A daily miasma of frivolity by two wanna-be cultural critics. Or: just, like, some good links, dude.

Tag Archives: news

Oct 21 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Bleach, Pine-Sol thrown in fight at Baltimore Co. Walmart

Bleach, Pine-Sol thrown in fight at Baltimore Co. Walmart

Hanah Cho and Steve Kilar, The Baltimore Sun:

A woman poured bleach and Pine-Sol on a Walmart customer in southern Baltimore County, police said, in an incident that closed down the store for several hours Saturday and sent 19 to area hospitals.

…

The Baltimore County Fire Department’s fire and medic units, who arrived on the scene just after 11 a.m., requested the hazardous materials team a short time later because of complaints about watery eyes and other injuries, said spokesman Glenn Blackwell.

One person was taken to the Wilmer Eye Institute for a potentially serious injury, while 18 others were taken to area hospitals, including Baltimore Washington Medical Center, Harbor Hospital, Northwest Hospital Center and St. Agnes Hospital, Blackwell said.

No.

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Oct 17 2011
Mark Twain, probably

80 percent of US boys use condoms the first time

80 percent of US boys use condoms the first time

The AP:

A surprising 80 percent of teenage boys say they are using condoms the first time they have sex, a government survey found in a powerful sign that decades of efforts to change young people’s sexual behavior are taking hold.

But another promising trend — a drop since the 1980s in the number of teenagers having sex — has leveled off.

…

The study, released Wednesday, is based on interviews with about 4,700 teenagers, ages 15 to 19, conducted from 2006 through 2010. It shows the percentage of boys who said they used condoms the first time they had sex climbed from 71 percent in 2002 to 80 percent in the new survey. In 1988, 55 percent of boys said they used a condom during their first sexual intercourse.

So it turns out that sex ed may in fact be effective when it actually involves education. Who knew?

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Oct 16 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Second Bush-Era Gun-Smuggling Probe

Second Bush-Era Gun-Smuggling Probe

The AP:

A second Bush administration gun-trafficking investigation has surfaced using the same controversial tactic for which congressional Republicans have been criticizing the Obama administration.

The tactic, called “gun walking,” is already under investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general and by congressional Republicans, who have criticized the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama for letting it happen in an operation called “Fast and Furious”.

…

Earlier this month, it was disclosed that the gun-walking tactic didn’t begin under Obama, but was also used in 2006 under his predecessor, George W. Bush. The probe, Operation Wide Receiver, was carried out by ATF’s Tucson, Ariz., office and resulted in hundreds of guns being transferred to suspected arms traffickers.

It’s time to stop hammering Obama specifically about this and time to start talking about how THE GOVERNMENT HAS BEEN DOING SOMETHING INCREDIBLY STUPID FOR A LONG TIME

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Oct 09 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Police arrest man for child pornography after tipoff from burglars

Police arrest man for child pornography after tipoff from burglars

Kim Hutcherson, CNN:

A central California man has been arrested for possession of child pornography, thanks to a tip from burglars who robbed the man’s property, authorities said.

Last month, a juvenile and a 19-year-old illegally accessed the property of Kraig Stockard, 54, of Delhi, California, according to a statement from Deputy Tom MacKenzie of the Merced County Sheriff’s Department. They broke into Stockard’s barn and stole approximately 50 CDs they believed were blank.

Stockard filed a police report on the incident on September 12, according to MacKenzie.

But the young people who stole the CDs were in for a surprise. When they began putting the discs into their computer, they discovered that some of them contained pornographic images of children, the statement said.

Despite having obtained the CDs under decidedly shady circumstances, the pair decided to report Stockard to the police.

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Oct 08 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Spain’s round-the-clock solar power plant

Spain’s round-the-clock solar power plant

Solar power is pretty awesome, except for that whole thing where it only works when the sun is out.

Well, that used to be the case, but Al Goodman of CNN has news for you:

Located just outside the quaint village of Fuentes de Andalucía, Gemasolar bills itself as the world’s first commercial-scale concentrated solar power plant (CSP) that uses molten salts receiver technology.

2,650 large mirrors called heliostats direct the suns rays to a receiver at the top of Gemasolar’s 450-feet tower that shines like a beacon during the day.

The stored energy can generate electricity for 15 hours without the sun shining and according to Arias the plant can provide 19.9MW of power, enough for a town of about 100,000 people.

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Oct 07 2011
Mark Twain, probably

A Changed Russia Arches an Eyebrow at Putin’s Staged Antics

A Changed Russia Arches an Eyebrow at Putin’s Staged Antics

Ellen Barry, The New York Times:

It was just a typical summer outing for Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin: Clad in a wet suit and fitted with an oxygen tank, he dived to the bottom of a bay and retrieved two ceramic jugs that dated to the sixth century A.D.

