On Constitution Day, California College Student Ordered to Stop Handing Out Constitutions
September 20th, 2013Via: Huffington Post:
Robert Van Tuinen, a student at Modesto Junior College in California, had a theory. He believed that the policies at his college limiting protests and expression were so restrictive that the college would try to shut him down even if he tried to hand out copies of the United States Constitution on September 17–Constitution Day.
Sadly, he was correct.
You can check out the video for yourself…
Not 10 minutes after Van Tuinen began handing out copies of the Constitution, a campus police officer arrived to stop him. Van Tuinen was informed that anytime someone wants to pass out anything on campus, it must first be registered and approved by the Student Development office.
Billionaire Investor: Fed Robbing Poor to Pay Rich
September 19th, 2013Via: CNBC:
The Federal Reserve isn’t just inflating markets but is shifting a massive amount of wealth from the middle class and poor to the rich, according to billionaire hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller.
In an interview on “Squawk Box,” the founder of Duquesne Capital said the Fed’s policy of quantitative easing was inflating stocks and other assets held by wealthy investors like himself. But the price of making the rich richer will be paid by future generations.
“This is fantastic for every rich person,” he said Thursday, a day after the Fed’s stunning decision to delay tightening its monetary policy. “This is the biggest redistribution of wealth from the middle class and the poor to the rich ever.”
Research Credit: Tru3Magic
Shinola Is Bringing Watchmaking to Detroit
September 19th, 2013Google’s Moto X smartphone is made in Texas. And now watches… Made in Detroit?
Yep.
Via: The Verge:
Detroit stories come in two kinds. There’s “the collapse of the Motor City” — the story of a once-great city now abandoned and bankrupt, its people gone or dug in, its once-grand buildings now majestic ruins, its streets overrun with stray dogs. And then there’s the story of “Detroit resurgent” — a hope as much as a truth, found on ubiquitous T-shirts emblazoned with “Detroit Hustles Harder” and “Detroit vs. Everybody.” It’s a hope embedded in the city’s motto, adopted way back in 1827: Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus. “We hope for better things; it shall rise from the ashes.” It’s a comeback story felt deep in the city’s blood and bones, and glimpsed through the ashes.
Shinola wants to be part of that hopeful story. You might recognize the name: it’s a resurrection, too, a brand of shoe polish popular around World War II, best remembered now through the phrase, “You don’t know shit from Shinola.” That earthy authenticity beckoned to Bedrock Manufacturing Co., a Dallas, TX, investment firm that revived the brand for its newest venture: an American-based watch manufacturer. So Shinola came to Detroit.
Torvalds On Being Asked to Insert a U.S. Government Back Door Into Linux Kernel
September 19th, 2013Via: eWeek:
NSA Backdoor
Torvalds was also asked if he had ever been approached by the U.S. government to insert a backdoor into Linux.
Torvalds responded “no” while shaking his head “yes,” as the audience broke into spontaneous laughter.
Neurosynaptic Chips: Building Blocks for Cognitive Systems
September 19th, 2013Via: IBM:
In many ways computers today are nothing more than very fast number-crunchers and information manipulators. They can process lots of data, but they really don’t think. They all adhere to the Von Neumann architecture, largely unchanged in the last half-century, in which computers are constructed by separating memory and processing and operate by executing a series of pre-written “if X then do Y” equations. With the advent of Big Data, which grows larger, faster and more diverse by the day, this type of computing model is inadequate to process and make sense of the volumes of information that people and organizations need to deal with.
In searching for an answer, IBM researchers found inspiration for a new computer chip design from the most powerful, efficient information processing device in the world: the human brain. The cognitive capabilities of the brain includes understanding the surrounding environment, dealing with ambiguity, acting in real time and within context – all while consuming less than power than a light bulb and occupying less space than a two-liter bottle of soda.
In August 2011, as part of the SyNAPSE (Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics) project IBM researchers led by Dharmendra S. Modha successfully demonstrated a building block of a novel brain-inspired chip architecture based on a scalable, interconnected, configurable network of “neurosynaptic cores” that brought memory, processors and communication into close proximity. These new silicon, neurosynaptic chips allow for computing systems that emulate the brain’s computing efficiency, size and power usage.
The Play Deficit
September 19th, 2013Via: Aeon Magazine:
If we love our children and want them to thrive, we must allow them more time and opportunity to play, not less. Yet policymakers and powerful philanthropists are continuing to push us in the opposite direction — toward more schooling, more testing, more adult direction of children, and less opportunity for free play.
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Families with MMR Vaccine Injured Children Receive Compensation
September 18th, 2013Via: Huffington Post:
The federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, better known as “vaccine court,” has just awarded millions of dollars to two children with autism for “pain and suffering” and lifelong care of their injuries, which together could cost tens of millions of dollars.
The government did not admit that vaccines caused autism, at least in one of the children. Both cases were “unpublished,” meaning information is limited, and access to medical records and other exhibits is blocked. Much of the information presented here comes from documents found at the vaccine court website.
Some observers will say the vaccine-induced encephalopathy (brain disease) documented in both children is unrelated to their autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Others will say there is plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise.
What’s more, these cases fit the pattern of other petitions, (i.e., Poling and Banks) in which the court ruled (or the government conceded) that vaccines had caused encephalopathy, which in turn produced permanent injury, including symptoms of autism and ultimately an ASD diagnosis.
And most of these children now have taxpayer dollars earmarked for applied behavioral analysis (ABA), an effective therapy specifically designed to treat ASD.
Meanwhile, parents, grandparents, friends and neighbors of both children testified they were developmentally normal, if not advanced for their age when they developed seizures, spiking fevers and other adverse reactions to their vaccines. According to these eyewitnesses, the children never fully recovered, and instead began losing vocabulary, eye contact and interest in others around them, all classic symptoms of regressive autism.
Research Credit: alvinroasting
Abandoned NHS IT System Has Cost £10bn So Far
September 18th, 2013Via: Guardian:
An abandoned NHS patient record system has so far cost the taxpayer nearly £10bn, with the final bill for what would have been the world’s largest civilian computer system likely to be several hundreds of millions of pounds higher, according a highly critical report from parliament’s public spending watchdog.
MPs on the public accounts committee said final costs are expected to increase beyond the existing £9.8bn because new regional IT systems for the NHS, introduced to replace the National Programme for IT, are also being poorly managed and are riven with their own contractual wrangles.
When the original plan was abandoned the total bill was expected to be £6.4bn.
Richard Bacon, a Conservative member of the committee, said the report was further evidence of a “systemic failure” in the government’s ability to draw up and manage large IT contracts. “This saga is one of the worst and most expensive contracting fiascos in the history of the public sector.
Satire: iPhone 5 NSA
September 18th, 2013Via: We Are Change:
