Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science? - National Geographic Magazine

Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science? - National Geographic Magazine:

In a sense all this is not surprising. Our lives are permeated by
science and technology as never before. For many of us this new world is
wondrous, comfortable, and rich in rewards—but also more complicated
and sometimes unnerving. We now face risks we can’t easily analyze.





We’re asked to accept, for example, that it’s safe to eat food
containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) because, the experts
point out, there’s no evidence that it isn’t and no reason to believe
that altering genes precisely in a lab is more dangerous than altering
them wholesale through traditional breeding. But to some people the very
idea of transferring genes between species conjures up mad scientists
running amok—and so, two centuries after Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, they talk about Frankenfood.

Confessions of a congressman: 9 secrets from the inside - Vox

Confessions of a congressman: 9 secrets from the inside - Vox: The only way political parties can successfully gerrymander is by knowing how you vote. Both parties have destroyed your privacy at the polling booth. Thanks to election rolls, we don't know exactly whom you voted for, but we get pretty damn close. We know exactly which primaries and general elections you have voted in, and since there are so few realistic candidates in most elections, down or up ballot, we might as well know exactly who you voted for. Marry that data with magazine subscriptions, the kind of car you drive, and all sorts of other easily available consumer information that we've figured out how to use to map your political preferences, and we can gerrymander and target subdivisions, houses — even double beds. Republicans want the male vote; Democrats the female vote.

Full text of Pope's in-flight interview from Manila to Rome :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

Full text of Pope's in-flight interview from Manila to Rome :: Catholic News Agency (CNA): I cannot constantly insult, provoke a person continuously, because I risk making him angry, and I risk receiving an unjust reaction, one that is not just. But that’s human. For this reason I say that freedom of expression must take into account the human reality and for this reason it must be prudent. It’s a way of saying that one must be educated, prudent. Prudence is the human virtue that regulates our relations. I can go up to here, I can go up to there, and there, beyond that no. What I wanted to say is that in theory we all agree: there is freedom of expression, a violent aggression is not good, it’s always bad. We all agree, but in practice, let us stop a little because we are human and we risk provoking the other.

Americans overwhelmingly want paid sick time, even if it lowers their wages - The Washington Post

Americans overwhelmingly want paid sick time, even if it lowers their wages - The Washington Post:

More to the point, a 2010 survey of 1,461 Americans
conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of
Chicago asked respondents how they felt about paid sick time, and then
presented them with a battery of arguments for and against such
legislation.



The "con" arguments included "If employers are
forced to increase costs by providing for paid sick days, they will cut
other costs by reducing wages or benefits like health care coverage" and
"A one-size-fits-all, paid sick leave mandate from the government would
threaten workers' wages and benefits. Government mandated benefits that
increase business costs would have to be made up by cuts in wages
or benefits."

But after hearing these arguments, respondents'
views on sick leave legislation were unchanged -- 75 percent supported
mandatory sick time before hearing the arguments, while 74 percent
supported it afterward. Even more telling, respondents rated the appeals
about lower wages among the least compelling of the con arguments.

Campus rape: Sororities want to fight sexual assault by throwing their own parties.

Campus rape: Sororities want to fight sexual assault by throwing their own parties.:

So now, some young women on campus are fighting for their right to
party. It seems obvious that sorority members (and the other women on
campus) would be safer in their own homes than at frat parties. The
problem is that the scenario is risky for the sororities themselves. For
the national organizations and local chapters, banning alcohol is a
financial calculation, not a moral one—staying dry helps them to avoid
the legal liabilities shouldered by raucous fraternities. Drinking
contributes not just to campus rape but also to physical fights,
accidents, poisoning, and other destructive behaviors. James R. Favor & Company, an insurance company that covers more than a dozen fraternities, told the Times in 2012
that one national fraternity was paying an average of $812,951 in
annual settlements until it went dry, at which point its annual payout
dropped to $15,388. An officer with the National Panhellenic Conference
told the Times that “she preferred to preserve the relative
calm of sorority houses, and continue to let fraternities assume the
cost, risk and cleanup of house parties.”

In Graphic Photos and On Twitter, ISIS Members Record and Tout Executions of Gays - The Daily Beast

In Graphic Photos and On Twitter, ISIS Members Record and Tout Executions of Gays - The Daily Beast: These are obscene images. They depict two men thrown from the roof of a building as a crowd watches them fall to their deaths, and they purport to show the Islamic State (or ISIS) carrying out public executions before an audience in Iraq’s Nineveh province.



The two victims’ alleged crimes? They are believed to be gay. In another photo, woman accused of being an adulterer is stoned to death, and two men charged with thievery are bound to crucifixes. Victims are commonly crucified, sometimes after they have been killed, in ISIS public executions.

Jon Stewart changed journalism before journalism was ready to change - The Washington Post

Jon Stewart changed journalism before journalism was ready to change - The Washington Post: Over the last few years, "The Daily Show" was still funny, even as it grew more routine and was distributed everywhere on social media. Stewart could still bring it -- the Eric Garner moment was perfect. But the show wasn’t crucial anymore, and it no longer felt as new. The media world had taken Stewart’s most basic impulses -- breaking down the biases, inherent fluffiness and navel-gazery of our political and pundit class -- and turned them into something ubiquitous.

In an era in which the Web generates instant takes on every gaffe or policy flub, Stewart’s nightly takes on the news began to feel a bit old. There are now a thousand professional bloggers and explainers and aggregators making Stewart’s points for him, calling out politicians before Stewart’s show went on the air. And there are a hundred researchers dredging up clips. If 2006’s “makaka” scandal happened today, Stewart would be the last to talk about it.

5 mistakes liberals make about corporate personhood and Hobby Lobby - Vox

5 mistakes liberals make about corporate personhood and Hobby Lobby - Vox: By the same token, the idea that corporations have a right to free speech is essential to preserving the values of the First Amendment. It's imperative that not only do Fox News' anchors have the right to criticize the Obama administration, but that Fox News as a corporate entity has that right. Otherwise, censors could effectively silence critics by heavily fining hostile broadcasters and publishers even while leaving the human critics unmolested. Similarly, NARAL Pro Choice America and the National Organization for Women are themselves corporations. It's critical to the democratic process that they are able to criticize Supreme Court decisions, lobby congress, and otherwise act as constitutional persons.

All politics is identity politics - Vox

All politics is identity politics - Vox: This is where the at-times tiresome concept of privilege becomes very useful. The truth is that almost all politics is, on some level, about identity. But those with the right identities have the privilege of simply calling it politics while labeling other people's agendas "identity."



Denial of this reality, it seems to me, is actually a key failing of a certain brand of American liberalism. Conservatives may join some white male liberals in decrying "identity politics," but nobody knows better than conservatives the power and importance of identities like Christian, American, traditional family, etc., in shaping thinking and giving meaning to political engagement.

Larry Summers on What Business Can Do to Save the Middle Class - HBR

Larry Summers on What Business Can Do to Save the Middle Class - HBR: But I have the concern that as currently practiced, our institutions provide overly high-powered incentives for taking steps that will benefit share prices in the very short run and insufficient incentives for taking steps that will benefit the company and both shareholders and stakeholders over the long run. I think this tendency has been exacerbated by some of the extremes of activism that we have witnessed in recent years where activists have sought to disrupt or restructure companies for the sake of an immediate payout even at some sacrifice of long-run interests.

Mike Daisey’s advice for Brian Williams: The monologist tells the NBC News anchor what he’s learned.

Mike Daisey’s advice for Brian Williams: The monologist tells the NBC News anchor what he’s learned.:

The problem is that in American public life a person must never admit
he’s lied. Our leaders will leap through incredible rhetorical hoops to
avoid it: We will be “mistaken,” “misled,” “misrepresented,”
“unaccountably in error”—anything to avoid saying that word. It’s
American cognitive dissonance at work, because we all know that in the
real world people lie all the time. No one tells the unvarnished truth
unless he wants to have a very short career—our culture teaches us that
it would be far better to be mentally deficient and incompetent than to
admit we lied.

Right now we are asked to believe Williams is unaccountably dim and
prone to fantastical visions, and that’s why his is no apology at
all—because it doesn’t respect the listener.

How The New York Times Works

How The New York Times Works: Dicke meets his first deadline—barely—but 9 p.m. is only the beginning. Deadline for the first local edition is 10:45, followed by another at midnight, and a final call half an hour later. When Dicke finally packs up to leave just after 12:30 a.m., Lillie Dremeaux is still plotting out the next morning's home page and preparing to hand overnight duties to an editor in Hong Kong. In a previous era, after the last page was sent to the printer, an editor would ring a bell, walk toward the door, and holler "Good night!" to mostly no one, because there was no one left to yell at. Dicke looks around at colleagues midshift, their eyes pinned to computer screens.



"We no longer do that," he says.

