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Nah, send them to the southside of chicago where almost 900 people have been shot, and soon to be a movie about "chiraq" because of the egregious amounts of black on black violence to the tune of 2800.

I'm hoping the people marching against cops will start marching in chicago after the recent shooting of a 4 year old - she caught a round in the head. Pretty sure she wasn't in a gang or deserving of the shot.

I live in the southside and hear the gunfire occasionally.

Here's the latest stats

http://crime.chicagotribune.co...

Here's the latest atrocity

http://chicago.suntimes.com/ne...

But yeah - the best efforts are focused on the occasional cop bit. Cause there's thousands of those (well not really - but it takes the sting out eh?)

By making drugs illegal, they become expensive and create a pool of dark money which can then be rerouted to:

1) Banks ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... )
2) Federal agencies and lobbyists ( http://www.thenation.com/artic... )
3) Three letter agencies ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... )
4) Local police ( http://my.chicagotribune.com/#... ) where traffic stops are now an entrepreneurial opportunity, as in "I had a thought about drugs, so give me all of your money."

Funny how the "Democrats" ripped open Blair Hull and Jack Ryan's divorce records for the anointed one. http://www.economicpolicyjourn... http://www.chicagotribune.com/...

Not only is it outrageous and unconstitutional, it's totally valueless. The Feds can't even stand in the way of people for whom they have good information that they might be interested in doing harm, let alone find anything new. The real purpose of a program that is so ineffective, can only be to retroactively find dirt on political outcasts and then put them in prison.

Citations:

• Feds warned about Boston bombers: http://www.nbcnews.com/storyli...
• The Feds monitored one of the Texas shooters, and he spent time in jail: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/p...
• Uselessness of the mass surveillance program:
  http://www.tomsguide.com/us/rs...
  http://articles.chicagotribune...

Perhaps prison wouldn't be appropriate for an adult either, here? There is evidence that harsher punishment is counterproductive, increasing the chance of repeat crimes.

Yes, the reason for that is that putting criminals together, and putting minor offenders together with major offenders, socializes them in the ways of crime. They teach each other how to commit crimes. They get sent away for small-time pot dealing and learn how to steal cars and burglarize buildings.

There used to be some well-run juvenile correction centers that actually did work. My friend's brother wound up in one of them. They taught him to read, they taught him a trade (carpentry).

Unfortunately most of those places have been replaced by what amounts to torture chambers run like prisons by sadistic guards. It's the fault of both Democratic and Republican conservatives. It's mostly Republicans, but I can't let Bill Clinton off the hook. http://www.theguardian.com/us-... Tax cuts have eliminated the budgets. Here's the umpteenth expose of the juvenile justice system, by the Chicago Tribune http://www.chicagotribune.com/... That's Rahm Emanuel's territory. At one group home, the staff was billing for "television therapy" when the kids watched movies on TV.

One of the problems is that the American people have turned mean-spirited without compassion or concern for those who are having problems, as demonstrated by some of the posts here. If these people take over, America isn't going to be a very good place to live.

"Can't crash a train into anything"...hahaha, you've never heard of the Chicago CTA

sleeping operator makes CTA train crash into and up escalator: http://www.chicagotribune.com/...
Pothead tries to push train ahead out of the way: http://www.chicago-l.org/misha...
CTA "ghost train" with no operator goes for a ride and crashes, multiple fail-safes not working: http://patch.com/illinois/oakp...

> You are living in a dreamworld.

No, I'm living in the real world. Statistically speaking, US cities are remarkably safe places to live. I am not aware of any US city that has been "overrun" by gangs and violence. There are dangerous areas, of course, but saying "citizens are constantly at war with each other" is nothing but hyperbole.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-violent-crime-1970s-level-20141110-story.html

Sure, just try and talk to them about a social contract to reduce the harm that comes from widespread ownership of firearms

You could replace 'firearms' with 'free speech' and find Great Powers (the PRC and Russia) that are sympathetic; somehow I doubt you'd be willing to emigrate there though. I also suspect that you'd be looking at a -1 mod right now, rather than +5, since your contribution to the discussion would be both offtopic and flamebait.

