Friday: Lions, Libertarians, no Limbaugh

Combining some obnoxious rich people, the Lucille and Mitt tumblr.

Sleepy Lions

Stealing the heart of a saint? That's a horror movie plot waiting to happen.

The Value-Added Teacher Model sucks. I need to read more Mathbabe, as she has lots of interesting things to say. Quants for the rest of us is good. (And it seems I need to check out Duck Duck Go.

Things to do to stop Google from collecting and using all your information. (I suspect us Android users are out of luck, everything on our phones belongs to Google.

Black Bloc tactics as cargo cult.

So is Libertarianism really just an attempt to preserve older forms of private power and not concerned with liberty at all?


Some advice for doing your own FOIA requests. (USA only.)

Better than Tribe

This is something I've wanted to ask about for awhile, and another conversation has reminded me about it.

I've never liked "tribe" as it gets used by people for their group of friends/community/etc. There's the issue of its use in Native American political structure of course. That's a big part of it. But there's also the fact that it has from the very beginning been linked to blood and exclusion, specifically.

I do like the idea of a word for these sorts of self-chosen communities of friends and intimates or at least like-minded individuals, but "tribe" always rubbed me the wrong way.

So, does anyone have other words they like for this sort of thing? Clique seems too exclusionary. I seem to remember having once done a search and come across Clade as an option, but now I can't find any backing other than the biological nomenclature, so perhaps I am thinking of another word. Nakama seems too intimate, for instance.

Bugs

Two stories about bugs.

1) Researches posit that honey bees have individual personalities. Or, more accurately, some are thrill-seekers (more properly "novelty-seekers", it seems) and some are not.

2) Fleeing the rising waters of a flood, thousands of wolf spiders have blanketed a farm in Wagga Wagga.