Justine Sacco Is Good at Her Job, and How I Came To Peace With Her

Justine Sacco Is Good at Her Job, and How I Came To Peace With Her: The internet became unbearable, unreadable for me, a constant ringing and roaring in my ear. There was no point in defending myself; any attempt at explaining my joke would cause those who were gleefully offended by it to redouble their efforts. GamerGate had turned itself into something more despicable and retrograde than I'd ever intended to point out with my little joke, but there was no one who wanted to listen to that. There wasn't any conversation to be had, no objective to reach or conclusion to draw. Smashing a pinata isn't just for the candy—it feels great to swing your arms and feel a thud, and so they'd clobber me no matter what, even when it was clear there wasn't much sport left in it for GamerGate, either.

How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life - NYTimes.com

How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life - NYTimes.com: Still, in those early days, the collective fury felt righteous, powerful and effective. It felt as if hierarchies were being dismantled, as if justice were being democratized. As time passed, though, I watched these shame campaigns multiply, to the point that they targeted not just powerful institutions and public figures but really anyone perceived to have done something offensive. I also began to marvel at the disconnect between the severity of the crime and the gleeful savagery of the punishment. It almost felt as if shamings were now happening for their own sake, as if they were following a script.

Chapel Hill shooting: My best friend was killed and I don't know why -- Fusion

Chapel Hill shooting: My best friend was killed and I don't know why -- Fusion:

Deep down everyone in this community knows it was a hate crime. But how do you prove it?




I have so many questions for him.




She’s so young. Would you not let her blossom a bit more? What went
through your mind? I mean, as you pulled the trigger you clearly killed
people. You killed one, then you killed a second time, a third time. And
you walked away from the scene. You took three young people. I don’t
know if he has kids but how could you do that to someone’s child? And
then just walk away. What is his motive? I wonder what would have
happened if we were there? Would he have killed us all, since we were a
bunch of hijabis? I can’t imagine. I have so many questions I don’t know
how to word them all. And I want to know exactly what happened, all the
details. I need to know.

F.B.I. Director Speaks Frankly About Police View of Blacks - NYTimes.com

F.B.I. Director Speaks Frankly About Police View of Blacks - NYTimes.com: One remedy, Mr. Comey said, would be for the police to have more interactions with those they are charged to protect. “It’s hard to hate up close,” he said.

Mr. Comey said there was significant research that says all people have unconscious racial biases. Although people cannot help their instinctive reactions, law enforcement needs “to design systems and processes to overcome that very human part of us all,” he said.

“Although the research may be unsettling, what we do next is what matters most,” Mr. Comey said.

He said that law enforcement agencies across the country needed to be compelled to report shootings that involve police officers so there can be a baseline to measure the issue.

Mom Lets Her 3-Year-Old Boy Dress Her For A Week | Bored Panda

Mom Lets Her 3-Year-Old Boy Dress Her For A Week | Bored Panda: If you let your 3-year-old son dress you up… you might wind up looking pretty fabulous, actually. Summer Bellessa, an actress and blogger at babble.com, decided to let Rockwell, her 3-year-old son, choose her outfits every day for a week. There are hits and there are misses, but you can’t deny that the kid has a good eye sometimes.

Brian Williams Suspended From NBC News for Six Months | Variety

Brian Williams Suspended From NBC News for Six Months | Variety: We have decided today to suspend Brian Williams as Managing Editor and Anchor of NBC Nightly News for six months. The suspension will be without pay and is effective immediately. We let Brian know of our decision earlier today. Lester Holt will continue to substitute Anchor the NBC Nightly News.



Our review, which is being led by Richard Esposito working closely with NBCUniversal General Counsel Kim Harris, is ongoing, but I think it is important to take you through our thought process in coming to this decision.



While on Nightly News on Friday, January 30, 2015, Brian misrepresented events which occurred while he was covering the Iraq War in 2003. It then became clear that on other occasions Brian had done the same while telling that story in other venues. This was wrong and completely inappropriate for someone in Brian’s position.

Egypt’s Jon Stewart Comes to America - The Daily Beast

Egypt’s Jon Stewart Comes to America - The Daily Beast: By the next month, however, Morsi would be forced out of power and the military took control of Egypt. Youssef tried to navigate these new waters but it soon became clear to him that after Sisi took office in June 2014, there would be no place for satirical humor in Egypt mocking those in power.

So where is Youssef now?



On Monday night, Youssef will be making his fourth appearance on The Daily Show, this time delivering a scripted comedy rant about the Middle East.

And he will be serving as a resident fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government for the spring semester. Not a bad gig for a comedian. But that’s only for a few months. From there Youssef may head off to Dubai to start a new venture, but things seem a little bit in flux.

Brian Williams, Retreading Memories From a Perch Too Public - NYTimes.com

Brian Williams, Retreading Memories From a Perch Too Public - NYTimes.com:

As
the evening news anchor, Mr. Williams possesses a rare combination of
fame and trust, with each feeding off the other. But fame is slippery,
morphing into infamy very quickly, as Mr. Williams discovered in four
days of sustained pounding. Everyone loves a story about seeing the
mighty fall, even if they are as fundamentally likeable as Mr. Williams.
(NBC confirmed that Mr. Williams would not be making a scheduled
appearance on Mr. Letterman’s show this week.)

As
it turns out, his non-apology was not a safe haven, but a trap door,
and his self-banishment was not a consequence, but a mistake.

I
don’t know if Mr. Williams will lose his job. I don’t think he should —
his transgressions were not a fundamental part of his primary
responsibilities. But if the executives who run NBC come to believe that
he can’t credibly cover combat or hurricanes, or call a politician on a
lie, they will dismiss him even though there is no plan in place for
succession.

Western Illusions Over Ukraine - NYTimes.com

Western Illusions Over Ukraine - NYTimes.com: The most difficult thing for a communist, it has been observed, is to predict the past. I was reminded of this as I listened to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in full Soviet mode at the Munich Security Conference, suggesting that after World War II it was “the Soviet Union that was against splitting Germany.”

People laughed; they guffawed. Germans recall the Soviet clamp on the east of the country and the Berlin Wall. But in a way Lavrov was right: The Soviet Union would have been quite happy to swallow all of Germany, given the chance.

Today, in similar fashion, President Vladimir Putin’s Russia would be quite happy to absorb all of Ukraine, which it views as an extension of the motherland, an upstart deluded by the West into imagining independent statehood.

I’m Autistic, And Believe Me, It’s A Lot Better Than Measles — The Archipelago — Medium

I’m Autistic, And Believe Me, It’s A Lot Better Than Measles — The Archipelago — Medium: No matter what other lofty ideas of toxins and vaccine-related injury anti-vaxxers try to float around in their defense, that’s really what all of this is about: we’re facing a massive public health crisis because a disturbing number of people believe that autism is worse than illness or death. My neurology is the boogeyman behind a completely preventable plague in the making.



The anti-vaccination movement is a particularly bitter issue for me because it doesn’t just dehumanize me as an autistic person; it also sets off two of my biggest triggers. Like many people on the spectrum, I don’t handle it well when people are 1) wrong, and 2) unfair.

When Children With Autism Grow Up - BuzzFeed News

When Children With Autism Grow Up - BuzzFeed News:

I was led to a corner of the room I hadn’t before seen. It was darker
than the rest of the space and a few decibels quieter. In the nook, I
saw Scooter. He had a stringy mustache and hair with great curling
wings. One of his eyes wandered slightly. He sat behind a
crescent-shaped table padlocked to the wall at both ends of the curved
top. Scattered in front of him were piles of flashcards, jars of beads,
toy cars, unfinished puzzles, crumbs from lunch, and a laminated piece
of tagboard with a strip of Velcro down the center. As soon as he saw
me, his face tightened into a sort of grimace, baring his teeth, but the
rest of his face, his eyes, posture, and hands were unexpressive as he
blankly leaned out into the dim classroom.



“Well, hi there,” I said, waving. I began to clam up in all of the pits of my body.



“Well, hi there,” Scooter said, and he let out a deep laugh.

 

The
person I was going to meet that day had been a child in my mind. In
front of me was a man. A man only two years younger than me.

In which marketing your news brand becomes a "bad thing"

Brian Williams’ Slow Jam - Jack Shafer - POLITICO Magazine:

Today, NBC News confirmed
that it will investigate Williams’ Iraq story, which is more bad news
for the anchor. If he is to survive his lapses (and given my low view of
the broadcast news-readers we call “anchors,” it doesn’t matter to me
whether he stays or goes) he needs to recast himself from the wittiest
and most engaging story-teller in the room and into the hardest-boiled
of TV journalists. If desiring a career as a comedian or an actor, he
should quit the news business and pursue his Hollywood dreams. But if he
chooses journalism, I’d have him strike from his calendar all future
guests spots on entertainment programs.



There’s nothing wrong
with a journalist making a few visits to the late night couches, but the
frequency of Williams’ appearances on entertainment programs indicate
he’s forgotten what business he’s in. Nobody is big enough to slow jam
the news and broadcast the news at the same time.