Even if I accepted your premise about the social cost of gun ownership (I don't, violent crime in the US has continued to drop for decades, even as gun laws have been largely liberalized) it would not change my opinion about firearms ownership. Self-defense is an inherent human right, one that can not be exercised effectively without weaponry that negates disparities in physical strength, numbers, or size. The right of self-defense is recognized in the United States by the 2nd Amendment, as well as Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I do not know about New York, but if you take an Uber car and get into an accident, do not count on the driver's insurance. It was invalidated the second you got in the car, having promised to pay him.

Don't know the specifics of the case, but Yellow Cab in Chicago have filed for bankruptcy because they are presumably unable to pay damages to a customer who was injured in a crash.

There must be a bit more detail to it, because I would have expected Yellow Cabs insurance to cover it... but just goes to show... something!

From:

http://articles.chicagotribune...

"It seems impossible to say that they weren't there at all, because they knew too much"

The five thugs admitted to beating, raping and killing the jogger. How can you defend that? The Armstrong report proved their guilty. Maybe Reyes came along later and finished the job, but those five certainly did it.

Now, generally im against no bid contracts, but this one makes sense.

Using Boeing makes sense. If Airbus was used, it would be more expensive because it would have to be stripped down and built back up again to make sure it was free from European listening devices. After all, if the US already does this to other countries with its presidential Boeing airplanes and Merkel's cell phone. It can't really complain when other countries retaliate and try to do the same thing back to the US White House.

The threats were originally posted to Twitter by @kingZortic. At about 3:51 p.m. the account, which had earlier challenged the FBI, CIA and NSA, posted an address on the 4500 block of West Schubert Avenue in Chicago and issued another challenge to "come get me I got guns, COME AT ME."

Chicago Police went to the address listed on social media and determined that the person behind the threats did not actually reside at that address, said News Affairs Officer Bari Lemmon. Police did not find any weapons and did not arrest or detain anyone, Lemmon said.

The threats targeted Southwest Airlines Flight 2492, which arrived at Atlanta from Milwaukee, and Delta Air Lines Flight 1156, which arrived from Portland, Oregon, said Reese McCranie, a spokesman for Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Both planes landed safely.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/...

The geek who thinks he is riding The Wave of The Future and pulling the rest of the world along with him, like it or not, is a very big part of the problem.

1 The frame should be easily folded and pocketed like any ordinary pair of glasses.

I spent the strangest of Christmases lit by the glow of the cell phone and tablet --- --- an obsession with the gadget so strong it destroyed any sense of a dinner with family and friends.

2 The geek will want a next-generation Glass with HD displays and cameras, front and rear facing, night vision, more sensitive microphones, better battery life, gigabytes of storage, unrestricted apps, including facial recognition with Internet connectivity, etc., etc., etc.

None of that is going to happen in the consumer market until the issues of privacy and respect for others are resolved first --- and hiding behind the geek's favorite legalisms ---"public space!"--- and memes like "Privacy is dead!" will bury Glass six feet under with no hope of resurrection.

The camera must remain visible. There can be no doubt when it is in use.

I would be very strongly tempted to insist on a warning when the audio and video feed is being streamed to the net or being interpreted --- augmented --- by internal or external apps.

3 The geek will predictably cry "Censorship!" Political correctness. But allowing AO apps into the Glass store would be disastrous.

Who wants to live in a society populated by wandering cyborgs staring vacantly into space.
There is no straight line from the introduction of the cellular telephone of the eighties to the placement of an all-knowing chip in our heads in the 22nd century, With each technological breakthrough we consider [what has been lost and what has been gained] Then we react.

Google Glass is the creepy innovation we didn't want.

Yes, on space stations.

Found an openly browseable copy of it in the net.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/...

By David Kidwell and Alex Richards
Chicago Tribune

Chicago's red light cameras fail to deliver the dramatic safety benefits long claimed by City Hall, according to a first-ever scientific study that found the nation's largest camera program is responsible for increasing some types of injury crashes while decreasing others.

The state-of-the-art study commissioned by the Tribune concluded the cameras do not reduce injury-related crashes overall — undercutting Mayor Rahm Emanuel's primary defense of a program beset by mismanagement, malfunction and a $2 million bribery scandal.

Emanuel has credited the cameras for a 47 percent reduction in dangerous right-angle, or "T-bone," crashes. But the Tribune study, which accounted for declining accident rates in recent years as well as other confounding factors, found cameras reduced right-angle crashes that caused injuries by just 15 percent.

