North Carolina’s Dominance Fails to Cover Cheating’s Stain - The New York Times

North Carolina’s Dominance Fails to Cover Cheating’s Stain - The New York Times:

A few years back, Reginald Hildebrand, who is black and is a retired professor of history who taught in the department of African and Afro-American studies, wrote a searching essay. He pointed to evidence that, made-up classes aside, it was an otherwise rigorous department.

He wrote of the fundamental conflict between the educational mission of a great university and “running a successful professional minor league franchise” such as Tar Heels basketball. A good coach, he noted, for a revenue-producing sport is paid more than some entire departments. When athletics sets the priorities, one cannot help but corrode the other.

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IASC: The Hedgehog Review - Volume 16, No. 3 (Fall 2014) - Falling -

IASC: The Hedgehog Review - Volume 16, No. 3 (Fall 2014) - Falling -: "If you’re poor, what might have been a minor annoyance, or even a major inconvenience, becomes something of a disaster. Your hard drive crashes? Who’s going to pay for the recovery of its data, not to mention the new computer? I’m not playing solitaire on this machine; the hard drive holds my work, virtually my life. It is not a luxury for me but a necessity. I need dental work. Anybody got $10,000? Dentists are not a luxury. Dental disease can make you seriously ill. Lose your cellphone? What may be a luxury to some is a necessity to me. Without that telephone and that computer, my life as I have known it would cease to exist. Not long after, so would I. I am not eager for that to happen. Need to go to a funeral hundreds of miles away? Who pays for the plane ticket? In the case of the funeral, my nephew paid for the plane ticket. My daughter and son-in-law paid for the dental work. Sometimes, I find it deeply humiliating that I am dependent on such kindnesses when I would prefer that the kindnesses flow the other way. Most of the time, though, I am just extremely grateful for the help of family and friends. It’s not so much humiliating as it is humbling, which is a good thing.
"



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A Personal Story » Community | GovLoop

A Personal Story » Community | GovLoop:

I started my career as a field biologist. For a long time I wanted to live in the rural West where I grew up, but jobs were scarce. I switched to writing when my son was born so I could spend more time at home. I have freelanced, operated the scoreboard at a local minor league baseball club, and waitressed. I worked for a state university and two different federal agencies: the DOI Fish and Wildlife Service, and (my current employer) the USDA Forest Service.

I love the mission of my agency: caring for the land and serving people. Public lands are our birthright, a national treasure, and rightfully the envy of many other countries.

I don’t know if this challenges the perceptions of the “typical” government worker, because I am just a real person. Completely ordinary, just like you. I work for the federal government and I care a lot about what I do. I am not a bureaucrat.

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Oliver Sipple - Wikipedia

Oliver Sipple - Wikipedia:

According to a 2006 article in The Washington Post, Sipple went through a period of estrangement with his parents, but the family later reconciled with him. Sipple's brother, George, told the newspaper, "[Our parents] accepted it. That was all. They didn't like it, but they still accepted. He was welcomed. Only thing was: Don't bring a lot of your friends."^[7]

Sipple's mental and physical health sharply declined over the years. He drank heavily, gained weight to 300 lb (140 kg), was fitted with a pacemaker, and became paranoid and suicidal. The incident brought him so much attention that, later in life, while drinking, he would express regret towards grabbing Moore's gun. Sipple had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia according to the coroner's report.^[6] On February 2, 1989, he was found dead in his bed, at the age of 47.

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Illegal Pot Farms Are Poisoning California’s Forests - The Atlantic

Illegal Pot Farms Are Poisoning California’s Forests - The Atlantic:

Growers bait open tuna cans with pesticides, which are often flavored like meat or peanut butter, or string up poisoned hot dogs on fishhooks. People have found bears, foxes, vultures, and deer with chemicals from grow sites in their bodies. One study of barred owls (Strix varia) in the Pacific Northwest found that 80 percent of the birds tested positive. And for every animal found, there are probably dozens more in a similar condition.

“It’s a massive problem,” says Craig Thompson, a wildlife ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service. “People don’t tend to grasp the industrial scale of what’s going on. There are thousands of these sites in places the public thinks are pristine, with obscene amounts of chemicals at each one. Each one is a little environmental disaster.”

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jseliger comments on We are the City of Seattle and we are tackling a huge housing affordability crisis. AMA March 30, 12-1pm PST

jseliger comments on We are the City of Seattle and we are tackling a huge housing affordability crisis. AMA March 30, 12-1pm PST: "If we really want affordable housing, all we have to do is legalize the building of it. But existing owners HATE the competition and want to see the value of their assets go up. So we don't get it; instead, we see lots of ineffective bandaids and workarounds and special programs that don't (and can't) really work, because the only way to lower the price of a good in the face of rising demand is dramatically increased supply.
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Gale Force: Borough President Gale Brewer Makes Manhattan Feel Small | Observer

Gale Force: Borough President Gale Brewer Makes Manhattan Feel Small | Observer:

Ms. Brewer gets along swimmingly with all her fellow borough presidents, noting the five of them have a group text message string. “You probably can’t—no, you can’t see these texts,” she says with a laugh. Mr. Oddo recalled a recent meeting the five of them had with Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña. The “two alpha males,” Eric Adams of Brooklyn and Rubén Díaz Jr. of the Bronx, battled it out to talk first. Then Melinda Katz of Queens jumped in, Mr. Oddo said.