Concession brawl - Mike Allen - POLITICO

Concession brawl - Mike Allen - POLITICO: 
It’s one of the iconic moments in American politics — never rehearsed, and never pleasant. The loser of a long, expensive presidential campaign telephones the victor with carefully worded pleasantries after the networks have declared a winner. Then the two go before their supporters and a global television audience.

But that ritual — designed to signal the polite end of the campaign, and the commitment to unite the country behind the winner — has sparked one final disagreement between the still-bitter camps of President Barack Obama and his 2012 rival, Mitt Romney, with eyewitnesses to the concession call lining up on Thursday to dispute just what was said between the two men.

At issue isn’t just the political spin, but a footnote of history, destined to be reviewed by anyone who writes about the 2012 presidential race.

Is the Professor Bossy or Brilliant? Much Depends on Gender - NYTimes.com

Is the Professor Bossy or Brilliant? Much Depends on Gender - NYTimes.com: Men are more likely to be described as a star, knowledgeable, awesome or the best professor. Women are more likely to be described as bossy, disorganized, helpful, annoying or as playing favorites. Nice or rude are also more often used to describe women than men.

Men and women seemed equally likely to be thought of as tough or easy, lazy, distracted or inspiring.

Interestingly, women were more likely to be described in reviews as role models. Mr. Schmidt notes that the reviews are anonymous, so he doesn't know the gender of reviewers. It could be that more female students describe female professors as role models than men do when describing men or women.

Obama ‘Has Offended Every Christian’ - The Daily Beast

Obama ‘Has Offended Every Christian’ - The Daily Beast: At the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, President Obama told fellow Christians that their religion had been abused and misappropriated in the past, just as Islam has been by terrorists in recent years. “In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ,” he said. Critics, including many Republicans, were outraged. “The president’s comments this morning at the prayer breakfast are the most offensive I’ve ever heard a president make in my lifetime,” former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore told The Washington Post. “He has offended every believing Christian in the United States. This goes further to the point that Mr. Obama does not believe in America or the values we all share.”

Tom Brady Giving MVP Truck To Malcolm Butler � CBS Boston

Tom Brady Giving MVP Truck To Malcolm Butler � CBS Boston: 


As MVP, Brady also received a shiny new Chevy truck. While he didn’t
hand his MVP trophy to Butler, the quarterback is doing the next best
thing: He’s giving him the truck.




Butler was not one of the 256 players drafted into the NFL last May,
and earned his spot on the Patriots with an impressive rookie camp and
preseason. While fans didn’t see much of Butler during the regular
season, he was no stranger to Brady, constantly plucking the
quarterback’s passes from the sky.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler: This Is How We Will Ensure Net Neutrality | WIRED

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler: This Is How We Will Ensure Net Neutrality | WIRED: Originally, I believed that the FCC could assure internet openness through a determination of “commercial reasonableness” under Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. While a recent court decision seemed to draw a roadmap for using this approach, I became concerned that this relatively new concept might, down the road, be interpreted to mean what is reasonable for commercial interests, not consumers.



 That is why I am proposing that the FCC use its Title II authority to implement and enforce open internet protections.

GoScienceEverything comments on ISIS Burns Jordanian Pilot Alive

GoScienceEverything comments on ISIS Burns Jordanian Pilot Alive: In times of war, brutality rises out of the human psyche--war has always been accompanied by torture, rape, and murder, except in the most disciplined of militaries. Look around at a hundred civilized men, and ask yourself how civilized they would have been if they were raised as 13th-century Mongols or Vikings.

Finally, what makes ISIL's brutality so beyond anything we've seen in recent times?



Generally, groups embrace, and emphasize, what sets them apart. ISIL has been shocking successful--and its defining trait is its shocking brutality. Does it surprise us, then, that they emphasize their defining trait for as long as it brings them success? They're milking it for all it's worth.

Exclusive: Google and Uber Are Going to War Over Taxis - Bloomberg Business

Exclusive: Google and Uber Are Going to War Over Taxis - Bloomberg Business: Now there are signs that the companies are more likely to be ferocious competitors than allies. Google is preparing to offer its own ride-hailing service, most likely in conjunction with its long-in-development driverless car project. Drummond has informed Uber's board of this possibility, according to a person close to the Uber board, and Uber executives have seen screenshots of what appears to be a Google ride-sharing app that is currently being used by Google employees. This person, who requested not to be named because the talks are private, said the Uber board is now weighing whether to ask Drummond to resign his position as an Uber board member.

BBC - Future - How to survive a disaster

BBC - Future - How to survive a disaster: This explains why in emergencies people often fail to do things that under normal circumstances would seem obvious. So the only reliable way to shortcut this kind of impaired thinking, most survival experts agree, is by preparing for an emergency in advance. “Practice makes actions automatic, without [the need for] detailed thinking,” says Chertkoff. This means making a mental note of the fire exits when you go to the cinema (and imagining yourself using them), reading the evacuation guidance on the back of the door when you stay in a hotel, and always listening to aircraft safety briefings however frequent a flyer you are. “Every time I go on a boat the first thing I do is find out where my lifeboat station is, because then if there is a problem I just have to respond, I don’t have to start thinking about it,” says Leach. Typically, survivors survive not because they are braver or more heroic than anyone else, but because they are better prepared.

The curious case of the disappearing Polish S — Medium Engineering — Medium

The curious case of the disappearing Polish S — Medium Engineering — Medium:

A few weeks ago, someone reported this to us at Medium:

“I
just started an article in Polish. I can type in every letter, except
Ś. When I press the key for Ś, the letter just doesn’t appear. It only
happens on Medium.”

This was odd. We don’t really special-case any language in any way, and even if we did… out of 32 Polish characters, why would this random one be the only one causing problems?

Turns
out, it wasn’t so random. This is a story of how four incidental
ingredients spanning decades (if not centuries) came together to cause
the most curious of bugs, and how we fixed it.

RubberNinja Animations

RubberNinja Animations: Who was Monty? Monty was the personification of motivation, determination and resolve. He was the man who never slowed down, who always wanted his life to be efficient, quick and as productive as possible. To those of you that never knew Monty, it might be hard to imagine to what extent of this I mean. Imagine a man who would literally microwave food by hitting random numbers, then pull it out the second it was ready, to rush off to an 18 hour work day where his uniform was a suite adorned with ping pong balls. Imagine a man who opted to have a work space right next to a motion capture stage because it was the most efficient location. Imagine a man who operated his computer entirely via keyboard shortcuts, hardly ever needing to touch the mouse, frequently breaking his keyboard keys from the break neck speed he worked. This was Monty, a literal Bruce Lee of animation. He would slow down for nothing more than his amazing wife Sheena.

Obama: We Should Stop "Overinflating" Importance Of Terror Groups As If "They Are An Existential Threat" To U.S. | Video | RealClearPolitics

Obama: We Should Stop "Overinflating" Importance Of Terror Groups As If "They Are An Existential Threat" To U.S. | Video | RealClearPolitics: What I do insist on is that we maintain a proper perspective and that we do not provide a victory to these terrorist networks by overinflating their importance and suggesting in some fashion that they are an existential threat to the United States or the world order. You know, the truth of the matter is that they can do harm. But we have the capacity to control how we respond in ways that do not undercut what's the -- you know, what's essence of who we are.



That means that we don't torture, for example, and thereby undermine our values and credibility around the world. It means that we don't approach this with a strategy of sending out occupying armies and playing Whac-A-Mole wherever a terrorist group appears because that drains our economic strength and it puts enormous burdens on our military.

Sharing Out Loud | AIRmediaworks

Sharing Out Loud | AIRmediaworks: In the past few years, I have also gotten much more comfortable with saying no and walking away. This is hard for me because I have a natural inclination to please people and I don’t want people to not like me. But I know my limits and I know when people are trying to take advantage of me.

Sometimes walking away is a good thing.



It’s OK to say no. (I recently put a disclaimer on my website explaining how I structure my consulting work. I recommend thinking about this and then writing something similar if you’re someone who is constantly getting your brain picked.)

It’s also OK to pivot. If you’re overwhelmed, it’s fair to take a step back. And it’s acceptable to go offline. In fact, I recommend it — and often.

Obama to parents doubting ‘indisputable’ science: ‘Get your kids vaccinated’ - The Washington Post

Obama to parents doubting ‘indisputable’ science: ‘Get your kids vaccinated’ - The Washington Post: Obama acknowledged that some people have concerns about the “effects” of vaccinations, but he cautioned, “the science is pretty indisputable.” He also noted that both his daughters Sasha and Malia have been vaccinated.



“You should get your kids vaccinated — it’s good for them,” Obama said. “We should be able to get back to the point where measles effectively is not existing in this country.”

Three Thrown Over the Cuckoo's Nest • Damn Interesting

Three Thrown Over the Cuckoo's Nest • Damn Interesting: What might happen, he wondered, if a psychologist were to deliberately pair up patients who held directly conflicting identity delusions? Perhaps such psychological leverage could be used to pry at the cracks of an irrational psyche to let in the light of reason. Dr. Rokeach sought and secured a research grant to test his hypothesis, and he began canvassing sanitariums for delusional doppelg�ngers. Soon he found several suitable subjects: three patients, all in state care, each of whom believed himself to be Jesus Christ. And he saw that it was good.