At the same time, the study calculated a corresponding 22 percent increase in rear-end crashes that caused injuries, illustrating a trade-off between the cameras' costs and benefits.

The researchers also determined there is no safety benefit from cameras installed at intersections where there have been few crashes with injuries. Such accidents actually increased at those intersections after cameras went in, the study found, though the small number of crashes makes it difficult to determine whether the cameras were to blame.

The finding raises questions about why the city installed cameras in so many places where injury-causing crashes were rare — nearly 40 percent of the 190 intersections that had cameras through 2012, the Tribune found.

"The biggest takeaway is that overall (the program) seems to have had little effect," said Dominique Lord, an associate professor at Texas A&M University's Zachry Department of Civil Engineering who led the Tribune's study.

"So the question now is: If we eliminate a certain type of collision and increase the other and overall it stays the same, is there an argument that it is fair to go with the program?" Lord said. "That is a question that I cannot answer.

Emanuel declined interview requests. His top transportation experts acknowledged flaws in the city's statistics but said the Tribune study reinforces their own conclusion that cameras are helping.

Chicago Transportation Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld said the city has never attempted a deep examination of the effectiveness of the largest automated enforcement program in the country, which has grown to more than 350 red light cameras and raised more than $500 million in $100 tickets since 2002. She said the Emanuel administration, now in its fourth year, is attempting to fix a long-standing lack of oversight.

"So certainly, the study presents an interesting argument, something that we will be considering moving forward," Scheinfeld said. "But the fact is, the important thing I want to make sure that we get across here is that there are less deaths out there, there are less injuries out there and we are very encouraged by that."

Several national traffic experts consulted by the Tribune called the study a valid examination that largely mirrors the results of similar scientific efforts conducted around the country that found moderate decreases in T-bone crashes coupled with increases in rear-enders as drivers hit the brakes to avoid camera-generated tickets.

The study findings also dovetail with the Tribune's examination of how short yellow light times at Chicago's traffic signals raise the stakes for drivers.

Prompted by Tribune reporting, Emanuel officials recently admitted to the city inspector general that they had quietly dropped the threshold for what constitutes a red light camera ticket, allowing the tickets even when cameras showe

Clinton Makes Mistake In Cutting Nasa's Budget

Nothing better captures the decay of the Clinton presidency from the change-friendly, innovative liberalism promised in 1992 to the reactionary liberalism of today, determined to defend the welfare state at all cost, than Clinton's newest "reinventing government" initiative. Unveiled late last month, it promises to "reinvent" NASA with huge budget cuts.

In 1992, Clinton-Gore campaigned as the Atari Democrats. Unlike the hidebound Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis locked in to the Democratic past, they posed as futurists dedicated to global competition, high-tech/high-wage jobs, and cutting edge science. So where do these two change-is-our-friend Democrats go for budget cutting? Farm subsidies? Welfare? Inflated government construction costs, a legacy of the egregious 1931 Davis-Bacon Act (that the administration has just promised to retain)?

They go to space, the one area where the United States has the greatest technological advantage-an advantage that can be quickly lost without serious sustained effort. Under the euphemism of "reinvention," the administration is cutting the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to pieces.

Isn't Hillary planning to run in 2016? What an indictment of the US political system, that she could possibly be competitive.

Actually it has concern has little to do with 'a certified union' and is more of a concern with the epidemic of single mothers forced to live on social welfare programs to support their kids, being given incentives to not have 2 parent families, and punished by the welfare systems if they attempt to establish or maintain a two parent household.

http://newsblogs.chicagotribun...
http://www.census.gov/prod/201...
http://www.actrochester.org/ch...
http://www.crosswalk.com/blogs...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

These are just a few examples of the concern and impact this is having on society, and especially effecting certain ethnic groups.

Unfortunately while all of the corruption exist in Government this won't be fixed. You can do your own searching to find out why that is, but I'll give you a hint. Milton Friedman was one of many that explained this situation and why people want it that way.

