These teabaggers are going to be the ruin of the United States.

• Photo –
• Five Ideas: Always With Honor –
• CBGB the Comic Book: Exploiting the Corpse of a Punk Rock Mecca –
• The Self-Shortering Of Argie McBargle –
• U.S. Information Warfare Operation Takes Down Website Used to Plan Attacks on Americans Inside Iraq; The Website Was Set Up and Run by CIA and Saudi Intelligence –
• Federal Reserve Must Disclose Bank Bailout Records –
• Militant arm of the infoviz movement gets serious about PowerPoint –
• Why it’s so hard to fire a Phila. police officer –
• Comics past, future, and grim –
• Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded. –
• Mind Mapping with the Visual Understanding Environment –
• Building An Intranet For Dummies – A Step by Step Guide –
• The 10 Republican No’s on Health Care –
• Hunch’s Twitter Predictor Game Is Awesomely Accurate –

• Getting Ugly –
• Reverting To Type –
• Which States Suffer When Gas Prices Rise? –
• GOP Lawmakers Use Christian Hate Radio To Concoct Conspiracies, Build Opposition To Health Reform –
• Bad Beat –
• Spring, warfare, bacteria, everything –
• Do Read –
• 10 Ways Social Media Will Transform Events in 2010 –
• The Million Follower Fallacy: Audience Size Doesn't Prove Influence on Twitter –
• Conscience Claws –
• 5 Things You Need to Know About Location-Based Social Media –
• Pulling The Plug Redux –
• Google enhances the “Places of Interest” layer –
• Hacking the Car: Cyber Security Risks Hit the Road – One of the unintended consequences of "the internet of things".
• 5 Amazing Infographics For the Health Conscious –
• Hacking the Car: Cyber Security Risks Hit the Road –
• Saint Patrick’s day faux pas: Ordering a ‘Black and Tan’ –
• Tracking a century of American eating –
• Social Networking Usage Surges Globally [STATS] –
• Willingly Brainwashed –
• Digital divide closing with major mobile help –
• If You Tell Them On Facebook, They Will Come…Again and Again –
• Mind the Gap –
• Dr Teeth tattoo –
• Ranking Occupations by Ideology –
• Inside the Collapse –
• Report: America’s Middle Class Shouldering the Brunt of Health Insurance Crisis –
• 2009 Wage Taxes (Filing Jointly) –
• Mass appeal –
• Connecting the Schoolhouse to Your House –
• The “Next” Generation: What Chatroulette Can Teach The Social Media –
• Proof that social media DOES work –
• Twitter – less than 20% access through the web –
• LBJ Politics –
• Late Night: The Submerging of the White Race, Special L. Paul Bremer Edition –
• Whatever Happened to Web 2.0? –
• Lundry: Graphing the Stimulus –
• Raiding Eternity –
• Mark Dery: What do zombies Mean? –
• Mark Dery: What do zombies Mean? –
• The 20 Cheapest Cars To Insure [Car Insurance] –
• Google Alleges That Viacom ‘Secretly Uploaded Its Content to YouTube, Even While Publicly Complaining About Its Presence There’ –
• Insurance Losses from Natural Disasters –
• What Social Media Users Want [STATS] –
• CBO: HCR knocks $130 billion from deficit, extends Medicare solvency –
• Learning from Tufte: What NOT To Do in Information Design –
• Apple Patents Reveal Plans for Mobile Social Networking App –
• Pre-modern blogs –
• Pennsylvania's New Century –
• In Defense of Deficits –
• The Current State of Twitter [INFOGRAPHIC] –
• Comprehensive, eh? –
• Your reality is out of date –
• The Christianity Map –
• A History of Financial Instruments –
• Stagflation Versus Hyperinflation –
• Many Eyes: Tutorial –
• Microsoft SharePoint Designer Team Blog : SharePoint Conference – Building a SharePoint Designer Mashup (Part 1) –
• 6 Subtle Ways The News Media Disguises Bullshit As Fact | Cracked.com –
• Movie Makers and Professors versus Car Dealers and Oil Industry Executives –
• “What Caused the Financial Crisis? Still 22 Possibilities” –
• A Defense of the Unknown in Infographics –
• “Using Neuroscience to Understand the Bounds of Rationality” –
• Why Liberals (Suddenly) Love the Health Care Bill –
• Happy Meal is ageless: no decay in a year on a shelf –
• ‘Breathe Social’: The New Rules of Relationship Management –
• WP Blackberry: Version 1.1: Comment Notifications, Geotagging, Gestures, and more ! –
• Obama and the Reagan myth –
• Bill O’Reilly quotes false survey: 46% of Physicians May Leave Medical Profession: UPDATED –
• The Death of the Pageview –
• Generation I: Middle Children Of The Information Age –
• Culture Jamming –
• Insurer targeted HIV patients to drop coverage. –
• Social Media Statistics: TV, Multi-tasking, Online News and Your Brand’s Friends, Fans & Followers –
• America’s Eating Habits (1909-2009) –
• Catholic nuns endorse HCR in defiance of bishops’ mandate –
• Today in history: the flight data recorder –
