The Zombie Apocalypse is Here and it is Called the tea party

Zombies, like tea partiers, exist only to spread their contagion. They serve no useful purpose but are driven by mindless hate…

 

Zombies are mindless killers. Everybody agrees on that. They just do what they do, which is bite people in order to spread their contagion. They serve no useful purpose. They are not interested in the common good because they don’t think. It seems, rather, that they are driven by a mindless hate. Hmmm, sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Zombies and Zombie apocalypses are popular in our culture. But they’re popular not because the zombies eat your face, but because you get to shoot the zombies. Or hit them with baseball bats.
Kill the zombies; end the apocalypse.
The problem is, we cannot so easily deal with our real zombie apocalypse, which we know as the tea party.
Yes, zombies have overrun Washington, D.C.. The White House and the Senate chamber are safe zones but they are under siege, and other than those havens, the nation’s capital is mayhem, and as they say in the zombie thriller World War Z, about to “go dark.”
But where did the Zombie apocalypse come from? What can we do? These are questions that is always asked by people facing a zombie apocalypse.
The first thing to understand is that zombies are not born, but made. As in another thriller, Resident Evil, these zombies were manufactured, and as in Resident Evil, by big business. In Resident Evil the culprit is the Umbrella Corporation. In the real world, it is Koch Industries.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) present as a public service zombie preparedness 101. If you can deal with a zombie apocalypse, the reasoning goes, you can deal with any catastrophe. The CDC examines potential disease vectors:

In movies, shows, and literature, zombies are often depicted as being created by an infectious virus, which is passed on via bites and contact with bodily fluids. Harvard psychiatrist Steven Schlozman wrote a (fictional) medical paper on the zombies presented in Night of the Living Dead and refers to the condition as Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndromecaused by an infectious agent. The Zombie Survival Guide identifies the cause of zombies as a virus called solanum. Other zombie origins shown in films include radiation from a destroyed NASA Venus probe (as in Night of the Living Dead ), as well as mutations of existing conditions such as prions, mad-cow disease, measles and rabies.

But in real life, the cause of the disease is much easier than this and far more frightening: the vector is fear and anger. Well, and catastrophic levels of ignorance. And sadly, these things are as contagious as any fictional agent, as contagious as cholera. Victims are everywhere; sadly, we have about as much chance of finding Patient Zero and manufacturing a cure as the protagonist did in the film World War Z.
And attractive as the thought is (imagine the House chamber sealed for all time to become the problem of future archaeologists), we cannot isolate and quarantine the infected as the CDC recommends.
In World War Z, Brad Pitt found a way to make people “invisible” to zombies but that won’t help us here. They have the means to hurt us even if they don’t see us. We can run, but we cannot hide.
The only real measure available to us is to stop the spread of the contagion. This means education. But as anyone knows, zombies are education resistant. It turns out that being mindless is a real impediment to learning.
As a result, we can’t save those already infected. All we can do is to immunize those people who have not succumbed. Facts immunize against ignorance and without ignorance fear and anger are helpless to effect change.
So please, as a public service, help those around you. Introduce them to something other than Faux News. Present them with facts and help us stop this disease while there is still time. We need to stop it before to save itself the rest of the world is forced to perform triage on the United States.
Zombies don’t have Big Brothers; sad as it is, it is too late for them. But it is not too late for the rest of us; there are others we can save. So please, do whatever you can to help. Let’s take away the zombie’s food source: ignorant people. Let’s save America from the zombie apocalypse.

Million Vet March Organizers Condemn Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz, and the tea party

The tea party, Sarah Palin, and Ted Cruz tried to hijack the Million Vet March for political and personal gain, and event organizers condemned them for politicizing the march.
According to a message on their website, the problem began when a local DC organizer turned the march into a tea party rally, “The political agenda put forth by a local organizer in Washington DC was not in alignment with our message. We feel disheartened that some would seek to hijack the narrative for political gain. The core principle is about all Americans honoring Veterans in a peaceful and apolitical manner.”
In a post on their Facebook page, organizers went into more detail,