Searching through Wikipedia, I think the Pound Cake speech (a speech he gave to the NAACP during a celebration of 50 years of Brown v Board of Education) is a good starting point, where Cosby criticized a culture where if someone does something bad and they get into trouble with police, the culture immediately jumps on the police rather than criticize the black youth who committed the crime in the first place. "Looking at the incarcerated, these are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake! And then we all run out and are outraged, 'The cops shouldn't have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand? I wanted a piece of pound cake just as bad as anybody else, and I looked at it and I had no money. And something called parenting said, 'If you get caught with it you’re going to embarrass your mother.' Not 'You're going to get your butt kicked.' No. 'You're going to embarrass your family.'"

Perhaps a better reference would be this Chicago Tribune discussion with Cosby where he ruminates on these topics. I think one of the most depressing criticisms Cosby gets is that people tell him he can't be saying these things publicly because then white people will hear it and think it's fine to say it about black people in general.

I just realized that I should of posted the actual damage strip clubs do instead of doing a tit for tat.

http://southtownstar.chicagotr...

That's the guy that got extremely drunk at a strip club and killed an innocent friend. I realize you might of looked at my earlier post and were just being facetious in your reply.

If the government supports turning over FOID registrations to people who ask, and you don't fight them, then you shouldn't support fighting for the privacy of other folks that for that same privacy.

Martin NiemÃller had a really good point to make about atrocities.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak outâ"
        Because I was not a Socialist.

        Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak outâ"
        Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

        Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak outâ"
        Because I was not a Jew.

        Then they came for meâ"and there was no one left to speak for me.

They've come after law abiding folks who registered to own a weapon. When did you fight back?

I don't even know where you live, but you are terrified of me.

Rest easy, I have watched my firearms, they sit where they are left and have not grown legs and moved yet.

BTW - nice dodge, I drive a jeep.

P.s. In neighborhoods where there are nude dancers, there are usually low lifes that frequent them. A friend of mine was killed by one actually.

http://southtownstar.chicagotr...

He was highly drunk and smashed into her small car with a heavy pickup truck.

Obama wants 6.2 billion to combat Ebola I doubt he'll get it after last night, but if he does, maybe some of that will go to research?

She is not "supposed to be quarantined" according to anyone except some idiot politicians trying to score political points and capitalize on fear. She has tested negative multiple times, has no symptoms, and the CDC has cleared her to go home. New Jersey governor said Monday that the CDC cleared nurse Kaci Hickox to go home during 21-day quarantine after she tested negative for Ebola

It's just idiot politicians who have to be seen to be "doing something", regardless of whether that thing makes any sense.

Also CDC says returning Ebola medical workers should not be quarantined.

I guess the IRS saw the 2.5B dollar haul local cops have brought in since 9-11, and said "oooo look! I bet we can do that too...thanks 9-11! thanks Patriot Act!! thanks terrorists!!!"

Then you haven't been paying attention, ATS, Redflex, and the other red light camera companies have been getting bad press all over the country, from Florida, to NJ, to Chicago where Redflex personnel bribed officials to get the $2B contract there, and there are public allegations from a former executive that they routinely bribed officials in at least 13 states: California, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Florida, New Jersey, Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia.

Chicago just got busted issuing tickets for short yellows. They instructed their vendor to start ticketing vehicles that ran yellows that were only 2.9 seconds long instead of the Federally mandated 3 seconds. Please note, they did not actually change the timing of the lights, just when tickets were issued. Previously if a yellow was shorter than 3 seconds then any tickets generated were discarded. Apparently times can fluctuate slightly due to electrical issues.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/...

Thousands of Chicago drivers have been tagged with $100 red light fines they did not deserve, targeted by robotic cameras during a series of sudden spikes in tickets that city officials say they cannot explain, a Tribune investigation has found.

The Tribune's analysis of more than 4 million tickets issued since 2007 and a deeper probe of individual cases revealed clear evidence that the deviations in Chicago's network of 380 cameras were caused by faulty equipment, human tinkering or both.

The city of chicago has already been accused of doing this. Got any other bright ideas?

Eisner (the president of Disney at the time) was driving in Florida. He saw a small daycare where someone had painted Disney characters on the walls.

Close, but not quite.

The controversy over the cartoon characters began when Hallandale city officials realized the 5-foot-high painted figures violated the city's sign code. The cartoons are considered signs by city officials, and as such they cannot cover more than 20 square feet of wall space, Growth Management Director Ron Muscarella said.

