Things in the news

“Now we know that even the president needs leaks from Edward Snowden to be fully informed about the dastardly acts of his own top spy agency,” wrote Robert Scheer, a writer for The Nation. (link)
--- merged: Dec 20, 2013 at 4:18 PM ---



2 Teachers Save School Bus-Load of Kids

 

Justine Sacco, Fired After Tweet on AIDS in Africa, Issues Apology - Yahoo

Classy.

 

The way I put it when I posted the same article on my facebook page:

Can we finally agree that having the ability to maneuver your way into a high-paying career does not mean that you're not just another blithering idiot?

 

Durka-Durka, NSA Jihad!

"The NSA is apparently monitoring online gamers in hopes of catching terrorists."

And all they're discovering is that kids call each other "n00b fagz" a whole lot.

 

Well, 1337 hAx0r, you should have let us all know back in 2006.

I committed verbal war crimes via AOL Instant Messenger, too.

 

Queen Elizabeth pardons Alan Turing.

As pretty much everybody is saying: about fucking time!

 

On the other hand, to refuse the pardon, which was demanded by tens of thousands of Britons, would be to ignore the UK's responsibility for the horrific wrong that was done to Turing.

The writer in the linked column is being a contrarian. It's just perverse to see Turing's pardon as somehow validating wrongs done to others at the time.

 

Poll: Republican Belief In Evolution Has Plummeted In Recent Years
This supports a theory of mine about partisanship.

Pundits take it for granted that, when a conflict arises between the views of an individual and the views of his/her political party, the party loses them.

It has been my observation, though, that a person experiencing such a conflict is more likely to change their views on an issue than to change their partisanship.

The abortion issue is a good example of this. In the last 25 years, the Democratic Party has moved firmly into the pro-choice camp, while the Republican Party has moved in the opposite direction.

You might think that pro-life Democrats and pro-choice Republicans would tend to change parties, so as to align with their views on abortion, but there has been relatively little of that. Instead, millions of people have changed their views on abortion, to align with their partisanship.

The theory of evolution has become unpopular among leading Republicans (remember the 2012 Republican presidential candidates, at a debate, all disavowing it), so belief in evolution has declined among Republicans generally.

As the number of Biblical creationists grows among Republicans, the pro-evolutionists will come under increasing pressure to change their views. And the more who switch, the more pressure there will be on the ones who remain.

Hence, I expect the decline of pro-science views among Republicans to continue, or even accelerate, in coming years.

 

I absolutely despise both of these anchors,
but this story is brilliant.
I rely on technology all the time to keep close to my husband.
I can't imagine being able to have a video chat with a dying loved one.
Family watches daughter die via laptop - CNN.com Video

 

Phil Everly died today

 

Target estimates breach affected up to 110 million - NBC News.com

Holy......shit.........

 

Someone was clearly wading in the shallow end of the gene pool!