It is our official position that the purpose of this march and the accompanying rallies is focused on the re-opening of the Veterans memorials and keeping them open. While we understand that a Constitutional republic requires the equilibrium of checks and balances to maintain the democratic process, the memorials, monuments and parks built in honor of Veterans should NEVER be closed, blocked or restricted from use. We take the official position that no government office holder shall have ability to abridge the freedom of access to these hallowed grounds.
We have, as a group, been prevented from certain groups that have piggy-backed off our grassroots efforts, to effectively create a comprehensive media message campaign. We made the mistake of trying to partner with some Washington insiders that thwarted many of our genuine concerns for keeping this apolitical and grassroots. While we support many of those groups common causes for Veterans, we do not support the manner in which they go about it. We chose instead to not incite or create panic.
We chose to listen to all Americans and all Veterans that have asked us to keep going on despite the disingenuous politicians, political action committees, talking heads on the televisions and press reports attempting to hijack the message. This included many threats of personal and political attacks on our group’s character, businesses, colleagues and our true intentions. While our hearts were heavy by the disheartening acts of a few powerful Washington elite and political extremists jumping on the opportunity to make money, we decided to stay true to our message of a non-partisan effort to assist Veterans.

Here are Palin and Cruz making the march all about Obama hate:

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A few powerful Washington elites? I believe that would be Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, and the political extremists are Sarah Palin and the tea partiers. The “incite or create panic” line refers to those tea partiers who tore down the barricades at the WWII memorial and marched to the White House. The extremists waved the confederate flag in front of the White House and chanted things like impeach Obama.
I suspect that Cruz and Palin were not invited, and a Facebook account of their behavior for one vet who was there fits the description of using the event for political gain, “I was disappointed when Ms. Palin and Mr. Cruz walked up to us to say hello but then walked down to the center to try to use us for they’re own purpose so I left to visit the viet nam memorial ty Brats.”
The tea partiers are proud of themselves for taking an event about veterans and turning it into another platform to showcase their hatred of this president, but they should be ashamed of themselves. The people who turned the march into an anti-Obama rally shamed and humiliated our veterans. Every vet knows that it doesn’t matter what political party a president is from, they are still the Commander in Chief. The organizers of this event may or may not be conservatives, but it is clear that they didn’t want the tea party mob, or Palin and Cruz’s grandstanding at their event.
Veterans are about honor and sacrifice. The repugicans who politicized the event brought dishonor to the very values that our veterans embody. To self-promoters like Palin and Cruz, veterans are nothing more than props to be used for political and financial gain, and they are proud to have tarnished our nation’s veterans with their selfish extremism.

The Religio-Wingnuts Attempt to Circumvent the Constitution By Claiming Academic Freedom

The latest attempt by the religio-wingnuts to circumvent the Constitution involves claiming that prohibiting teachers from teaching the bible as science infringes on their academic freedom.