After learning about the figures from the news media, Disney sent an investigator to photograph the murals. The photographs were reviewed by Disney attorneys, who agreed that the figures too closely resembled Disney's famous characters, Champlin said.

http://articles.chicagotribune...

Gun deaths in Australia dropped sharply after the ban was enacted.

And before. "It's true the homicide rate fell after the law took effect -- but it had also been falling long before that. A study published by the liberal Brookings Institution noted that the decline didn't accelerate after 1996."

At least in Maryland and Illinois the wiretap laws have been ruled unconstitutional. So I would hope that GM's lawyers would first research the issue as they could run into the opposite of what they intend. In this day and age they can be looking at legal action from owners if such a feature is disabled in a state where such laws are unconstitutional. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-03-20/news/chi-supreme-court-eavesdropping-law-20140320_1_illinois-supreme-court-illinois-eavesdropping-act-cook-county-jail

Cities like Chicago are installing cellphone tracking devices to monitor pedestrian traffic. http://readwrite.com/2014/09/0... http://articles.chicagotribune... There's one at the top of a light pole in front of the Board of Trade on Jackson St. It looks like a small, black, round trash can.

Oh it's worse than you think. The Chicago Tribune has already caught the city randomly changing the rules of the cameras so that there are occasonal large spikes of tickets generated. The rule changes are things like removing turn on red or changing the speed approached to the light for ticket triggering. The Chicago Tribune's website has a whole section on the ongoing red light issues. Sorry some of it is pay walled but not all of it.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/...

On the contrary, I fear the biggest nuclear threat in the modern world is from individual "terror" groups. In the age of Mutually Assured Destruction, the only people with nothing to lose are those who can't be tied to a specific region. If a group of unaffiliated individuals attack a country, that country has no recourse for nuclear retaliation.

I highly recommend the documentary "Countdown to Zero", it recounts the stories of a couple of extremist organisations caught in the process of acquiring nuclear material, and the frightening thing is that most of these cases were caught by accident, ie. luck. And if those were found by accident, we have no idea how many transactions may have been successful.

To quote a Russian military prosecutor with regards to the tracking & security of nuclear material during the collapse of the Soviet Union:

"potatoes were guarded better"

http://articles.chicagotribune...

Could millions of college dropouts get a second chance through a GED-style equivalent of a college diploma? In today's age of blue-collar blues and online education, the idea of college-equivalency exams doesn't sound so outlandish anymore.

These are the new realities: The high school diploma is not the gateway to the middle class that it used to be. Amid new corporate efficiencies and the migration of high-paying, low-skilled jobs overseas since the 1950s, growing numbers of college graduates are occupying jobs like postal worker or restaurant manager that used to be filled by high school grads.

The results are new pressures on blue-collar families and the sort of class tensions voiced by presidential candidate Rick Santorum with his recent verbal jab ("What a snob!") at President Barack Obama's push for more college attendance. In fact, Obama, like Santorum, also has been a major cheerleader for community colleges and trade schools. He did not say college was something everyone should do; rather, he said it is "an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford."

Yet, give Santorum his due. He touched on a reality that deserves more public discussion: College isn't for everyone. Some very bright students thrive better while learning a hands-on trade, for example, than they do in a classroom. Others simply can't afford the time or tuition of college because of their personal circumstances.

As a result, the percentage of college graduates who come from households in the bottom fourth of income earners — as I did — has declined to only 7.2 percent from 12 percent in 1970, according to Ohio University economics professor Richard Vedder, who also is director of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for College Affordability and Productivity.

Santorum's remarks while campaigning in Michigan moved me to call Vedder, whom I have known since he tried to put some economics knowledge into my noggin when I was one of his students many years ago.

Author of the 2004 book "Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs Too Much," Vedder sees a disconnect between the cost of college and the needs of the job market. He has found as many as one out of three college graduates today to be in jobs that historically were filled by people with less education.

"These are jobs that do not require higher-level learning skills, critical thinking skills, or writing skills or anything of that nature," he said in a telephone interview.

At the same time, we see cheaper alternatives to college like online education growing to the point where we see Internet Age stories like online student Kayla Heard. The Union, Wash., 16-year-old graduated last year from Washington State University with a 3.7 grade-point average in social sciences without ever stepping on campus, except to pick up her diploma.

