A little of this, a bit of that

Laser pointers and cat variations

Bed bugs and the psychological effects of coping with them.  And ways to get rid of them.

Protecting our drinking water.  Cleaning plastic from our oceans.

Monsanto working hard to discredit scientists.

Mark Ruffalo, a true hulk.  Fear of powerful women.

Dutch sexuality education.

Interesting question and intriguing answers:  What has the internet made obsolete?

The awfulness of the 2000 presidential election revisited.

How can you tell if rocks were tools in prehistoric times?

The dangers of coal to our climate.  Ocean conservationist sounds a warning to Canada.

Eggs, chickens, and turkeys are going to become more expensive.

Wendell Potter explains the machinations of the health insurance companies.

Pesticides killing off the Monarch butterfly.

Ten poverty myths disproved.

New Bush, new lies about the Iraq War.

Early computers, polar vortexes and Emma Watson

Antikythera mechanism expedition begins search for missing fragments of world’s oldest known computer and more.

My Year As an Abortion Doula

My Year in the NRA

More megaquakes can happen.

An excellent male contraceptive.

Sign of the times.

Polar vortex a sign of global warming.

Internet trolls.

Emma Watson, UN's Goodwill ambassador

Cats and Crumbs.

Caturday and more.

Will the trolls win the internets?

A scientist fights back.

Police steal from innocent people.

Whatever Iceland is doing right now.

How to vote in November.

Our internet in 2014

By Tom Tomorrow

Tuesday casserole

WTF is wrong with Americans?

Why we should watch the virulent religious fanaticism oozing to the surface in the US.

What is wrong with Governor Brown?  MORE jails? Really?

Paving with solar panels.

Hagfish kill by slime.

Drinkable books.

10 ingredients that don't belong in your bathroom.

Shaming, shunning, (soon to be stoning) women who have abortions.

A billboard actually doing something worth while: eating pollution.

Al Franken on the internetal tubes.

Oh, and Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi.

Monday Monday....

El Nino incoming and what it will do to us.

We have to intervene!

Guns.  Guns will keep you safe... (just not the other guy.)

The world's 'poorest' president.

Everything you know about the Ukraine is wrong.

Makes me want to go out and plant more trees.

Music was her life blood and kept her alive.

What parents do to a baby's brain and what happens when they are not there in the development stage.

Oldest piece of rock in the world.

Daring to be a woman on the internet.

Thank you, Moon.

All in a day's work..

1,500-year-old plague victims shed light on disease origins Study finds catastrophic diseases aren't things that evolve once – 'they actually evolve multiple times from different ancestors.'

Early Europeans had dark skin and blue eyes

Mailman tries to deliver the mail.

Cow terrorists.  And 19 animals that kill the most people (cows are on the list).

What happens when you fail your high school science class.

Survivors of the Boston Marathon bombing go on an adventure.

How businesses 'regulate' themselves.

Bag snaggers of New York.

Why can't we have hyper fast internet like Chattanooga?

Gun Nuts, Car Crashes, and Radiation--Fun For Everyone!

Personal stories of women who have had abortions.  Healthy sweaty women.  And why some women will vote Republican is beyond me.  The next generation of intelligent women.

The negatives of Governor Chris Christie.

A meeting of Mothers Against Gun Violence brings out a group of gun nuts.

What letting loose a virus into the internets can do... think space station..

A shower design that reuses water and saves money.  Do you think we'll ever see it produced in the US?

The Earth is old... older than 6,000 years.  Life on Earth is really old.  Apparently older than we ever imagined.  And here is a panorama of Mars.  (scroll down and ignore the annoying whirling gif.)

Russian car crashes from dash cams.

Fukushima residents may never go home, say Japanese officials  I thought that was a given.  They have lost that area of Japan forever.

Plastics, pensions and another attempt at censoring the internet

Ignoring our plastic garbage doesn't make it disappear, it kills things.

10 urban legends debunked.... I won't tell you which of these I've believed....

Insight into the workings of Ted Cruz.

Incoming water wars.   Maybe we should move to Mars.

Maybe algae will save us?

Building a Better American Male.  And the American female.

Fat cats can't leave anyone's savings alone, can they?

An American fuck-up at Fukushima.

Another attempt to censor the internet.

Women of the Net

Celebrating your geekness.

Fighting misogynistic trolls who hate women.

Refusing to break down and cry when in court.

Twitter is attempting to deal with online threats to women.

Who actually has power?

Plan B should be available now to everyone.

Because the wimmen folk are stupid and need help.

