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Study Casts Doubt On Mammoth-Killing Cosmic Impact
schwit1 writes Rock soil droplets formed by heating most likely came from Stone Age house fires and not from a disastrous cosmic impact 12,900 years ago, according to new research from the University of California, Davis. The study, of soil from Syria, is the latest to discredit the controversial theory that a cosmic impact triggered the Younger Dryas cold period."
Bennett Haselton (born November 20, 1978) is the founder of Circumventor.com and Peacefire.org, two US-based websites dedicated to combating Internet censorship. Peacefire.org is focused on documenting flaws in commercial Internet blocking programs. Circumventor.com is dedicated to distributing anti-censorship tools to users in countries such as China and Iran, and as of 2011 has over 3 million subscribers through distribution channels including email and Facebook pages.[1]
At 21, Haselton testified before the US Child Online Protection Commission (COPA Commission), a congressionally appointed panel mandated by the Child Online Protection Act, where he presented evidence that the error rate in most commercial blocking programs was much higher than commonly believed.[2] In 2007, he testified as an expert witness for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, in the ACLU's lawsuit against the North Central Regional Library District, where a filter was enforced on library computers for all patrons including adults. Haselton's tests showed that sites which the library filter had blocked as "pornography" included a church, an immigration rights group, and the Seattle Women's Jazz Orchestra, and overall that about one in four .org sites blocked by the library filter was blocked in error.[3]
Haselton was born in Oklahoma.[4] Haselton's father is a geophysicist and his mother is a piano teacher.[5] Haselton lived in England and Denmark and graduated from Copenhagen International School.[6] At 15, Haselton became a member of the Danish National Math Team, saying that "you don't have to be Danish."[5]
Haselton's interest in censorship dates from when he was 10 years old and heard swear words for the first time.[5] "I remember my parents and some other adults talking about profanity to some kid," Haselton says.[5] "I just thought, 'Why not declare on midnight, January 1, that all swear words are not swear words anymore? Then there will be no such thing as foul language.'"[5] Haselton also credits growing up in Denmark for his views on censorship.[5] "In Denmark it's totally different," Haselton says.[5] "For example, between the train station and our school, there was a strip club that had pictures of topless dancers, and kids had to walk right by it. Nobody really thought anything about it. It never occurred to me until I came back to the US how something like that could never happen here. The club would have been fined and shut down."[5]
In 1995 Haselton returned to the United States for college.[4] Haselton earned a master's degree in mathematics from Vanderbilt University.[4] After graduation, Haselton worked on Visual Basic at Microsoft for seven months.[4] The New York Times said on May 15, 2000 that Haselton was fired from Microsoft[7] however Haselton says that he resigned in good standing and "showed the NYT editors a copy of [his] personnel file from Microsoft which has "Term. type: Voluntary" and "Term reason: Resignation" printed on it, but the paper has still not corrected the article."[8]
Haselton started PeaceFire in August 1996[9] to educate young people about the 1996 Online Communications Decency Act, which made it illegal to send indecent material to minors over the Internet.[5] "Many people online still remember that as the first big Internet censorship law, and it sort of drew everybody together to unite against it," Haselton says.[5] The Supreme Court struck down the law in 1997.[5]
Haselton believes that minors should have the same First Amendment rights as adults.[10] "I think intellectual development is one of the fundamental human rights, and it's also a right that people under 18 have," says Haselton.[10] "It's totally arbitrary what words are considered swear words and what body parts are considered pornographic," says Haselton.[5] "I sometimes feel like I'm involved in some huge conspiracy, an experiment to see how long it takes to drive me crazy. People are so conditioned about censorship in this country that it begins to look like I'm arguin