After, Ms. Brewer looked at Mr. Oddo. He moved to yield to her, but Ms. Brewer mouthed to him: “I have her cellphone number. I can talk to her later.”

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Report: Sun to be in your eyes during change-of-command ceremony

Report: Sun to be in your eyes during change-of-command ceremony: "SAN DIEGO — According to sources, Coast Guard Sector San Diego personnel will hold a change of command ceremony on base today at 1100 this morning. However, the whole crew in formation will be staring directly at the blazing sun for the entire 6 hour duration.

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The Lion City II - Majulah on Vimeo

The Lion City II - Majulah on Vimeo:

When we pass by landscapes they appear fixed in time, but they change around us constantly. The idea behind this film is to reveal this change by returning to the same camera positions over the years.

Special thanks to Michael for composing the amazing soundtrack, and for keeping me motivated over the past few years of shooting. This was a long term collaboration with Michael who visited every year from Copenhagen so we could develop the music and footage side by side, each influencing the other. We've had a lot of requests for the soundtrack and Michael is making it available for your personal listening for free - listen or download at: sepiaproductions.net

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soggypoophair comments on Maine's new opiate limit causing problems for patients.

soggypoophair comments on Maine's new opiate limit causing problems for patients.: "
Imagine that you experience an injury or illness that renders you in the worst pain of your life every single moment, 24/7. It's actually worse than that, my condition makes the worst pain prior seem like rainbows and butterflies. You spend weeks going to your doctor, jumping through all the appropriate hoops, trying to literally not throw yourself in front of a truck in the process because of the agony. Minutes pass like hours, hours pass like days. You do not want to get "high" or have a good time, you just want to not be in pain. Finally, you get a script. Finally, you have your life back. You fall to your knees and thank the metaphorical god for modern medicine. The nightmare is over.



Then this crackdown happens. The nightmare happens all over again. You can't get the script that saved your life, for no other reason than other people were milking the system and lawmakers didn't like it. Imagine if cancer patients went in to get their chemo and were told "Sorry, there are now strict regulations in place, and we can only give you 30% of this much weaker chemo drug instead.""



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Joe Medicine Crow - Wikipedia

Joe Medicine Crow - Wikipedia: "After spending the latter half of 1942 working in the naval ship yards in Bremerton, Washington, Medicine Crow joined the Army in 1943.^[5] He became a scout in the 103rd Infantry Division, and fought in World War II. Whenever he went into battle, he wore his war paint beneath his uniform and a sacred eagle feather beneath his helmet.^[3]



Medicine Crow completed all four tasks required to become a war chief: touching an enemy without killing him (counting coup), taking an enemy's weapon, leading a successful war party, and stealing an enemy's horse."



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Charges: Waseca Man Who Said Black Man Shot Him, Actually Shot Himself - Southern Minnesota News

Charges: Waseca Man Who Said Black Man Shot Him, Actually Shot Himself - Southern Minnesota News:

The officer says Thissen told him that a woman and a black man with a gun were arguing in the parking lot and he got in between them. At that point, Thissen says he and the man began fighting and he was shot during a struggle for the gun.

Police reviewed surveillance video from a business nearby and saw nothing of the sort. They then searched Thissen’s car and found a black revolver with one fired casing in the cylinder.

Thissen was confronted with the evidence and admitted he made up the story about the black man shooting him, explaining that he accidentally shot himself.  He says it happened when he was checking the gun to see if it was loaded and his thumb slipped off the hammer.

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America Is Ill-Prepared to Counter Russia’s Information Warfare - WSJ

America Is Ill-Prepared to Counter Russia’s Information Warfare - WSJ:

A report last year by RAND Corp., “The Russian ‘Firehose of Falsehood’ Propaganda Model ,” noted that cyberpropaganda is practically a career path in Russia. A former paid troll told Radio Free Europe that teams were on duty around the clock in 12-hour shifts and he was required to post at least 135 comments of not fewer than 200 characters each.

In effect, Moscow has developed a high-volume, multichannel propaganda machine aimed at advancing its foreign and security policy. Along with the traditional propaganda tools—favoring friendly outlets and sponsoring ideological journals—this represents an incredibly powerful tool.

Now extrapolate one step further: Apply botnets, artificial intelligence and other next-generation technology. The result will be automated propaganda, rapid spamming and more. We shouldn’t be surprised to see any of this in the future.

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This is how you stop fake news - The Washington Post

This is how you stop fake news - The Washington Post: "On the other hand, when I followed the death panel rumor with a Republican politician’s correction, the debunking worked. All the respondents — Republicans and Democrats alike — were far more likely to reject the veracity of death panels. And a week later, the citizens exposed to the quote from the Republican remained more likely to reject the death panel rumor — although again, the power of that correction faded.

The lessons of my study are clear.



Just as important as how a rumor is debunked is who does the debunking. Politicians who support good public policy by speaking against their partisan interests — in this case, Republicans speaking out against the death panel rumors — are considered credible sources by citizens from across the ideological spectrum."