Whistleblowers, Hobbits and Women

Schneier on Snowden

Prosecuting Snowden 

Edward Snowden broke the law by releasing classified information. This isn't under debate; it's something everyone with a security clearance knows. It's written in plain English on the documents you have to sign when you get a security clearance, and it's part of the culture. The law is there for a good reason, and secrecy has an important role in military defense. 

But before the Justice Department prosecutes Snowden, there are some other investigations that ought to happen. 

We need to determine whether these National Security Agency programs are themselves legal. The administration has successfully barred anyone from bringing a lawsuit challenging these laws, on the grounds of national secrecy. Now that we know those arguments are without merit, it's time for those court challenges. 

It's clear that some of the NSA programs exposed by Snowden violate the Constitution and others violate existing laws. Other people have an opposite view. The courts need to decide. 

Grayson Passes Corporate Accountability Amendments

“These amendments say that government contractors who lie, cheat, and steal will now get the death penalty,” Democrat Grayson wrote in an email to his supporters. “If you cheat the taxpayer, you’re toast. If you evade Federal taxes, it’s all over. If you rig bids or forge documents, goodbye to you. No more government contracts. And for government contractors, cutting off government money is a death sentence.”

Scientists say new study shows pig health hurt by GMO feed

(Reuters) - Pigs fed a diet of only genetically modified grain showed markedly higher stomach inflammation than pigs who dined on conventional feed, according to a new study by a team of Australian scientists and U.S. researchers.
The study adds to an intensifying public debate over the impact of genetically modified crops, which are widely used by U.S. and Latin American farmers and in many other countries around the world.
The study was published in the June issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Organic Systems by researchers from Australia who worked with two veterinarians and a farmer in Iowa to study the U.S. pigs.

The original underground

Archaeologists have uncovered thousands of Stone Age underground tunnels, stretching across Europe from Scotland to Turkey, perplexing researchers as to their original purpose. 

German archaeologist Dr Heinrich Kusch, in his latest book ‘Secrets of the Underground Door to an Ancient World’ has revealed that tunnels were dug under literally hundreds of Neolithic settlements all over Europe and the fact that so many tunnels have survived 12,000 years indicates that the original network must have been huge.

Useful websites

The Hobbit, the Desolation of Smaug.

Reproductive Coercion, Domestic Violence and Anti-Choice Laws

A lot of men, it turns out, get off on having power over women’s bodies, and are willing to bully, coerce and even trick women into pregnancy to get that feeling of power over them. It’s called “reproductive coercion,” and it’s way more common that was previously thought, as Kat Stoeffel reports for The Cut.

And .... they're off!

Louisiana Parents Fear Elementary School Cafeteria Scanner Will Implant the Antichrist’s ‘Mark of the Beast’ on Kids’ Hands

Congress: They don't work for you.

Bedbugs in hospitals.

We can blame Chile for deforming the earth.

This PROVES we should let the oil companies build pipelines all over the place and drill and ... oops...

Roundup ... is really really toxic.

Have telemarketing people been calling you more on the phone?

What single gif or picture would you show someone?

Georgie Bush's Great Mulligan.

Teaching Game Theory.

From sex to bombs...

Interesting take on the latest sex scandal.

Lee Atwater's Southern Strategy.

McCain is still sore he isn't president.

Run away, run away!!

The perils of being a woman online.

Did Anonymous save the election by blocking Rove's hacking minions?

Verdun, France has a Forbidden Forest filled with 12 million unexploded bombs from WWI.

Napoleon was right.

"When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain." Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France.

Albert Einstein: “No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.”

Romney's 'tax' plan.

Ann Romney's horse behaves itself.

Climate change.  And North Carolina decides to deny science.

Obamacare helps women.

US resists losing control of the Internet... to a UN agency.

Murray's law.

Traditional biblical marriage.

Jim Hightower warns us that police will be using drones. What could possibly go wrong?

Aaannnnddd... here we are. Birth defects in Iraq. All that depleted uranium in Bush and Cheney's wonderful awesome bunker buster bombs has arrived. War crimes anyone?

Bill Moyers Makes It Clear: Requiring An ID Is Voter Suppression And Unconstitutional:

 

Will we ever be able to learn from our experiences?

Or will we have to repeat them over and over and over....

After the storm.

Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Chernobyl

Internet virus

Libor's dirty laundry:

Yet, on these shores, the reaction has been mainly a shrug. Perhaps we’re suffering from bank-scandal fatigue, having lived through Bank of America’s various travails, and the Goldman Sachs revelations, and, most recently, the big JPMorgan Chase trading loss. Or maybe Libor is just hard to gets one’s head around. But the Brits have this one right. They may not understand the intricacies of Libor any better than we do, but they sense, powerfully, that banks have once again made a mockery of the role that society entrusts to them. “Why has the scandal created outrage in Britain? Because it truly is outrageous,” said Karen Petrou, the managing partner of Federal Financial Analytics. “They weren’t supposed to be fixing that rate — no matter what the reason.” She continued: “If I give you my money, I need to be able to trust you with it. If you can only be trusted via regulation, then you might as well be a utility. And if banks can’t be trusted to manage their trading desks, then we need to rethink our whole model of banking.” Petrou is not an advocate of returning to the days of Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era law that separated investment banking and commercial banking. But with the Libor scandal, she said, she could certainly understand the growing calls for it. Barclays, of course, is hardly the only big bank that manipulated Libor for fun and profit. It is simply the first to admit its wrongdoing and settle with the government. The word is that just about every big bank is under investigation for playing games with Libor, including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and other American-based financial giants. Which means there is going to be a lot more opportunities for Americans to become outraged over this scandal. And, maybe, to finally summon the will to change banking once and for all.

Avoiding the Web of one...

From an email from MoveOn:

MoveOn wouldn't be possible without the open Internet. But according to our own Eli Pariser, the Internet itself is changing. His book on the topic, The Filter Bubble, comes out this week (you can check it out here).
In March, the TED conference invited him to preview the argument. When I talked to Eli beforehand, he was really nervous—in the audience were top executives from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and a number of other companies he critiques. But his call for an open, ethical Internet—he actually called out the Google founders and Bill Gates in the audience by name—got a standing ovation. And it's been burning up the TED website ever since.

We're sharing it today because we think it's a really important point. Increasingly, the Internet is hiding things from us, and we don't even know it. Take a moment to watch Eli's TED talk today:

Tell the FCC....

Incessant barking might work better (Steve Bates in comments :D ) but sign the petition anyway:

Tell the FCC: It's up to you, not Google and Verizon, to regulate the Internet: "Chairman Genachowski: The FCC, not big corporations, should make important decisions about the future of the Internet. Stop delaying and use your powers to enact strong net neutrality provisions immediately."

Don't be evil

The petition reads:

"As a Google user, I am telling you, 'Don't be evil.' The deal between Google and Verizon as reported by the New York Times is evil because it undermines the open Internet upon which hundreds of millions of people rely. Live up to your founding motto, walk away from this deal and save the Internet."

Tell Google what you think.

74 Democrats sold you out to AT&T, Verizon and Comcast

They signed industry-backed letters telling the FCC to abandon efforts to protect Internet users by prohibiting big companies from blocking Internet traffic.

Not only is this letter an attack on net neutrality, but by signing the industry letter, they are attempting to drastically undercut the FCC's ability to make a fast, affordable and open Internet available to everyone in America. They are actually taking a position against the interests of rural and low-income communities.

This is unacceptable.

We need to make sure these members of Congress know that their constituents are paying attention and will hold them accountable when they undermine net neutrality protections.

Sign our petition to these representatives telling them that you're upset by their decision to side with the wealthy telecommunications corporations over their constituents.

What this comes down to is a principle known as "net neutrality." Net neutrality means that Internet users, not Internet service providers, should be in control. It ensures that Internet service providers can't speed up, slow down, or block Web content based on its source, ownership, or destination.

Of course broadband providers are insisting that we should just trust them and there's no need for consumers to be protected by net neutrality rules. But we cannot trust AT&T, Verizon and Comcast to protect a free and open Internet any more than we could trust BP to protect the oceans.

Without strong net neutrality rules, we might have to rely upon the good will of large telecoms to protect our access to the diversity of political perspectives. We might have to trust companies like Comcast, which actively and secretly interfered with users' ability to access popular video, photo and music sharing applications. We might have to trust companies like AT&T, which censored anti-Bush comments made by Pearl Jam's lead singer during a concert.

A free and open Internet is an important part of 21st Century democracy, but these 74 House Democrats signed a letter that undercut the efforts of the FCC to make sure the Internet stays free and open.

In other words, they decided to stand with wealthy corporations rather than stand up for your interests.

The simple fact of the matter is that powerful companies with a vested interest in this fight like AT&T have armies of lobbyists to push their agenda.

If these 74 House Democrats are going to get the message that it's unacceptable for them to sell out their constituents, it's only going to be because people like you speak up.

So take a minute right now to sign our petition.



