• What a Fool Believes. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-04-23). Arizona Governor Jan Brewer explains why we shouldn't worry that her state's new law (allowing the police to demand identity papers from anyone who looks like they might be an "illegal" immigrant) won't lead to racial profiling or other abuses (as if "the thing itself" were not abuse enough ...):… (Linked Friday 2010-04-23.)

• No More Looking Back…Unless You’ve Embarrassed Us. Jesse Walker, Jesse Walker: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2010-04-16). Julian Sanchez has posted some sharp comments about Thomas Drake, the NSA whistleblower facing charges for leaking information to the Baltimore Sun. Sanchez concludes: the contrast between the reaction to Drake and the non-reaction to other forms of lawbreaking makes the standard in effect for Bush-era misdeeds clear: If you… (Linked Saturday 2010-04-24.)

• Because They Can. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-04-24). The TSA at work. (Linked Saturday 2010-04-24.)

• Ugly Viral vs. Pretty Viral. Mike Sellers, Online Alchemy (2010-04-15). Recently I encountered yet another app on Facebook that required me to "become a fan" and install the app before I could even see what it was, much less whether I liked it enough to become a real fan. Sorry, no. That's not viral except in the meanest, ugliest sense.  Like… (Linked Sunday 2010-04-25.)

Happy Sunday, everyone! Time to get Shameless.

What have you been up to this week? Write anything? Leave a link and a short description for your post in the comments. Or fire away about anything else you might want to talk about.

• this thought experiment just got way too awesome. Dinosaur Comics (2010-04-20). archive – contact – sexy exciting merchandise – what happened – search – about!!!@@e2;2020;90; previousApril 20th, 2010nextApril 20th, 2010: I just found out that Stanford’s marching band turned their tubas into Dinosaur Comics to help win a Battle of the Bands and this is what I have to say to… (Linked Wednesday 2010-04-21.)

• Help Corvus help the Kate Sharpley Library. Shawn P. Wilbur, Out of the Libertarian Labyrinth (2010-04-16). I’ve got a lot to say, sometime soon, about mutual-aid economies and the power of small, periodic support for small projects, but, for once, let’s get the practice out there in front of the theory. Despite my tendency to be into a bit of everything all the time, the heart… (Linked Thursday 2010-04-22.)

• !!!@@e2;20ac;2dc;Infographic', by Phil Gyford. John Gruber, Daring Fireball (2010-04-09). Zing.  â˜…  (Linked Thursday 2010-04-22.)

• Malfunction ... Malfunction ... Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-04-22). Mary Matalin on CNN's Campbell Brown show just now, on the subject of marijuana: My libertarian sense says let's regulate it. (Linked Friday 2010-04-23.)

• The Washington-Wall Street Kabuki Dance. The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty (2010-04-23). Excellent work in the latest from Sheldon Richman: “When I watch the public furor over the ruling party's attempt to ‘toughen’ regulations on the financial industry, I get the same feeling I often have in a theater: Good show but it's not real. … If you have doubts about any of this, imagine some top Wall Street operator calling for elimination of the Federal Reserve System and the banking cartel it administers. Imagine him endorsing repeal of all federal and state banking regulations and their replacement with free banking and market-based money. Imagine him testifying on behalf of an end to all implicit guarantees, bailout promises, and the "too big to fail" doctrine. If you can't imagine it you have begun to grasp the nature of the actual political economy in which we live.” Sheldon’s column has also been reprinted in this weekend’s CounterPunch. (Congrats!) (Linked Friday 2010-04-23.)

• The Palinites and the Paulians. Jesse Walker, Jesse Walker: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2010-04-20). The biggest (though not the only) limit to last week's CBS/New York Times Tea Party survey is that it didn't distinguish the movement's armchair sympathizers from the people who actually go out and join the rallies. Politico and Edison Research have filled part of that gap by polling the participants… (Linked Friday 2010-04-23.)

Farewell to the notification area. Canonical Design (2010-04-23):

Ubuntu is phasing out the notification area (a.k.a. "system tray"), because of its ineffectiveness at notifying people of things, and its inconsistent behavior. Many programs that previously used the notification area should use other notification mechanisms instead. Some notification area items will be replaced by various system status menus we're…

Good riddance to bad interface elements.

New U.S. $100 Even Uglier. Daring Fireball (2010-04-22):

Why are we making our money ugly? We're ruining one of the greatest visual brands in history.  â˜… 

Good lord.

John Gruber, linking the story at Daring Fireball, asks “Why are we [sic] making our money ugly?” I don’t think it’s hard to explain. The answer is that “we” (you and I) aren’t doing anything to the U.S. Federal Reserve notes, because we don’t design them and we don’t have any meaningful market choice about what kind of money to use, either. The “visual brand” here is a brand in a completely uncompetitive market.

The people who do exercise effective choice over the design of U.S. government monopoly money (Treasury, the Fed, and the Secret Service) have no need to work to attract customers; their work is solely concerned with confining customers. Hence they have no incentive to be concerned with keeping their “visual brand” strong or attractive; the incentives point towards just making it as complicated and inelegant as possible, in order to make the design hard to counterfeit. Money that was produced in a competitive market, and which relied on customer choice rather than government fiat as its basis for value, has typically been attractive and well-designed.