Academic freedom is the concept that free inquiry by faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy, and that scholars should have freedom to teach or communicate ideas or facts without being targeted for repression, job loss, or imprisonment. It cannot be disputed that in America the “mission of the academy” (public schools) is not teaching christianity or that substituting the bible for science is the “communication of facts.” As far as academic freedom to teach religion, that is the purview of private religious schools and has no place in the taxpayer-funded public school system. However, a new bill was introduced in the Pennsylvania legislature that supporters claim will protect the “academic freedom” of christians who teach the bible as science in public school classrooms. It is another assault on the Constitution in the long-standing war against science by the religio-wingnuts, and an overt attack on the secular nature of the Constitution’s separation of cult and state.
The Pennsylvania measure is not the first time christians have attempted to defy the Constitution despite the most recent ruling prohibiting teaching creationism as science that a federal court ruled unconstitutional. In Kitzmiller v. Dover, the court ruled that “teaching ‘intelligent design’ aspires to change the ground rules of science to make room for religion, specifically, beliefs consonant with a particular version of christianity;” the ruling should have put an end to attempts to teach the bible creation myth as science in public schools. In 1987, the Supreme Court invalidated another “academic freedom” claim of Louisiana’s Balanced Treatment Act that required public schools to teach creation myth alongside evolution because according to the court; it did not advance academic freedom “but has the distinctly different purpose of discrediting” evolution” and because its “primary purpose was to endorse a particular religious doctrine.” The court ruled the Louisiana law “violated the separation of church and state” and was patently unconstitutional.
The Pennsylvania measure is being promoted by a preacher, Donn Chapman, who claims teaching evolution is a triumph of secularists and “neo-Darwinists” who are “driving god from the marketplace and keeping us from being able to give god the glory for what he’s done.” According to Chapman, “secularists are getting our kids and saying, ‘You feed them, you take them to cult on Sunday, but if they’re going to be intelligent, if they are going to get into a good school, they are going to learn to think like us. Heil, Hitler.’ That’s what it’s about.” It is ironic Chapman invokes Nazi Germany while fervently declaring that his religious freedom has been “suppressed” because science is taught in public schools while pushing to force the christian religion down the throats of America’s children.  He claims  that anyone who even suggests teaching creationism as science is exterminated academically, and that since christians are the “spiritual children of the founders of this nation, we need to take it back and give it back to god” by teaching the bible as science.
The Pennsylvania legislation follows laws passed in Louisiana (2008) and Tennessee (2012), and was set aside or killed in Kansas, Montana, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Indiana. The real issue according to Chapman is not about the bible as science, but about a clash of worldviews between secularism and theocracy.  The clash was evident in another religious right legal challenge in Kansas where the Christian group, Citizens for Objective Public Education (COPE) argued that by teaching science in public schools “the state is ‘indoctrinating’ impressionable students” they claim is a violation of the 1st Amendment. COPE exists to “promote the religious rights of parents, children, and taxpayers” and claims that public schools “promote a ‘non-theistic religious worldview’ by allowing only ‘materialistic’ or ‘atheistic’ explanations to scientific questions.”
COPE’s mission is creating “religiously neutral” public schools that do not promote “pantheistic and materialistic religions, including Atheism and Secular Humanism” (christianity is exempt) and it informs their incredibly naïve understanding of atheism and secular humanism. Atheism is simply rejection of belief in the existence of deities, and secular humanism is a nontheistic philosophy embracing reason, ethics, and social justice while specifically rejecting religious dogma, supernaturalism, and superstition as the basis of decision making. Secularism, by its nature, is precisely the necessary approach public schools have to take to avoid being transformed into christian madrassas, and yet a significant number of teachers are wary of following the Constitution or curriculum that is not bible-oriented.
In a 2011 study of high school biology teachers, the authors found that pro-creationist teachers are not reluctant to teach their religion as established science, and that too many teachers are mortified at the backlash from wingnuts for teaching evolution that is a violation of their academic freedom the religio-wingnuts are so intent on protecting for bible advocates. According to the study, there is “a pervasive reluctance of teachers to forthrightly explain evolutionary biology,” and only 28% of teachers actually follow current standards, 13% openly teach intelligent design or creationism, and 60% avoid the topic altogether because of undue and unconstitutional pressure from the religious right on a crusade to put an end to secular academic freedom.
As if Americans are not besieged enough by conservatives waging war on every demographic in society, they have to defend themselves against the real and present danger of having their children indoctrinated into the christian religion in the public school system. This country’s population is already scientifically retarded as evidenced by such outrageous claims that climate science is a hoax and the absurd proclamation by Ted Cruz at the Values Voters Summit that birth control pills are abortifacients.
The last thing America needs is an entire generation of 14^th century peasants clinging to religious mythos as science they were taught using taxpayer dollars. It is the long-term goal of the religio-wingnutst in their war on education, science, and the secularism inherent in the U.S. Constitution. If the religio-wingnuts demand academic freedom to teach the bible as science, there is a proliferation of religious schools across the nation that will give any halfwit with a bible a job indoctrinating children to believe fairy tales are science, but they will not be “academics” and they damn sure better not get one penny of taxpayer money to do it.

Disasters in the Dakotas

First it was the freak blizzard that hit South Dakota, killings hundreds of thousands of cattle.

Now it's a huge oil spill in a North Dakota wheat field.

A farmer discovered a huge oil spill — several times bigger than the recent Mayflower, Ark., spill – nearly two weeks ago in North Dakota. but because of federal government furloughs, we’re only just learning about it.- grist

Why should we care about the dakotas' food?
There was one courageous South Dakotan who cared about our nation's food and americans' access to it..

The disasters are too immense for the states to handle themselves. They need the governments help...and quick. senator McGovern wouldn't call those farmers needing aid.."moochers"...senator McGovern wouldn't call those needing snap benefits "moochers" like a current South Dakotan politico.

If you haven't done so already, call your congresscritters and tell them to grow up and get the government going again. Better yet, call Thune's office and ask him if he has told those farmers affected by the shutdown and the disasters that "they are on their own."

Daily Comic Relief

Woman clinging onto drawbridge rescued by firefighters

Firefighters in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, rescued a breast cancer walk participant on Saturday morning after she got stuck on a railway bridge as it was lifting into the air. The 55-year-old Dania Beach woman, whose identity was not released, ended up hanging onto the bridge by her hands and feet as it moved into an upright position. Witnesses said she stayed calm as she held on for half an hour, about 22 feet above the train tracks, until her rescue.

Many of those who watched the situation unfold were, like the woman, wearing pink shirts from the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer 5K walk. Firefighters responded to multiple 911 calls about the woman, who told firefighters she took part in the cancer walk earlier in the morning, Fort Lauderdale city spokesman Matt Little said.

The people that the woman was with were crying and begging for people to call police for help and for their friend to hold on, Powell said. “They harnessed the ladder up against the actual tracks and a firefighter went and got her and we were all clapping, like we were just amazed," Powell said. A crowd of spectators cheered when firefighters rescued the frightened woman using the 24-foot ladder, Little said. She was not injured.

YouTube link.

It's not known why she was on the railroad bridge, Little said. Signs say "No Trespassing, " and there is a pedestrian walkway on the nearby Andrews Avenue bridge. Witness Philip Glazebrook said he was surprised that she crossed the bridge in the first place because it gives a loud warning before it rises. “This bridge is controlled from Tallahassee. There’s not a bridge minder here anymore,” Glazebrook said. “So she’s stuck on the bridge and she’s going up. The next thing is, she’s stuck, straddled like Jesus Christ.”

Burglar threatened to sue his victim for stopping him from fleeing the scene of break in

A burglar threatened to sue his victim for stopping him from fleeing the scene of a break in. Lee Johnson was disturbed by landlord Paul Clare as he tried to raid the Waterside pub in Eccles, Salford, Manchester Crown Court heard.
But because his escape was foiled by a struggle which ended with a fall through a window, the burglar decided that he was the victim. Mr Clare, 45, who lives above the pub, was woken by loud banging in the middle of the night. When he went downstairs to investigate, Johnson, who was high on crack cocaine, leapt from behind the bar and vaulted to a window to escape.

The intruder managed to force it open and get half his body through. But Mr Clare grabbed his legs in a bid to stop him getting away. In the struggle that followed Mr Clare was struck in the mouth, causing him to bite his own tongue.

But he refused to give up and one of Johnson’s shoes fell off in the tussle. The court heard Johnson then shouted ‘I’ll sue you’ as he fell through the window before cutting his head. Police were there within seconds of Johnson landing on the ground, and arrested the burglar at the scene. Johnson was jailed for 15 months.

Man shocked to find 28-inch curly fry in his takeout

Tuscaloosa resident Gary Young scored what he calls a "one-in-a-million" curly fry at an Arby's in Cottondale on Oct. 4.

Young discovered the 28-inch french-fried potato with his beef and cheddar meal when he arrived home.

"I was shocked," he said. "That's like the biggest fry I've ever seen. I thought it was a snake."

Young has resisted eating his tasty find, deciding instead to store it in a Ziploc bag in his refrigerator.

What The World Would Look Like If Countries Were As Big As Their Online Populations

A map showing what the world would look like if countries were as bif as their online populations. The map, created as part of the Information Geographies project at the Oxford Internet Institute, has two layers of information: the absolute size of the online population by country (rendered in geographical space) and the percent of the overall population that represents (rendered by color).

Thus, Canada, with a relatively small number of people takes up little space, but is colored dark red, because more than 80 percent of people are online. China, by contrast, is huge, with more than half a billion people online, but relatively lightly shaded, since more than half the population is not online.

Twenty-Six Maps That Show How New Yorkers Really Feel About Each Other

A Business Insider poll asked New Yorkers to pick which neighborhoods have the best food, the best bars, and the most attractive people, among many other things. The poll was carried out using SurveyMonkey's Audience feature, which was more accurate predicting the 2012 election than numerous traditional pollsters.

They asked 414 New Yorkers - someone who lives and/or works in New York City - to answer 26 questions about the neighborhoods. They've mapped the percentage of people who named each area for different questions.

Landlocked Navies Of The World

It might seem odd that nations with no access to the ocean would maintain naval forces, but many do. Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, for example, keep many naval vessels on the enormous Caspian Sea. Switzerland and Burundi have armed patrol boats on their border lakes.

These forces, however, are not separate military entities, but integrated into the other armed forces. What makes these nations unique is that they maintain separate military organizations identified as navies, but these forces have access only to inland rivers and lakes.

Random Photos

How Aging Changes Our Appearance

It's always amazing to see childhood photos of old people you know and see how they looked when they were our age (or younger). Sometimes they look almost identical, sometimes they look like 2 different people. Here are 10 GIFs of elderly people to match a photo taken of them 50-60 years earlier.

The Century Old Color Photographs Of Prokudin-Gorsky

In 1909 a remarkable project was initiated by Russian photographer Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky. His mission was to record - in full and vibrant color - the vast and diverse Russian Empire. Here, with his story, is a selection of his amazing century old full color pictures.

Kuşköy

The Turkish Bird Village

The people of Kuşköy, a small village in Turkey, have invented a brilliantly simple way of communicating over long distances, by whistling. This fascinating means of communication was created over 400 years ago as a consequence of working in the fields of the Pontic Mountains.

The terrain is irregular making travelling very difficult even on short distances, and because of this, the villagers felt the need for an alternative to speaking and shouting. Inspired by the songs of birds, they started whistling the syllables of Turkish words which proved to be much more effective and less energy-consuming than yelling or walking all the way to the person they needed to speak with.

Anthropology News

Did Humans Arrive in Americas 30,000 Years Ago?

Cave art depicting early Americans’ sex lives suggests people inhabited Americas 18,000 years earlier than believed.

Living Relatives of Iceman Mummy Found

The Austrian ice mummy has at least 19 living male relatives, according to a genetic study.

What is the Higgs?

The Higgs boson or Higgs particle is an elementary particle initially theorised in 1964, and tentatively confirmed to exist on 14 March 2013. Peter Higgs from England and François Englert from Belgium, two theoretical physicists who suggested that an invisible ocean of energy suffusing space is responsible for the mass and diversity of the the universe, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013.

But what exactly is the Higgs?

Astronomical News

'Gravity' and Reality: History's Worst Space Disasters

The blockbuster movie 'Gravity' sheds light on actual space disasters in our spacefaring history.

Epic Space Photos of the Week 

Enjoy some of the most inspiring, beautiful and down-right stunning photos from our adventures in space this past week.

Mysterious Missile Launch Seen From Space Station

Last night, an unannounced Russian ICBM test gave space station astronauts a shock. 

Hebes Chasma: Mars Express Stares into Martian Abyss

Sitting at the northern edge of Mars' famous Valles Marineris canyon complex is a strange gouge in the landscape called Hebes Chasma -- this is its story.

Thieving owl is terrorizing joggers

Joggers in the Highpoint neighborhood of East Memphis are living in fear after a large owl has reportedly attacked at least two joggers the past few days. Joe Parks runs through the neighborhood everyday. A few days ago, he felt what he thought was a branch knock him on the head. "He was coming at me at eye level," Park said. "It was very dark. There was a little bit of fog, and he was dead silent. I happened to turn around when he was coming at me and I hit the deck. He landed in a tree.

Will A Chicken That's Fed Lemons Taste Like Lemons?

High-end chickens are chickens fed with produce that's out of the price range of most humans. David Burke, one of New York City's most prominent chefs chimed in with this head-scratcher.

He says: 'If the chickens ate ginger and lemon, you would have a gingery, lemony chicken, I think.' A ginger-lemon chicken sounds fantastic! But, um, wait a second. Is that scientifically possible?

