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You have all the facts wrong it looks like. Zimmerman didn't attack Martin, he was backing off, returning to his car when Martin attacked him. Zimmerman fell, Martin jumped over him beating Zimmerman's head against the ground, Zimmerman then shot him.

The cops who didn't throw Zimmerman into a holding cell right away obviously thought that it happened this way, that Zimmerman was protected with that 'Stand your ground' law, that it was self defence.

The media is being used though to create a narrative among the public that there is this splurge of white on black crime, when actually that is not the case in USA, and nobody makes a federal case out of crimes like this for example.

From the 911 call (the full unedited one), it is clear that Zimmerman ran after Martin, armed with a gun, against clear dispatcher advice, without any provocation from Martin. Whatever happened in a confrontation after that, I would not like to live in a place (and don't) where you are justified shooting someone to dead after something you initiated this way. I would be scared to death and do anything if anyone came after me like that. And it would make it very easy to get away with premeditated murder, you just initiate a situation exactly like this.

You have all the facts wrong it looks like. Zimmerman didn't attack Martin, he was backing off, returning to his car when Martin attacked him. Zimmerman fell, Martin jumped over him beating Zimmerman's head against the ground, Zimmerman then shot him.

The cops who didn't throw Zimmerman into a holding cell right away obviously thought that it happened this way, that Zimmerman was protected with that 'Stand your ground' law, that it was self defence.

The media is being used though to create a narrative among the public that there is this splurge of white on black crime, when actually that is not the case in USA, and nobody makes a federal case out of crimes like this for example.

Hey! We need you! Your students will hate you, your administration will suspect you, you'll be paid a pittance for long hours and much work, you'll be subject to every lawsuit a disgruntled punk can talk his drunken mother into starting, you'll pay for your supplies out of pocket, we may have to lay you off with almost no warning, and we'll be spying on you on-line. But other than that, it's a dream job!

Because it's a New York school. You get paid a good salary, benefits, and a ridiculous pension.

And as detailed in the New Yorker, you can't be fired, unless there is an Act of God.

And even then, you can appeal your firing and probably win.

For example, they paid a teacher not to teach for ten years: http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-02-10/news/31048116_1_rubber-room-problem-teachers-teachers-union

This entire case is a crock of bullshit. When two black teens set a white kid on fire, a clear hate crime, it hardly gets a column in the local news. But when a hispanic guy kills a black teen it garnishes national media attention?

Fuck Sharpton and Jackson, where were they then? Did Obama come out and say "If I had a son, he'd look like Coon"?

Source: http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-03-04/news/31122324_1_white-boy-fire-tv-station
Recent photos of Trayvon: http://i39.tinypic.com/1yvg5h.jpg

followup #1:

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Titanic+Ottawa+woman+alone+survives+sinking+from+group+steerage/6430607/story.html

followup #2:

http://articles.nydailynews.com/1998-04-13/news/18075077_1_white-star-line-magazine-reports-communist-china

followup #3:

FP!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHARGARBBBLE

(how'd that happen?)

In a case like this, I'd trust the statements of anyone who didn't have a motive to lie... which to me means anyone but George Zimmerman we can assume to be completely honest with what they believe they saw or heard. Mr Zimmerman's statements must be corroborated by facts.

Regarding the injuries to Mr Zimmerman, police and medical reports indicate a broken nose and gash on the back of his head. Video can be seen of officers examining the back of his head, and images released by abcnews seem to confirm that. Unless completely destroyed, a broken nose could very well be hard to see in that video. Nothing seems to contradict the injury claims in my opinion.

Regarding the voice fingerprinting claiming that the voice was not Mr Zimmerman, I find those claims suspect at best. The results show a 48% match based on background noise in 911 calls vs 911 calls made by Mr Zimmerman himself. A more apt comparison might be made by setting those results side by side against results from samples of Mr Martin's voice. But given the distortion in both sources of audio, the level of background noise, the distance from the event, the types of speech (screaming vs speaking... note the trouble voice identification software when it comes to identifying singers) and the state of voice wreckognition, I doubt we can pull meaningful evidence from computer recognition results.

Regarding the girlfriend of Mr Martin's phone conversation, I believe her factual statements are credible. She basically says that Travon saw a guy following him, lost him, and there was a confrontation where Trayvon asks "why are you following me?" and Zimmerman asks "what are you doing here?", followed by the start of a fight. There obviously is no clear way to determine who threw the first punch from those tapes.

Regarding the eye witnesses to the fight, one eye witness couldn't see much because it was so dark, but he thought he saw a man in red on the ground (zimmerman was wearing red). Media reports are sketchy, but a possible second eye witness in the same story backs Zimmerman's version of events. The bodily injuries, police reports indicating that Zimmerman appeared to be wet with grass stains, like he had been lying down with his back on the ground, and limited witness accounts seem to support the Zimmerman version, at least at some point during the confrontation.

