Where Rational Thought Meets the Road.
"The reasonable [person] adapts [oneself] to the world.
The unreasonable [person] persists in trying to adapt the world to [oneself].
Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable [person]."
-George Bernard Shaw
Esquire Theme by Matthew Buchanan
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27
Jan
People that are interested in Approval Voting should definitely check this out, too: http://www.electology.org/approval-voting
And if you’re really interested in voting systems, then you should probably “like” this group with the hundreds of other people that already have: https://www.facebook.com/electology
(Source: molly-pants)
25
Jan
After journalist arrests at Occupy Wall Street, US drops 27 spots on global press freedom index. Now ranked 47th in the world.
List of countries ahead of US on the Reporters Without Borders global press freedom index:
Finland, Norway, Estonia, Netherlands, Austria, Iceland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Cape Verde, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, New Zealand, Czech Republic, Ireland, Cyprus, Jamaica, Germany, Costa Rica, Belgium, Namibia, Japan, Surinam, Poland, Mali, OECS, Slovakia, United Kingdom, Niger, Australia, Lithuania, Uruguay, Portugal, Tanzania, Papua New Guinea, Slovenia, El Salvador, France, Spain, Hungary, Ghana, South Africa, Botswana, South Korea, Comoros, Taiwan…
Then the United States of America at #47.
Source: Reporters Without Boarder global press freedome index, released today.
Ralph Nader Gives the Real Lowdown on Obama’s State of the Union | Democracy Now!
“Societies with more income inequality have higher infant death rates than other societies:
Societies with more income inequality have higher rates of mental illness than other societies:
Societies with more income inequality have a higher incidence of drug use than other societies:
Societies with more income inequality have a higher high school drop out rate than other societies:
Societies with more income inequality imprison a larger proportion of their population than other societies:
Societies with more income inequality have a higher rate of obesity than other societies:
Individuals in societies with more income inequality are less likely to be in a different class of than their parents compared to other societies:
Individuals in societies trust others less than people in other societies:
Societies with more income inequality have higher rates of homicide than other societies:
Societies with more income inequality give less in foreign aid than other societies:
Children in societies with more income inequality do less well than children in other societies:
The authors sum it up pretty simply: : “Th[e] dissatisfaction [measured in this data is] a cost which the rich impose on the rest of society.”
Fantastic info- this is why we should focus on income inequity.
16
Jan
An important round-up by Jonathan Turley in today’s WaPo. He writes:
Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet, objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit.
12
Jan
There may be something wrong with the way police use force, maybe.
The deputies then put Christie into a restraining chair, a controversial device that binds inmates at both wrists, both ankles, and across the chest. In depositions, the other inmates, along with a deputy trainee named Monshay Gibbs, testified that Christie was sprayed at least two more times after he had been strapped to the chair. He was also stripped naked, and outfitted with a “spit mask,” a hood designed to prevent inmates from spitting on jail personnel. In Christie’s case, the mask kept the pepper spray in close proximity to his nose and mouth, ensuring he would continue to inhale it for the full six hours he was in the restraint chair.
…
In the early afternoon of March 29, Nick Christie went into respiratory distress. He was taken to the Gulf Coast Medical Center in Fort Myers. Joyce Christie told journalist Jane Akre that according to hospital staff, her husband was so covered in pepper spray that doctors had to repeatedly change their gloves as they became contaminated. Christie would suffer multiple heart attacks over the next two days before he was finally declared brain dead and his life support was removed on March 31. Two days after Christie had been transported out of the jail, Deputy Medical Examiner Dr. Robert Pfalzgraf noted in his autopsy report that Christie still had brown-orange liquid pepper spray all over his body.
Pfalzgraf determined that Christie’s heart gave out due to stress from his exposure to pepper spray. He ruled the death a homicide.
The Devil’s Chair
“I look at this story, and all I can say is, what in the world were they thinking?” says David Klinger, a former police officer who now teaches at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Klinger specializes in the use of force. “As a general rule, you don’t use pepper spray on someone who is restrained. There might be some limited circumstances where, say, you have a suspect in handcuffs who is banging his head against the window of a patrol car. You might give him a quick burst of pepper spray. But never, never someone who is secured in a restraint chair. It just makes no sense at all.”
10
Jan
Whenever a member of law enforcement is killed in the line of duty, like Officer Jared Francom recently was, it’s a tragedy. When the “target” of the military tactical style operation that led to the shootout leaving the officer dead appears to have been a personal marijuana grow, it’s also infuriating.