Let's go a step further, says Vedder.

"As college costs rise," he said, "people are asking: Aren't there cheaper ways of certifying competence and skills to employers?"

People typically believe there are no good substitutes for college. But if prospective employees can certify to potential employers that they are as bright, knowledgeable, good at communicating and eager to learn as a better-than-average college graduate, they can present themselves as a bargain — willing to accept wages that are higher than normal high-school-graduate standards but low compared to most college-graduate salaries.

Vedder is encouraged by recent agreements between the Education Testing Service, which operates the famed SAT test for the College Board, and the Council for Aid to Education to provide competency test materials to students online through StraighterLine, an online education firm. The challenge is to persuade college-accreditation organizations and the business community that colleg

http://articles.chicagotribune...

if they want to set a min level without the high cost of college and then they can take people from the teach / trades / learn on there own.

I'm sure gather heat and wind information is the top priority of citizens who live in the murder capital of America.

The murders happen in mostly constrained areas that do not affect the people shopping on Michigan avenue. The city is extremely segregated by socioeconomic status. The murders are tolerated because "it doesn't happen to people that matter." Surely this is to be used to keep the good people on the north side safe from the rabble.

The name Braves is not offensive; if anything it celebrates the courage of the Native American. But the team should drop the use of the tomahawk chop in the stadium. (They have already done away with the Native American image that was formerly used in conjunction with their logo.) And the Indians should get rid of their horrible cartoon logo.

This article in the Chicago Tribune suggests that the Blackhawks have little cause for worry: http://articles.chicagotribune...

"Some" is a word with very little precision. Your slashdot ID is pretty low, so I suspect you know enough people over 40 that you should see fairly widespread racism. I live in a little island of relative racial harmony in a city with terrible race relations (Philadelphia). But any East Coast city is going to be the same, as are rust belt cities. I don't have much in the way of personal experience with the West Coast, except for San Francisco - and that was pretty terrible 10 years ago anyway.

The younger kids aren't nearly as fazed by it - you see integrated groups of younger people walking around all the time now. There is a lot of hope for the future, but until the old people all die racism is going to continue to be a problem. Remember that the people who were keeping the status quo alive and well during Jim Crow are still alive. We get reminded that these people still wield influence whenever they open their bigoted mouths.

And it isn't just cliche racism, where white men with some influence are screwing minorities. Look at the way Democratic strategists are using race to fire up their supporters. Look at the way race is used to fire up the immigration debate on both sides. These tactics simply would not be effective if race were not a huge factor in our society.

. . .cops lie. They will lie to secure a conviction, but crowd-sourced photographic evidence is what will counter their culture of concealing misbehavior. Dash cams might help, too, but not as long as cops are in control of the on-off switch (see here and here).

Nuclear power plants are shutting down for economic reasons. Analysis (linked above) shows that it is the economics of natural gas and renewables that is doing this. So far, wind has played a big role, forcing zero pricing at night. A number of Midwestern nuclear plants may close this year. http://articles.chicagotribune... Obviously, if low cost gas can backstop supply of even cheaper wind, the concept of baseline power is useless. And it only made sense if nuclear could be the lowest cost supplier, which it can't. No cost savings from being inflexible and brittle save nuclear if everything else is cheaper.

http://articles.chicagotribune...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...

So people are upset about the NSA spying on companies and a country that was willing to look the other way on some very questionable practices ?

A little reality check here. George Washington was one of our first spymasters,
  http://www.amazon.com/George-W...
And the value of intelligence information to our well being has not decreased one bit since the revolution.

Sound more like feminist victimization rehashed...

Sounds to me more like game developers are thinking long and hard about what is happening elsewhere in the entertainment industry.

["Frozen"] took the No. 13 spot on the all-time worldwide box office list this week, passing "Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace" and "Jurassic Park."

It's been a big week for "Frozen," which has been in the top ten at the box office in the U.S. and Canada for 17 weeks.

On Wednesday, Disney said that "Frozen" had sold 3.2 million DVD and Blu-Rays on Tuesday, becoming one of the biggest home entertainment debuts in recent years.

Disney chairman and chief executive Robert Iger told shareholders Tuesday that "Frozen" was on pace to be the most successful animated film in history, surpassing "Toy Story 3," which ranks No. 11 on the all-time list with $1.063 billion.