What can we say with some level of certainty? Zimmerman called police to report a suspicious person, and began to follow him. At some point, Trayvon recognized that some random guy is following him, tells his girlfriend as much, and loses him around a corner. This is also confirmed on the police tape of the call that Mr Zimmerman made. Zimmerman is heard telling the police where to meet him, and he doesn't want to give out his full address while he doesn't know where Martin is. Martin tells the cops to call him when they arrive. At some point, Martin asks the guy why he is following him, and Zimmerman asks him what hes doing around there, and a fight breaks out, ending the call with Martin's girlfriend. The background audio in a 911 call picks up, we can hear a

Actually if you dig a little deeper, you'll find some information coming from the 13-year-olds mother which is quite interesting, and brings into question even more of the level of police work done eg leading questions, badgering, etc.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/video-george-zimmerman-killing-trayvon-martin-grainy-proves-lawyer-article-1.1052713

Re: It will never be true in my house.
Depends who is giving you your computer, device or job?
A school can network to your home with little public comment about camera use
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_District
The background paperwork once needed for high risk, cleared work is now becoming normal
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/job-applicants-asked-turn-facebook-passwords-article-1.1047427
Then you have the CIA hinting at the joy of a fully networked US home
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/03/petraeus-tv-remote/

I live and work in NYC. The Washington Post might love kissing billionaire technocrat ass, but Bloomberg didn't get this money back. In fact Bloomberg is responsible for letting SAIC rob over $600M on this contract, all the way until the bitter end while Bloomberg defended SAIC and its "cost overruns". As he finally admitted last Summer. It's the Federal prosecutor, Manhatttan US Attorney Preet Bharara, who clawed back this money. Though indeed even Bharara couldn't get it all back: the ripoff claimed $652M, the court awarded $540M, and the city might get from $466-518M. Meanwhile Bloomberg whined that getting the $500M wasn't done "in a more pleasant way". (FWIW, when his bankster cops were macing women on public sidewalks last Summer, he had no complaint that it couldn't be done in a more pleasant way). Bloomberg says we now have a functioning system "at a very reasonable cost", because he's not including all the costs of recovering the money in court. He defended this ripoff until the bitter end, and continues to spin it.

But that is exaxtly what most governments are doing - creating an environment of fear by constantly reminding us of how vulnerable we are. External terrorism is less common now than it was 30 years ago,

That's a bunch of baloney. Or maybe you can tell us which external terrorist groups where striking the continental United States in 1982 and killing large numbers of people? Did we all miss a couple of mass attacks?

They do this to achieve a political objective of control of the populace,

Really? How does that work? You get frisked at the airport so you stop voting? You walk through the metal detector so you stop making campaign contributions? Your baggage gets X-rayed so you stop going to church? I don't think you know what you are talking about.

How does that not satisfy the definition of "using terror to achieve a political objective"

Is the TSA leaving piles of dead bodies from groping next to the security lines at the airports? I hadn't noticed. Are they killing members of congress who vote against their budget? Are they disappearing journalists who take a stand against the use of X-Ray machines?

Taking reasonable precautions against actual terrorists isn't "terrorism". TSA finds 4 guns per day at airports

They can send you to jail for not cooperating (or even citing the constitution at them), prevent you from traveling freely and deny you the right to exit the country. They can put you on watch lists that make the "more traditional" TLA's pay attention to you. And their influence is spreading.

So, yes, they are.

Let's put it down to the Fox News Effect, but your post is pretty much conservative urban legend crap.

In 2010 ACORN alone had over 15 convictions of fraud related activities.

Vote REGISTRATION fraud. Not actual VOTING fraud.

This is not some trivial difference, as organizations are required by law to turn in all the forms they collect. So if someone registers as Micky Mouse, ACORN would flag that form and set it aside for state officials to look at - a fact that seems to have been left out of your storyline. They can't pick and choose forms to throw in the trash, for reasons that should be obvious - partisans would throw forms from the opposing party in the trash.

Just last year at least 10 separate states investigated, indicted and/or convicted people for voter fraud and in almost every case (with at least 1 exception) the suspects were Democrats and/or their operatives.

You mean people like Usman Ali?

Ali, on the other hand, a 68-year-old Pakistani-born jewelry store owner in Tallahassee, Fla, didn't cast a vote at all. When Ali went to renew his driver's license at a Florida DMV, he was handed a stack of forms to fill out by the clerk. One of them, it turns out, was a voter registration form. He says he hadn't noticed that it was only for U.S. citizens and, in any case, he never actually voted. Ali's unintentional voter registration crime, a federal misdemeanor, resulted in his deportation back to Pakistan, though he had legally lived in the U.S. for more than 10 years.

Or Kimberly Prude?

