I’m sorry but I’m a little confused here. I could swear I saw a Hollywood movie that claimed this flight was brought down by the passengers of Flight 93. Neil Young even wrote a song about it called “Let’s Roll”. Now Dick wants to take the credit? I know he has a book to sell, but does Dick have no sense of decency? I may have to rethink this whole thing.
Your comments?
Thanks to AC and No Agenda
In the euphoria following the downfall of the Mubarak regime in Egypt, Wael Ghonim, the so-called “hero” of the revolution proclaimed:
“Technology played a great role here. You know, it helped keeping people informed, it helped making all of us collaborate.”
He said the Egyptian government was “stupid” to close down the internet because that showed the world Mubarak was afraid. The revolutionaries even had back-up plans in the event of a government closure of internet access.
But according to Yale scholar Navid Hassanpour, the apparent positive role the internet played in the revolution has been misrepresented.
In a widely circulated American Political Science Association conference paper, he argues that shutting down the internet did make things difficult for sustaining a centralised revolutionary movement in Egypt.But, he adds, the shutdown actually encouraged the development of smaller revolutionary uprisings at local levels where the face-to-face interaction between activists was more intense and the mobilisation of inactive lukewarm dissidents was easier.
In other words, closing down the internet made the revolution more diffuse and more difficult for the authorities to contain.
RTFA. An interesting conundrum methinks.
Now, if they’ll just send me a years supply…..
This item was written by Matt Taibbi who is one of the few investigative journalists left in the country.
Had a friend send me this article by former Republican staffer Mike Lofgren under the subject line, “Informative reading for tonight’s Republican showcase.” I’m probably late in seeing it, but Lofgren’s piece raises fascinating and terrifying questions about the future of our political system and the increasing possibility that we are headed toward something like a civil war, or a constitutional crisis.
Lofgren, in describing the reasons for his defection from the Republican party, describes a Republican camp that increasingly acts not like a traditional peacetime political organization, but more like an apocalyptic cult or one of the authoritarian movements from early 20th century European history.
[…]
As Lofgren notes, this was insurrectionary, revolutionary behavior. Only the massive scale of the gambit prevented it from being easily identified as terrorism and criminal blackmail. If in exchange for not defaulting on our debt Boehner, Hensarling, Cantor and the rest of them had asked for a billion dollars worth of gold bullion deposited in Swiss bank accounts, or the release of a dozen Baader-Meinhofs from German prisons, it could hardly have been much different from what they actually did.
[…]
Had Obama invoked emergency powers to raise the debt limit unilaterally – and I think he had good reasons to do that – we might have had a revolt on our hands.Most people aren’t thinking about this because we’re so accustomed to thinking of America as a stable, conservative place where politics is not a life-or-death affair but more something that people like to argue about over dinner, as entertainment almost. But it’s headed in another, more twisted direction. I’m beginning to wonder if this election season is going to be one none of us ever forget – a 1968 on crack.
The LROC was launched in June of 2009, and had been orbiting and photographing the Moon with its Narrow and Wide Angle Cameras ever since. Although it has usually held a near-circular orbit at an average altitude of 50km above the lunar surface, on August 10th NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center temporarily altered its orbit to a more oval configuration, that brought it as low as 21km. The result were the photos…that show the Apollo landing sites in greater detail than ever before.
Just for the nutballs who think we never went to the moon.
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Obama was a bit more lively than usual (which wouldn’t be hard) in presenting his plan. What do you think of it? Will Republicans vote for it? Will it work or will it be more money down the stimulus drain? Will it help 50+ year old office workers for whom construction work isn’t an option? Will it help laid off factory workers whose jobs are never coming back no matter how much money is pumped in? Will this help companies who don’t hire more and produce more because demand is gone because of the recession? And so on? Or is the fed gov doing anything pointless at this point with this being an attempt to prop up Obama’s low ratings for next year’s election? Sound off!
