Links of the Week

Just realized I have not posted anything here in a while. To me nothing major has happened. Technically stuff has happened in politics with Donald Trump and Huckabee deciding not to run for President but that was a gimme anyway. That fool Newt Gingrich is running but that too is just a play for money as he has proven to be a flim-flam artist but not much else. He knows the publicity will drive book sales and his speaking tours prices up which is all that really matters to him (besides the ego stroking). Still here are a few things that grabbed my interest.

15 States Get Florida's $2 Billion
On one hand you have to give credit, Republican putting money where his mouth is. On the other hand the state is hurting for jobs, is hurting for income and just needs helps so the money isn't really his but the citizens of the state. Sadly logic never plays into GOP thinking as Governor Rick Scott cancelled a high speed rail project that would have given Florida $2.4 billion to build. The GOP's hatred of infrastructure projects (better to let things fall apart) knows no bounds. The empty gesture didn't "return" the money to the government but instead allowed 15 states to pick up the pieces and improve their own rail systems. For the GOP, if it doesn't benefit the rich, it shouldn't benefit anybody even though a rail system is a cheaper, safer, and all around better alternative to transportation for commuters compared to rush hour traffic. Just a reminder the primary goal of the GOP is "Make the rich richer, to hell with the rest."

Library of Congress' National Jukebox
"The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives." The Jukebox is streaming only with a huge collection of music, speeches, readings and more going back nearly the entire century.

Starcraft II: Game of Thrones Intro
Not sure how they did it, but a new video takes the excellent TV series Game of Thrones opening credits sequence and translates it to Starcraft II.


Man Travels 35 Years Into The Past
An interesting video that shows a man de-aging 35 years. It seems at least once a year he filmed himself and how now combined clips from those recordings in reverse order to show how he has changed over the last 35 years.


Microsoft Buys Skype for $8.5 Billion
It is times like this I wish I could invest in companies as Microsoft dropped a cool $8.5 billion for Skype. Apparently Wall Street thinks the company plans to integrate Skype into Bing, smartphones, the XBox 360 and anything else that might use video conferencing in some form or fashion.