Prude, a 43-year-old African-American woman from Milwaukee, was convicted of cashing a counterfeit check for $1,254 in 2000. She never served any jail time but was still on probation four years later, at the end of 2004, when she attended a Democratic election rally. Marching with others to City Hall that day, Prude registered to become a voter and later voted by absentee ballot, since she had also signed up to serve as a poll worker and therefore wouldn't be available to vote in person on Election Day. Since she hadnâ(TM)t served time in jail, she thought she was permitted to vote, but later found out from her probation officer that she was wrong. She immediately called City Hall in hopes of rescinding her vote. Her thanks for doing so? She was convicted of felony voter fraud by the U.S. attorney in the state of Wisconsin and sent to prison for more than a year.

The only **actual fraud** here is the Republican Party pretending this is a grave problem necessitating draconian voter ID laws when you can literally count the number of actual cases on one, maybe two hands. Out of millions and millions of votes cast nationwide.

and in almost every case (with at least 1 exception) the suspects were Democrats and/or their operatives.

Your partisan stone throwing would be funny if the Secretary of State of Indiana wasn't just convicted of half a dozen counts of actual voting fraud when he was the man in charge of the state's elections. And if Ann Coulter hadn't voted in two districts in the same election.

And if the GOP hadn't stolen a presidential election by disenfranchising tens of thousands of eligible voters in Florida.

The thing we have working for us is that devices don't have to last forever - just until you die. So in practice, risky procedures (and drugs) become mainstream by starting on patients with extremely short life expectancies or very low quality of life, and then gradually reducing the threshold for using the treatment as the kinks are worked out. But young people who receive joint replacements today are told they'll last 10-20 years until you're back in the shop, which is definitely expensive, inconvenient, and somewhat medically risky. If I were a young vet being considered for some fresh-from-DARPA neural interface, I would seriously consider the fact that I will almost certainly outlast the research program and even the doctors who implanted my one-of-a-kind device. They'll almost certainly end up scraping it out for an upgrade within 15 years.

Which leads to this sort of bullshit.

why have standards if we don't enforce them? send the kid to private school if public school standards are too much work.

They're not dumb, they're just following an agenda that requires a bit of science denial now and then.

This is politicians in general. Just about anytime someone says "blah blah (democrats/republicans) blah blah" it can be applied both ways. Partisan politics are stupid, imo.

For global warming, it's because the rich assholes they toady to don't want to change the way they do business, even if it means destroying the nest we live in.[*]

You know what, even if man made global warming is real, the estimates that i've seen are a 1 degree rise in temperature and sea level rising a foot, over a century. And the only acceptable reaction, less you be labeled a denier is "LET"S DRASTICALLY ALTER OUR WAY OF LIFE AND BASICALLY FORGO MODERN LIFE AS WE KNOW IT". Have fun explaining that to someone when they can't get their medicine on time, because that diesel truck was causing too much pollution. Or countless other scenarios that are helped because of oil.

For creationism, it's because there aren't enough rich people to win elections, so they have to con various flavors of fools into voting against their own best interests.

That's right anyone who doesn't vote your way is a fool. You know what, it drives me nuts arguing with liberals/conservatives, but I almost always refrain from calling people stupid(and i regret the times i have done that). You know why? Because it's not really true. Besides which, lowering yourself to insults is usually just an indicator of a lack of an intelligent argument.

Related note, the junk food industry is fighting efforts to remove vending machines from gradeschools, because their profits are more important than the kids' health.

Personally I don't give a shit either way, it's the decision of the school and parents. Thankfully, people actually care about their children, if it's a big issue to them, they won't let the machines in.

We've evolved into a society where the haves only care about having more, fuck the consequences.

No, human beings don't evolve a whole lot (back to that science thing). People, like you apparently, just think you know better for other people than they do. Which leads to this sort of bullshit.

Oh, Big Brother is real, I just thought maybe RFID wasn't His way. NYC just saw reported that its 3/4 $billion "first responder" wireless radio system is such a boondoggle the city tried to sell it to Northrup Grumman and lease it back, but "at least" the Department of Transportation is using it to monitor cars by imaging their license plates and databasing them. The sell/leaseback attempt would have gotten Northrup to lease the same system to other private users. So Bloomberg created a wireless citywide surveillance network that doesn't protect us, but is a platform for private interests to track us all, in realtime video indexed to our government files. The only part that doesn't make sense is that the military contractor isn't taking Bloomberg up on the deal.

As for my own wireless sensors, I'll probably try Zigbee. I'd be happier if there were a way to upgrade the stack in a year or two with 6lowpan or something more open than Zigbee, but it seems the OTA upgrade would kill the remaining batteries. If only there were a $2 thermocouple recharger that could harvest ambient heat faster than the radio/MCU kills the battery, it might be OK.

And then maybe we could get some parity in watching the watchmen.

In Jobs' defense, the interview subjects still recommended him for the high-level [government] appointment, which he didn't get.

"Honesty and integrity are not prerequisites to assume such a position," one of the interview subjects reportedly said.

