Link roundup

1. For other Blogger users, here's a useful comment by a Blogger employee from Ann Althouse's blog:

While our export tools may have been somewhat unreliable when handling blogs this large (Althouse is one of the largest Blogger blogs!), along the way helping Ann we discovered ways to improve them and moving forward Blogger will be much better equipped to handle cases like this.

So Ann while I'm personally sad to see you go (if that is indeed the decision), I wanted to let you know that you will always have a home on Blogger and a team who cares about your experience with Blogger. That also (of course) goes for everyone. We love hearing from users, and anyone can bug me directly on Twitter (@electrobutter) if something is on their mind, or hit up the team via @blogger.

It seems like such a typical Google thing to do to make such outreach efforts only when it was too late to keep her on the platform. Her entire Blogger blog was deleted, possibly by error, possibly by a rogue Google employee, last month.

2. "An investigation into Atlanta’s public school system has uncovered evidence that teachers and principals have been secretly erasing and correcting answers on students’ tests for as long as a decade."

3. "For the past few years, networks have been digitally inserting ads and product placements for new products into old reruns."

Link roundup

1. Comment and win some goodies from Heidi Kenney.

2. From the latest interesting article at Bleeding Cool about the difficulty of running a comic book shop:

The fact that a lot of comics fans are weird is something that has dogged the industry in the UK especially. I shall spend the next couple of thousand words trying to kill the idea that comics fans are pretty much retarded freaks; but the actual truth about my shop is that I had a far higher percentage of people who would probably feature highly on an autism spectrum than you would find anywhere in your town (outside of the comics shop)

3. Video of Anthony Weiner when he was forcefully denying assertions of wrongdoing. And TMZ says he gave one of his sexting friends advice on lying.

Link roundup

1. Wild tales of cheating in Italian soccer. And this ballot is hilarious (if you like gallows humor).

2. 11 minutes of movie insults. (NSFW language.)

3. Gizmodo's tablet advice: "If you're not a nerd, you shouldn't buy an Android tablet."

*Buy iPads at eBay.

Link roundup

1. "Is the Downfall of Dominique Strauss-Kahn Also the Downfall of the Euro?"

2. Gawker:

In 2009, the Cerdas, a Las Vegas family whose two daughters suffered from immune deficiency disorders, appeared on the reality show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Their old, moldy house was torn down, and new one, designed to protect the young girls, was built in its place. But as it turns out, the Cerda girls may not have been sick at all.

Six doctors in Oregon testified that neither Molly, age 10, or Maggie, 8, suffer from an immune deficiency disease. Rather, their mother Terri may suffer from Munchhausen by proxy syndrome, a psychological disorder that leads caregivers to invent or exaggerate health problems in others for attention or sympathy.

3. In a pinch, you can use tinfoil to more easily move heavy furniture.

Link roundup

1. I didn't expect to read this:

Thor on the Nintendo DS is not what you'd expect. Despite having to tie into a movie property and needing to work with certain likeness and story parameters, the developers at WayForward (Contra 4) have created a great licensed game. Thor plays incredibly well, and is a remarkably well-executed 2D brawler.

$30 at Amazon.

Kotaku likes the Wii and DS versions too. Just like my experience with the Force Unleashed 2, the Wii version was pretty good fun, while the PS3/Xbox versions got terrible reviews.

2. Gawker:

We all know reality television shows, including and especially American Idol, are basically serial hoaxes. But couldn't they try a little harder to maintain the illusion? Idol producers went to elaborate lengths last night to falsely present Jennifer Lopez's on-air performance as "live," but they left behind a few editing artifacts proving that it was taped.

3. And also at Gawker:

Kate Middleton's Brother Pretends to Be a Lawyer to Get His Dirty Pictures Off the Internet.

Link roundup

1. SF Chronicle:

In a pants-on-fire moment, the White House press office today denied anyone there had issued threats to remove Carla Marinucci and possibly other Hearst reporters from the press pool covering the President in the Bay Area.

Chronicle editor Ward Bushee called the press office on its fib:

Sadly, we expected the White House to respond in this manner based on our experiences yesterday. It is not a truthful response. It follows a day of off-the-record exchanges with key people in the White House communications office who told us they would remove our reporter, then threatened retaliation to Chronicle and Hearst reporters if we reported on the ban, and then recanted to say our reporter might not be removed after all.

2. The time Jim Carrey went totally nuts for new year's eve on David Letterman.

3. How law schools trick students into attending by promising them merit scholarships, and then keeping secret how likely it is that they will lose the scholarship after their first or second year. Via.

Link roundup

1. One particular person was caught posing as various people in Reddit's Ask Me Anything feature (including a blind guy, a deaf girl, a pickpocket, and a mean high school cheerleader).

2. Move over grade inflation, here's course name inflation:

the content of these courses is not as high-achieving as their names — the course-title equivalent of grade inflation. Algebra II is sometimes just Algebra I. And College Preparatory Biology can be just Biology.

3. "4 Great Ways to Convert Partial RSS Feed To Full RSS Feed."