• The 20 Most Expensive Cars To Insure [Car Insurance] –
• Report: Congressmen spending thousands of dollars a month to lease ordinary vehicles –
• The Legacy Of The Irish: Two Views –
• Does the Constitution Contain Article VI or Not? Views Differ. –
• Drupal: The New Gov 2.0 Site Builder? –
• Conceptual Foundations of the Balanced Scorecard –
• Projection of populations by level of educational attainment, age, and sex for 120 countries for 2005-2050 –
• The 10 Uncanniest Irish Mythological Creatures –
• Photo –
• Is It Luck of the Irish or Something More? –
• Philadelphia Local News –
• “Shrinking Detroit Back to Greatness” –
• How to Be a Good Leader in a Recession –
• Tea Bags And Coffee Grounds –
• What is to be done? –
• Hitchens: The Great Catholic Cover-Up –
• Mapping Christianity –
• Internet of Things Explained (Video) –
• What If You Threw A Tea Party, And No One Came? –
• Big Data Is Less About Size, And More About Freedom –
• Ray LaHood: “The End of Favoring Motorized Transportation” –
• Media, Race, & Web 2.0 –
• Where USA Foreign Aid Goes –
• US: Census (Pew 3/10-14) –
• Rove-ing –
• College students mostly begin research at Wikipedia –
• Sunshine Week: EPIC Publishes 2010 FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) Gallery –
• One Party Two Factions –
• Bank Competition Map –
• Smoking Grass –
• C-Span Puts Full Archive On The Web –
• The future of newspapers in an online world –
• News you can use –
• Former NHTSA Lawyer: Agency Was ‘Extremely Skeptical’ of Sudden Acceleration Complaints –
• Facebook and Twitter Making a Major Impact on Purchase Decisions [STATS] –
• Do You Mind If Mint Sells Data Based On Your Transactions? –
• Read the Bill Becoming the Norm –
• Brown v. Board? –
• 2009 Wage Taxes –
• Real Health Costs About the Same as Car Ownership –
• 8 Studies Demonstrating the Power of Simplicity –
• Outsourcing is Good For Us(?) –
• Feds Study Whether Toyota’s Problems Caused By Cosmic Rays [Beige Bites Back] –
• Soda Tax Failing In NY, Big Joke In Philadelphia –
• Video: How To Stop A Speeding Prius If You're F****** Stupid –
• The Complexity Machine –
• Out-crazying Nixon –
• Backup your shit! –
• A person…loses a reasonable expectation of privacy in emails…after the email is sent to and received by a third party. –
• Which child molesters would Jesus wait 30 years to suspend? –
• Father FOXy –
• Newspapers Applaud National Education Standards –
• Web Illiteracy: How Much Is Your Fault? –
• Reich: Health Care and the Political Lessons of History –
• Rippa! –
• Study: Hyundai customer loyalty upends Toyota, Honda, takes #1 –
• America, You Brought The Toyota Hoax On Yourself [Beige Bites Back] –
• Who wouldn’t blog for $80,000 a year? –
• Comcast SportsNet purchases sports blog The700level –
• Cinemetrics database of Average Shot Length –
• Four Infographical Morsels No. 5 –
• Birth order effects in relationships –
• Six Companies Pushing for Transparency in Healthcare Pricing –
• Larison is Shrill –
• The FedEx Universe –
• What is Motivating the Republican Party? The Strange Case of Health Care –
• Contemplating a Job Change? Think Long Term –
• New Full Text Report: The State of the News Media, 2010 Includes Some Excellent Reference Material –
• Beefscapes –
• Drunken Maps or Why the Netherlands is the World’s Designated Driver –
• The Myth of the Strong Center –
• White House Blueprint for revising the Elementary and Secondary Education Act –
• Tufte Kills Kittens –
• 10 Search Engines to Explore the Deep End of the Invisible Web –
• Top 100 Websites –
• The Texas textbook two-step –
• Cheating The Honest Men –
• More Stupidity Over Guns –
• Is Innovation Fair? Andrew Keen Says No –
• Response to Newsbusters Regarding the Wonders of Catholicism –
• Notes on Leadership: Be Like Steve Jobs, . . . And Bill Campbell, And Andy Grove –
• Calling all mental models –
• Profiles in Successful Law Enforcement –
• Why User Competency Matters in Social Design –
• Saving Ryan’s Privatization –
• Receipts? We don’ need to show you no steekin’ receipts… –
• If keyboard lag is “discontinuity in our selves,” what’s a JRun error? –
• Late Night: “Nonresponsibility,” Or, How to Set a Proper Papal Moral Example –
• Edward Tufte’s Introduction to Data Analysis –
• Twilight is the loneliest time of day –
• Universal Check-in App Confirmed: Brightkite’s Stealth Service –
• I have refrained from writing much about this because I'm so –
• Danah Boyd: How Technology Makes A Mess Of Privacy and Publicity –
• Nearing Retirement and Unemployed or Underemployed –
• Security Clowns –
• New Rule: Let’s Not Fire the Teachers When Students Don’t Learn –
• Socialize Your Cause – Social Media for Non-profits, Charities, & Causes –