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Why Action Scenes in Big Budget Movies Have Become So Boring | IndieWire

Why Action Scenes in Big Budget Movies Have Become So Boring | IndieWire:

Ironically, the greatest battle scene of the last two years was not on the big screen with superheroes, but on HBO, with director Miguel Sapochnik’s ”Battle of the Bastards” episode of “Game of Thrones.” The action and effects were big, but that’s not what made it work so well. The underlying tension of the scene was John Snow not heeding his sister Sansa’s insight to her sadistic former captor Ramsay Bolton. The battle scene became a filmmaking masterclass in the use of space, as Sapochnik expertly lured Snow (and the audience) into a sense of victory — only to become enclosed by Ramsay’s trap. Just as space disappears and we lose our grounding in a speedily edited slaughter, Sansa shows up with reinforcements to open the trap. It’s an epic triumph: She has conquered her past, and is now seen as a leader to be taken seriously.

The action, the pace, the story, and the direction are all one unified force. Our involvement is not based on the effects and size of the scene, which were impressive for television, but by doing what Hollywood has always done best — storytelling through physical action.

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Within integrated schools, de facto segregation persists - Baltimore Sun

Within integrated schools, de facto segregation persists - Baltimore Sun:

But within that diversity, school leaders have uncovered a de facto system of segregation.

Enrollment data obtained by The Baltimore Sun through a public records request shows that the district's advanced classes — honors, gifted and talented, and AP — are disproportionately white, while the regular and remedial classes are disproportionately black.

There are twice as many white students as black students in Howard schools. But demographics alone doesn't explain the disparities.

In elementary school, nearly five times as many white students as black students are enrolled in gifted and talented courses. In middle school, it's nearly four times as many.

By high school, where the menu of advanced classes expands to include honors, the gaps persist, with twice as many white students in honors classes and three times as many in gifted and talented courses.

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Inside Alabama’s Auto Jobs Boom: Cheap Wages, Little Training, Crushed Limbs - Bloomberg

Inside Alabama’s Auto Jobs Boom: Cheap Wages, Little Training, Crushed Limbs - Bloomberg:

After Allen’s injury, Surge Staffing gathered its 80 or so Matsu workers for a meeting, says Wolfsberger, the former Surge manager. That’s when the agency learned the plant had provided no hands-on training, routinely ordered untrained temps to operate machines, sped up presses beyond manufacturers’ specifications, and allowed oil to leak onto the floor. “Upper management knew all that. They just looked the other way,” says Wolfsberger, who left Surge in 2014 and now manages a billiards parlor. “They treated people like interchangeable parts.”

An administrative law judge with the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission approved a $103,000 fine against Matsu, ruling that Allen’s injuries resulted from its “conscious disregard or plain indifference” to his safety. Matcor-Matsu did not respond to phone messages and emailed questions, nor did its attorney, John Coleman. After the commission’s 2015 decision, Coleman told the Birmingham News the judge was mistaken and that Allen was trained but didn’t follow the rules. Allen sued the company and reached a multimillion-dollar settlement out of court. He and his wife purchased 15 acres and a big house with a fish pond near the Tennessee River, prepaid their kids’ college tuition, and bought a bright-green Buick Roadmaster. “I’d rather have my arm back any day,” Allen says.

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Why Does Mount Rushmore Exist? - The New York Times

Why Does Mount Rushmore Exist? - The New York Times: "Mount Rushmore is not just big; it is about bigness — a monument to monumentalism. Borglum was obsessed with America’s size: the heroic story of a handful of tiny East Coast settlements growing to engulf an entire continent. The four presidents were chosen largely for their roles in this expansion. Jefferson, for instance, not only wrote the Declaration of Independence but also greatly increased the country via the Louisiana Purchase. Teddy Roosevelt oversaw the creation of the Panama Canal, which increased America’s global reach.

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The Man in the Rockefeller Suit | Vanity Fair

The Man in the Rockefeller Suit | Vanity Fair: "By snatching his seven-year-old daughter from her mother’s custody, after a bitter divorce, the man calling himself Clark Rockefeller blew the lid off a lifelong con game which had culminated with his posing as a scion of the famous dynasty. The 47-year-old impostor charmed his way into exclusive communities, clubs, and financial institutions—marrying a Harvard M.B.A.; working at Kidder, Peabody; and showing off an extraordinary art collection—until his arrest brought him face-to-face with his past and with questions regarding skeletal remains dug up in a California backyard.
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Is it too late to save Hong Kong from Beijing’s authoritarian grasp? | World news | The Guardian

Is it too late to save Hong Kong from Beijing’s authoritarian grasp? | World news | The Guardian:

I have been visiting Hong Kong since the late 1990s, and after more than a week of scheduled interviews and spontaneous encounters with people of many different walks of life and political persuasions, what I found was an unmistakable, shared sense of foreboding among the people of the city. In formal interviews and over meals in crowded, neighbourhood restaurants, the fear people expressed was that their home – one of Asia’s freest and most cosmopolitan cities – is locked on a collision course with the authoritarian system that governs China.

The freedoms and democratic culture that make Hong Kong so special might not survive. As one prominent lawyer put it to me: “If there is a solution to Hong Kong’s predicament, surely no one has imagined it yet.”

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The House Freedom Caucus Saves America | The Resurgent

The House Freedom Caucus Saves America | The Resurgent:

The House Freedom Caucus just saved the Republican Party from itself and saved the United States from a Republican attempt to just do something on health care no matter how bad that something might be.

They stood on principle and are being assailed for it by the Republican establishment.