The following Democratic members of the House signed the industry-backed letter:

Bobby Bright (AL-02), Mike Ross (AR-04), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ-01), Ed Pastor (AZ-04), Gabrielle Giffords (AZ-8), Dennis Cardoza (CA-18), Jim Costa (CA-20), Laura Richardson (CA-37), Joe Baca (CA-43), Loretta Sanchez (CA-47), Allen Boyd (FL-02), Corrine Brown (FL-03), Alcee Hastings (FL-23), Suzanne Kosmas (FL-24), Sanford D Bishop, Jr. (GA-02), John Barrow (GA-12), David Scott (GA-13), Leonard Boswell (IA-03), Wally Minnick (ID-01), Bobby Rush (IL-01), Debbie Halvorson (IL-11), Baron P Hill (IN-09), Dennis Moore (KS-03), Charlie Melancon (LA-03), Frank Kratovil, Jr. (MD-01), Dutch Ruppersberger (MD-2), Elijah Cummings (MD-07), Gary Peters (MI-9), William Lacy Clay Jr (MO-01), Russ Carnahan (MO-03), Travis Childers (MS-01), Bennie G Thompson (MS-02), Gene Taylor (MS-04), G. K. Butterfield (NC-01), Heath Shuler (NC-11), John Adler (NJ-3), Albio Sires (NJ-13), Harry Teague (NM-2), Tim Bishop (NY-01), Gregory Meeks (NY-06), Joseph Crowley (NY-07), Ed Towns (NY-10), Yvette Clarke (NY-11), Michael McMahon (NY-13), Scott Murphy (NY-20), Bill Owens (NY-23), Michael Arcuri (NY-24), Daniel Maffei (NY-25), Steve Driehaus (OH-01), Charlie Wilson (OH-06), Marcia Fudge (OH-11), Zachary T. Space (OH-18), Dan Boren (OK-02), Kurt Schrader (OR-05), Robert Brady (PA-01), Chaka Fattah (PA-02), Kathleen Dahlkemper (PA-03), Jason Altmire (PA-04), Christopher Carney (PA-10), Allyson Schwartz (PA-13), Tim Holden (PA-17), Lincoln Davis (TN-04), John Tanner (TN-08), Al Green (TX-09), Ruben Hinojosa (TX-15), Charlie Gonzalez (TX-20), Ciro Rodriguez (TX-23), Solomon Ortiz (TX-27), Henry Cuellar (TX-28), Gene Green (TX-29), Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX-30), Glenn Nye (VA-02), Rick Larsen (WA-02), Nick Rahall (WV-03)

Support Marxist utopias!

Thursday deadline: Protect net neutrality

One of Glenn Beck's latest conspiracies involves a "gang of communists" who want to turn the Internet into a "Marxist utopia." That dangerous gang of communists he's warning Fox News viewers against? They're net neutrality supporters.

Glenn Beck has it all wrong: Net neutrality protects -- not threatens -- free speech online. Net neutrality is the principle that Internet users, not Internet service providers, should be in control. It ensures that Internet service providers can't speed up, slow down, or block Web content based on its source, ownership, or destination.

The FCC is accepting public comments until Thursday on a proposed regulation that would protect net neutrality. Will you say that you won't be fooled by scare tactics and that you support an open Internet?

We've made it easy to submit a public comment in support of net neutrality. Just use the sample comment at right to craft your own personal comment.

When the FCC initially took comments in January, pro-net neutrality submissions vastly outweighed comments from opponents of Internet freedom. As a result, big telecom companies are running scared. They're worried that the FCC might agree with us and prohibit them from inspecting and filtering the Internet content you access, blocking Web sites and applications they don't like, and overcharging you for using the Web. Out of the 120,000 comments submitted, 98,000 of them - a whopping 74 percent - were from CREDO Action members like you.

The FCC has opened a second round in the comment period. So we need to repeat that performance and beat back the media monopolists once again.

You can help us dominate the second round, too. Submit your comment today!

The big telecom companies have deployed hundreds of lobbyists and pushed outrageous lies. Their goal? Overcome our voices by duping the public into believing their net neutrality myths.

We have only two days to debunk these lies and protect the free-flowing Web, as the FCC is only accepting the second round of comments until April 8. We've made it easy for you to submit your comment on our site -- but we'll need it by 10 a.m. Pacific time on April 8 in order to get it into the docket by the deadline.

Without strong net neutrality rules, we might have to rely upon the good will of large telecoms to protect our access to the diversity of political perspectives. We might have to trust companies like Comcast, which actively and secretly interfered with users' ability to access popular video, photo and music sharing applications; AT&T, which censored anti-Bush comments made by Pearl Jam's lead singer during a concert; and Verizon Wireless, which interfered with NARAL Pro-Choice America's ability to send text messages to its members.

Without net neutrality, the Internet would cease to be a public platform for free speech, political organizing, and equal opportunity.

Speak out against the corporate lies. Submit your public comment today.