” Of course, the answer is yes. And I like it.

Years ago I had an idea for “reverse” glasses. All they would do is invert horizontally–or flop–the image your retinas receive as if you were viewing through a mirror. I suspect after a brief period of adjustment you’d be able to function fairly normally wearing them, but your common surroundings would appear oddly different, like [...]

During Jon Stewart’s interview with Al Gore, Stewart half-jokingly proposes one solution to the problem of oil interests slowing the move towards cleaner energies:
Stewart: Partner up with Exxon and say, “You own the oil and gas now; you can own the new thing.”
I have to admit, granting the oil companies monopolies on the replacement technologies [...]

The creators of StackOverflow should team up with the Dept. of Health & Human Services and launch a medical Q&A site based on the SO model.
StackOverflow was designed by a few programmers to scratch an itch within the community, and the model they came up with made it the most effective question/answer site I’ve ever [...]

From a comment on a Radley Balko post about Troy Davis:
…the state can’t be trusted to sort the innocent from the guilty with the 100% accuracy necessary for executions to be morally defensible, even if death is a theoretically just punishment…
From what I read everyday it’s abundantly clear that this is true. The criminal justice [...]

For a few moments, imagine the year is 2109 and the U.S. government “grudgingly tolerates” the recreational use of psychoactive drugs, but requires users to take an education course and earn a license to buy and use (even alcohol).

Most reasonable people can agree that Gitmo detainees not proven to be enemy combatants at all (e.g. persons pulled off the street on whom we’ve never had anything more than suspicion) should be freed. The tougher question is, what about those obviously working for the enemy, but who are acquitted of committing war crimes.
Mark Kleiman [...]

PDF articles are notorious usability disasters, with the worst being multi-column documents that require you to constantly scroll in opposite directions as you move through the columns. PDF readers should let us draw a simple path through the document (maybe zoomed out) to outline the flow of text through the article (better, it could try [...]

Mr. Obama and members of Congress,
Rather than supplying any current auto manufacturers with a bailout, which I think will only delay the inevitable, please consider investing (and encouraging private investment) in efforts to standardize the components of a new generation of automobiles. With free and open standards, such as those used to build the web [...]