The legislation was deeply flawed and would have hurt a great many Americans. It would have made it harder for free market solutions to lower costs in health care and would have harmed senior citizens.

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House Democrats explain why they think Republicans keep failing on health care - Vox

House Democrats explain why they think Republicans keep failing on health care - Vox:

House Democrats have a theory for why Republicans failed spectacularly in their attempt to pass a new health care bill filled with longstanding Republican health care policy ideas.

Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI) said it’s because Congress already did so — way back in 2010. It’s now called Obamacare.

“They’re now realizing, maybe for the first time, that we took all of their best ideas and put it in the Affordable Care Act. And now they have nowhere else to go,” Kind said of congressional Republicans in an interview on Thursday afternoon.

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Double amputee, Marine veteran sworn-in as N.Y. police officer

Double amputee, Marine veteran sworn-in as N.Y. police officer:

A U.S. Marine veteran who lost his legs during a tour of duty in Afghanistan is believed to be the first-ever double amputee to become a full active duty police officer in the U.S.

Matias Ferreira was sworn in Friday as an officer with the Suffolk County Police Department in New York, six years after he stepped on an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan.

The agency, in a Facebook post, said the injury didn't deter him from achieving his life-long dream of becoming a police officer. Ferreira was sworn in with a group of 58 other officers, 43 of whom also had prior military experience.

The class elected Ferreira its president and underwent 29 weeks of training. They'll start work in the coming week.

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The Emergency Power Cut-Out Quandary : talesfromtechsupport

The Emergency Power Cut-Out Quandary : talesfromtechsupport:

After I got out of the Army I went to work as a tech support contractor for the Marines and learned a valuable lesson. Marines are great at breaking things, be it the enemies things or USMC IT resources. This story is about the intersection of the USMC Private First Class and some very poor engineering.

So, the guts of what I supported was essentially a network in a trailer. It had switches, routers, servers, a NAS device, and three rack mounted UPS systems. All of this stuff was covered by canvas and connected internally in a magnificent web of cabling. All of this cabling led to an I/O panel above where the tail gate dropped into a sort of desk. Now, central to the power panel was the Emergency Stop Switch which was wired to the serial ports on the UPS systems to kill power in an emergency.

Makes sense, right? Well, due to some craptastical engineering, not only did it turn the UPS systems off, it also managed to fry the controller boards so they would never turn on again.

Enter my service call, where I am called out to the field from my nice cushy office to diagnose and repair a power failure. I come out and sure enough, no power. I try turning the UPS systems on, no dice. I check to make sure the cabling is all connected right, yup. Then, on a whim I pull on the emergency stop button and it clicks back out.

Me: Why was the emergency stop pressed? Marine: I dunno. It was like that when we got here. Me: Was there an overnight watch? Marine: Yes. PFC Dingus was on watch last night. Me: Someone needs to go get him right now.

Wait a while

PFC Dingus arrives loudly exclaiming innocence, with his cover pulled suspiciously low.

Me: Please take of your cover. He slowly removes it to expose the big red circle on the side of his forehead.

Heads shake around the room.

Apparently PFC Dingus fell asleep on watch and fell forward effectively head-butting the emergency stop button (and costing the USMC about $12,000 in parts and labor)

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The odyssey of Viktor Belenko: a fascinating footnote to the Cold War. – SeanMunger.com

The odyssey of Viktor Belenko: a fascinating footnote to the Cold War. – SeanMunger.com: "The story of Viktor Belenko’s defection, and particularly his acclimatization to life in the United States, was told brilliantly in the 1980 biography MiG Pilot by John Barron, which I read years ago and greatly enjoyed. As a (now) high-profile Soviet defector, Belenko thought, during his early days in the USA, that CIA officials arranged things for him to make the United States look good–a supermarket, for example. In a memorable incident recounted in MiG Pilot, Belenko went into a store, was overwhelmed by the vast array of goods for sale, and thought it was sort of a Potemkin village created for his benefit–only to learn later that all stores are like that.

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News 3/24/17 | HIStalk

News 3/24/17 | HIStalk:

A study in progress postulates that rising mortality and morbidity in midlife, non-Hispanic Americans is due to the “cumulative disadvantage” of poor job prospects for those with low levels of education, leading to “deaths of despair.” 

In contrast, mortality rates in Europe are going down overall, decreasing even more rapidly for those without higher education.

The authors note a startling statistic – whites aged 50-54 had a 30 percent lower mortality rate than blacks in 1999, but the white mortality rate is now 30 percent higher. It also notes that overprescribing of opioids for pain has made things much worse.

People will be less-healthy at age 65 than those who preceded them, which has significant implications for Medicare.

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Women and Girls in Afghanistan — Razia's Ray of Hope

Women and Girls in Afghanistan — Razia's Ray of Hope:

Prior to the Soviet occupation and Taliban takeover, Afghanistan was a relatively liberal country with a progressive outlook on women’s rights. Afghan women comprised 50% of government workers, 70% of schoolteachers, and 40% of doctors in Kabul. However, the effects of war and the Taliban regime quickly effaced the rights of women in public life and relegated them solely to the domestic domain.

Women and girls have often been the worst victims of conflict. Under the Taliban, women were forced to wear an all-encompassing burqa in public and barred from working outside the home. They were also banned from attending schools, riding bicycles, wearing brightly colored clothes, or laughing loudly. As many as 1 million women have been widowed by Afghanistan’s wars and left with few options for supporting themselves and their families.

