There is also some noise that a new protection agency could stifle innovation. But is an over-the-limit fee really an innovation, or just a cheap trick designed to fool customers into believing a product costs one price when the majority of customers actually pay far more?

via Marketplace From American Public Media.

But Rand, who preached the notion of absolute personal freedom and individualism, was a study in contradictions.Among her acolytes, she did not tolerate dissent.”What she would tell you, basically, is that she was right and you were not thinking properly if you did not agree with her,” Heller says.Rand’s longtime lover and student Nathaniel Branden circulated a list of rules for her followers to absorb. One read: “Ayn Rand, by virtue of her philosophical genius, is the supreme arbiter in any issue pertaining to what is rational or moral.”

via NPR.

A large number of web services are geographically restricted, such as Hulu, Pandora and Spotify. The reasons are usually to do with content licensing restrictions, or because US visitors or visitors from other advanced economies are of a higher value from a monetization perspective. A web application can only guess at the location of a visitor based on an IP address and other information, such as browser language and regional settings.

via On The Internet, Nobody Knows You’re Not In The USA – washingtonpost.com.

This is Day to Day from NPR News. I’m Madeleine Brand. A new study finds that popping a multivitamin pill everyday will not prevent cancer or heart disease. NPR’s Allison Aubrey joins me now to explain the study. And Allison, this was a long-term research project involving lots and lots of people. What did the scientists do?

For 50 or 60 years, we have let ourselves believe that as long as we have money we will have food. That is a mistake. If we continue our offenses against the land and the labor by which we are fed, the food supply will decline, and we will have a problem far more complex than the failure of our paper economy. The government will bring forth no food by providing hundreds of billons of dollars to the agribusiness corporations.

via NYTimes.com.

public class CircularIterator implements Iterator {

via Javalobby.

An Aug. 14 announcement that most of their protest permits had been denied brought television cameras to groups who’d previously attracted little attention. By Aug. 18, these groups — from Code Pink to Iraq Veterans Against the War — announced plans to ask Pittsburgh City Council for a resolution supporting their right to free speech “in a place where we will be seen and heard,” according to a letter delivered to council. The groups asked for a second resolution that “holds law enforcement accountable to a use of force policy to ensure that demonstrators are not abused.”

They also successfully petitioned council to hold a public hearing on free-speech rights during G-20. That hearing has not yet been scheduled, but activists may not wait to be heard.

via Pittsburgh City Paper.

You don’t have to know Jim Finkle or anyone else at the State Department to recognize their pain. Millions of workers around the world are in the same straits: They’ve heard about the joys of Firefox, the wonders of Google Docs, or any number of other great programs or Web sites that might improve how they work. Indeed, they use these apps at home all the time, and they love them. But at work they’re stymied by the IT department, that class of interoffice Brahmins that decides, ridiculously and capriciously, how people should work.

via Slate

The most famous and farreaching labor conflict in a period of severe economic depression and social unrest, the Pullman Strike began May 11, 1894, with a walkout by Pullman Palace Car Company factory workers after negotiations over declining wages failed. These workers appealed for support to the American Railway Union (ARU), which argued unsuccessfully for arbitration. On June 20, the ARU gave notice that beginning June 26 its membership would no longer work trains that included Pullman cars.

via Pullman Strike.

Hobson Street in Brookline is getting a face lift, undergoing base repair this week and next week the tarry smell of asphalt will float through the neighborhood.

via kdka.com.