Source

Whoever it was that said that to the FBI has serious chutzpah.

In some US states, there are still laws being passed that enable persecution of "deviant" behaviour, e.g. being gay or transgender.

The TSA has not caught ONE terrorist. They are 100% ineffective and needs to be removed as an expense that the american people do not need to carry.

Exactly; last week, they didn't even detect a gun until the passenger had already gotten past the checkpoints!

I heard last year that first responders are trying to hang onto a chunk of radio spectrum that the telecoms want. I don't think it was really about encryption so much as making sure that it could do trunking correctly - units could bring in radios across the country and have working interoperability. Encryption is its own ball of crazy. I for one would rather have the fire fighters have better radios, the fuzz can generally get good radios if they want them.

This is apparently the "D Block" which is next to existing 700MHz public safety frequencies.
http://gcn.com/articles/2011/03/31/first-responders-public-safety-d-block-spectrum.aspx
later: http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dc/2011/06/911-first-responder-radio-bill-clears-committee

As long as people are willing to trade freedom for illusion of security, DHS and its ilk will prosper.

There, FTFY.

TSA finds 4 guns per day at airports

This says more about the US's infatuation with guns then the TSA.

People are dumb enough to bring guns to an airport. Sorry if that sounds less alarmist but it's true, never ascribe to malice what can easily be explained by stupidity.

Now the TSA isn't needed for finding people who are dumb enough to bring guns to an airport. Security could do that well enough before the TSA or DHS ever existed. It's basic security that has been around since metal detectors were first installed in Airports. To stop guns at airports all you need to do is have a metal detector and luggage X-Ray that everyone passes though... and we've had those since long before the 90's.

I dare say, non-US airports find significantly fewer firearms because people in other nations tend to lock their firearms up amongst other logical procedures involved with firearm ownership. You want to stop dumb people from bringing guns to an airport, start with fixing the dumb people.

TSA finds 4 guns per day at airports (Wouldn't it be absurd to let those guns on the planes?)

It would not be absurd at all to let chocolate factory owners and politicians (and other citizens) carry a gun on a plane. 1200 guns are found a year, and there is no evidence that anyone planned to use them on the plane.

As long as people are willing to trade freedom for illusion of security, DHS and its ilk will prosper.

There, FTFY.

TSA finds 4 guns per day at airports

Do you have anything to fix that? Or are you going to keep living your illusion?

And the latest conviction: 3 Men in NC Terror Ring Get 15-45 Years in Prison

"You have to make people feel safe" - This is a quote from a friend's mother, shortly after 9/11, in response to the absurd increase in airport security procedures. As long as people are willing to trade freedom for security, DHS and its ilk will prosper.

TSA finds 4 guns per day at airports (Wouldn't it be absurd to let those guns on the planes?)

The American security services will be needed as long as there are extremists planning attacks, like in the most recent set of convictions below. This goes on month after month, year after year. And for all of the civil rights theater, Americans continue to travel where they want, vote for who they want, live where they want, and speak or publish as they always have. The same voices that chide Americans as cowards for wanting reasonable precautions to make it less likely that terrorists will deliver truck bombs to malls or attempt another 9/11 seem to come from people who wet themselves at the idea of a Federal employee reading the newspaper or viewing Facebook.* Oh the humanity! An FBI agent might read the profile of another Mohammad Omar Aly Hassan! And by the way - Benjamin Franklin's Committee of Secret Correspondence authorized opening other people's private mail for intelligence purposes during the Revolutionary War.

3 Men in NC Terror Ring Get 15-45 Years in Prison

Three members of a home-grown terror ring who conspired to attack the Quantico U.S. Marine Corps base and foreign targets were sentenced Friday to between 15 and 45 years in federal prison.

Hysen Sherifi, 27, will serve 45 years in prison; Ziyad Yaghi, 23, got nearly 32 years; and Mohammad Omar Aly Hassan, 24, was sentenced to 15 years. They faced the possibility of life in prison. Each said they would appeal their convictions and claimed innocence. Dozens of members of Raleigh's Muslim community made the five-hour round-trip to coastal New Bern to witness the hearing for the men who supporters believe were unjustly convicted. . . .

Hassan used his Facebook account and Internet forums to post his own comments and videos by others encouraging Muslims to fight nonbelievers and Muslims who did not agree with their desire to establish mandatory religious law, prosecutors said. . . .

"You're prosecuting Islam. The judge should be sitting here with the government," Aly Hassan said, pointing to the prosecutors.

Yaghi was convicted of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism and conspiracy to carry out attacks overseas. Sherifi was convicted of both crimes, two counts of firearms possession, and conspiracy to kill federal officers or employees for plotting the Quantico attack. Hassan was convicted of providing material support to terrorists, but acquitted of a charge of conspiracy to carry out attacks overseas.

* The same Federal government that some think should be given all power over our health care system - the power of life and death.