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Explaining The Rising Death Rate In Middle-Aged White People : Shots - Health News : NPR

Explaining The Rising Death Rate In Middle-Aged White People : Shots - Health News : NPR:



"Mortality rates have been going down forever. There's been a huge increase in life expectancy and reduction in mortality over 100 years or more, and then for all of this to suddenly go into reverse [for whites ages 45 to 54], we thought it must be wrong. We spent weeks checking out numbers because we just couldn't believe that this could have happened, or that if it had, someone else must have already noticed. It seems like we were right and that no one else had picked it up.




We knew the proximate causes — we know what they were dying from. We knew suicides were going up rapidly, and that overdoses mostly from prescription drugs were going up, and that alcoholic liver disease was going up. The deeper questions were why those were happening — there's obviously some underlying malaise, reasons for which we [didn't] know."



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TacnizM comments on 21-year-old Turkish student in jail after his ‘No’ video goes viral ahead of presidential power's referendum

TacnizM comments on 21-year-old Turkish student in jail after his ‘No’ video goes viral ahead of presidential power's referendum:

thankyou for your word. most of us know that not every american or soldier is like that. but tragedies like you just explained can change the mindsets so quickly. most of the times it is young children and teens who get affected, and i am not going to lie that i have not been influenced by these things.

then again, i feel that the iraqis are also part to blame. instead of uniting we fought amongst ourselves too. these days i feel ppl are just tired and just want to live their lives with families, so i hope the violence there will go away in the near future.

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The games we play – Medium

The games we play – Medium:

Beliefs are not actions. We cannot persecute people for what they believe, no matter how much it disgusts us, and simultaneously maintain a free and open democracy.

We are all responsible for the increasingly alarming practice of coercion masquerading as equality, in which someone like Larry can be persecuted, in which nuance is overlooked because “it’s a moral question”, in which diversity is starting to look a lot more like conformity.

If diversity is our dogma, call me “spiritual, not religious”. I still pray for the same things as you, but I won’t be at the witch trials.

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Williams College Admits 1,253 Students to Class of 2021 – Office of Communications

Williams College Admits 1,253 Students to Class of 2021 – Office of Communications: "“This year’s applicant pool was the largest and strongest in the college’s history, which made rendering decisions particularly challenging,” said Richard Nesbitt, director of admission. “We anticipate yielding a terrific and diverse class of powerful academics, curious problem-solvers, and engaged community members.”

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The mystery of the disassembled projectors : talesfromtechsupport

The mystery of the disassembled projectors : talesfromtechsupport:

Unfortunately, #overachiever got sent to a remote site where he was the only tech, and just popping the cover and blowing the dust out was not up to his professional standards. So he broke the thing down to the component level, hit it with alcohol and q-tips, really made it gleam... and then forgot how to get it back together. Rather than accept with humility that he had @#$#%! up and beg for help, he reasoned that if he took apart his spare projector and REALLY paid attention, he would be able to reassemble them both and no one would be the wiser.

Since you are reading this here, I assume you already know what happened. 

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Health care takes on the fight against trafficking

Health care takes on the fight against trafficking:

Dr. A rolled his eyes.

It was last October, and he had just come across a triage note that said, “I have a tracker in me.”

Dr. A  — we’re not using his name or identifying his hospital, which is in a major American city, to protect patient safety — is 28 years old, a resident and about as green as they come.

And he’s got a patient who claims she’s got a GPS tracking device implanted in her side.

“When you work on the east side of our hospital, psychiatric patients are a dime a dozen,” he said.

But this patient is different. She’s put together. She’s lucid. She’s got an incision.

A group crowded around the computer to see her x-ray.

“Embedded in the right side of her flank is a small metallic object only a little bit larger than a grain of rice,” he said. “But it's there. It's unequivocally there. She has a tracker in her. And no one was speaking for like five seconds — and in a busy ER that's saying something.”

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TIL Deaf-from-birth schizophrenics see disembodied hands signing to them rather than "hearing voices" : todayilearned

TIL Deaf-from-birth schizophrenics see disembodied hands signing to them rather than "hearing voices" : todayilearned: "Also: Some deaf people with tourettes syndrome involuntarily sign curse words with their hands. most people with tourettes don't involuntarily swear though, deaf or not.
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Man Stops Teens from Fighting, Says 'Right Thing to Do' | Time.com

Man Stops Teens from Fighting, Says 'Right Thing to Do' | Time.com:

A New Jersey man who is being hailed a hero after he was captured in a viral video breaking up a fight between two young men said he stepped in to stop the violence “because it was the right thing to do.”

Ibn Ali Miller, 26, has received widespread praise online, including from NBA star Lebron James, after he defused a fistfight that erupted in the middle of the street in Atlantic City earlier this week and convinced the brawlers to shake hands and walk away.

More than 28 million people have viewed the video since it was posted on Facebook on Monday. Miller can be seen urging the youngsters not to bring shame to their hardworking parents and tells them he refuses to leave until they make peace.

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Naval officer misses 'Jeopardy!' question about Navy birthday

Naval officer misses 'Jeopardy!' question about Navy birthday:

The clue was, “Members of this service founded Oct. 13, 1775 really have the blues.”

