The dictionary's online definition of the term is "oral stimulation of the genitals". "It's hard to sit and read the dictionary, but we'll be looking to find other things of a graphic nature," district spokeswoman Betti Cadmus told the paper.No shit.
While some parents have praised the move – "[it's] a prestigious dictionary that's used in the Riverside County spelling bee, but I also imagine there are words in there of concern," said Randy Freeman – others have raised concerns.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
US idiots ban THE DICTIONARY in public schools
After all, it defines the term "oral sex":
Friday, January 22, 2010
CA District Court Rules That Mass Surveillance of Americans is Immune From Judicial Review
Privacy has been dead for awhile, but in case you need the reminder:
In the ruling, issued late Thursday, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker held that the privacy harm to millions of Americans from the illegal spying dragnet was not a "particularized injury" but instead a "generalized grievance" because almost everyone in the United States has a phone and Internet service.
"The alarming upshot of the court's decision is that so long as the government spies on all Americans, the courts have no power to review or halt such mass surveillance even when it is flatly illegal and unconstitutional," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "With new revelations of illegal spying being reported practically every other week -- just this week, we learned that the FBI has been unlawfully obtaining Americans' phone records using Post-It notes rather than proper legal process -- the need for judicial oversight when it comes to government surveillance has never been clearer."
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
FBI Created Nonexistent Terrorism Emergencies to Justify Illegal Phone Spying
One More Abuse:
The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records, according to internal bureau memos and interviews. FBI officials issued approvals after the fact to justify their actions.
E-mails obtained by The Washington Post detail how counterterrorism officials inside FBI headquarters did not follow their own procedures that were put in place to protect civil liberties. The stream of urgent requests for phone records also overwhelmed the FBI communications analysis unit with work that ultimately was not connected to imminent threats.
A Justice Department inspector general's report due out this month is expected to conclude that the FBI frequently violated the law with its emergency requests, bureau officials confirmed.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Saturday, January 16, 2010
The Way We Were
Google Books has recently scanned in the complete archives of Ebony.
"Highlights" include:
"Highlights" include:
The Trials of an Interracial Couple:
What do 'average, decent Americans' do when a 'mixed' couple settles in?
Thursday, January 14, 2010
We believe the lie
No matter how obvious:
The study being covered is titled, "Insincere Flattery Actually Works".
Participants in the study were asked to evaluate the merits of a new department store opening in the area based on one of the store’s advertisements. In addition to describing the new store’s offerings, the ad lauded readers for their impeccable sense of style and eye for high fashion. While participants overwhelmingly categorized the pamphlet as flattery with the ulterior motive of pushing blouses, the experimenters were more interested in how their attitudes would be influenced at the implicit level. Might participants develop a non-conscious positive association with the department store, even after rejecting the ad as meaningless puffery? And if so, would this implicit reaction be a better predictor of decisions and behavior down the road? Will even the people who are wise to advertising tricks end up at the register, credit card in hand?
It turns out that implicit attitudes towards the store were more positive than explicit attitudes. They were also better predictors of reported likelihood of making future purchases, as well as likelihood of joining the store’s club. So it seems that while participants quickly dismissed these ads at the explicit level, the flattery was exerting an important effect outside their awareness.
The study being covered is titled, "Insincere Flattery Actually Works".
Haiti Sentence of the Day
Marginal Revolution:
Very rapidly, President Obama needs to come to terms with the idea that the country of Haiti, as we knew it, probably does not exist any more.
First-Person Tetris
You can really feel the Gs. Or if first-person isn't your thing, maybe you'd like a Mario-Tetris Mashup.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Conversation with an anonymous Facebook employee
Welcome to the Creepy New World:
Rumpus: Would you suppose that Facebook employees might read people’s messages?
Employee: See, the thing is — and I don’t know how much you know about it — it’s all stored in a database on the backend. Literally everything. Your messages are stored in a database, whether deleted or not. So we can just query the database, and easily look at it without every logging into your account. That’s what most people don’t understand.
...
Rumpus: So in what other ways do you track behavior, that isn’t necessarily obvious to users?