You have a strange interpretation of Jim Crow since Occupy protestors clearly appeared involved these crimes:

1. NY: 10/1/2011 Police Arrest More Than 700 Protesters on Brooklyn Bridge
2. Madison, WI: 10-27-2011 Madison Occupiers Lose Permit Due to Public Masturbation
3. Phoenix: 10/28/2011 Flier at Occupy Phoenix Asks, “When Should You Shoot a Cop?”
4. NY: 10/18/2011 Thieves Preying on Fellow Protesters
5. NY: 10/9/2011 Stinking up Wall Street: Protesters Accused of Living in Filth as Shocking Pictures Show One Demonstrator Defecating on a POLICE CAR
6. NY: 10/7/2011 Occupiers Rush Police More
7. Cleveland: 10/18/2011 ‘Occupy Cleveland’ Protester Alleges She Was Raped
8. NY: 10/10/2011 ‘Increasingly Debauched’: Are Sex, Drugs & Poor Sanitation Eclipsing Occupy Wall Street?
9. Seattle: 10/18/2011 Man Accused of Exposing Self to Children Arrested
10. 10/12/2011 Iran Supports Occupy Wall Street
11. Portland: 10/16/2011 #OccupyPortland Protester Desecrates Memorial To U.S. War Dead
12. Portland: 10/15/2011 #OccupyPortland Protesters Sing “F*** The USA”
13. Chicago: 10/17/2011 COMMUNIST LEADER Cheered at Occupy Chicago
14. 10/15/2011 American Nazi Party Endorses Occupy Wall Street‘s ’Courage,‘ Tells Members to Support Protests and Fight ’Judeo-Capitalist Banksters’
15. Boston: 10/14/2011 Coast Guard member spit on near Occupy Boston tents
16. Boston: 10/11/2011 Boston Police Arrest Over 100 from Occupy Boston
17. New York: 10/11/2011 You Can Have Sex with Animals.
18. New York: 10/15/2011 Harassing Police with Accusations of Phony Injuries
19. New York: 10/9/2011 Occupy Wallstreet Protesters Steal from Local Businesses
20. New York: 10/25/2011 Three M

You both asked:

I'm surprised you didn't include Occupy

and answered your own question:

Freedom of speech rights my ass. Occupy doesn't know what their rights are and what they mean, how to deliver a message, or how to work for change. Instead, they come across as a bunch of posers and whiners squatting in the parks and demanding the right to squat there for the rest of their lives while they wait for the world to change itself just because they discovered the world isn't fair.

Despite that, Occupy was the news story of the year to me. It was a brief spark of hope dashed by the incompetence of self-styled "victims" who insult those who know what actual oppression is.

The Occupy movement in the US is essentially the political equivalent of bitcoint: It takes large amounts of valuable time and energy and produces seeming random outputs that are claimed to be valuable but which in fact are largely useless despite the claims of their respective supporters.

Excellent: “Daily Show” on class divisions at Occupy Wall Street

Occupy’s Misogyny

When are the feminists going to speak out on the abuse of women that’s happening at the hands of the Occupy crowd? Rapes and sexual assaults are rampant among the Occupy movement in cities across the nation. According to ABC News, this past Saturday night a 23-year-old reported being raped by a 50-year-old inside a tent at Occupy Philadelphia. Similarly, a 14-year-old child was allegedly raped at Occupy Dallas. And at Occupy Cleveland, a 19-year-old told police she was raped after sharing a tent with an unknown man. After reporting her rape at Occupy Baltimore, a young woman claimed occupiers refused to help find her attacker. Now reports of rape and attempted rape in Zuccotti Park are surfacing. These are just the ones that were reported.

In addition to rapists, suicidal folks are causing emotional distress within the movement. After a 32-year-old man shot himself inside his tent at Occupy Burlington, Vermont protesters were so traumatized that they readily agreed to pack up and end their demonstration.

Besides rapes and suicides, occupiers have injured women in the midst of their shameless attempts to grab attention. A couple weeks ago, I attended Americans for Prosperity’s “Defending the American Dream” Summit, which was crashed by Occupy D.C. I was able to depart safely, with my frightened guests in tow, as protesters hissed vile remarks in our direction. Others weren’t that lucky. The Daily Caller reports that an elderly woman was pushed down the stairs during the occupiers’ stampede into the convention center. Not one protester stopped to help her, even as she lay in pain from severe injuries to her wrists, ankles, and legs.

Despite claiming to represent the 99%, Occupy Wall Street managed to cost at least 91 people their jobs: Milk Street Cafe, FiDi eatery that lost business due to Occupy Wall Street barricades, to close for good

During a time when most city governments have having a very difficult time financially, the Occupy movment jacked up the costs. It cost Oakland CA about $2.4 million, LA is looking at $2.3 million, with some more big bills coming in shortly. Many other cities are in a similar position.

A number of "Occupy" site around the world was hit by revelations that

How do you explain this? Did the Koch brothers forget a bribe payment?