• 15 Awesome interactive maps from the New York Times :: 10,000 Words –
• Report: No AWD for Subaru version of FT-86 “Toyobaru” (w/poll) –
• SEIU to Congressman: Vote Yes On The Senate Bill Or We’ll Find A Primary Challenger –
• Repo [Leh]men –
• Consumer Reports Quantifies Waste Due To Stupid Packaging –
• Post of the Week: March 6-12, 2010 –
• Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac? –
• IRS Releases 2009 Data Book –
• Get Your Irish Up –
• Schumpeter–Standing for Convictions in a Democracy –
• Leaked UK record industry memo sets out plans for breaking UK copyright –
• MySpace’s Mid Level Management Structure Is Crumbling –
• Who would be cast in a Coen Brothers’ Star Wars? –
• America’s Goats Need Your Help –
• Report: Over 2000 Bank Enforcement Actions in 2009 –
• Stuff White People Like Stealing –
• [from fritz] Five insights into the behaviors of social media users –
• Glenn Beck Responds to Cardinal George and Archbishop Chaput –
• FCC Launches Broadband Consumer Tools –
• While Facebook & Twitter Sit on Sidelines, MySpace Jumps Into Bulk User Data Sales – MySpace has taken a bold step and put a large quantity of bulk user data up for sale on startup data marketplace InfoChimps. Data offered includes user playlists, mood updates, mobile updates, photos, vents, reviews, blog posts, names and zipcodes. Friend lists are not included. Remember, Facebook and Twitter may be the name of the game these days in tech circles, but MySpace still sees 1 billion user status updates posted every month. Those updates will now be available for bulk analysis.
• Extinction’s Tipping Points § SEEDMAGAZINE.COM – Tipping points, as popularized by Malcolm Gladwell’s eponymous bestseller from 2000, are critical thresholds within a system where a small change or shift can snowball into a much larger one, rippling nonlinearly through the entire system and transforming it from one stable state into another. Examples include the boiling point of water, the spread of an idea (or a virus) within a population, and the slight shift in balance that can send someone from standing to sprawling across the floor. This week, several potential tipping points have made headlines. But unlike the relative triviality of brewing tea, catching a cold, or falling on one’s face, these critical thresholds concern the past and future of every living thing on Earth.
• Gay marriage: the database engineering perspective @ Things Of Interest – To be blunt, the systems aren't set up to handle it. The paper forms have a space for the husband's name and a space for the wife's name. Married people carefully enter their details in block capitals and post the forms off to depressed paper-pushers who then type that information into software front-ends whose forms are laid out and named in precisely the same fashion. And then they hit "submit" and the information is filed away electronically in databases which simply keel over or belch integrity errors when presented with something so profound as a man and another man who love each other enough to want to file joint tax returns.<br />
  <br />
  Speaking as a computery-type person, altering the paper forms is not my department. It's probably expensive and there are probably millions of existing incorrect forms which would need returning or recycling or burning instead of using. Or maybe it's simple. I don't know. The real question from my perspective is how you store a marriage in a computer.
• Feb. 25: Carnegie Mellon Professor Calculates Real Risk of Driving a Recalled Toyota – Carnegie Mellon University – Consumers also may want to reconsider parking their recalled Toyotas until repairs have been made. "Replacing driving by walking really increases the risk of dying," Fischbeck said. "Walking a mile is 19 times or 1,900 percent more dangerous than driving a mile in a recalled Toyota. Driving while using a cell phone would increase risk much more than the chance of having a stuck accelerator."
• Massa v. Beck Celebrity Crazy Match –
• 10 Perfect "Snowicane" Cars [Snow Cars] –
• HOW TO: Prepare for Disasters Using Social Media –
• The formula for Hollywood movies –
• The Damn Kids Today Are Ruining Everything With Their Sex Slang –
• Very large numbers –
• Lawrence Lessig’s Wireside Chat on Fair Use, Politics, and Online Video –
• The Rise of Netbooks –
• How blast-proof suits work –
• Visualization of an Urban Cyberspace –
• Book: A Genius for Deception –
• How blast-proof suits work –
• Bank branches in high schools a good financial lesson –
• How Your Book Covers Get Designed (A: Quickly!) –
• Real Simple Selects Philadelphia as One of 21 Top Time-Saving Cities –

As we should all know by now, (hundreds?) of thousands of individuals may have had their personal information compromised via a theft from ChoicePoint. CP initially thought they got lucky, and disclosed the California thefts (as they are required by Californian law), however, it looks like the thefts are of a much greater scale.

So what? I don’t do business with Choicepoint. Have you flown anywhere since 9/11? Been arrested? Done anything that might arouse the suspicions of the Federal Government? Applied for a job? Cashed a personal check at a retailer? You may not realize it, but you HAVE done business with Checkpoint.

Their clients include law enforcement, Homeland Security, fraud prevention, credentialing information, and pre-employment screening. ChoicePoint is doing a lot of the data cruching that develops “actionable intelligence” for the FBI and other law enforcement agencies as well as administrating the “No-Fly List”. Never mind the interfaces with public life? Volunteered to work with the Boy Scouts? That’s the tip of the iceberg…there’s plenty more that they’ll be able to do. In this day and age of fear and loathing, the government has spent millions on greating dossiers on each and every one of us. There’s money to be made…my personal profile, if every single scrap of info that could be out there on me was calculated (interactive flash calculator here), it would be worth $138.75.

Now, I meant to cover the Privacy Act next week when I did a braindump on the Freedom of Information Act. But it seems like current events have conspired to push the timetable up some.

So who is Choicepoint?

CP Gov’t Subsidiary
http://www.dbtonline.com/

Training Material
http://www.cpvirtualcampus.com/documents.htm

Subscriber Agreement
http://www.choicepointgov.com/contracts.htm

Product Line
http://www.choicepointgov.com/product.htm

As far as the Privacy Act is concerned, you have the right to obtain any information a federal branch of government holds about you, with similar exceptions based on ongoing criminal proceedings and national security. The only catch is that you need to know who is likely to be holding such data, and it must be indexed by some identifier – like your Social Security number. To make life easier, the Government Printing Office (GPO) has a searchable database to see who is the federal owner of your data.

So what should you do if you think that your personal information might have been compromised? Well, for starters, In December 2003, President Bush signed the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, which allows consumers to put a free, 90-day fraud alert on their credit reports. The alert forces banks, car dealers and other lenders to apply additional scrutiny whenever anyone tries to apply for credit in that person’s name.

Until the legislature enacts some laws to protect consumers, the safeguarding of you identity is in your hands.

Currently, the Fair Credit Reporting Act guarantees you a free copy of your credit report if you have suffered some adverse action, such as a declination of credit or not getting a job offer after an interview. In addition, free credit reports are gradually being rolled out across the United States, with the last region due to start in September, 2005.

It’s also a good idea to think about requesting your information from the other sources, since that info is being aggregated and used by everyone you could possible imagine, from government to private industry.