Employee: We track everything. Every photo you view, every person you’re tagged with, every wall-post you make, and so forth.
...
Rumpus: So tell me about the engineers.
Employee: They’re weird, and smart as balls. For example, this guy right now is single-handedly rewriting, essentially, the entire site. Our site is coded, I’d say, 90% in PHP. All the front end — everything you see — is generated via a language called PHP. He is creating HPHP, Hyper-PHP, which means he’s literally rewriting the entire language. There’s this distinction in coding between a scripted language and a compiled language. PHP is an example of a scripted language. The computer or browser reads the program like a script, from top to bottom, and executes it in that order: anything you declare at the bottom cannot be referenced at the top. But with a compiled language, the program you write is compiled into an executable file. It doesn’t have to read the program from beginning to end in order to execute commands. It’s much faster that way. So this engineer is converting the site from one that runs on a scripted language to one that runs on a compiled language. However, if you went to go talk to him about basketball, you would probably have the most awkward conversation you’d have with a human being in your entire life. You just can’t talk to these people on a normal level. If you wanted to talk about basketball, talk about graph theory. Then he’d get it. And there’s a lot of people like that. But by golly, they can do their jobs.
Jennifer Love Hewitt bedazzles her business.
If there's one thing that makes lovemaking even more special, it's the promise of a trip to the emergency room to have a team of doctors remove razor-sharp crystal shards from your penis. If you're really into roleplay and fat girls, you should call Jennifer Love Hewitt and ask if she wants to pretend that your penis is the Exxon-Valdez and she's the barren rocky beach without adequate safety measures in place.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
They're all dorks
How to capture the Supreme Court's attention:
"What was that adjective?" Scalia asked Monday. "I liked that."
"Orthogonal," Friedman said.
"Orthogonal," Roberts said.
"Orthogonal," Scalia said. "Ooh."
Monday, January 11, 2010
A tribute to Russia's thriving arts
This has to be one of the catchiest, most well-crafted songs in recent memory. Which is why you should watch this video on mute.
What's the easiest way to drop probation violations by 93%?
Cut the severity of punishment, but deliver it immediately:
Alm decided to try something different. He reasoned that if the offenders knew that a probation violation would lead immediately to some certain punishment, they might shape up. “I thought, What did I do when my son was young?” he recalled. “If he misbehaved, I talked to him and warned him, and if he disregarded the warning, I gave him some kind of consequence right away.” Working with U.S. marshals and local police, Alm arranged for a new procedure: if offenders tested positive for drugs or missed an appointment, they would be arrested within hours and most would have a hearing within 72 hours. Those who were found to have violated probation would be quickly sentenced to a short jail term proportionate to the severity of the violation — typically a few days.
Alm mentioned his plan to the public defender, who suggested that it was only fair to warn probationers that the rules were going to be strictly enforced for the first time. Alm agreed, and on Oct. 1, 2004, he held a hearing for 18 sex offenders, followed by another one for 16 drug offenders. Brandishing a laminated “Wanted” poster, he told them: “I can guarantee that everyone in this courtroom wants you to succeed on probation, but you have not been cutting it. From now on, you’re going to follow all the rules of probation, and if you don’t, you’re going to be arrested on the spot and spend some time in jail right away.” He called the program HOPE, for Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation With Enforcement, and prepared himself for a flood of violation hearings.
But they never materialized. There were only three hearings in the first week, two in the second week and none in the third. The HOPE program was so successful that it inspired scholars to evaluate its methods. Within a six-month period, the rate of positive drug tests fell by 93 percent for HOPE probationers, compared with a fall of 14 percent for probationers in a comparison group.
ACLU defends students' right to protest the ACLU
Democracy in action:
The ACLU of Virginia today asked the principal at Gate City High School to honor the free speech rights of students who plan to protest the ACLU at the school's football game tomorrow night.
