Clipmarks | BartendingBear's clips

ScienceDebate 2008: Let The Answers Flow

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:43:53 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear
clipper's remarks: Excellent chance for positive campaigning among presidential candidates. Will they take it?

Clip Source: www.sciencedebate2008.com

In November, 2007, a small group of citizens began working to restore science and innovation to America’s political dialogue. They called themselves Science Debate 2008, and they called for a presidential debate on science. The call tapped a wellspring of concern over the state of American science.

On behalf of the American science and innovation community (see who here), we have submitted these questions to the candidates for President and asked them to do two simple things: A) provide a written response, which we will publish here, and B) discuss these questions in a nationally televised forum.

1. Innovation.

2. Climate Change.

3. Energy.

4. Education.

5. National Security.

6. Pandemics and Biosecurity.

7. Genetics research.

8. Stem cells.

9. Ocean Health.

10. Water.

11. Space.

12. Scientific Integrity.

13. Research.

14. Health.

Clip Source: www.sciencedebate2008.com

Voters are more likely to vote for a candidate that supports scientific research

Voters are more likely to vote for a candidate that will tackle climate change

What the Fourth of July Really Means

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:26:05 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear
clipper's remarks: You have to read what comes between these two paragraphs.

Clip Source: www.populistamerica.com

In America, the Fourth of July is the day we celebrate the announcement, to the world, that a new kind of governing ideal had come to stay. It celebrates a letter, written primarily by Thomas Jefferson, sent to King George III and the rest of the world telling them a new way of life has proven itself in America, and Americans want to retain that way.

Today, Americans are on the verge of cancelling that letter. Too many today prefer to be managed riff-raff and no longer responsible for themselves. The task of living free is too difficult. We have arrived at a time when Americans are rejecting the contents of that letter, the Declaration of Independence, and want to return to the Old World ways, where the few elite rule the many. In the coming election, we are looking for the return of the elite few who will shape and manage our lives as they see fit.

How Google Should Comply With The Court Order

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:21:49 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear
clipper's remarks: Makes sense to me.

Clip Source: www.techcrunch.com

The recent court order directing Google to hand over data to Viacom about every YouTube video ever watched strikes many people as an absurd overreach of the law into the privacy of anyone who has ever used YouTube (i.e., almost everyone on the Internet). Google should definitely keep fighting the ruling if it can.

But if it can’t, perhaps it should comply with it in a creative way. The data in question are data logs containing the records of every video watched on YouTube, by whom, and at what times. The court is also ordering that Google hand over all videos that have ever been taken down for any reason. The logs alone take up 12 terabytes. Google should print them out and deliver them on paper.

It would literally fill up the Library of Congress. That is roughly the equivalent of all the printed books in the Library of Congress (by one estimate, others put it at 20 terabytes—either way, it’s a lot of paper). The court order never states what form, the data must be delivered in.

Jesse Helms - Dead at 86 years

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 17:03:19 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear
clipper's remarks: He won't be missed in these quarters.

Clip Source: www.wral.com

Jesse Helms, the firebrand U.S. senator whose outspoken, conservative views polarized North Carolina and U.S. voters for decades, died at 1:15 a.m. Friday in Raleigh, according to John Dodd, president of the Jesse Helms Center.

He joins the second and third presidents of the United States – Thomas Jefferson and John Adams Jr. – who both also died on Independence Day.

He was 86. His cause of death was not released. Funeral arrangements will be forthcoming, Dodd said.

King George: 1776 Or 2008?

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:59:54 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear
clipper's remarks: You make the call.

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

Alive In Independence Hall: The Declaration of Independence

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:46:25 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear
clipper's remarks: DO NOT MISS THIS!!!

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

FoodPriceTruth.org Expert Advisors

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:39:27 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear
clipper's remarks: They say it's all about oil.

Clip Source: www.foodpricetruth.org

FoodPriceTruth.org believes the following experts will help facilitate a more balanced debate on food prices and biofuels.

David Morris, Vice President, Institute for Local Self Reliance

Lee Lynd, Professor of Engineering Sciences, Dartmouth College

Nathaniel Greene, Senior Policy Analyst, Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC)

Patrick Mazza, Climate Solutions

Brent Searle, Special Assistant to the Director, Oregon Department of Agriculture

Dr. Bruce E. Dale, Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Michigan State University

Carol Werner, Executive Director, Environmental & Energy Study Institute (EESI)

Jetta Wong, Senior Policy Associate, Environmental & Energy Study Institute (EESI)

Brooke Coleman, Executive Director, New Fuels Alliance; Founder, Northeast Biofuels Collaborative

Anne Steckel

Note: The experts' willingness to be a Food Price Truth Expert does not connote endorsement of the FoodPriceTruth.org campaign.