Lt. Cmdr. Eli Rosenberger, assigned to Electronic Attack Squadron 137 at Whidbey Island in Washington, was quick on the buzzer. As he proudly wore his dress blues, he answered, “What is the Marine Corps?” 

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Why Americans have come to worship their own ignorance - Macleans.ca

Why Americans have come to worship their own ignorance - Macleans.ca: "Q: You discuss how science-averse the populace at large is. On the centre and left, people tend to throw science-denial at the right, because of climate change, but anti-vaxxers mostly tilt left.
A: And the anti-GMO people."



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George S. Patton's speech to the Third Army - Wikipedia

George S. Patton's speech to the Third Army - Wikipedia: "All the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters. Every single man in the army plays a vital role. So don't ever let up. Don't ever think that your job is unimportant. What if every truck driver decided that he didn't like the whine of the shells and turned yellow and jumped headlong into a ditch? That cowardly bastard could say to himself, 'Hell, they won't miss me, just one man in thousands.' What if every man said that? Where in the hell would we be then? No, thank God, Americans don't say that. Every man does his job. Every man is important. The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns, the quartermaster is needed to bring up the food and clothes for us because where we are going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last damn man in the mess hall, even the one who boils the water to keep us from getting the GI shits, has a job to do.
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My Salaam - Is a feminist Muslim-hijabi-academic-activist a walking contradiction?

My Salaam - Is a feminist Muslim-hijabi-academic-activist a walking contradiction?: "That is not to say that Islam isn’t used as a tool by oppressors to justify their atrocities—Daesh is a case in point. But such distortions are not unique to Islam; slavery was justified using Christian theology at a time in history. However, even as a 14-year-old, I refused to believe that human misinterpretation of God’s words should take precedence over the divine principles of justice and mercy that I had been taught to live by. To this day, I try to ground my activism in the belief that God is both Merciful and Just, and that as Muslims, we cannot achieve personal salvation without a firm commitment to justice for all.

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Paralyzed Virginia Marine walks for first time in 33 years | WTVR.com

Paralyzed Virginia Marine walks for first time in 33 years | WTVR.com:

Betsy Labar says physical limitations were no match for her husband.

“It was pretty tough,” says Betsy. “He just stepped up and coached, soccer coached lacrosse, coached baseball.”

“Really I am just a regular guy who got injured,” Terry said. “Tried raising a family -- be as good as father and husband as I could.”

A few days ago Terry would take one giant leap. During physical therapy at McGuire Terry was fitted with a motorized exoskeleton.

“I remember standing up and I felt 10-feet tall,” says Terry. “It was really surreal, it really was.”

Almost 102 year old woman : IAmA

Almost 102 year old woman : IAmA:

What exists now that you wish you had had earlier?



"Medicine, I had a cousin who died of the common cold in the 1920's. Something you can go to the grocery store for now could have saved him
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Cold snap kills nearly half of cherry blossoms, pushing back peak bloom date - The Washington Post

Cold snap kills nearly half of cherry blossoms, pushing back peak bloom date - The Washington Post: "
Persistent frigid temperatures and a blustery snowstorm early in the week have ravaged about half of the city’s cherry blossoms, leaving them unable to bloom this year. Most of the remaining buds are expected to fully bloom by the end of next week, National Park Service officials said Friday.

Mike Litterst, a spokesman for the Park Service, described the scenario as venturing into “uncharted territory” for the city. The damage could have been worse, he said, with up to 90 percent of buds threatened because they were far along in the blooming process as the cold snap arrived."



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Kelly Family Press Release on the ‘BBC Dad’ Viral Video | Robert Kelly — Asian Security Blog

Kelly Family Press Release on the ‘BBC Dad’ Viral Video | Robert Kelly — Asian Security Blog: "Today, my family and I conducted a select set of interviews, with the BBC for the international audience, with the Wall Street Journal for the American audience, and with the Korean media for the local audience here. Here is our statement on the video incident. Thank you. Robert E. Kelly

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The product manager’s guide to the care and feeding of humans – Medium

The product manager’s guide to the care and feeding of humans – Medium:

The key bit involves creating an environment where people feel they’re in a safe space to do some of the best work of their career. How do you do that? A former manager use to say, “By giving them enough rope to take risks, but not to hang themselves.” While that’s a bit grim, you get the point.

Make sure they know they can come to you — and that sooner is better than later. Tell them risks are good and valued, and also when to pull you in to help them out.

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How the baby boomers destroyed everything - The Boston Globe

How the baby boomers destroyed everything - The Boston Globe: "All these giveaways had consequences. The rich got richer, as we know, but the rich are old. That is, they’re boomers. The patterns of general boomer gains mirrored those of the very wealthy. From 1989 to 2013, wealth gaps between older and younger households grew in the same way as those between the top 5 percent and the bottom 95 percent. Today’s seniors (boomers) are much wealthier relative to the present young than the seniors of the 1980s were to then-young boomers. All those tax breaks, bailouts, easy money, deregulation, and the bubbles they spawned supported that boomer wealth accumulation while shifting the true costs to the future, to the young.

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Moving the Goalposts on Seattle’s Minimum Wage

Moving the Goalposts on Seattle’s Minimum Wage:

Look, disagreements and arguments over the $15 minimum wage are necessary and welcomed. Every policy idea, no matter its noble intentions, should be subject to rigorous debate. I do have an issue, though, when individuals brag about the ease of predicting the future, only to adjust their predictions when the future doesn’t go as they expected.

