Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker, reporting for The New York Times:

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is lifting the military’s official ban on women in combat, which will open up hundreds of thousands of additional front-line jobs to them, senior defense officials said Wednesday.

The military will now be fully inclusive - a move that reflects an unstoppable social progress in America. A rising voice in this country demands that no longer should one’s skin tone, or love interest, or lack of a penis serve as justification for limited freedoms. There is still time for citizens and politicians to jump onboard, or forever risk being tied to the wrong side of history.

Devour.com:

With his dry humor and photographic evidence, writer and director S.G. Collins proves that faking the 1969 moon landing was technologically impossible.

Eh … Collins is probably a liberal, pro-government, anti-family, muslim terrorist - or whatever it is that we call people nowadays who rely on facts.

Today marked a joint celebration in the Unites States - Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and The 57th Presidential Inauguration. As President Barack Obama delivered his inaugural address, the two were tied together in my mind.

Martin Luther King, Jr. once said:

Cowardice asks the question - is it safe? Expediency asks the question - is it politic? Vanity asks the question - is it popular? But conscience asks the question - is it right?

And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right.

Our President stated eloquently to the entire world that now is once again a time for such a position:

Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law — for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.

Why? Because it is right.

Emil Protalinski, The Next Web, on a bizarre story about a man who was caught outsourcing his job to a contractor in China so that he could spend more time on Reddit and Facebook:

The story goes a little something like this. A developer at a US-based critical infrastructure company, referred to as “Bob,” was caught last year outsourcing his work to China, paying someone else less than one fifth of his six-figure salary to do his job. As a result, Bob had a lot of time on his hands

On an unrelated note, does anyone have contacts looking for work in China?

I like this reason from Swizec Teller better than his other two regarding the propensity of some to work at night:

On the other hand you have something [Paul Graham] calls the maker’s schedule – a schedule for those of us who produce stuff. Working on large abstract systems involves fitting the whole thing into your mind – somebody once likened this to constructing a house out of expensive crystal glassand as soon as someone distracts you, it all comes barreling down and shatters into a thousand pieces.

This is why programmers are so annoyed when you distract them.

This aptly describes my preferred workflow. When finishing my dissertation last fall, my wife was nice enough to let me change my schedule. I would go into the office around 2-3 p.m. and stay until 4-4:30 a.m. I didn’t work the entire time - just dabbled here and there. But between 11 p.m. and 3:30 a.m, time disappeared and I was immensely productive. That time frame has always been my bread and butter, likely for reasons described by Teller.

Last week, First We Feast released its list of the 20 most influential beers of all time:

As the beer market matures, it’s important to have a sense of context—to understand how we got here, and appreciate the trailblazers that took brewing to new heights (or dragged it so low that others were inspired to fight back). Of course, determining a beer’s influence is a tricky and subjective matter. Yet it is one that brings up a lot of questions worth asking: Which beers set the standard within their respective style? Which IPAs ushered in the era of the American hop bomb? What is the gateway beer that has converted the most newbies into beer nerds?

Clearly perturbed by this list, Martyn Cornell offered a critique and released his own list:

You’ll have some idea of the validity of this list when I tell you that half the beers on it are brewed in the US. I don’t want to diss the panel that chose these beers, but I only recognise one name on it, apart from him there are none of the commentators I turn to for insight into the North American brewing scene, let alone anyone from outside the US, and there doesn’t appear to be a single brewing historian among any of them. Which is presumably why they came up with such a totally crap list, with far, far more misses than hits.

I’ve got to go with Cornell’s list.

Dave Zirin, writing for The Nation:

It says so much that Te’o’s bizarre soap opera has moved Swarbrick to openly weeping but he hasn’t spared one tear, let alone held one press conference, for Lizzy Seeberg, the young woman who took her own life after coming forward with allegations that a member of the team sexually assaulted her. Swarbrick’s press conference displayed that the problem at Notre Dame is not just football players without a compass; it’s the adults without a conscience. Their credo isn’t any kind of desire for truth or justice. Instead it seems to be little more than a constant effort to protect the Fighting Irish brand, no matter who gets hurt.

If you aren’t familiar with the Lizzy Seeberg case, Zirin wrote about it earlier this month.

The internet had its fun - me included - with the bizarre story of Manti Te’o’s fake girlfriend. After reading Zirin’s article and obtaining much needed perspective, I feel somewhat ashamed that I wasted any time at all with the Te’o story. Sure it’s a perplexing and winding tale, but I should stop hoping for answers to be given by men who shed fake tears for fake victims. Instead, we should all demand answers from such men and ask why real tears were never shed for real victims.

Timothy Burke and Jack Dickey with an awesome bit of investigative reporting for Deadspin about the inspiring story of Manti Te’o’s personal tragedies - a story that now appears to be an elaborate hoax:

But that’s where the definite ends. From here, the rest of Te’o’s public story begins to grade into fantasy, in the tradition of so much of Notre Dame’s mythmaking and with the help of a compliant press.

Assembling a timeline of the Kekua-Te’o relationship is difficult. As Te’o’s celebrity swelled, so did the pile of inspirational stories about his triumph over loss. Each ensuing story seemed to add yet another wrinkle to the narrative, and details ran athwart one another. Here is the general shape of things, based on occasionally contradictory media accounts:

Te’o has since released a statement in which he claims to be the victim of the hoax. But as Burke and Dickey outline, Te’o previously claimed to meet the girlfriend in question and his father claimed they routinely spent time in Hawaii. In addition, Te’o once told a reporter that her family didn’t wish to be contacted when asked it was okay to reach out for comment.

Don’t over think this. The evidence is pretty damning thanks to the work by Burke and Dickey - damning to both Te’o and to media outlets like EPSN. If it looks like a fake duck …

note: the title was shamelessly stolen from the comments section in the Deadspin article.

John W. Gonzalez, reporting for the San Antonio Express News:

Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff is an unabashed book lover with 1,000 first editions in his private collection, but even he sees the writing on the wall.

Paper books have lost their allure, and future generations may have little use for them, Wolff contends.

So when he embarked on a mission to create a countywide library system, he decided it should be bookless from the start.

Today, after months of planning, Wolff and other county leaders will announce plans to launch the nation’s first bookless public library system, BiblioTech, with a prototype location on the South Side opening in the fall.

Many libraries have already started digital lending. This seems like the next step forward.

Dr. Chuck Doswell provides an extensive list of common myths and folklore surrounding tornadoes:

This is in response to questions I’m asked frequently, so I’m providing a summary here.  As usual, this is purely my own opinion and represents nothing that has been formally reviewed/vetted by anyone.

Dr. Doswell delivers many important facts, written in his famous straight-forward, no-nonsense wit. It’s worth the read.

(via Aaron Botnick)