Yet, despite their rules, TSOs sometimes still prohibit passengers from bringing meds, despite the fact that TSA's regulations say that's okay (disclaimer: TSA officially claims that they allowed the insulin, but not the gel packs to keep it cool; the woman claims otherwise. You decide who is telling the truth).

"There are people government agencies stupid enough to demand just that." -FTFY

"Little Adolf Hitler, 5, along with his sisters, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie, were taken into custody in 2009."
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-11-20/news/30423408_1_nazi-inspired-names-joycelynn-aryan-nation-heath-campbell

There are better articles I've since read. Try one on nydailynews.com or collisionguard.com or drivers.com or slashfood.com or boston.com.

Not all of them make the same case, in fact I'm more inclined to believe now that phone usage is the more dangerous, but come on, if you're gonna criticize the source, maybe find one of the dozens of better ones a google search away!

Funny how people have their beliefs and the facts have no sway on them.

... In a separate study of 1,000 drivers, ExxonMobil Corp. discovered more than 70% of drivers eat while driving - and 83% drink beverages.

My source (not the original): http://articles.nydailynews.com/2009-07-19/local/17928504_1_drink-and-drive-drivers-study

I don't remember where I originally read that but here's one.

Reenacting, badly: Vermont deer hunter accidentally kills friend, then commits suicide.

You can vote on whether you think this was the right thing to do or not...
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/hundreds-cops-flood-zuccotti-park-occupy-wall-street-protesters-show-defiance-retreat-surrender-article-1.977430

Let's rename the war on terror to be more accurate too ...

Virtual strip-searches, ball-fondling, never-ending but ineffectual id checks, forcing women to drink their own breast-milk, arbitrary rule enforcement, making everyone go bare-foot, singling-out people by the clothes they wear, forcing people to remove nipple rings with pliers, torturing injured flyers, making people piss on themselves, the list is practically endless.

And yet the TSA hasn't caught a single terrorist.

But they sure are doing a bang-up job of destroying human dignity. Therefore I say we rename the War on Terror to The War on Dignity.

He's already lost his wife and daughter at least, that's a start. What a pathetic piece of shit.

He only lost his daughter because he stopped giving her money and took away her Mercedes. Seems she was pretty happy with the arrangement for the past 7 years since she didn't upload the video earlier (video's from 2004). He's not even up for re-election for 3 more years.

"...she warned her father if he reduced her financial support and took away her Mercedes, which he had provided, he would "live to regret it.""

What a spoiled brat. Isn't this blackmail or extortion? Give me money or else? It's already been ruled that it wasn't a crime, and even if it was she didn't go to the police, she uploaded it to the internet for all to see. I think she should be brought up on charges.

A CBS producer threaten to expose that David Letterman was sleeping with staff if he didn't pay $2 million. Police found out and the producer was arrested and got 6 months in jail.

How is this different? "Give me a Mercedes and money or I release the (perfectly legal) spanking video to Youtube!"

You should ask Koch brothers and Mueller. They now believe it. Sadly, only idiots are claiming that GW is not occurring, or that the USA can continue to run deficits like the republicans ran (10 t of the 14.5 t), or that the earth is only 6K years old, or that the earth is at the center of the universe.

The New York Daily News has an article on the PR operation behind that. It's a fairly standard white collar fraud story - initial success, overexpansion, arrogance, losses, fraud to cover up the losses, collapse, prosecution, jail. Enron and Worldcom come to mind.

Plus general ineptitude. The business (a kosher slaughterhouse in Iowa) managed to get in trouble with PETA, EPA, OSHA, DOL, and INS, and that was before the fraud. A professor of food science: "If you can figure out a law to break, they broke it." Head of kosher supervision: "They're just kids from Brooklyn who were suddenly running a big meat plant. They didn't realize that they had to hire professionals to take care of things."

There's a lot of religious politics surrounding this mess, but basically, it's the story of an inept businessman who used fraud to cover up the ineptitude and got caught.

No one argues he didn't do the crime. The sentence may be harsh, but it's what the current guidelines list. The dollar numbers were big enough to kick the sentence up, and the judge went by the book and gave him 27 years.

Yes, the UN generally does an OK job, except for that bit where they want to censor speech that makes other parties feel bad.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/01/14/2009-01-14_unacceptable_censorship_the_united_natio.html

There is not one common standard for "defamation". An atheist might say that it is impossible to "defame" a religion, since they're all made up anyway. A hard-line Christian or Muslim might conclude that any criticism whatsoever was defamation. Additionally, the freedom of speech in member countries is not synchronized in the least. Consider that in the UK, a newspaper can be ordered to not publish certain articles about individuals, which is practically inconceivable in the US. German courts have ruled that the names of criminals cannot be published alongside their crimes, regardless of the fact that they actually committed such crimes (not "may have committed", but "actually did commit").