Ex-Agent Says CIA Ignored Iran Facts

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:32:36 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear
clipper's remarks: CIA skull-duggery at it's finest.

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

A former CIA operative who says he tried to warn the agency about faulty intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs now contends that CIA officials also ignored evidence that Iran had suspended work on a nuclear bomb.

The onetime undercover agent, who has been barred by the CIA from using his real name, filed a motion in federal court late Friday asking the government to declassify legal documents describing what he says was a deliberate suppression of findings on Iran that were contrary to agency views at the time.

The former operative alleged in a 2004 lawsuit that the CIA fired him after he repeatedly clashed with senior managers over his attempts to file reports that challenged the conventional wisdom about weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East.

"On five occasions he was ordered to either falsify his reporting on WMD in the Near East, or not to file his reports at all,"

"He is not even allowed to attend court hearings about his own case,"

FBI To Join The "Presumption of Guilt" Parade BushCo Favors

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:28:59 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear
clipper's remarks: Civil rights become a fond memory.

Clip Source: www.suntimes.com

The Justice Department is considering letting the FBI investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial and ethnic groups.

Although President Bush has disavowed targeting suspects based on their race or ethnicity, the new rules would allow the FBI to consider those factors among a number of traits that could trigger a national security investigation.

Currently, FBI agents need specific reasons — like evidence or allegations that a law probably has been violated — to investigate U.S. citizens and legal residents. The new policy, law enforcement officials told The Associated Press, would let agents open preliminary terrorism investigations after mining public records and intelligence to build a profile of traits that, taken together, were deemed suspicious.

Critics say the presumption of innocence is lost in the proposal.

New NSA Spying Decision Undermines Arguments for Telecom Immunity

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 03:35:39 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear
clipper's remarks: Seemingly, this effectively cuts executive power off at Georgie's knees.

Clip Source: www.eff.org

Today, Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the Northern District of California, issued an opinion in Al Haramain v. Bush, one of the cases challenging the NSA warrantless wiretapping program. The Court found that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) preempted the state secret privilege. This important decision is particularly timely, as it undermines key arguments for telecom immunity on the eve of the Senate vote on a FISA bill, set for next week.

The good news is that the Court held that "FISA preempts the state secrets privilege in connection with electronic surveillance for intelligence purposes and would appear to displace the state secrets privilege for purposes of plaintiffs’ claims." The Court rejected the expansive view of executive power promoted by the government, holding that the President's authorities under Article II of the Constitution do not give him the power to overrule FISA.

International Muslim Matrimonials

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 03:54:32 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear
clipper's remarks: How does one make their choice from these pictures? I'm not trying to be insulting. While the eyes can tell a lot, in a single static picture it really isn't much. What is the enticement to click through and get something from the text behind them?

Clip Source: www.photobasement.com

Irrefutable Tie Between Gitmo Techniques & Chinese Torture

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:19:12 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear
clipper's remarks: Isn't that special? BushCo is rife with criminals simply from the following of this path. HANG THEM HIGH!

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The only change made in the chart presented at Guantánamo was to drop its original title: “Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance.”

Free Credit Report That's REALLY... FREE!

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 05:54:56 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear

Clip Source: dealmac.com

Free credit report that's really free

Before you accept a pitch for a "free credit report," note that AnnualCreditReport.com offers a free credit report from all three major credit bureaus (Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian). Those credit bureaus founded AnnualCreditReport.com based on federal legislation (the FACT Act). Monitoring your credit report is widely considered as the most effective way to catch identity fraud. A free credit report can be requested once per year.

30 Sites For Free Legal Music

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 05:43:09 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear

Clip Source: mashable.com

Downloading illegal music has become a hot topic on the Web. So much so that it’s easy to forget about the plethora of sites dedicated to free, legal music. We’ve put together a list of 30+ sites that will keep your MP3 player playing until your batteries are completely drained.

Whether you’re into pop, jazz, metal or classical, there’s something here for everyone. Let us know which are your favorites.

How Californians See America

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 05:41:04 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear
clipper's remarks: I guess I live in Canada.

Clip Source: graphjam.files.wordpress.com