• The Camaro SS Police Car Will Make You Beg To Be Arrested [Exclusive] –
• Age, Education, and Functional Decline –
• Oh Noes! We’ve Lost Glenn Beck –
• How to Plan Your Garden –
• <i>Automobile</i> takes a look at the early history of ’sudden acceleration’ –
• Anachronistic Memes: The Best of the Bayeux Tapestry –
• Guide to Microsoft Police Forensic Services –
• The GOP’s War on Teddy Roosevelt –
• The Atlantic: The Fall of the Internet and the Rise of the ‘Splinternet’. –
• Who Really Paid Bart Stupak’s Rent? –
• Rich County, Blue County –
• Report: GM scouring the globe for next Corvette design, first time looking beyond U.S. –
• How an LED Works –
• The Mechanics of ABC News’ Unintended Toyota Acceleration Hoax [Beige Bites Back] –
• Toyota Workers Say Bosses Have Ignored Safety Concerns For Years –
• Did Malcolm Gladwell miss the real story on teaching? –
• Duncan Announces Race to the Top Finalists –
• NYC Mayor Bloomberg: Soda Tax Is An Easy Fix For Flagging Economy –
• Iraq Update: Everyday Life –
• Climate Change Keeps Fighting –
• Palin Admits To Travelling To Canada For Health Care –
• Wall Street Bonuses –
• Mobile Pie Chart Hell –
• Auto Sales Still Low –
• Google Opens Public Data Explorer Lab –
• Obama Appoints Infographics Guru Tufte to Explain Stimulus Funds –
• It's National Consumer Protection Week! –
• Unemployment Rate and Level of Education –
• Hyundai i-flow –
• The Graying of America –

• Report: ABC News faked at least one part of runaway Toyota report –
• Lawrence Lessig scares a room of liberals –
• Lawrence Lessig scares a room of liberals –
• De-Anonymizing Social Network Users –
• Rahm Touched Me Here –
• Net a “Fundamental Right,” Four Out of Five Say –
• The Missing Piece of the OpenData / OpenGov Puzzle: Education –
• The federal government is like Schlitz after Schlitz stopped being a good beer –
• The Rise Of Transactional Advertising –
• Toyota Simulator –
• Chris Matthews and His Panel Leave Out the Media’s Role in Selling the Iraq Invasion While Discussing Rove’s Book –
• 5 Ways to Use Twitter to Avoid a Backchannel Disaster –
• Cash vs. Accrual and Why Accounting Matters for Taxes –
• Five Best VPN Tools [Hive Five] –
• Making Jonah Goldberg Look Like a Serious Scholar… –
• The CMO’s Guide to the Social Landscape –
• Another Oscar Infographic –
• Finally, A Push-Up Panty for the Penis (NSFW) –
• Graphs: Duration of Unemployment –
• Indiana County Won't Prosecute Stores With Redboxes –
• Clarence Thomas’ Revenge –
• First Contact –
• MashedIn – Show how you are connected –
• 'Good' Beats 'Innovative' Nearly Every Time – BusinessWeek –
• PolicyTool for Social Media –
• The Forty-Fifth Parallel –
• Building Great Teachers –
• Tracking the Knowledge Economy –
• The Streets of San Francisco in 1905/06 –
• The Future Of Mobile Is A Mindshare War – The Winners Have Already Been Chosen –

If we weren’t so dumb (or scared, anxious, or greedy), you’d think we’d have recognized the pattern by now.

Bill the Butcher was not the elite, but he did fancy himself an elitist.  He wanted to be powerful like those in Tammany Hall, even though he was just a useful tool.  Kind of like the teabaggers, who will still get shanked at the end of the movie.

• Christopher Thornberg on Double Dip Recession –
• Less than 4/10 Americans rely purely on offline media –
• Reading: WSJ Guide to Information Graphics –
• Who Will Advocate For Toyota Owners In Japan? –
• Slick Play –
• Director of Research at Google and AI genius –
• Full-content RSS feeds harm page views, but not viewership –
• Everything you thought you knew about the Bush administration is wrong –
• Budget News from Kansas is Bad News for DC and Wall Street –
• Countdown: Conservatives Outraged With Liz Cheney’s Fear Mongering –
• Have You No Sense of Decency? –
• 100 Best Corporate Citizens 2010 –
• John Adams Meets Joe McCarthy –
• Entelligence: Will Android fragmentation destroy the platform? –
• Pentagon gunman another right-wing terrorist –
• Goodnight Forest Moon –
• Thesis: The swear words in a movie –
• States May Ban Credit Checks For Job Applicants –
• Create Easy Income By Offering Affordable Web Site Hosting Services –
• Respect –
• The Most Boring Lone Wolf Terrorist EVAR –
• Visualizing iBiblio.org traffic –
• A Map of the Drone Strikes in Pakistan –
• The Pentagon Shooter’s Extreme Right-Libertarian Beliefs –
• Know How Much Caffeine Is in the Food and Drinks You Love [Health] –
• SuperTweet: Moving Beyond 140 Characters –
• Why We Need to Measure Poverty Differently –
• Altimeter Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM, The New Rules of Relationship Management –
• Geek Army Knife –
• The Promise and Peril of Big Data –