Animal News

DNews: Dogs Have Feelings, Too

Dog owners have been saying it for years: "Dogs are really just four-legged, furry humans." And now science backs it up! Researchers trained dogs to lay still in an FMRI machine and what they found is sure to make you go "awwwwww."

Amazing Animals of the Week: Photos

This week's gallery includes a mole with a flower nose, butterflies trying to be owls, and a supersized moth.

'Spirit Moose' and Other Sacred Animals

Hunters in Nova Scotia made the mistake of killing an albino moose, a rare animal revered by a local tribe.

Aninmal Pictures

The Daily Drift

Psycho!

Carolina Naturally is read in 194 countries around the world daily.
 

Home Cooking ... !

Today is International Day of Rural Women Day 

 

Don't forget to visit our sister blog: It Is What It Is

Some of our readers today have been in:

The Americas

Buenous Aires, Argentina

Barranquilla, Colombia

San Juan, Puerto Rico

Sioux Lookout, Montreal, Regina, Britannia, Chatham, Thunder Bay, Mississauga, Kanata, Longueuil, Prince George, Ottawa and Toronto, Canada

Conchas and Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

Elcho, Cecero, Kenhorst, Symrna, Sparta and Saginaw, United States

Mexico City and Mexicali, Mexico

Santiago, Chile

Europe

Laval, Rouen, Ivry-Sur-Seine and Roubaix, France

Woking, Wollaston, Bradford and London, England

Sulzbach, Berlin, Nuremberg, Wuppertal, Bonn, Rothe Erde and Wehlheiden, Germany

Ivrea, Rovigo and Rome, Italy

Athens, Greece

Chelyabinsk, Moscow and Saint Petersburg, Russia

Olsztyn, Poland

Madrid, Spain

Zagreb, Croatia

Istanbul, Turkey

Buzau, Bucharet and Balotesti, Romania

Kista, Sweden

Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Horsholm, Dernmark

Zhovti Vody, Ukraine

Asia

Bangkok, Thailand

Kolkata, Hyderabad, Pondicherry, Pune, Guntur, New Delhi, Mumbai, Nagur and Jamshedpur, India

Al Jubayhan and Az Zarqa, Jordan

Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Colombo, Sri Lanka

Qiryat, Petah Tikva and Bat Yam, Israel

Gerash and Tehran, Iran

Jakarta, Indonesia

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Rajshahi and Dhaka, Bangladesh

Africa

Cape Town, South Africa

Algiers, Algeria

Sfax, Tunis, Tunisia

Mekenes, Morocco

Lagos, Nigeria

Banjul, Gambia

Al Jizah, Egypt

Pacific

Homebush, Perth and Osborne Park, Australia

Quezon City, Philippines

Today in History

1529		Ottoman armies under Suleiman end their siege of Vienna and head back to Belgrade.
1582		The Gregorian (or New World) calendar is adopted in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal; and the preceding ten days are lost to history.
1783		Francois Pilatre de Rozier makes the first manned flight in a hot air balloon. The first flight was let out to 82 feet, but over the next few days the altitude increased up to 6,500 feet.
1813		During the land defeat of the British on the Thames River in Canada, the Indian chief Tecumseh, now a brigadier general with the British Army (War of 1812), is killed.
1863		For the second time, the Confederate submarine H L Hunley sinks during a practice dive in Charleston Harbor, this time drowning its inventor along with seven crew members.
1878		Thomas A. Edison founds the Edison Electric Light Co.
1880		Victorio, feared leader of the Minbreno Apache, is killed by Mexican troops in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico.
1892		An attempt to rob two banks in Coffeyville, Kan., ends in disaster for the Dalton gang as four of the five outlaws are killed and Emmet Dalton is seriously wounded.
1894		Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer, is arrested for betraying military secrets to Germany.
1914		Congress passes the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, which labor leader Samuel Gompers calls "labor's charter of freedom." The act exempts unions from anti-trust laws; strikes, picketing and boycotting become legal; corporate interlocking directorates become illegal, as does setting prices which would effect a monopoly.
1924		German ZR-3 flies 5000 miles, the furthest Zeppelin flight to date.
1941		Odessa, a Russian port on the Black Sea which has been surrounded by German troops for several weeks, is evacuated by Russian troops.
1945		Vichy French Premier Pierre Laval is executed by a firing squad for his wartime collaboration with the Germans.
1950		President Harry Truman meets with General Douglas MacArthur at Wake Island to discuss U.N. progress in the Korean War.
1964		Nikita Khrushchev is replaced by Leonid Brezhnev as leader of the Soviet Union.
1966		Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale establish the Black Panther Party, an African-American revolutionary socialist political group, in the US.
1969		Rallies for The Moratorium to End the War  in Vietnam draw over 2 million demonstrators across the US, a quarter million of them in the nation's capital.
1987		The Great Storm of 1987 strikes the UK and Europe during the night of Oct 15-16, killing over 20 people and causing widespread damage.
1989		Canadian hockey player Wayne Gretzky makes his 1,851st goal, breaking the all-time scoring record in the National Hockey League.
1990		Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the USSR, receives Nobel Peace Prize for his work in making his country more open and reducing Cold War tensions.
1997		Andy Green of the UK becomes the first person to break the sound barrier in the Earth's atmosphere, driving the ThrustSSC supersonic car to a record 763 mph (1,228 km/h).
2003		China launches its first manned space mission, Shenzhou I.
2007		New Zealand police arrest 17 people believed to be part of a paramilitary training camp.
2008		Dow Jones Industrial Average plummets 733.08 points, the second-largest percentage drop in the Dow's history.
2011		Protests break out in countries around the globe, under the slogan "United for Global Democracy."