The scene, captured by a camera crew and broadcast on the nightly news, cast Mr. Putin as a broad-chested Renaissance man, just the thing for his listless approval ratings. Scenes of Mr. Putin braving the elements — tranquilizing a tigress, tenderly feeding sugar to his horse or shooting a dart at a whale from a rubber dinghy — are a staple of political life in Russia.

There have long been suspicions that his exploits were not spontaneous. Still, it was remarkable to see Mr. Putin’s press secretary, Dmitri S. Peskov, surrounded by a panel of exceedingly skeptical journalists, trying to explain as delicately as possible that Mr. Putin’s much-hyped dive in August had been staged.

“Look,” Mr. Peskov said good-naturedly in the broadcast, which was released late Tuesday. “Putin did not find an amphora that had been lying on the bottom for many thousands of years. That is obvious.”

I mean, on the one hand, no shit. Did anyone really believe that?

But it is weird that someone on his press team is actually coming out with this.

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Oct 06 2011
Mark Twain, probably

FBI seeks to update definition of rape

FBI seeks to update definition of rape

Justin Fenton, The Baltimore Sun:

The FBI is moving to change the federal definition of rape for the first time in 80 years, which authorities and women’s advocacy groups hope will lead to improved tracking of the crime and an attitude shift among investigators.

Critics have maintained that the current definition is archaic, too narrow and leaves crimes uncounted in police statistics, resulting in fewer resources for victims and law enforcement.

…

Since 1927, rape has been defined as forcible male penile penetration of a female — which excludes cases involving oral and anal penetration, where the victims were drugged or under the influence of alcohol, and male victims.

Usually when we talk about redefining rape it’s because someone is trying to be an asshole, but this appears to be a positive step toward being a civilized society.

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Sep 25 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Tiny neutrinos may have broken cosmic speed limit

Tiny neutrinos may have broken cosmic speed limit

Dennis Overbye, NY Times:

The physics world is abuzz with news that a group of European physicists plans to announce Friday that it has clocked a burst of subatomic particles known as neutrinos breaking the cosmic speed limit — the speed of light — that was set by Albert Einstein in 1905.

If true, it is a result that would change the world. But that “if” is enormous.

Even before the European physicists had presented their results — in a paper that appeared on the physics Web site arXiv.org on Thursday night and in a seminar at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, on Friday — a chorus of physicists had risen up on blogs and elsewhere arguing that it was way too soon to give up on Einstein and that there was probably some experimental error. Incredible claims require incredible evidence.

Incredible. I love the unflappable attitude of this scientist:

John Learned, a neutrino astronomer at the University of Hawaii, said that if the results of the Opera researchers turned out to be true, it could be the first hint that neutrinos can take a shortcut through space, through extra dimensions. Joe Lykken of Fermilab said, “Special relativity only holds in flat space, so if there is a warped fifth dimension, it is possible that on other slices of it, the speed of light is different.”

“Oh, one of the basic tenants of the last 100 years of physics might be wrong? Well… what if we invert the polarity… it just might work!”

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Sep 24 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Scientists use brain imaging to reveal the movies in our minds

Scientists use brain imaging to reveal the movies in our minds

Yasmin Anwar, UC Berkeley:

Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and computational models, UC Berkeley researchers have succeeded in decoding and reconstructing people’s dynamic visual experiences – in this case, watching Hollywood movie trailers.

As yet, the technology can only reconstruct movie clips people have already viewed. However, the breakthrough paves the way for reproducing the movies inside our heads that no one else sees, such as dreams and memories, according to researchers.

Holy Toledo. Do not miss the video demonstrating their work. Really amazing stuff.

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Sep 22 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Gunmen dump 35 bodies on busy street in Mexicos

Gunmen dump 35 bodies on busy street in Mexicos

Fucked up news out of Mexico from E. Eduardo Castillo of the AP:

Masked gunmen blocked traffic on a busy avenue in a Gulf of Mexico coastal city Tuesday and dumped the bodies of 35 slaying victims as horrified motorists watched, authorities said.

Veracruz state Attorney General Reynaldo Escobar Perez said the bodies were left piled in two trucks and on the ground of an underpass near a shopping mall in the city of Boca del Rio.

Police had identified seven of the victims so far and all had criminal records for murder, drug dealing, kidnapping and extortion and were linked to organized crime, Escobar said. He didn’t say to what group the victims belonged to.

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