Where does it stop? Once we allow the UN the toehold in determining what is acceptable speech, where is the line that cannot be crossed?

Actually, what Cain said yesterday was "Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks, if you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself."

While it's arguable that not having a job is a person's own fault (a losing argument with the economy, but arguable), saying it's the fault of everyone not rich that they're not rich isn't just insane. It's the kind of institutional insanity that is driving the country into nothing but the madhouse, with a corporatocracy of Cains at the wheel.

Come on, it's not fair to say we don't make things. http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-01-29/news/27738306_1_gas-egypt-protesters

After 9/11, emergency flood gates were supposed to be installed in the NYC subway system. Water from fire hoses alone was enough to eventually completely flood the PATH tunnels to New Jersey. If the cement box that kept the Hudson River from pouring into the site had cracked open, the subway system would have flooded up to midtown. As of late 2010, some flood gates were being installed.

The Pennsylvania Railroad tunnels to New Jersey already had flood gates (the PRR built to last), but they'd been neglected and weren't working. Amtrak has since fixed them.

Better link to the actual source, the sometimes-sketchy New York Daily News:

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/08/22/2011-08-22_mayor_bloomberg_pushes_for_traffic_light_cameras_on_every_corner.html

OT: Murdoch apparently misled London Police/UK Parliament:

"News Corp. heir apparent James Murdoch is now in the crosshairs of critics who charge he misled Parliament about Britain's phone-hacking scandal.

The allegations against the 38-year-old Murdoch, long considered the successor to his father Rupert, raised questions about his credibility - and his future.

Murdoch, under questioning this week, said he was unaware the invasions of privacy at the now-shuttered News of the World went beyond a single reporter.

But a pair of former Murdoch top staffers contradicted the media scion, insisting he was informed years ago about an email suggesting the hacking was far more prevalent.

The incriminating missive was uncovered during a lawsuit filed by British soccer association chief Gordon Taylor over alleged hacking of his phone.

The email, which included a transcript of an illegally obtained conversation, seemed to implicate others at the muckraking tabloid."

Read more at http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2011/07/23/2011-07-23_murdoch_son_sinks_deeper_amid_cries_he_misled_probe.html

For a lot of people, discovering something new that they didn't know about is part of the enjoyment of reading. If you know exactly what you want, you can order it from Amazon. If you don't know exactly which title, but you are looking for something in a certain genre that you enjoy, or by an author you like, a real-live bookseller can help you find something interesting. This works better for fiction than it would for reference or technical books, but the decline of the large-scale bookstores means that this sort of personal advice will become unavailable to large segments of the population. You can't exactly go look at the table full of new non-fiction or trade paperbacks, pick one up and leaf through the pages, and if you like it, use your 30% off coupon and take it home with you today, if you're sitting in front of your Mac logged in to Amazon.(OK, I know Amazon has this great algorithm for predicting what you'll like based on what you and others have purchased, and you can download and read an e-book immediately, but see my comment about mom's basement, again, and there's this thing about actual books versus having to read it on a gadget.)

Wal-Mart is the cause of the decline and fall of small town commerce. Time after time it's been shown that when Wal-Mart builds a store on the outskirts of a small town, business in that town dries up, the jobs at these stores go away (to be replaced by part-time employment at said Wal-Mart), and the money that people would have spent at locally-owned and operated shops goes out of town. All to save a few cents on light bulbs or pickles. (Even big cities are seeing the same thing.) When the town dries up and blows away because there's no way to make a living there anymore, Wal-Mart closes up shop too (another article), and moves on to conquer the next small town. Much has been written about the aggressive tactics that Wal-Mart uses to exact the lowest prices from its suppliers, many of which have had to move US jobs overseas in order to meet these demands, or have even gone out of business because they could not continue to sell goods to Wal-Mart at a loss.

To turn the subject back to books, Wal-Mart happens to also be one of the largest book and music retailers, and they are known to censor what they sell, to the point of requiring publishers to provide expurgated versions of books and CDs. (Maybe it's a good thing we have Amazon, then.)

You mean like Thomas Gordon, Jr. or Charles Henry Bennett?

I hear name calling, "You are naive" but nothing factual.

It's interesting that you would say that after doing the same yourself. When you state "It's also true grass roots, unlike the paid astroturf deployed against it" what facts do you have that show it is "true grass roots"? What "paid astroturf"? You state that the person you replied to is ignorant, yet have no facts to back up your assertions. Then you come and claim that I need facts. Why must I prove myself yet you do not have to?

Which TEA party isn't grass roots?

I'll give you that the original movement of the TEA party was somewhat grass roots but has since been co-opted and formed into an astroturf campaign full of people being manipulated by larger organizations

Who is funding them if they aren't grass roots?