The students are reacting to a September 15 letter from the ACLU of Virginia telling school officials that a sectarian prayer delivered over the public address system at a football game was unconstitutional. According to news reports, the students have now produced more than 1,000 t-shirts, which they plan to wear to this Friday's game. The front of the t-shirts shows the school's initials, a cross, and the words, "I still pray…" On the back is, "In Jesus' name."
...
"This is not nearly as ironic as it seems, and it is certainly a wonderful opportunity for the school and the students to think about how fundamental constitutional principles are applied to real life," added [ACLU Director Kent] Willis.
Useful Advice About Advice
Highlights from this excellent Ben Casanocha post:
Tyler Cowen also has some interesting thoughts:
2.We overvalue advice on difficult decisions and undervalue advice on easy ones. So say some studies. During the college admissions process, kids get a million opinions on an admittedly important and difficult situation, but in the end receive so many contradictory thoughts that they end up confused. On the other hand, when faced with where to go for lunch, people would do better to ask around a bit for a recommendation.
...
4. Advice is a form of nostalgia. For this reason, we should view advice from others primarily as an opportunity for greater insight into the mind of the advice-giver, rather than as something useful to be acted upon ourselves.
...
9. When you seek advice, should you consult the domain expert or someone who knows you best?
Your mother may know you best but she may not know your industry. The domain expert knows the market but doesn't know your individual preferences or history. Conclusion: Get advice first from the domain expert to get a model and assess your choices. Then consult the person who really knows you to understand which choice makes most sense for you.
Tyler Cowen also has some interesting thoughts:
1. You don't know what a person really thinks until you hear his or her advice. Along these lines, if you really want to know what a person thinks, ask for advice and he or she will open up.
...
3. There are many exacting scholars who should be locked in a room, asked for advice of various kinds, and forced to speak into a tape recorder with no edits allowed. The advice-giving mode mobilizes insights which otherwise remain dormant, perhaps for fear of falsification or ridicule or of actually influencing people. All of the transcripts should be put on The Advice Website, with an open comments section, to limit the actual influence of the advice. Some famous people would be revealed as foolish in critical regards. The contents would be most interesting as non-advice and the site would carry a government warning that the advice is not to be taken seriously.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Crazy grandpa attacks 15-year-old cellist
As it turns out, the grandpa is Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic. From Pop!Tech 2008.
Art so good you might barf a little.
These disturbing sculptures are more than awesome. As someone else might put it, the experience of being overwhelmed and repulsed helps prime the brain for the transmission of certain kinds of information. Don't look away just because it's gross. You'll miss the big show.
Tom Waits reads Charles Bukowski
your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
How we law students are hungry
In case you are one of the great unwashed horde considering a legal education...
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/01/07/the-costs-and-benefits-of-grad-school/
...are you fucking HIGH?
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/01/07/the-costs-and-benefits-of-grad-school/
...are you fucking HIGH?
Friday, January 8, 2010
The Third and The Seventh
The Third and The Seventh is a short film done entirely in CG. In perfect, flawless computer animation. Maybe ten years of green-screen blockbuster have dulled you to the unimaginable complexity shown here; it represents no great leap forward from, say, the action scenes in GI Joe. But take a second to ponder what it means that one person can crystallize a seamless replication of reality with basic, widely available computer tools. Think about all the things we can know in a Google second, all the remote and impossible knowledge on display here. The physics of how jet trails dissipate in the atmosphere. What the anatomy of a bird wing looks like as it flaps. Indices of refractions on camera glass. The learning of generations, accumulated since we first agreed on a system of chicken-scratches, combed over and indexed by our elaborate machines for the benefit of our poor frail brains.
I'll even embed the video for you.
The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.
You have to see it. You need to.
I'll even embed the video for you.
The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.
You have to see it. You need to.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
In the next thirty seconds I may change your browsing habits permanently.
This nifty badboy is named Readability. Click the link, grab the bookmark in the top right hand corner, and go browse your regular news sites.
Want to see how dramatic the difference is?
Even the most annoying webpages....
Become instantly readable.
Don't say I never rocked you tender.
Want to see how dramatic the difference is?
Even the most annoying webpages....
Become instantly readable.
Don't say I never rocked you tender.
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