The Conspiracy Theory Surrounding The Seahawks’ Last Play | The Nation

The Conspiracy Theory Surrounding The Seahawks’ Last Play | The Nation: The conspiracy theory lies in the fact that Seahawks coach Pete Carroll believed that the last yard the Seahawks needed for that Super Bowl victory was a gimme and, all things being equal, much better to have the iconic Super Bowl moment go to Russell Wilson than to Marshawn Lynch. Coaches setting certain favored players up for glory is as old as football itself. In addition, the politics of race, respectability, public relations and what’s in the best interest of a $2 billion corporation all played into this. That’s the theory.



I contacted someone inside that locker room and they said to me as if on repeat: “Can’t believe it. We all saw it. They wanted it to be Russ. They didn’t want Marshawn to be the hero.”

Jeb 'Put Me Through Hell’ - POLITICO Magazine

Jeb 'Put Me Through Hell’ - POLITICO Magazine: So most of the talk has touched on his more measured stances on immigration and Common Core. He’s been portrayed as a cerebral policy wonk in contrast to his father, the solicitous writer of thank you notes, and his brother, the clownin’-around worker of rooms. This bloodless depiction, though, ignores the intensity, the vehemence, the practically gladiatorial certitude with which he pursued what he wanted in the Schiavo case, and more generally the fervid way in which he believes in what he believes—that “absolute truth” he talked about in his speech in Savannah, two months after the death of Terri Schiavo, and one month before he asked the prosecutor to investigate her husband.

The audacious rescue plan that might have saved space shuttle Columbia | Ars Technica

The audacious rescue plan that might have saved space shuttle Columbia | Ars Technica:

That's the way events actually unfolded. But imagine an alternate timeline for the Columbia mission in which NASA quickly realized just how devastating the foam strike had been. Could the Columbia astronauts have been safely retrieved from orbit?




During the writing of its report, the CAIB had the same question, so
it asked NASA to develop a theoretical repair and rescue plan for Columbia
"based on the premise that the wing damage events during launch were
recognized early during the mission." The result was an absolutely
remarkable set of documents, which appear at the end of the report as
Appendix D.13. They carry the low-key title "STS-107 In-Flight Options Assessment,"
but the scenario they outline would have pushed NASA to its absolute
limits as it mounted the most dramatic space mission of all time.

Read Roald Dahl's Powerful Pro-Vaccination Letter (From 1988)

Read Roald Dahl's Powerful Pro-Vaccination Letter (From 1988):

It is not yet generally accepted that measles can be a dangerous
illness. Believe me, it is. In my opinion parents who now refuse to have
their children immunised are putting the lives of those children at
risk. In America, where measles immunisation is compulsory, measles like
smallpox, has been virtually wiped out. 

Here in Britain, because so many parents refuse, either out of
obstinacy or ignorance or fear, to allow their children to be immunised,
we still have a hundred thousand cases of measles every year. Out of
those, more than 10,000 will suffer side effects of one kind or another.
At least 10,000 will develop ear or chest infections. About 20 will
die.

5 confounding questions that hold the key to the future of driverless cars - The Washington Post

5 confounding questions that hold the key to the future of driverless cars - The Washington Post: Now, here is the economic conundrum: Many of the biggest benefits of driverless cars will be shared by society, but the costs of the technology will be borne by individual consumers. That means that we have to find a way to better align the costs and benefits of driverless cars for the people who might buy them. That may mean offering subsidies. Or it may mean building into these cars clear value for individual consumers from the moment they drive off the car lot. It's easier to value, for instance, great fuel economy (which saves me money now) than great safety (which produces the absence of future accidents).

'Play Freely at Your Own Risk' - The Atlantic

'Play Freely at Your Own Risk' - The Atlantic:





At one point, I looked up at the trees. I was astonished to see that
there were children in them. The more I looked, the more children I saw.
There were children 15 feet high in the air. There were children
perched on tiny homemade wooden platforms, like circus ladies dressed in
glittery clothes about to swan-dive into little buckets. There were
children sitting up there, relaxed, in their navy blue sailor-type
school uniforms, chatting and eating candy on bitty rectangles of
rickety wood as if they were lounging on the Lido deck of The Love Boat.
There were children, preteens, crouching 15 feet up on the roof of the
playpark hut and then—I gasped to see this—leaping off it onto a pile of
ancient mattresses.





King and I sat on a log, eating warm, white gooey marshmallows. The
park was around us, and the trees were around us, and the dirt was
around us, and the smoke, and the music. The children were in the trees,
and were flying in the air.





We stayed there as long as we could.

Michelle Obama joins Bradley Cooper to praise ‘American Sniper’ - The Washington Post

Michelle Obama joins Bradley Cooper to praise ‘American Sniper’ - The Washington Post: Obama, who saw the film on Air Force One as she and her husband traveled abroad this week, called it “complex,” “emotional” and a realistic “depiction of a veteran and his family” in her remarks at a gathering that included star Bradley Cooper.

“While I know there have been critics, I felt that, more often than not, this film touches on many of the emotions and experiences that I’ve heard firsthand from military families over these past few years,” she said. “This movie reflects . . . the complex journeys that our men and women in uniform endure.”

What the Web Said Yesterday - The New Yorker

What the Web Said Yesterday - The New Yorker: On July 17th, at 3:22 P.M. G.M.T., the Wayback Machine saved a screenshot of Strelkov’s VKontakte post about downing a plane. Two hours and twenty-two minutes later, Arthur Bright, the Europe editor of the Christian Science Monitor, tweeted a picture of the screenshot, along with the message “Grab of Donetsk militant Strelkov’s claim of downing what appears to have been MH17.” By then, Strelkov’s VKontakte page had already been edited: the claim about shooting down a plane was deleted. The only real evidence of the original claim lies in the Wayback Machine.

The Guardians Who Slumbereth Not | Texas Monthly

The Guardians Who Slumbereth Not | Texas Monthly: The Gablers’ views are straight-forward and comprehensive. They believe that the purpose of education is “the imparting of factual knowledge, basic skills and cultural heritage” and that education is best accomplished in schools that emphasize a traditional curriculum of reading, math, and grammar, as well as patriotism, high moral standards, dress codes, and strict discipline, with respect and courtesy demanded from all students. They feel the kind of education they value has all but disappeared, and they lay the blame at the feet of that all-purpose New Right whipping boy, secular humanism, which they believe has infiltrated the school at every level but can be recognized most easily in textbooks.

Discrimination in the Credential Society: An Audit Study of Race and College Selectivity in the Labor Market

Discrimination in the Credential Society: An Audit Study of Race and College Selectivity in the Labor Market: In this research, I examine employment opportunities for white and black graduates of elite top-ranked universities versus high-ranked but less selective institutions. Using an audit design, I create matched candidate pairs and apply for 1,008 jobs on a national job-search website. I also exploit existing birth-record data in selecting names to control for differences across social class within racialized names. The results show that although a credential from an elite university results in more employer responses for all candidates, black candidates from elite universities only do as well as white candidates from less selective universities. Moreover, race results in a double penalty: When employers respond to black candidates, it is for jobs with lower starting salaries and lower prestige than those of white peers. These racial differences suggest that a bachelor's degree, even one from an elite institution, cannot fully counteract the importance of race in the labor market. Thus, both discrimination and differences in human capital contribute to racial economic inequality.

The Blight of Bipartisanship - The New Yorker

The Blight of Bipartisanship - The New Yorker: The tension between big-tent inclusiveness and ideological purity has bedevilled our two major political parties for many years, but for Democrats it became especially vexing in the middle decades of the twentieth century. From 1932 to 1964, the Democratic Party won seven out of nine Presidential elections and enjoyed an almost continuous majority in the House and the Senate. But who, exactly, was winning and what did victory mean? The answer was clear in only two intervals. The first was the initial phase of the New Deal, when Franklin Roosevelt’s economic-rescue proposals were swiftly passed into law by Congress and embraced by a nation traumatized by the Great Depression. The second came during the three-year period after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, when Lyndon Johnson and Congress went on a legislative spree that ended with the midterm election in November, 1966.

Christian Berthelot: Cesar takes a look at the first few seconds of life for babies born caesarean (PHOTOS).

Christian Berthelot: Cesar takes a look at the first few seconds of life for babies born caesarean (PHOTOS).: Around a week later, Berthelot met Jean-Francois Morievnal, an obstetrician in the hospital where his son had been born. The two spoke about their mutual love of photography and, about six months later, Morievnal proposed the idea that Berthelot begin working on a series about midwifery in the operating room with a focus on caesarean births.

don’t be an accelerant | Fredrik deBoer

don’t be an accelerant | Fredrik deBoer: As I have gotten older, I have grown more and more convinced that the most important element of politics is stakes. Stakes. Skin in the game. And the accelerants demonstrates how a difference in stakes can render the most ardent allies into a part of the problem. For the urge to simply intensify every conflict demonstrates an indifference to political progress that can only emerge from privilege, from a lack of stakes. Why not throw gas on every fire, when you know you’re never going to get burned? Chait discusses the way in which burnout develops from these kinds of conflicts, the way people end up giving up out of exhaustion. And, indeed, I have observed in my life some of the more vituperative political voices I know grow jaded by the nastiness they themselves have helped create. But this is where stakes comes in most directly: because these people are white and educated and financially comfortable, they could withdraw from politics in a way that people of color and the working class simply can’t. A woman of color activist can cease to take part in activism, but the reality of racism and sexism will follow her wherever she goes. This is what I mean by stakes, the difference whether politics is a choice or an enforced condition. And it’s what I find most cynical about the accelerants; they have the luxury of engaging with maximum anger and ugliness, and then withdrawing when they run out of steam. For them, and for me, withdrawal is possible, and so the urge to engage in a vicious way comes without as many consequences. No such release valve really exists for the activists of color in whose name the accelerants trash others. This is what we mean when we talk about privilege.

I don’t know what to do, you guys | Fredrik deBoer

I don’t know what to do, you guys | Fredrik deBoer:

That’s always how this conversation goes down: if you say, hey, we
appear to have a real problem with how we talk to other people, we are
losing potential allies left and right, then the response is always
“stop lecturing women of color.” But these codes aren’t enforced
by women of color, in the overwhelming majority of the time. They’re
enforced by the children of privilege. I know. I live here. I am on
campus. I have been in the activist meetings and the lefty coffee
houses. My perspective goes beyond the same 200 people who write the
entire Cool Kid Progressive Media.



Amanda Taub says political correctness “doesn’t exist.” To which I can only ask, how would you know?
I don’t understand where she gets that certainty. Is Traub under the
impression that the Vox offices represents the breadth of left-wing
culture? I read dozens of tweets and hot take after hot take, insisting
that there’s no problem here, and it’s coming overwhelmingly from people
who have no idea what they’re talking about.

An Actual Letter Ayn Rand Wrote To An Actual Teen Girl

An Actual Letter Ayn Rand Wrote To An Actual Teen Girl: The Letters of Ayn Rand is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. It is a perpetual source of comfort and inspiration to me. Every morning, Ayn Rand must have thrust herself forth from her steel bed and asked herself “What is the most Ayn Rand thing that I can do today?”



On May 22, 1949, the answer was to write a letter to her young niece, who had sent her a short note asking to borrow $25 for a new dress. Here was Ayn’s reply.

Israeli Ambassador: Netanyahu Never Meant to Disrespect Obama - The Atlantic

Israeli Ambassador: Netanyahu Never Meant to Disrespect Obama - The Atlantic: Before I answer your question, let me be clear that the prime minister’s visit to Washington is intended for one purpose—to speak about Iran, that openly threatens the survival of the Jewish state. The survival of Israel is not a partisan issue. It is an issue for all Americans because those who seek Israel’s destruction also threaten America.

America and Israel have to face this threat together.



The prime minister is looking forward to the opportunity to speak to the American Congress and through them to the American people about what he believes is the greatest challenge of our time—preventing a nuclear-armed Iran.

Chris Rock Will Never Come to Williams | freedomfreys

Chris Rock Will Never Come to Williams | freedomfreys: Thought experiment: if I changed the scenario in my head, and imagined that Bill Maher was being blocked from delivering a Berkeley commencement address due to some insensitive anti-feminist comedy, would I agree with the Berkeley students?

Optimistically, no. Optimistically, I’d be able to see the value in having someone like him imparting some wisdom to us, the bright-eyed and the bushy-tailed. I’d be able to rise above the “LOL a woman doing something womanly” joke history. As a comedian myself, I’m no stranger to some bullshit women-aren’t-they-hilarious tirades, and if I’m completely honest, I’ve laughed at them too. But I’m still actively grappling with these pieces. I’m not sure if the optimistic scenario is the accurate one.



I feel very aligned with how Rock sees it. Growth happens when we encounter something uncomfortable, dig deeper into that discomfort, and experience it enough so that it is no longer uncomfortable. Comedy is a tool that can help us sink into things that we don’t fully understand yet. Comedy can be a bridge. And, more obviously, it can make figuring all this stuff out just a little more entertaining.

Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say -- NYMag

Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say -- NYMag: That the new political correctness has bludgeoned even many of its own supporters into despondent silence is a triumph, but one of limited use. Politics in a democracy is still based on getting people to agree with you, not making them afraid to disagree. The historical record of political movements that sought to expand freedom for the oppressed by eliminating it for their enemies is dismal. The historical record of American liberalism, which has extended social freedoms to blacks, Jews, gays, and women, is glorious. And that glory rests in its confidence in the ultimate power of reason, not coercion, to triumph.

Addicting Info – Trans Man Rejected By His Catholic Church, So Pope Francis Invites Him To The Vatican For A Hug (VIDEO)

Addicting Info – Trans Man Rejected By His Catholic Church, So Pope Francis Invites Him To The Vatican For A Hug (VIDEO): First, the Pope responded first with a personal phone call (as he has been reported to do in the past). While Neria was still getting over being on the phone with the Pope, the Pontiff invited him and his fiance to join him in a private meeting at the Vatican.

At the meeting, Neria states that Pope Francis embraced him and told him that in no uncertain terms, there was “a place in the house of God for him.” Neria says this feeling of acceptance has had a profound impact on him, and he now feels he has a place in the church he loves.

As an atheist, LGBT feminist, I maintain a cool head on the “Cool Pope Francis” hype. He is still the leader of a breathtakingly conservative church, he still opposes same-sex marriage, and has questionable ethics over the role of women in public life – he is not without room for growth. That said, as a human being, I have enormous admiration for someone who takes the time to make such a profound difference in the life of another. This wasn’t a sweeping gesture, it was a miracle in one person’s life.

The Genius of Moondog, New York’s Homeless Composer

The Genius of Moondog, New York’s Homeless Composer: On September 8, 1999, at the age of 83, Louis ‘Moondog’ Hardin passed away in Munster, Germany, presumably from heart failure.

In his time, Moondog had influenced hundreds of artists, including some of the greatest musicians of the 20th century -- Philip Glass, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, and Janis Joplin among them. Today everyone from rock band Mars Volta to trip-hop group Portishead cites him as a source of inspiration.



He’d willed himself through the harsh streets of New York, found ways to dazzle onlookers, and signed record deals as a homeless man -- all the while pridefully defending his eccentricities. And after all of this, he’d redefined himself abroad -- had come to life more brilliantly than ever before, in unfamiliar territory.

Are we electoral fundamentalists? � 3:AM Magazine

Are we electoral fundamentalists? � 3:AM Magazine: Van Reybrouck concludes with a warning: we are experiencing the calm before the storm. “It’s the calm of 1850… it’s the calm that precedes a long period of great instability. At the time, the big question was the right to vote; today, it’s the right of expression.” Of course, his proposal for a bi-representative system is not an immediate miracle cure for Democratic Fatigue Syndrome; it is a prescription for the long term. In the UK today, politics is in flux. But after the Scottish referendum, ordinary people across the country are invigorated by the idea of constitutional reform: there is a desire for change. As Van Reybrouck writes: “We need to democratise democracy… what are we waiting for?” A hopeful ending that change is just around the corner. However, the dilemma of how to get elected elites to relinquish their grip on the seats of power remains unresolved. Perhaps the starting point is to question ourselves: are we, in fact, electoral fundamentalists?

My Life In The Blogosphere

My Life In The Blogosphere: Here at BuzzFeed and at BuzzFeed News, we also try not to weep for the old blogosphere, and most (though by no means all) of our top editors have roots in it. Mat Honan and Summer Anne Burton were blogging in the 1990s. Doree Shafrir was at Gawker when I wrote the Daily News’s first politics blog; Shani Hilton got her break on Tapped and on PostBourgie, which was also home to Joel Anderson and Tracy Clayton; Lisa Tozzi worked on some of the New York Times’s first strides into blogging; Chris Geidner got his start as a law blogger; Adam Serwer and Katherine Miller and Ginny Hughes and Jace Lacob and Hayes Brown and Tom Gara are all old-time bloggers. Jack Shepherd and Peggy Wang were early to reimagining blogging on this strange new BuzzFeed in the late aughts.

Comcast Changes Customer’s First Name To “A**hole,” Is Really Sorry – Consumerist

Comcast Changes Customer’s First Name To “A**hole,” Is Really Sorry – Consumerist: We know from years of talking to people on the frontlines of customer service and billing that they don’t always have the nicest things to say about customers; you probably wouldn’t either if your day consisted of being yelled at for issues beyond your control. But most people don’t let their distaste for customers boil over to the point where they actually rename a customer “A**hole Brown.”