At 8:40 p.m. on Wednesday, January 3, 2012, members of the Weber-Morgan Narcotics Strike Force in Ogden, Utah conducted a “knock and enter” warrant on the home of 37 year-old army veteran Matthew David Stewart. According to reports, they knocked and no one answered. When they forcefully entered his home in paramilitary style gear, with guns drawn, they encountered gunfire. When it was all said and done, one member of the task force was fatally injured, five members were wounded, Stewart was injured and faces likely charges of aggravated murder (which carries the death penalty) and multiple counts of attempted aggravated murder.
According to DEA Special Agent in Charge Frank Smith, the victims and other agents involved in this operation are heroes, and they were “protecting the public.” I tend to agree with Agent Smith, members of the task force are heroes, but in this instance, they certainly were not protecting the public.
The only public reports about why Stewart was raided indicate that Stewart had a personal, indoor marijuana grow for medical reasons. It’s been reported that Stewart suffers from PTSD and grew a small amount of marijuana to self-medicate. In addition, it has been speculated that the reason why Stewart failed to answer the knock is because he was asleep at the time. He worked the midnight shift and would typically be asleep at the time the raid was conducted.
So, it seems an army veteran who suffers from PTSD was suddenly awoken to armor-clad armed men in his home and he allegedly opened fire. The army vet now likely faces the death penalty. One officer is dead. Five wounded. Countless lives have been ruined.
I’d like Agent Smith to explain to Stewart exactly why he was a threat to the public. There has been no allegation that Steward sold marijuana, or gave it away to kids, or that he was a danger to anyone before the paramilitary-style raid on his house. In fact, his neighbors were shocked to learn that there was any drug activity in the area, dispelling the notion that Stewart was an immediate threat to anyone. Without making a fuss and without causing problems in his neighborhood, Stewart simply grew marijuana for personal medical reasons.
I’d also like Agent Smith to explain to Officer Francom’s family why Stewart’s personal medical grow warranted the over-the-top means of enforcement that has been linked to so many needless deaths and injuries.
Finally, I’d like Agent Smith to explain to everyone why — as he stated to Fox 13 News — this situation isn’t a legalization issue? Clearly, the officers involved were just doing their job. They were enforcing enacted laws that their superiors wanted enforced. However, if marijuana were legal, this and numerous other prohibition-related deaths, including the death of another Utah man at the hands of this very same task force, would never have happened.
So long as marijuana remains a law enforcement issue as opposed to a public health issue, we’ll keep seeing tragic stories like these. Officers and civilians shot, and often times killed, over a naturally occurring plant that is safer than alcohol. It’s sad and it’s sickening, and it’s about time that we finally rethink our nation’s devastating marijuana prohibition.
06
Jan
We have said as a policy matter that this administration will not put U.S. citizens in indefinite detention. Could a future administration hold a U.S. citizen in military detention? Yes, if the [2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force] allowed it, but that would have been true with or without this bill.
Anonymous White House official, during an interview with TPM, regarding liberal, progressive, and libertarian criticism of President Obama’s decision to sign the National Defense Authorization Act. (via manicchill)
Fake legal opinions from an “anonymous source” don’t exactly inspire confidence when the text of the bill directly contradicts it. Have you ever noticed how when an “anonymous source” leaks something pro-government it’s taken without scrutiny or concern, but anything negative is combed over with extreme diligence? U.S. media for you.
03
Jan
This is tragic.
USA! USA! USA!
Capitalism isn’t the problem, the American rich are.
-Joe
(Source: keepyourhopesuphighx)
02
Jan
Obama again out-Bushes his predecessor, George Bush. Obama has signed a law making it legal to have the military indefinitely detain Americans in the US without trial.
Under the Bush administration, similar claims of worldwide detention authority were used to hold even a U.S. citizen detained on U.S. soil in military custody, and many in Congress now assert that the NDAA should be used in the same way again. The ACLU believes that any military detention of American citizens or others within the United States is unconstitutional and illegal, including under the NDAA. In addition, the breadth of the NDAA’s detention authority violates international law because it is not limited to people captured in the context of an actual armed conflict as required by the laws of war.
We are extremely disappointed that President Obama signed this bill even though his administration is already claiming overly-broad detention authority in court. Any hope that the Obama administration would roll back those claims dimmed today.
