SOPA and PIPA have been put on hold (e.g. Harry Reid, Lamar Smith and associates have realised the bills won’t pass if they call a vote). Rejoice, but remain vigilant. You know they’ll try again in a few months with a new version of the law with some superficial changes. But for now, success! A very impressive example of people power driven by the Internet.
Hat tip to CBS News, where at time of writing the poll asking whether Congress should pass the SOPA/PIPA bills was running at 97% no.
Back in 2006, Russian state-run TV aired accusations against the UK that sounded like they were stolen from “Get Smart”. According to the Russians, the Brits planted a “spy rock” filled with electronic gadgetry in a Moscow park. They broadcast pictures and X-Rays of the allegedly captured “spy rock” and grainy surveillance footage showing alleged British agents interacting with the rock. Continue reading
Today, the TSA has apologized for sifting through the colostomy device of 89-year-old Ruth Sherman and putting 85-year-old Lenore Zimmerman’s back brace through an X-ray machine during the Thanksgiving holiday in 2011 at JFK. Even though the utter ridiculousness of these actions is pretty obvious, the TSA is still reassuring that there was no strip search of any kind. Continue reading
Trend alert, kids are out there wandering the streets raping and murdering. And not just those 17 year old kids who are really only kids by technicality. I’m talking about tweens.
Obviously, following this link will take you to descriptions of violence involving children. Continue reading
Keep in mind that it is the Year Of Our Lord 2012 as you’re reading this. The incident described here happened in the Spring of 2011… but it might as well have been 1963. Continue reading
So, early this morning, BoingBoing.net with some pretty serious accusations towards Google’s falling ethics and a specific bit of fraud that seems to be going on in Kenya. Basically, Kenya does not have a good public business directory. There are no yellow pages and most businesses do not have a web presence. So, a company called Mocality decided they were going to do that. Continue reading
On Tuesday the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed an injunction that stopped Texas’ restrictive sonogram law. Under the reaffirmed law, abortion providers are required to show or describe an ultrasound image of a woman’s pregnancy. The only exceptions to the law are if the fetus was conceived by rape or incest or if the fetus has an abnormality. Women can decline to view the sonogram, but she must listen to the doctor’s description. Continue reading
On Tuesday Stephen Glass filed papers (PDF) with the California Supreme Court to appeal a California Bar Association decision that he was morally unfit to practice law in California due to his inability to be a moral journalist. Continue reading
If you’ve ordered anything from Best Buy online since the day after Thanksgiving, you might want to check your email. Your special snowflake might not be getting that Hot New Toy after all.
From a press release issued to FOX 9 in Minneapolis earlier this week: Continue reading
I can be kind of a cynical person, and sometimes I see things–like the idea of “President Gingrich“–that make me think the future is just doomed. Then things happen that make me think, hey, the future might be OK. Like when we elected that black guy President. Or when people realized that the Newt Gingrich running for president was THAT Newt Gingrich, the disgusting space-pig that resigned in disgrace back in the Nineties, and not some other guy with that same perfectly common name. But nothing recently has made me think, maybe things have changed–for a little bit, at least–for the better quite like this picture of a traditional Navy homecoming at a pier in Virginia Beach. Continue reading