When you have Tea Party organizations such as "Americans For Prosperity" which are funding a lot of Tea Party movements and activities. Then you realize that the "Americans For Prosperity" are funded by the Koch brothers....You begin to wonder. That, and if you look at the funding that Tea Party candidates receive, you find that they get tons of donations from the oil industry, gas industry, health professionals and the financial industry. Every large donation (Tea Party Patriots received a $1million donation from an 'anonymous donor'. How is that grass roots?) is hidden behind the new laws that don't require disclosure. So while you might look at everything I just said and claim I made it up (I did not) and then say I haven't proved it isn't grass roots. I say to you, you haven't proved that I'm wrong and that it is grass roots.

Did I hear you say according to your assertions that Rand Paul is ultra conservative far right?

Rand paul is so conservative that he scared Dick Cheney. Think about that for a second:

Some of his positions frighten even staunch conservatives like former Vice President Dick Cheney, who backed Paul's GOP opponent. Source

He opposes abortions even in cases of rapes and incest and wants to overturn Roe v Wade. He wants to eliminate the department of education. I'll give you that some of his positions aren't as far right. He's an interesting mix of both far right and moderate, even a little left (such as legalizing Marijuana). But if it'll make you feel better, my original assertion was slight hyperbole and should have said "are generally ultra conservative/very far right" because yes, there are some exceptions.

The TEA party was effective in....

Just because they got someone elected does not necessarily mean they were effective. Consider Wisconsin where I'll be surprised if Scott Walker gets another term doing anything ever again. He's outright shown that getting rid of Unions has nothing to do with the budget or money, he just wants to bust unions. Including firefighters and policemen. In fact, the only public worker he's not trying to take a paycut and benefits from is himself!

Just because you haven't been paying attention, doesn't mean it didn't happen.

I never said it didn't happen, hell the Tea Party is causing chaos, I even said that. But don't pretend that there's no corporate influences going on here. Don't pretend there's no astroturfing. Hell, don't pretend that the Tea Party is "drastically chang[ing] the conversation towards what We the People believe is important" because it's not. It's just another corporate funded group of people who believe they know best thinking that they are speaking for many more people than they actually are.

Now I wonder how would the counterpart in Japan look like, if Japan chooses a similar solution.

The problem is, they're not exactly swimming in land in Japan. (They're swimming in radioactivity.) They'd have to build it on the side of a mountain or something. Seriously though, the best option is to expatriate as rapidly as possible. Spend some of their money while it's worth something to secure some land for their citizens in some other nation and send them packing. Whole towns are now flooded at high tide since the 'quake. Japan is facing a chronic land shortage.

All this comes off as insensitive I'm sure, and I'm sorry, but it doesn't make sense to build anything in Japan any more. I'd be talking real seriously with Brazil. They already have lots of Japanese and surely they could benefit from lots more. The Japanese are very serious about protecting the environment in their own country, so it might actually improve their environmental conditions to import them all.

How non-technical, and after how thorough of a look?

I'll just leave these here...

http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-297432.html
http://gigaom.com/2008/08/31/dont-like-the-iphone-check-out-these-touchscreen-phones/
http://www.gsmarena.com/newscomm-769.php
http://www.telecomasia.net/node/5199
http://www.google.com/search?q=SPH-1300&hl=en&prmd=ivns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=jjfATeTDOIL30gHT_tXuBA&ved=0CC4QsAQ&biw=1680&bih=947
http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=ET&p_theme=et&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EEF6B3EB0A8C768&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM
http://cgi.ebay.com/SPRINT-PCS-PALM-OS-WIRELESS-PHONE-SPH-1300-DUAL-BAND-/180613037497
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2000-09-25/news/18143226_1_cell-phone-palm-os
http://www.geardiary.com/2006/11/30/the-palm-treo-700p-palm-os-smartphone-review/
http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=1690
http://www.gizmag.com/go/2306/
http://www.google.com/search?q=sony+p900
http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/10/13/lg.debuts.new.prada.phone/
http://www.esato.com/phones/compare.php?phone=433&cp=439
http://gizmodo.com/#!190670/cect-a1000-touchscreen-phone-with-1000-hours-standby
http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/at-t-8525/4505-6452_7-32133413.html?tag=lia;rcol

these aren't phones, but what the hell... they could still be mistaken for an iPhone at a glance...

http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/prodserv/handheld.html
http://www.suddenlink.net/pages/curtismc/palms.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_III

These examples are all referencing real problems:

Here's your gay-roommate citation

"Knowing" your roommate is gay is one thing. Having electronic evidence that helps you "prove" it is another. The story linked is alarmist, but at smaller scale this isn't that uncommon for gays -- I've had a friend get hired, show up for work and be told "you aren't a team player" after a less than a week. Maybe he's not a team player. But maybe being queer at a Southern firm had something to do with it. He was probably outed by information leaking from electronic services (Facebook, etc). This is one more vector for this.

Privacy rights aren't needed for everyone. They're needed by those on the margins of social approval, with little power of their own. I don't think that makes them less important.