Events

Via Andrew Sullivan, a 185-voice virtual choir:

The Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters now has a bigger desktop: 2400 pixels wide and 1920 pixels high, baby. Kewl.

President Obama signed the health-care reform bill just now. It's law. So the U.S. now has a health care law with as much charity and compassion as, say, the U.K.'s circa 1950. And still no stock-market crash. How about that.

HBO

Yesterday some of my classmates fretted about how the stock market would collapse today because of health care reform passing the House. Yawn. With half an hour to go, the NASDAQ, DOW, and oil are up; bonds are down; gold is down. All the indicators are within 1% of Friday's closes. What a disaster: Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s. It's hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they'll...

And we now have a 20th-century health care plan for America. Just in time. Fifty years from now, our children and grandchildren will wonder why the vote was so close, kind of like how we today wonder about the 85 who voted against the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Or maybe the way we don't, but we should. Update—James Fallows: For now, the significance of the vote is moving the United States FROM a system in which people can assume they will have health coverage IF they are old enough (Medicare), poor...