15
Dec
Study Published in Science Shows How Future Learning Could Be Instant
This has all kinds of potential, obviously. I can’t imagine the consequences of using this immorally.
New research published today in the journal Science suggests it may be possible to use brain technology to learn to play a piano, reduce mental stress or hit a curve ball with little or no conscious effort. It’s the kind of thing seen in Hollywood’s “Matrix” franchise.
Experiments conducted at Boston University (BU) and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, recently demonstrated that through a person’s visual cortex, researchers could use decoded functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to induce brain activity patterns to match a previously known target state and thereby improve performance on visual tasks.
Think of a person watching a computer screen and having his or her brain patterns modified to match those of a high-performing athlete or modified to recuperate from an accident or disease. Though preliminary, researchers say such possibilities may exist in the future.
“Adult early visual areas are sufficiently plastic to cause visual perceptual learning,” said lead author and BU neuroscientist Takeo Watanabe of the part of the brain analyzed in the study.
Neuroscientists have found that pictures gradually build up inside a person’s brain, appearing first as lines, edges, shapes, colors and motion in early visual areas. The brain then fills in greater detail to make a red ball appear as a red ball, for example.
Researchers studied the early visual areas for their ability to cause improvements in visual performance and learning.
“Some previous research confirmed a correlation between improving visual performance and changes in early visual areas, while other researchers found correlations in higher visual and decision areas,” said Watanabe, director of BU’s Visual Science Laboratory. “However, none of these studies directly addressed the question of whether early visual areas are sufficiently plastic to cause visual perceptual learning.” Until now.
Boston University post-doctoral fellow Kazuhisa Shibata designed and implemented a method using decoded fMRI neurofeedback to induce a particular activation pattern in targeted early visual areas that corresponded to a pattern evoked by a specific visual feature in a brain region of interest. The researchers then tested whether repetitions of the activation pattern caused visual performance improvement on that visual feature.
The result, say researchers, is a novel learning approach sufficient to cause long-lasting improvement in tasks that require visual performance.
What’s more, the approached worked even when test subjects were not aware of what they were learning.
“The most surprising thing in this study is that mere inductions of neural activation patterns corresponding to a specific visual feature led to visual performance improvement on the visual feature, without presenting the feature or subjects’ awareness of what was to be learned,” said Watanabe, who developed the idea for the research project along with Mitsuo Kawato, director of ATR lab and Yuka Sasaki, an assistant in neuroscience at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“We found that subjects were not aware of what was to be learned while behavioral data obtained before and after the neurofeedback training showed that subjects’ visual performance improved specifically for the target orientation, which was used in the neurofeedback training,” he said.
The finding brings up an inevitable question. Is hypnosis or a type of automated learning a potential outcome of the research?
“In theory, hypnosis or a type of automated learning is a potential outcome,” said Kawato. “However, in this study we confirmed the validity of our method only in visual perceptual learning. So we have to test if the method works in other types of learning in the future. At the same time, we have to be careful so that this method is not used in an unethical way.”
At present, the decoded neurofeedback method might be used for various types of learning, including memory, motor and rehabilitation.
There was a brief moment when civil libertarians were stunned to see President Barack Obama actually take a stand in favor of civil liberties after years to rolling back on basic rights of citizens and moving beyond the Bush Administration in building up the security state. Obama said that he would veto the defense bill that contained a horrific provision for the indefinite detention of American citizens. While many predicted it, Obama has now again betrayed the civil liberties community and lifted the threat of the veto. Americans will now be subject to indefinite detention with trial in federal courts in a measure supported by both Democrats and Republicans.
This leave Ron Paul as the only candidate in the presidential campaign fighting the bill and generally advocating civil liberties as a rallying point for his campaign. Paul offered another strong argument against the Patriot Act and other expansions of police powers in his last debate. He also noted that the Patriot Act provisions were long advocated before 9-11, which was used as an opportunity to expand police powers. As discussed in a prior column, Obama has destroyed the civil liberties movement in the United States and has convinced many liberals to fight for an Administration that blocked torture prosecutions, expanded warrantless surveillance, continued military tribunals, killed Americans on the sole authority of the President, and other core violations of civil liberties.
It’s no surprise, given that he was the one who asked the clause be put there in the first place, but it’s still frustrating to see Team Blue ignore things that they’d be completely up in arms against if they had been done by Team Red.