Why The Rules Of The Road Aren’t Enough To Prevent People From Dying | FiveThirtyEight

Why The Rules Of The Road Aren’t Enough To Prevent People From Dying | FiveThirtyEight: “The engineer will usually calculate the load a beam must bear and then design it to hold some percentage of higher load, for safety. When building roads, the 85th percentile calculates the speed the engineers hope or intend people will travel, but then it’s used to design a road to meet that speed at a minimum, with a factor of safety allowing for faster travel,” he told me.



In other words, by adding additional “safety” to the road, it is designed to make people comfortable going faster than the engineers’ intended speed. This is known as the interpreted design speed (the speed people actually feel safe traveling), which is often significantly higher than the intended design speed. Think of a subdivision with wide, flat roads. The speed limit may be 25 mph, but you feel utterly comfortable doing 40.

Energy: Seize the day | The Economist

Energy: Seize the day | The Economist: The most straightforward piece of reform, pretty much everywhere, is simply to remove all the subsidies for producing or consuming fossil fuels. Last year governments around the world threw $550 billion down that rathole—on everything from holding down the price of petrol in poor countries to encouraging companies to search for oil. By one count, such handouts led to extra consumption that was responsible for 36% of global carbon emissions in 1980-2010.



Falling prices provide an opportunity to rethink this nonsense. Cash-strapped developing countries such as India and Indonesia have bravely begun to cut fuel subsidies, freeing up money to spend on hospitals and schools (see article). But the big oil exporters in the poor world, which tend to be the most egregious subsidisers of domestic fuel prices, have not followed their lead. Venezuela is close to default, yet petrol still costs a few cents a litre in Caracas. And rich countries still underwrite the production of oil and gas. Why should American taxpayers pay for Exxon to find hydrocarbons? All these subsidies should be binned.

Study: Islamic fundamentalism is not a marginal phenomenon in Europe

Study: Islamic fundamentalism is not a marginal phenomenon in Europe: The results show that if first and second generations are considered and if each definition is taken independently, almost 60% would return to the roots of Islam, 75% think there is only one interpretation of the Koran possible to which every Muslim should stick, and 65% say that religious rules are more important to them than the rules of the country in which they live. "However in second generation Muslims the levels are slightly lower (between 50% and 70%)," states the expert.



According to the study, Islamic fundamentalism, also known as Islam, prevails in Europe if compared to Christian fundamentalism, in which only 4% of Christians shared the ideas of the three statements of the definition. Among Protestants, fundamentalism reached 12%. "All fundamentalists are strictly religious but this does not mean that all strictly religious individuals are fundamentalists. Strict religiosity is more frequently associated to Islamic fundamentalists than to Christians," claims the author.

Boko Haram is not al-Qaeda - The Washington Post

Boko Haram is not al-Qaeda - The Washington Post: It’s critical to note that Boko Haram began as a largely non-violent (though anti-system) Muslim reform movement, targeting local imams and politicians that were unsympathetic to their strict interpretation of sharia law. The movement only became radicalized following the Nigerian government’s 2009 offensive, in which an estimated 700 people, including Boko Haram’s founder Mohammed Yusuf, were killed by members of the Nigerian security sector, while members of the Joint Task Force engaged in egregious human rights abuses and violations of the rule of law. While Abubaker Shekau may include in his sermons international jihadistrhetoric, much of Boko Haram’s ideology and mobilization centers on the specific abuses of the government.

Iowa is removing deadly dams, making whitewater parks

Iowa is removing deadly dams, making whitewater parks: Water quality has become a huge issue in Iowa. Studies show that a dam creates an impounded area behind it that increases the retention time of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediments, lowering the water quality of the impounded area. When a dam is removed, it may simply transport the problem downstream, but in some rivers, water quality has improved overall.

Dam removal leaves a wilder river and leads to improvements in habitat and number of species, Hoogeveen said.

And, in the bargain, save lives.

Broken Hollywood: The Biz’s Top Players Call Out Ways Industry Needs to Change | Variety

Broken Hollywood: The Biz’s Top Players Call Out Ways Industry Needs to Change | Variety: Kevin Tsujihara, Warner Bros. Entertainment chairman and CEO: I don’t think our business models are keeping pace with the changes taking place in consumer behavior.

Andrew Sullivan is going to stop blogging. No, blogging isn’t dead. - The Washington Post

Andrew Sullivan is going to stop blogging. No, blogging isn’t dead. - The Washington Post: The idea inherent in all of the death knells for blogging is that blogging is any one thing. It's not. As I explain to anyone who will listen to me — an ever-shrinking populace — a "blog" is simply a publishing medium. It's a way to put content on the Internet — usually a fast and, relatively, user-friendly way. But, the conflating a publishing medium with a sort of online writing — opinionated, snarky — that tends to be the preferred approach of many of its users is a mistake.



Back to Smith for a minute. Before he became an Internet kingpin, he and I were colleagues; he blogged about politics at Politico, I did it here. (Depressing!) What Ben did — lots of short hits, breaking news, excerpting from other articles — was totally different than the longer-form analysis I was largely practicing at the time. We both succeeded as "bloggers," but with totally different approaches. (I've come to realize, over time, that Ben's approach to covering political news online was closer to right than mine.)

Boom: Inside a British Bank-Bombing Spree - Bloomberg Business

Boom: Inside a British Bank-Bombing Spree - Bloomberg Business: As far as anyone knows, there has never been a gas attack on an American ATM. The leading theory points to the country’s primitive ATM cards. Along with Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, and not many other countries, the U.S. doesn’t require its plastic to contain an encryption chip, so stealing cards remains an effective, nonviolent way to get at the cash in an ATM. Encryption chip requirements are coming to the U.S. later this year, though. And given the gas raid’s many advantages, it may be only a matter of time until the back of an American ATM comes rocketing off.

How ‘Selma’ Got Smeared �

How ‘Selma’ Got Smeared �: Selma is, among many other things, a movie about tactics, and about how disagreements between men who see themselves as ideological comrades with strategic differences play out in the struggle for social justice. Those tensions are enacted on different fronts and in several pairings — not just in the scenes between King and Johnson, but in those between King’s men and the on-site leaders of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (including future U.S. Representative John Lewis); between Johnson and Governor George Wallace (a smug racist who nevertheless views himself as the reasonable middle between Johnson’s softheartedness and the outright thuggery of Dallas County, Alabama Sheriff Jim Clark); and, by implication, between King and the less pastorally inclined, more outspoken Malcolm X. One of the most brilliant and honest connections that DuVernay draws between King and Johnson is that, like so many leaders, each man sees himself as a righteous warrior caught in the middle. But King’s “middle” is between what he views as the politically motivated incrementalism of Johnson and the angry urgency of Malcolm, whereas Johnson sees his “middle” as between the angry urgency of King and the troglodyte resistance of a cadre of unreconstructed white Southern politicians — a world from which he himself had emerged. In outlining these dialectics in Selma, a movie in which street action alternates with negotiating-table hardball, DuVernay doesn’t create false equivalencies, but she does offer a perspective that many establishment historians and journalists cannot — an outsider’s view of how men in power think about themselves.

The voting rights martyr who divided America - CNN.com

The voting rights martyr who divided America - CNN.com: But people had far less sympathy for Liuzzo when she was murdered. Hate mail flooded her family's Detroit home, accusing her of being a deranged communist. Crosses were burned in front of the home. Her husband, Anthony Liuzzo Sr., had to hire armed guards to protect his family.

A Ladies' Home Journal magazine survey taken right after Liuzzo's death asked its readers what kind of woman would leave her family for a civil rights demonstration. The magazine suggested that she had brought death on herself by leaving home -- and 55% of its readers agreed.

The boy who didn't come back from heaven: inside a bestseller's 'deception' | Books | The Guardian

The boy who didn't come back from heaven: inside a bestseller's 'deception' | Books | The Guardian:

“You’re right, this whole story is fabricated,” Johnson recalled Beth
Malarkey telling him. “[But] because the book was a bestseller, no one
in the evangelical publishing industry wanted to kill it.”


Johnson would spend the next two years trying to help Beth get out
that message – that Alex’s story wasn’t real, that a child who had
almost died in a car accident in 2004 had been pushed to expand upon a
fairytale he’d told when he was six.




Following the accident, Alex spent two months in a coma and woke up
paralysed. But his description of what happened in between offered a
compelling tale of life after death, including visions of angels and
meeting Jesus. The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven, published in 2010 with
Alex and his father Kevin listed as co-authors, eventually became a
bestseller – one billed as a description of “miracles, angels, and life
beyond this world”.




But last week, following persistent rumours, Alex, now 16, revealed
that the detail in the book was false. “I said I went to heaven because I
thought it would get me attention,” he wrote on his own blog.