It’s even worse when you consider that Worstall’s opinions are the primary source for many others when writing about Seattle’s minimum wage. His devious methods are not harmless; they have real-world consequences and shapes people’s judgments.

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Escape to another world | 1843

Escape to another world | 1843: "“Underemployment” – work in a position for which one is overqualified – has risen steadily since the beginning of the millennium; the share of recent college graduates working in jobs which did not require a college degree rose from just over 30% in the early 2000s to nearly 45% a decade later. As frustrated college students take jobs for which they are overqualified, young people with less education often find themselves competing for still less demanding work, which pays lower wages and offers less security and room for advancement.
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Laziness isn’t why people are poor. And iPhones aren’t why they lack health care. - The Washington Post

Laziness isn’t why people are poor. And iPhones aren’t why they lack health care. - The Washington Post: "First, it’s founded on the assumption that the United States is a land of opportunity, where upward mobility is readily available and hard work gets you ahead. We’ve recently taken to calling it grit. While grit may have ushered you up the socioeconomic ladder in the late 19th century, it’s no longer up to the task today. Rates of intergenerational income mobility are, in fact, higher in France, Spain, Germany, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and other countries in the world than they are here in the United States. And that mobility is in further decline here, an indicator of the falling fortunes not just of poor and low-income Americans, but of middle-class ones, too.

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Drugs are killing so many people in West Virginia that the state can’t keep up with the funerals - The Washington Post

Drugs are killing so many people in West Virginia that the state can’t keep up with the funerals - The Washington Post: "The state's funeral directors are on the front lines of this trend. “When you get an overdose, typically it's going to be a younger individual who's not financially in a great position,” Kimes said. “I've heard from several funeral directors that the majority of [overdose deaths they deal with] are addressed via the indigent burial program.”

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How America Lost Faith in Expertise | Foreign Affairs

How America Lost Faith in Expertise | Foreign Affairs: "The following year, Public Policy Polling asked a broad sample of Democratic and Republican primary voters whether they would support bombing Agrabah. Nearly a third of Republican respondents said they would, versus 13 percent who opposed the idea. Democratic preferences were roughly reversed; 36 percent were opposed, and 19 percent were in favor. Agrabah doesn’t exist. It’s the fictional country in the 1992 Disney film Aladdin. Liberals crowed that the poll showed Republicans’ aggressive tendencies. Conservatives countered that it showed Democrats’ reflexive pacifism. Experts in national security couldn’t fail to notice that 43 percent of Republicans and 55 percent of Democrats polled had an actual, defined view on bombing a place in a cartoon. 

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Shavarsh Karapetyan - Wikipedia

Shavarsh Karapetyan - Wikipedia: "Shavarsh Karapetyan (Armenian: Շավարշ Կարապետյան) is a retired Soviet Armenian finswimmer, a World and European champion, best known for saving the lives of 20 people in a 1976 incident in Yerevan.

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Our ally Turkey is in crisis and needs our support | TheHill

Our ally Turkey is in crisis and needs our support | TheHill: "Editor’s Note: On March 8, 2017, four months after this article was published, General Flynn filed documents with the Federal government indicating that he earned $530,000 last fall for consulting work that might have aided the government of Turkey. In the filings, Flynn disclosed that he had received payments from Inovo BV, a Dutch company owned by a Turkish businessman with ties to Turkey's president and that Inovo reviewed the draft before it was submitted to The Hill. Neither General Flynn nor his representatives disclosed this information when the essay was submitted.

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Reflections on the revolution in Middlebury - AEI | Society and Culture Blog » AEIdeas

Reflections on the revolution in Middlebury - AEI | Society and Culture Blog » AEIdeas: "In the mid-1990s, I could count on students who had wanted to listen to start yelling at the protesters after a certain point, “Sit down and shut up, we want to hear what he has to say.” That kind of pushback had an effect. It reminded the protesters that they were a minority. I am assured by people at Middlebury that their protesters are a minority as well. But they are a minority that has intimidated the majority. The people in the audience who wanted to hear me speak were completely cowed. That cannot be allowed to stand. A campus where a majority of students are fearful to speak openly because they know a minority will jump on them is no longer an intellectually free campus in any meaningful sense."



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Death of Suburbia series overview - Business Insider

Death of Suburbia series overview - Business Insider: "The commercial real-estate firm CoStar estimates that nearly a quarter of malls in the US, or roughly 310 of the nation's 1,300 shopping malls, are at high risk of losing an anchor store.

Once that happens, it spells trouble for communities — especially those in the suburbs, where job opportunities are more limited than in cities.

"Malls are big, big contributors to city and state taxes, jobs, and everything," Howard Davidowitz, chairman of the research firm Davidowitz & Associates, told Business Insider's Hayley Peterson. "Once they close, they are a blight on the community for a very long time."

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Death of Suburbia series overview - Business Insider

Death of Suburbia series overview - Business Insider: "The commercial real-estate firm CoStar estimates that nearly a quarter of malls in the US, or roughly 310 of the nation's 1,300 shopping malls, are at high risk of losing an anchor store.

Once that happens, it spells trouble for communities — especially those in the suburbs, where job opportunities are more limited than in cities.

