Archive for the 'Elite' Category
Serial Child Molester Hastert Sentenced to 15 Months in Prison
April 27th, 2016Via: Politico: The judge calls the former House speaker a “serial child molester” as Hastert apologizes for “mistreating” boys he supervised as a wrestling coach.
Firms that Paid for Clinton Speeches Have U.S. Government Interests
April 22nd, 2016Well holy shit. Thanks, Captain! Via: AP: It’s not just Wall Street banks. Most companies and groups that paid Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to speak between 2013 and 2015 have lobbied federal agencies in recent years, and more than one-third are government contractors, an Associated Press review has found. Their interests are sprawling and […]
Life-Expectancy Inequality Grows in America
April 19th, 2016Via: The New Yorker: There may be no better way to appreciate humanity’s growing prosperity than to consider how long we live. A child born in 1900—little more than a century ago—was likely, on average, to die by the age of thirty. Today, according to the World Bank, the comparable figure is seventy-one. That is […]
Children of Sydney’s Business and Political Elite Attend School That Bans Screens in Classrooms
April 18th, 2016Via: The Australian: A top Australian school has banned laptops in class, warning that technology “distracts’’ from old-school quality teaching. The headmaster of Sydney Grammar School, John Vallance, yesterday described the billions of dollars spent on computers in Australian schools over the past seven years as a “scandalous waste of money’’. “I’ve seen so many […]
Substituting Vegetable Oils for Butter Increases Risk of Death
April 18th, 2016Via: Medical Xpress: A research team led by scientists at the UNC School of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health has unearthed more evidence that casts doubt on the traditional “heart healthy” practice of replacing butter and other saturated fats with corn oil and other vegetable oils high in linoleic acid. The findings, reported […]
Here Come the Unregulated GMOs
April 18th, 2016Via: MIT Technology Review: People are arguing about whether genetically modified foods should carry labels. But the next generation of GMOs might not only be unlabeled—they might be unregulated. Over at Scientific American you can read a 6,000-word story about how one such plant, a GM mushroom, was created. The short version is that a […]
Saudis Threaten to Sell $750 Billion in U.S. Treasuries Over 9/11 Bill
April 17th, 2016The word, “Bush” doesn’t appear in this piece even once. And what is Marvin up to these days? Via: New York Times: Saudi Arabia has told the Obama administration and members of Congress that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes a […]
When Lobbying Was Illegal
April 16th, 2016Via: Priceonomics: Wouldn’t it be nice if lobbying were illegal? It’s a tempting thought. But it seems impossible. Lobbying is a multi-billion dollar industry and an accepted—if hated—part of American politics. American courts have ruled that lobbying is constitutionally protected free speech, and lawyers and laymen alike generally accept this. The same is true of […]
Bernie Earned Less in Year than Hillary Made in Single Speech
April 15th, 2016Via: Weekly Standard: Bernie Sanders reportedly earned just over $200,000 in 2014. That same year, Hillary Clinton, Sanders’s top Democratic rival, gave about 45 paid speeches, many of which paid her more in a single hour than Sanders made the entire year. The Washington Post reports on Sanders’s income. “The senator from Vermont reported income […]
The Plan to Send Featherweight Robotic Spacecraft to the Nearest Star at One-Fifth of the Speed of Light
April 13th, 2016100 billion-watt laser??? Via: Guardian: In an unprecedented boost for interstellar travel, the Silicon Valley philanthropist Yuri Milner and the world’s most famous cosmologist Stephen Hawking have announced $100m (£70m) for research into a 20-year voyage to the nearest stars, at one fifth of the speed of light. Breakthrough Starshot – the third Breakthrough initiative […]
