POLITICO – The Senate Finance Committee filed its sweeping health care reform bill Monday and its release served largely to highlight the divisions among Democrats over the direction of reform.
The massive, 1,500 page bill is expected to serve as the backbone for Democratic reform efforts going forward and five senators expressed concerns about one of its main provisions, a 40 percent tax on high-end insurance plans.
Scientists claim the giant atom-smashing Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is being jinxed from the future to save the world.
In a bizarre sci-fi theory, Danish physicist Dr Holger Bech Nielsen and Dr Masao Ninomiya from Japan claim nature is trying to prevent the LHC from finding the elusive Higgs boson. Called the “God particle,” the theoretical boson could explain the origins of mass in the universe — if physicists can find the darn thing.
The scientists say their math proves nature will “ripple backward through time” to stop the LHC before it can create the God particle, like a time traveller who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.
“One could even almost say that we have a model for God,” Dr Nielsen says in an unpublished essay. “He rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them.”
Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. said today the Obama administration is officially reversing the federal stance on medical marijuana and ordering authorities not to arrest or charge any users and suppliers who conform to state laws.
In guidelines issued today, Justice Department officials are telling prosecutors and federal drug agents that they have more important things to do than to arrest people who obey state laws that allow some use or sale of medical marijuana.
The move clarifies what some critics had said was an ambiguous position of the Obama administration on the controversial issue, especially in the battleground state of California, where authorities have raided numerous clinics and made arrests over the years. Some of those California raids followed Obama’s inauguration in January, after, as a presidential candidate, he had pledged to stop them.
The new guidelines note that federal law enforcement agencies have limited resources and that they need them for more pressing priorities.
As described by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an ever-watchful guardian of the Constitution, these Attorney General’s Guidelines for Domestic FBI Operations authorize the FBI — without going to a court — “to open investigative ‘assessments’ of any American without any factual predicate or suspicion. Such ‘assessments’ allow the use of intrusive techniques to surreptitiously collect information on people suspected of no wrongdoing and no connection with any foreign entity. These inquiries may include the collection of information from online sources and commercial databases.”
The press has largely been uninterested in this suspension of the Bill of Rights — but we know a lot about David Letterman.
President Barack Obama has expressed no objections to these radical revisions of the Constitution, a founding document he used to educate students about at the University of Chicago. His attorney general, Eric Holder, said calmly during his Senate confirmation hearing: “The guidelines are necessary because the FBI is changing its mission … from a pure investigating agency to one that deals with national security.”
Found by A Fox.
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Chicago police officers accused of forcing man to pose for photo during Pittsburgh G-20 summit | StarTribune.com — This never ends.
The Chicago Police Department is investigating several of its officers accused of forcing a college student they arrested during last month’s G-20 summit in Pittsburgh to pose for a group photo with them.
The department, which has been dogged by embarrassing allegations of misconduct in recent years, began investigating the Pittsburgh claims after video of the alleged incident was posted on YouTube.
The video apparently shows about 15 police officers in riot gear posing for a photo with a man they detained kneeling in front of them.
Kyle Kramer, the 21-year-old University of Pittsburgh student forced to pose with police, was returning to campus from a pizza parlor when he was detained by police who were rounding up protesters, his attorney Cristopher Hoel told The Associated Press on Friday.
“He was a college student arrested for walking on campus. That seems to me to make him a victim,” Hoel said.
Found by A Fox.
Credit: Boy Genius Report
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Verizon is gearing up to launch a marketing blitz that pits an upcoming phone called “Droid” against Apple’s iPhone. Verizon isn’t divulging many Droid details at present, but a hands-on review and some supposedly leaked photos have surfaced. The phone is reportedly made by Motorola and features Android 2.0 software.
[…]
On Oct. 30, Verizon Wireless is widely expected to launch the Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Droid, its entry into the Android smartphone market.
It’s ramping up to the event by kicking off an ad campaign that appears to put the Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhone firmly in the crosshairs.
Although Verizon hasn’t officially announced details of the phone, The Boy Genius Report has posted a review as well as supposed photos of the device. The only information Verizon is currently offering is a teaser Web site.
Formerly known as the “Sholes,” the Droid is slightly thicker than an iPhone 3GS and has a slider keyboard, according to The Boy Genius Report. It is made of metal and very sturdy.