"Malls are big, big contributors to city and state taxes, jobs, and everything," Howard Davidowitz, chairman of the research firm Davidowitz & Associates, told Business Insider's Hayley Peterson. "Once they close, they are a blight on the community for a very long time."

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Our Miserable 21st Century | commentary

Our Miserable 21st Century | commentary: "Ever since 2000, basic indicators have offered oddly inconsistent readings on America’s economic performance and prospects. It is curious and highly uncharacteristic to find such measures so very far out of alignment with one another. We are witnessing an ominous and growing divergence between three trends that should ordinarily move in tandem: wealth, output, and employment. Depending upon which of these three indicators you choose, America looks to be heading up, down, or more or less nowhere.

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A Time for Immodest Proposals - The New York Times

A Time for Immodest Proposals - The New York Times: "The Trump campaign (and the Bernie Sanders campaign across the aisle) suggests that there is a public appetite for ideas that are well outside the ideological boxes of post-Cold War conservatism and liberalism. The evidence now emerging — read Nicholas Eberstadt’s big, depressing essay in the latest Commentary for a synthesis — suggests that the slow-burning social crisis in American life is much worse than even those of us who wrote a lot about it thought. And the chaos in the Middle East and widening fissures in European politics suggest the times might require a more substantial rethinking of American foreign policy than most Washingtonians have contemplated."



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A Professor Who Attended Charles Murray’s Middlebury Talk Is Now Wearing a Neck Brace. Protesters Attacked Her. - Hit & Run : Reason.com

A Professor Who Attended Charles Murray’s Middlebury Talk Is Now Wearing a Neck Brace. Protesters Attacked Her. - Hit & Run : Reason.com:

The principle of free speech was not the only thing to suffer injury at Middlebury College on Thursday: a professor was physically assaulted by members of the mob that shut down Charles Murray's talk.

That professor, Allison Stanger, had to go to the emergency room and is now wearing a neck brace.

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Middlebury College professor injured by protesters as she escorted controversial speaker | Addison County Independent

Middlebury College professor injured by protesters as she escorted controversial speaker | Addison County Independent: "MIDDLEBURY — Middlebury College Professor Allison Stanger was injured by protesters Thursday evening as she was escorting a controversial speaker from campus. She was treated at Porter Hospital and released."



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Andrew Sullivan: Our President’s Emotional Bait and Switch

Andrew Sullivan: Our President’s Emotional Bait and Switch: "In America, as Charles Murray has shown in his extraordinary book, Coming Apart, the young and the smart and the talented — the people who would once have formed the core of these small towns — have long since fled to distant colleges and cities. They don’t come back. They would once have been the police chief or the town librarian or the school principal. They once helped make the town a well-run place with a clear identity, where the same families and networks lived together, died together, belonged together. These connections have attenuated … as economics supplants culture, as efficiency erases the individuality of inefficient places, as Amazon rips the heart out of shopping districts, as the smartphone removes us from physical space, and as many more immigrants and their culture alter the feel of a place in ways that disorient those with memories and loyalties.

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You May Want to Marry My Husband - The New York Times

You May Want to Marry My Husband - The New York Times:

No wonder the word cancer and cancel look so similar.

This is when we entered what I came to think of as Plan “Be,” existing only in the present. As for the future, allow me to introduce you to the gentleman of this article, Jason Brian Rosenthal.

He is an easy man to fall in love with. I did it in one day.

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Like start-ups, most intentional communities fail – why? | Aeon Essays

Like start-ups, most intentional communities fail – why? | Aeon Essays: "In this way, intentional communities and utopias can serve as short-lived petri dishes for emergent culture. The Findhorn Foundation has been home to several hundred people, but the number of those touched by the community runs to millions. Similarly Enspiral, despite being remotely nestled in Wellington, is now influencing communities around the world by exporting best practices and software tools such as Loomio, for decentralised decision-making, and Cobudget for managing finances within communities and groups.

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'Moonlight's' Barry Jenkins: Here's the Oscar Speech I Would Have Given | Hollywood Reporter

'Moonlight's' Barry Jenkins: Here's the Oscar Speech I Would Have Given | Hollywood Reporter: ""Tarell [Alvin McCraney] and I are Chiron. We are that boy. And when you watch Moonlight, you don't assume a boy who grew up how and where we did would grow up and make a piece of art that wins an Academy Award. I've said that a lot, and what I've had to admit is that I placed those limitations on myself, I denied myself that dream. Not you, not anyone else — me. And so, to anyone watching this who sees themselves in us, let this be a symbol, a reflection that leads you to love yourself. Because doing so may be the difference between dreaming at all and, somehow through the Academy's grace, realizing dreams you never allowed yourself to have. Much love."

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The State of Trump's State Department - The Atlantic

The State of Trump's State Department - The Atlantic: "The flags in the lobby of the State Department stood bathed in sunlight and silence on a recent afternoon. “It’s normally so busy here,” marveled a State Department staffer as we stood watching the emptiness. “People are usually coming in for meetings, there’s lots of people, and now it’s so quiet.” The action at Foggy Bottom has instead moved to the State Department cafeteria where, in the absence of work, people linger over countless coffees with colleagues. (“The cafeteria is so crowded all day,” a mid-level State Department officer said, adding that it was a very unusual sight. “No one’s doing anything.”) As the staffer and I walked among the tables and chairs, people with badges chatted over coffee; one was reading his Kindle.

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