The Story of Diana: The Making of a Terrorist

The Story of Diana: The Making of a Terrorist:

The attempts at self-transformation turned collectives into a violent
groups with an almost savage emotional atmosphere. The group criticism
sessions inevitably led to hurt feelings and smoldering grudges. The
attempt to overcome traditional niceties led to exaggeratedly crude
behavior. People became stiff, unnatural, afraid they would be attacked,
and perhaps even purged, if they were found lacking in commitment to
the revolution. Many Weatherman became nervous, high-strung and
emotionally unstable. 

The military aspects of the training—karate, target shooting, practice
in street fighting and, later, the making of bombs—suffered in the
chaotic atmosphere of the collectives where everyone was always
overtired and underfed.

Diana’s commitment was to the revolution. Her loyalty to her friends and
her determination to repress all “bourgeois hang-ups” led her to
participate fully in everything, but friends say she was deeply upset by
much that was happening. A gentle woman who preferred staying with one
man at a time, Diana questioned both the sexual excesses and the
emphasis on violence and was brutally criticized as a
result. Nevertheless, she was often the one who pressed for a rest
during the long, highly chafed meetings and she tried, largely without
success, to prevent the collectives from becoming excessively cold and
brutal.

Making Sense of Ferguson | STLCurator

Making Sense of Ferguson | STLCurator

“Society’s punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.”

– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

.....

Sheriffs Want Popular Police-Tracking App Disabled | NBC4 Washington: Sheriffs are campaigning to pressure Google Inc. to turn off a feature on its Waze traffic software that warns drivers when police are nearby. They say one of the technology industry's most popular mobile apps could put officers' lives in danger from would-be police killers who can find where their targets are parked.

A final cry for attention

A stranger e-mailed saying he planned to kill himself. What was I supposed to do? - The Washington Post: On Dec. 10, 2013, an American expat in Japan
e-mailed a handful of writers, many of them Washington Post reporters, a suicide note.

Panel clears CIA officials accused of spying on Senate committee probing torture - Yahoo News

Panel clears CIA officials accused of spying on Senate committee probing torture - Yahoo News: After investigating the incident, the CIA inspector general, David Buckley, referred the matter to the Justice Department for potential violations by agency officials of two federal laws: the Wiretap Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. (The Justice Department has since declined to prosecute.)

Buckley, who announced his resignation last month, also recommended that the accountability board be appointed to review possible discipline of the employees, concluding that some of them had displayed a “lack of candor” to his investigators in the course of his review.

But the accountability board headed by Bayh and Bauer rejected nearly every finding by the inspector general.



It concluded that there was “no basis” for the Justice Department referral, noting that one of the officials who oversaw the matter “reasonably believed” he was acting under the authority of Brennan himself and that the director had cautioned against intruding on the Senate’s internal work product.

Best Professional Advice I Ever Got | Eric Niebler

Best Professional Advice I Ever Got | Eric Niebler: Eric, every now and then I’m going to come into your office and ask you, “What are you working on that I don’t know about?” You should always have something to tell me.

What ‘American Sniper’ Gets Right - The Daily Beast

What ‘American Sniper’ Gets Right - The Daily Beast:

People on the left go back and forth with those on the right about
the movie’s merits. Is it pro-war? Is it anti-war? And while a platoon
of professional essayists, film aficionados and all around ‘I’m
smarter-than-you’ folks attack one another’s opinions, there seem to be a
couple items that have been forgotten along the side of the long road
we’ve traveled for 15 years—15 years!—in Iraq and Afghanistan.



The
most obvious is the lack of attention paid to the fact that only about
one percent of our population has borne the weight of war. Then there
are the families left behind while those fighting are deployed multiple
times to both theaters—Iraq and Afghanistan—breaking the military and
too often breaking those who sit state-side, worrying, waiting, while
99% of everyone around them dances through the day without any real
prospect of danger or death knocking on their door.

There are angry hyper partisans of all ages

I lost my dad to Fox News: How a generation was captured by thrashing hysteria - Salon.com:

I do not blame or condemn my father for his opinions. If you
consumed a daily diet of right-wing fury, erroneously labeled “news,” you
could very likely end up in the same place. Again, this is all by
design. Let’s call it the Fox News effect. Take sweet, kindly senior
citizens and feed them a steady stream of demagoguery and repetition,
all wrapped in the laughable slogan of “fair and balanced.” Even
watching the commercials on Fox, one is treated to sales pitches for
gold and emergency food rations, the product cornerstones of the
paranoid. To some people the idea of retirees yelling at the television
all day may seem funny, but this isn’t a joke. We’re losing the nation’s
grandparents, and it’s an American tragedy.

People talk about the
imminent “death” of Fox News itself, because of an ever-aging
demographic.



Again, Frank Rich makes this case, but I think his argument
is dubious. Certainly the audience is graying to oblivion, but it’s a
cold comfort to those of us who watch our parents or grandparents drown
in an incessant downpour of outrage. We will only see the “End of Fox
News” when my father and his contemporaries die. I do not want to watch
my father and his entire generation spend their remaining years enraged
at utter nonsense.

The American Dream shatters in Prince George’s County | The Washington Post

The American Dream shatters in Prince George’s County | The Washington Post: Still, Jennifer and Fred managed to graduate college, although their mothers could lend only moral support. Today, she works as a supervisor in the federal workforce. He is a manager for a sports memorabilia firm.

The problem is not their income but their home. Once a source of wealth, it is now their biggest financial burden.

The Bryants owe just over $560,000 on their house, which they estimate is worth about $80,000 less than that. Since they moved in 2001, their monthly payment has more than doubled to nearly $3,900 a month — a predicament that arose because of an ill-advised refinancing into a loan whose terms the federal government now deems predatory.

The East Coast May Be About To Get One Of The Worst Blizzards It’s Ever Seen | FiveThirtyEight

The East Coast May Be About To Get One Of The Worst Blizzards It’s Ever Seen | FiveThirtyEight: A historic blizzard is on track to hit southern New England and the northern mid-Atlantic — including Boston, New York City and possibly Philadelphia — early this week. A storm system will develop off the East Coast during the day Monday and throw back moisture into cold air Monday evening and into Tuesday. Snow may fall at a rate of 2 inches to 4 inches per hour in some spots.

But just how historic will the storm be?



It could easily make the all-time top 10 in terms of snowfall in all three cities, and it may claim the No. 1 spot in Boston and New York.

Why My Son Isn't Vaccinated (It's Not What You Think)�|�Jamie Davis Smith

Why My Son Isn't Vaccinated (It's Not What You Think)�|�Jamie Davis Smith: There are many children, no doubt some in your very own community, who will not be able to be vaccinated because of health issues ranging from allergies, to immune system disorders, to cancer treatments, which can completely wipe out their immune systems. Certainly, there are babies. These children are among the most vulnerable in our society -- and also the least likely to weather a bout with a serious disease.

Those who are old enough to be vaccinated and otherwise healthy enough to receive vaccines -- but do not -- put my infant son at risk.



They put children so sick they cannot receive vaccines at risk for suffering from preventable diseases and in extreme instances, a completely preventable death.

Holy Shit, I Interviewed the President — Medium

Holy Shit, I Interviewed the President — Medium:

Glozell, Bethany and I don’t
sit in fancy news studios surrounded by fifty thousand dollar cameras
and polished metal and glass backdrops with inlayed 90-inch LCD screens.
People trust us because we’ve spent years developing a relationship
with them. We have been scrutinized and found not evil. Our legitimacy
comes from honesty, not from cultural signals or institutions.

And
with young people having no reasons to trust those cultural signals
that we older folks were raised with, this is the only thing that works
for them anymore. Our values and interests mesh with theirs enough that
they’ve come to trust us. They trust us to make content that they will
enjoy and they trust us to be the kind of people they can look up to.
People who betray that trust risk losing everything that they have
built.

To the journalists
who have criticized me for getting Obama to sign something for me, or
Glozell for saying the word “dick,” or Bethany for saying that she isn’t
very involved in politics, there’s something you need to understand:
Our legitimacy springs exclusively from honesty. I have to be who I am. I
have to act the way I feel like acting, or I am lying to my audience.

Zivotofsky v. Kerry: The Supreme Court case over Israel and US foreign policy, explained - Vox

Zivotofsky v. Kerry: The Supreme Court case over Israel and US foreign policy, explained - Vox: The primary reason that the court will likely side against Zivotofsky is that the Constitution is widely understood as giving the executive branch the bulk of foreign policy powers. That derives from something called the "sole organ" doctrine, named for a speech that founding father John Marshall gave in 1800, a year before he became the chief justice of the Supreme Court. Marshall said, "The President is the sole organ of the nation in its external relations, and its sole representative with foreign nations." A 1936 Supreme Court decision, United States v. Curtiss-Wright, ruled that the "sole organ" doctrine grants the president inherent constitutional powers in foreign relations.

Those inherent presidential powers are considered to include authority to recognize countries and borders, which is central to the Jerusalem issue. The idea is that the US government needs to be a single unified entity on the world stage in order to conduct effective foreign policy. Letting the president and Congress independently set their own foreign policies would lead to chaos.