Seriously, don’t go voting for this mother fucker.
13
Dec
Student loan debt has ballooned since the 1990s.
#1 After adjusting for inflation, U.S. college students are borrowing about twice as much money as they did a decade ago.
#2 According to the College Board, college tuition is absolutely soaring. The following comes from a recent CBS News article….
Average tuition and fees at public colleges rose 8.3 percent this year and, with room and board, now exceed $17,000 a year, according to the College Board.
#3 Average yearly tuition at private universities in the United States is now upto $27,293. That figure has increased by 29% in just the past five years.
#4 In America today, approximately two-thirds of all college students graduate with student loan debt.
#5 In 2010, the average college graduate had accumulated approximately $25,000 in student loan debt by graduation day.
#6 According to the Student Loan Debt Clock, total student loan debt in the United States will surpass the 1 trillion dollar mark in early 2012.
#7 The total amount of student loan debt in the United States now exceeds the total amount of credit card debt in the United States.
#8 Over the past 25 years, the cost of college tuition has increased at an average rate that is approximately 6% higher than the general rate of inflation.
#9 Back in 1952, a full year of tuition at Harvard was only $600. Today, it is$35,568.
#10 The cost of college textbooks has tripled over the past decade.
#11 One survey found that 23 percent of all college students actually use credit cards to pay for tuition or fees.
#12 According to recent Pew Research Center polling, 75% of all Americansbelieve that college is too expensive for most Americans to afford.
#13 College has become so expensive that it is causing many college students to do desperate things in order to pay for it. For example, an increasing number of young college women are actively advertising on the Internet for “sugar daddies” who will help them pay their college bills.
#14 The student loan default rate has nearly doubled since 2005.
#15 Approximately 14 percent of all students that graduate with student loan debt end up defaulting within 3 years of making their first student loan payment.
The Quality Of College Education In America Stinks
#16 The typical U.S. college student spends less than 30 hours a week on academics.
#17 According to very extensive research detailed in a new book entitled “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses”, 45 percent of all U.S. college students exhibit “no significant gains in learning” after two years in college.
#18 Today, college students spend approximately 50% less time studying than U.S. college students did just a few decades ago.
#19 35% of U.S. college students spend 5 hours or less studying per week.
#20 50% of U.S. college students have never taken a class where they had to write more than 20 pages.
#21 32% of U.S. college students have never taken a class where they had to read more than 40 pages in a week.
#22 U.S. college students spend 24% of their time sleeping, 51% of their time socializing and 7% of their time studying.
#23 Federal statistics reveal that only 36 percent of the full-time students who began college in 2001 received a bachelor’s degree within four years.
Not Enough Jobs For College Graduates
#24 Only 55.3% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 were employed last year. That was the lowest level that we have seen since World War II.
#25 According to the Economic Policy Institute, the “official” unemployment rate for college graduates younger than 25 years old was 9.3 percent in 2010.
#26 One-third of all college graduates end up taking jobs that don’t even require college degrees.
#27 In the United States today, there are more than 100,000 janitors that have college degrees.
#28 In the United States today, 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees.
#29 In the United States today, approximately 365,000 cashiers have college degrees.
#30 In the United States today, 24.5 percent of all retail salespeople have a college degree.
#31 The percentage of mail carriers with a college degree is now 4 times higher than it was back in 1970.
#32 Right now, there are 5.9 million Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 that are living with their parents.
#33 According to one recent survey, only 14 percent of all Americans that are 28 or 29 years old are optimistic about their financial futures.
#34 Record numbers of Americans are going to college, but incomes for young American adults just keep falling. Since the year 2000, incomes for U.S. households led by someone between the ages of 25 and 34 have fallen by about 12 percent after you adjust for inflation.
#35 Once they get out into the “real world”, 70% of all college graduates wish that they had spent more time preparing for the “real world” while they were still in school.
(Source: jonathan-cunningham)
Did you see the image that ran on the front-page of the Los Angeles Times (and other newspapers) depicting the immediate aftermath of a suicide bombing in Afghanistan? It’s terrible. Readers are understandably upset, and many are criticizing the Times for subjecting them to such visual…
What’s clear is that you won’t see these news outlets print a picture of Afghan civilians after WE bomb them.
(Source: Los Angeles Times)
via molly-pants
via nickturse
via jonathan-cunningham
via fuckyeahdrugpolicy
via sunfoundation