The Droid is also very fast, according to the review. Its QWERTY keyboard has a soft-touch rubberized finish, but the keyboard design may not yet be entirely finalized. The Droid will be shipped with a desktop cradle-cum-charger that will turn it into a multimedia station.
It’s sometimes hard to tell. The immortal Mario the plumber has appeared in more than 200 video games since 1981 and is still going strong.
However, one popular series may be ready to give its fans some closure. Ratchet and Clank have been spanning their fictional universe since 2002 in an effort to defeat evil and save all from certain doom. The franchise, about two intergalactic heroes fighting evil, has sold more than 16 million copies.
Despite that, the game’s developers are hinting that the upcoming “Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time“ may be the last in the series, an unusual occurrence for an industry in which sequels to best-selling games are often announced far in advance.
Travelers flying on Virgin America over the holidays will get free in-flight Wi-Fi thanks to Google, the companies said Monday.
Google and Virgin America are teaming up to offer free Wi-Fi Internet service for all Virgin America passengers traveling between November 10, 2009, and January 15, 2010.
The Gogo Wi-Fi service, which was rolled out to Virgin America’s entire fleet of planes in May, is normally available for $12.95 for flights of over three hours. It’s $9.95 for flights between one and a half hours and three hours. Flights of less than an hour and a half are $5.95. There’s a special deal for people using smartphones and other Wi-Fi enabled handhelds that costs $7.95 for flights over one and a half hours.
Well, whoop-de-fricken-doo!
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Cardinal falls victim to dengue as thousands stay away from annual religious festival | Guadalajara Reporter Traveler Alert!
“We ask you to free us from the epidemics that are currently devastating the state of Jalisco,” pleaded Guadalajara Auxiliary Bishop Jose Trinidad, in front of 7,000 worshippers outside the Instituto Cabañas. “Especially dengue, influenza and other calamities that don’t permit us to live life to the full.”Between September 27 and October 3, health authorities confirmed 373 new cases of dengue in Jalisco – the highest number ever recorded in a single week. Sixty-seven of those were the more serious hemorrhagic kind.The total number of cases of dengue confirmed in Jalisco is now 2,360, over ten percent of which are hemorrhagic.Jalisco leads the Mexican league table for suspected cases of dengue, with 26,537 probably cases recorded up until late September, more than double than second-placed Guerrero.
This story was sent in from Ivan Silva with this note:
From speaking to relatives in Mexico it appears that there is a for the most part not not very covered dengue fever outbreak in Jalisco (at least that’s where they are at). The words that this person said were “someone in every family has been affected”. According to wikipedia there is no commercially available vaccine, so why get people worked up about it?
A shot of a ship coming out of an SF Bay Fogbank. Taken from Treasure Island.
 Paradise for Hawaiians |
Imee Gallardo, 24, has been scooping ice cream at a Häagen-Dazs shop at Waikiki Beach for five years, and during that time the shop has done something its counterparts on the mainland rarely do: it has paid for her health care.
“I wouldn’t get coverage on the mainland?” Ms. Gallardo asked. “Even if I worked? Why?”
Since 1974, Hawaii has required all employers to provide relatively generous health care benefits to any employee who works 20 hours a week or more. If health care legislation passes in Congress, the rest of the country may barely catch up.
Lawmakers working on a national health care fix have much to learn from the past 35 years in Hawaii, President Obama’s native state.
Among the most important lessons is that even small steps to change the system can have lasting effects on health. Another is that, once benefits are entrenched, taking them away becomes almost impossible. There have not been any serious efforts in Hawaii to repeal the law…
Growing numbers of Americans who have lost houses to foreclosure are landing in homeless shelters, according to social service groups and a recent report by a coalition of housing advocates.
Only three years ago, foreclosure was rarely a factor in how people became homeless. But among the homeless people that social service agencies have helped over the last year, an average of 10 percent lost homes to foreclosure, according to “Foreclosure to Homelessness 2009,” a survey produced by the National Coalition for the Homeless and six other advocacy groups.
[…]
Most people who become homeless because of foreclosure had been low-income renters whose landlords stopped making their mortgage payments, leaving them scrambling for new housing with little notice and scant savings, according to the survey and interviews with shelters.But in recent months, there has been a visible increase in the number of former homeowners showing up in shelters.
[…]
“These families never needed help before,” said Larry Haynes, executive director of Mercy House in Santa Ana, Calif. “They haven’t a clue about where to go, and they have all sorts of humiliation issues. They don’t even know what to say, what to ask for.”
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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