This Is What War In Ukraine Looks Like - BuzzFeed News

This Is What War In Ukraine Looks Like - BuzzFeed News: Pro-Russian rebels unleashed a barrage of rocket fire against the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol Saturday. The rockets killed at least 30 civilians.

American Sniper’s “wolves, sheep, and sheepdogs” speech has a surprising history with conservatives and the right wing.

American Sniper’s “wolves, sheep, and sheepdogs” speech has a surprising history with conservatives and the right wing.:

After leaving his service as a Navy SEAL and publishing his
memoir, Chris Kyle started mentoring other veterans with PTSD. As the
movie mentions in its conclusion, Chris Kyle was killed by another
veteran, a Marine. Are Marines not sheepdogs? Or did Kyle’s killer turn
into a wolf? Most importantly, as the analogy goes, why couldn’t Kyle
tell the difference?

Because the analogy is simplistic, and in its simplicity,
dangerous. It divides the world into black and white, into a
good-versus-evil struggle that the real world doesn’t match. We aren’t
divided into sheep, sheepdogs, and wolves. We are all humans.

Ask Michael Brown. Ask Eric Garner.

Ask Chris Kyle.

On Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs - Dave Grossman

On Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs - Dave Grossman: We know that the sheep live in denial, that is what makes them sheep.
They do not want to believe that there is evil in the world. They can
accept the fact that fires can happen, which is why they want fire
extinguishers, fire sprinklers, fire alarms and fire exits throughout
their kids' schools.





But many of them are outraged at the idea of putting an armed police
officer in their kid's school. Our children are thousands of times more
likely to be killed or seriously injured by school violence than fire,
but the sheep's only response to the possibility of violence is denial.
The idea of someone coming to kill or harm their child is just too hard,
and so they chose the path of denial.





The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the
wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference,
though, is that the sheepdog must not, can not and will not ever harm
the sheep. Any sheep dog who intentionally harms the lowliest little
lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work any other way,
at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours.





Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that
there are wolves in the land. They would prefer that he didn't tell them
where to go, or give them traffic tickets, or stand at the ready in our
airports in camouflage fatigues holding an M-16. The sheep would much
rather have the sheepdog cash in his fangs, spray paint himself white,
and go, "Baa."





Until the wolf shows up. Then the entire flock tries desperately to hide behind one lonely sheepdog.

Every movie rewrites history. What American Sniper did is much, much worse. - Vox

Every movie rewrites history. What American Sniper did is much, much worse. - Vox:

American Sniper has a problem. It's a movie about a black-and-white distinction between good and evil, but it is set almost entirely in the Iraq War, which can only be honestly portrayed in shades of gray.





Faced with a choice between altering its narrative
to account for that gray versus altering the facts of history, the film
chose the latter. It adopted an "honesty shmonesty" approach to the
war: in its retelling, Iraq was a fight of Good Americans against Bad
Terrorists, led by Chris Kyle, the Good-est American of them all.









The result is a sort of Hezbollah martyr video for the Fox News set; recruitment propaganda for culture-war extremists. In
the world of this movie, the Iraq war is an extension of the war on
terror; heroes with guns are our only hope of salvation; and anyone who
doubts that is part of the problem. And if the film's historic box office success and many award nominations are anything to go by, that propaganda is frighteningly effective.

The AI Revolution: Road to Superintelligence - Wait But Why

The AI Revolution: Road to Superintelligence - Wait But Why: It takes decades for the first AI system to reach low-level general intelligence, but it finally happens. A computer is able understand the world around it as well as a human four-year-old. Suddenly, within an hour of hitting that milestone, the system pumps out the grand theory of physics that unifies general relativity and quantum mechanics, something no human has been able to definitively do. 90 minutes after that, the AI has become an ASI, 170,000 times more intelligent than a human.

Superintelligence of that magnitude is not something we can remotely grasp, any more than a bumblebee can wrap its head around Keynesian Economics. In our world, smart means a 130 IQ and stupid means an 85 IQ—we don’t have a word for an IQ of 12,952.

What we do know is that the history of humans on the Earth suggests a clear rule: with intelligence comes power. Which means an ASI, when we create it, will be the most powerful being in the history of life on Earth, and all living things, including humans, will be entirely at its whim—and this might happen in the next few decades.

Video: Sky News cuts off Charlie Hebdo writer when she tries to display Mohammed cartoon � Hot Air

Video: Sky News cuts off Charlie Hebdo writer when she tries to display Mohammed cartoon � Hot Air: Why humiliate a grieving person this way? She has the balls to stand by her work in the name of free speech, at great personal risk to herself, and this is how she’s treated? Literally pissing on Stephane Charbonnier’s grave would be less hurtful, I think, than taking up his killers’ cause this way.

'American Sniper': The Strategy Behind Warner Bros.' $107M Opening - The Hollywood Reporter

'American Sniper': The Strategy Behind Warner Bros.' $107M Opening - The Hollywood Reporter: All the while, Warners aggressively courted members of the military and veterans groups, hiring Glover Park Group, a leading Washington-based consulting firm. Most modern war films, from Green Zone to Zero Dark Thirty, have ignited potentially damaging debate about U.S. policies before their openings, but not Sniper (only with its phenomenal launch has such debate begun). "This is the first contemporary mainstream war film that really tells a personal story about soldiers. It is very unusual," says Sue Kroll, president of worldwide marketing and international distribution at Warners. Oscar winner The Hurt Locker likewise focused on the personal, but the indie film, released in June 2009, never was seen by the masses and topped out at $17 million domestic.

NFL Deflategate: Controversy shouldn’t overshadow the Super Bowl | The MMQB with Peter King

NFL Deflategate: Controversy shouldn’t overshadow the Super Bowl | The MMQB with Peter King:

But don’t try turning this story about two pounds per square inch of
missing air into the Hornung-Karras gambling investigation, because it
ain’t that. This doesn’t rise to the level of threatening the integrity
of the game in any lasting way. Sorry, but I’m not buying into that
popular level of hyperventilation.



Some perspective, please?





When the Patriots’ football deflation scandal leads all three
broadcast networks’ news broadcasts, as it did on Thursday night, we
might officially be through the looking glass. If that’s the most
important story in the world, then it says more about our judgment and
our focus than it does the significance of the topic. And it also
proves, to no surprise, that controversy drives both the league and the
news cycle like never before. (And how lucky are we that deflate rhymes with gate, as if we ever needed the impetus of a rhyme to attach -gate to any tempest? Who can forget the Super Bowl’s Nipplegate?)

Yemen in Crisis | European Council on Foreign Relations

Yemen in Crisis | European Council on Foreign Relations:


It’s hard to divine which way things in Yemen are heading – an
uncertain situation has grown even more difficult to read. It appears
that the Houthis—who have enthusiastically taken aim at the president
and the cabinet over the past week’s crisis—are largely shocked that the
president has called their bluff. In the formerly independent South,
longstanding calls for secession have grown even louder. Across the
country, frustration seems mounting – both at the country’s power
brokers and at the international actors that, until recently, had hailed
the country’s political process as a model transition to democracy.





The next few days will unquestionably be crucial.  At writing time,
Houthi fighters reportedly have the homes of many members of the
now-resigned cabinet under siege. All eyes are set on Sunday’s meeting
of the two houses of the Yemeni parliament, which could very well reject
the president’s resignation, sending the country into further
uncertainty. Indeed, little remains clear at the moment, except for the
fact that the country is likely facing its most crucial juncture since
the overthrow of the Mutawakkilite Monarchy on 26 September, 1962.

Iran Sanctions Supporters Don't Want To Improve Nuclear Talks. They Want To Destroy Them.

Iran Sanctions Supporters Don't Want To Improve Nuclear Talks. They Want To Destroy Them.: The Republican freshman congressman-turned-freshman senator from Arkansas opened up while speaking to a conference at the Heritage Foundation on Jan. 15. In previously overlooked remarks, he had this to say about congressional proposals to threaten Iran with new sanctions: "Certain voices call for congressional restraint urging Congress not to act now, lest Iran walk away from the negotiating table, undermining the fabled yet always absent moderates in Iran. But the end of these negotiations isn't an unintended consequence of congressional action. It is very much an intended consequence -- a feature, not a bug."



Cotton is a member of the Senate committees on intelligence and the armed services.

Islamophobia Is Not a Myth - The Atlantic

Islamophobia Is Not a Myth - The Atlantic: Says O'Neill, "According to federal crime stats, in 2009 there were 107 anti-Muslim hate crimes; in 2010, there were 160. In a country of 330 million people, this is exceptionally low." But in 2000, there were 28 such incidents. What's wrong with inveighing against anti-Muslim bigotry that's responsible for 100 or so "extra" hate-crimes, or noting that the numbers were much worse immediately after 9/11... and worrying a spike could happen again? Calling for tolerance of a minority group at a moment of plausible peril is costless, prudent and humane, not objectionable. And if relative tolerance then prevails, that's a success, not an occasion to complain that elites weren't trusting enough in the masses.