And thanks to its ubiquitous anthem "Let it Go," the soundtrack has sold over 1.4 million albums in the U.S. It has also been streamed more than 100 million times on Spotify.

'Frozen' surpasses 'Jurassic Park' on all-time box office list

In Blu-Ray sales at Amazon, "Frozen" is #1, "Catching Fire" #2 and "Gravity" in 3D #10.

The point being that ditching gender stereotypes in mass media can have a very big financial payoff. If it means ditching the foul mouthed, misogynistic and eternally adolescent male audience that perpetuates these stereotypes, that can be a price worth paying.

"Even Hyatt said he's not sure whether he would replicate the shock of getting a patent in 1990 on a "single chip integrated circuit computer architecture" a ruling that effectively gave him a financial claim to most microprocessors, the digital backbone of every personal computer in the world

Did he actually devise methods to overcome the technical obstacles before an actual chip could be fabricated. I'm thinking laminar flow etc. If not then he's just another patent troll. ps.The US patent system is fucked, you do know that already ?

“A new image of urban America is in the making,” HuffPo quotes William H. Frey, a demographer at Brookings who co-wrote the report, as saying. “What used to be white flight to the suburbs is turning into ‘bright flight’ to cities that have become magnets for aspiring young adults who see access to knowledge-based jobs, public transportation and a new city ambiance as an attraction.”

And recently, it has started to become the norm, not just a trend amongst young.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/23/18441345-urban-renewal-census-figures-show-cities-surging?lite

Big cities surpassed the rate of growth of their surrounding suburbs at an even faster clip, a sign of America's continuing preference for urban living after the economic downturn quelled enthusiasm for less-crowded expanses.

And, the trend lines up with the younger crowd driving & buying cars less.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/why-dont-young-americans-buy-cars/255001/
http://cars.chicagotribune.com/fuel-efficient/news/chi-cars-get-older-young-people-drive-less-20130807

The Times notes that less than half of potential drivers age 19 or younger had a license in 2008, down from nearly two-thirds in 1998. The fraction of 20-to-24-year-olds with a license has also dropped. And according to CNW research, adults between the ages of 21 and 34 buy just 27 percent of all new vehicles sold in America, a far cry from the peak of 38 percent in 1985.

Second, nowhere in the article does he mention New York. He is an urban planner from New York, yes, but he was specifically talking about the tech companies in the Bay Area bussing employees from the city to the suburbs. He's not pushing anything for New York. He's an urban planner talking about planning in an urban area other than the one he is in.

Here's one example of it having happened:
http://articles.chicagotribune...

Well, I would be more worried that it's actually real

Interestingly, Obama always supported the all-powerful teachers union in Chicago, who managed to get working conditions so good for their members that the schools had to cut the number of teaching days to afford those gold-plated teachers.

Interestingly, that seems to be completely made up.

In 2012 there were 170 teaching days for elementary school teachers. After the strike and contract negotiations there were 180 teaching days in 2013. High school teachers also had a 10 day increase. In both cases, the length of the work day also increased (see the same link as before).

Why would the US Coast Guard own any icebreakers? We don't have any deep ice around our coastlines.

The US Coast Guard has 6 ice breakers in service on the Great Lakes:

Early ice causing problems on Lake Michigan:

The ice is getting formidable, particularly in the lower St. Mary's River, which connects Lake Superior to the lower Great Lakes.

"Most of the iron ore and the biggest coal shipping ports are on Lake Superior, so if our ships can't get through the St. Mary's River, the steel mills won't get their iron ore and power plants won't get their coal," Nekvasil said.

Two Coast Guard icebreakers as well as one from Canada are working on the river, Nekvasil said.

Here's the cold, hard facts: For every one of you who win that fucking friend lottery, there are thousands of people who don't.

That sort of observation is only relevant when a) it's actually a "fact", and b) a different bunch of "thousands of people" for each person who won the "friend lottery".

An actual survey found that more than half of all jobs offered were filled internally or by referral. That indicates to me that a lot of people, not merely one in a few thousand, found jobs via the "friend lobby".

I personally, have picked up at least three jobs via the "friend lottery". I don't think I'm even remotely unusual in that.