New Year's link-dump

A new year, a new decade (I leave the pedantry to others), a ridiculous heap of tabs open on my browser. Time for a clean slate! Here are a number of things, from the serious to the ludicrous, that have caught my interest in recent weeks. Apologies that I've lost track of where I found most of these!

• Face recognition software (for which, I'll admit, I don't have any application) appears to fail for black people. Oops!! I like the mix of humor and incredulity here.
  
  
• Healthcare reform isn't just an abstract policy issue -- it's life and death for people whose current coverage is running out for one or another inhumane reason. Insurers don't want to carry people with chronic conditions, even if straightforward interventions keep them healthy; I guess that the stratospheric costs of covering them after their (uncorrected) health collapses don't really matter, as long as they're off the books and somebody else's problem...
  
  
• Speaking of healthcare, there's a delicious (snarky) irony in the fact that Rush Limbaugh got such great medical treatment from HI's highly unionized, socialized medical system (i.e., one of the most progressive in the country). Sure, Rush, if we all had care like that, we probably *wouldn't* need reform...
  
  
• Atrios has some good points on US industrial policy (or lack thereof). Often the same guys who argue loudest for free-rein capitalism are those getting the most from the antiquated set of incentives and subsidies we already have.
  
  
• Amusing, and not without truth: Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy -- the complaints of this first-world modern life...
  
  
• I'm not a phone texter, yet anyway, but the value of this application is immediately obvious to me -- really, I'd like a similar application for a book reader, since I'm more likely to be reading while I'm walking my daily commute, but so far peripheral vision has been enough.
  
  
• A good tip for anybody at any time: 10 words you need to stop misspelling. Am tempted to buy the poster of this one, but that just wouldn't help with emailers and other folks in the e-world...
  (via Lou at work)
  
  
• And finally, for your amusement, a touching tribute to the lesser kudu from the late Brad Graham. I hope we'll all use the gift of another year to be the best damn kudus we can be!