The much-anticipated jobs plan President Obama laid out Thursday evening borrows a page from the tax package he negotiated with GOP leaders in December. In order to get the stimulus spending he wants, Obama proposed to give Republicans tax breaks they’ve supported in the past — with a promise not to increase the deficit. The $447-billion plan isn’t particularly novel, relying on familiar tax breaks, infrastructure projects and grants to state and local governments. The details, though, may not matter as much as how lawmakers respond to them. The bitterly partisan brinkmanship in Washington over the debt ceiling weakened the public’s already shaky confidence; reaching bipartisan agreement on even a modest jobs plan could help undo that damage. It’s a rare moment of political convergence for the president and his critics.
Here’s the text of the speech.
Hungary has produced a provocative video advertisement to encourage more people to fill out its national census online next month.
In a video posted on social networking sites Wednesday, a topless young woman in red underwear, lacy black stockings and holding a whip opens the door to a census taker, who, realizing he has arrived at an inopportune moment — offers her the option of completing the census online.
“We want to reach the younger generation as well, and the internet is more for this generation, it uses their language,” Imre Dobossy, a top communications official at the Central Statistics Office (KSH) told Reuters.
The last time Hungarians were counted was 10 years ago, and this will be first time they will be able to fill out the questionnaire online.
Sometimes answering the door really isn’t convenient.
A Las Cruces woman has been charged $1,122 by a local hospital for a forcible body cavity search ordered by the Metro Narcotics Agency that did not turn up any illegal substances.
She is now asking the county to pay her hospital bill.
The woman, who is not being named because she was not arrested or criminally charged, was searched at Memorial Medical Center on July 1, according to a tort claim notice Las Cruces attorney Michael Lilley served to the county this week.
The woman is refusing to pay the $1,122 she was subsequently billed for the body cavity search, the tort claim notice shows.
Metro Sgt. Mike Alba said agents had “credible information from a reliable source” that the woman was concealing up to an ounce of heroin, leading to the search warrant from Magistrate Court. The woman, who has no criminal history in New Mexico, was in custody for several hours…
The county has a policy of not commenting on threatened or pending litigation.
Idiots. So much for what Las Cruces considers credible and reliable.
Thanks, Cinaedh
Sort of like China who also has cities without people, but for a different reason.
New Mexico, home to several of the nation’s premier scientific, nuclear and military institutions, is planning to take part in an unprecedented science project — a 20-square-mile model of a small U.S. city.
A Washington, D.C.-based technology company announced plans Tuesday to build the state’s newest ghost town to test everything from renewable energy innovations to intelligent traffic systems, next-generation wireless networks and smart-grid cyber security systems.
Although no one will live there, the replica city will be modeled after a typical American town of 35,000 people, complete with highways, houses and commercial buildings, old and new.
Pegasus Global Holdings CEO Bob Brumley says the $200 million project, known as The Center, will be a first of its kind in the U.S., creating a place for scientists at the state’s universities, federal labs and military installations to test their innovations for upgrading cities to 21st century green technology and infrastructure in a real world setting.
Today there are 150 children, all conceived with sperm from one donor, in this group of half siblings, and more are on the way. “It’s wild when we see them all together — they all look alike,” said Ms. Daily, 48, a social worker in the Washington area who sometimes vacations with other families in her son’s group.
As more women choose to have babies on their own, and the number of children born through artificial insemination increases, outsize groups of donor siblings are starting to appear. While Ms. Daily’s group is among the largest, many others comprising 50 or more half siblings are cropping up on Web sites and in chat groups, where sperm donors are tagged with unique identifying numbers.
Now, there is growing concern among parents, donors and medical experts about potential negative consequences of having so many children fathered by the same donors, including the possibility that genes for rare diseases could be spread more widely through the population. Some experts are even calling attention to the increased odds of accidental incest between half sisters and half brothers, who often live close to one another.
[…]
Critics say that fertility clinics and sperm banks are earning huge profits by allowing too many children to be conceived with sperm from popular donors, and that families should be given more information on the health of donors and the children conceived with their sperm.
For Kindle and with free ePub version. Only $9.49 Great reading.
Here is what Gary Shapiro CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) said: Dvorak's writing sings with insight and clarity. Whether or not you agree with John's views, he will get you thinking and is never boring. These essays are worth the read!
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