Non Sequitur

Arrest made in ‘Baby Hope’ case

Police say charges to be filed against child's relative in 22-year-old mystery

 

More than 22 years after Anjelica Castillo, aka “Baby Hope” was found murdered in the woods of upper Manhattan police have made an arrest in the case.

A relative of Castillo, believed to be a cousin, has reportedly confessed to the killing, according to officials in New York.

In a press conference on Saturday, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said a man named Conrado Juarez, 53, has been arrested and will be charged with Castillo’s murder. The New York Post reports that Juarez was 30 at the time of Castillo’s death in 1991.

"A tip produced a lot of investigative work, and with great detective work we were able to track people down and interview them," Kelly said. "We finally came up with Anjelica’s sister, and that broke the case through.”

In an emotional moment, Kelly noted that while Castillo was known only as "Baby Hope" for the past 22 years, detectives on the case had paid for a headstone for the young girl inscribing it with the words, "Because we care."

During his press conference, Kelly said that Juarez allegedly kidnapped Castillo and sexually assaulted and smothered her with the help of his wife, Balvina Juarez. When he realized that Castillo was dead, Juarez allegedly summoned his sister, now deceased, for help. Castillo was living with Juarez and other relatives at the time while her parents were going through a separation, Kelly said.

Kelly says Juarez and his sister then took a livery cab to Manhattan where they disposed of the body. "Juarez returned to The Bronx and his sister returned to Queens, never to speak of this heinous act again, that is until our investigation caught up with them,” Kelly said at the press conference.
NBC News reports that the arrest came after police stepped up their investigation into the case this summer. The New York Daily News reports that the arrested individual is expected to be charged in connection with the case.
The renewed investigation efforts led to Castillo being identified in early October, the first time her actual identity has been discovered since her body was first found inside a cooler in the woods in 1991. On Friday, a tip led police to identifying Castillo’s father. Police told CNN they do not currently have enough evidence to arrest the man but are attempting to contact him about the case. We're very interested in him,” an anonymous official told CNN.
Police have also recently identified Castillo’s sister and mother. Castillo is believed to have been between 3 and five years old at the time of her death. NBC 4 New York reported that Castillo’s mother told authorities she lived in fear of the baby’s father, which is why she did not report her child as missing back in 1991.

"They made it their mission to identify this young child, to lay her to rest and to bring her killer to justice," Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said in a statement released on Saturday.

Golden Showers

McCrony to spend $230,000 in taxpayer funds on bathrooms at the Governor’s mansion

Pat McCrony (r-N.C.) feels ‘entitled’ to spend up to $230,000 in taxpayer funds remodeling bathrooms in his private living quarters at North Carolina’s Executive Mansion even as he demands cuts to public schools and social programs One of these is necessary, the other is not.
McCrony is taking the term ‘Golden shower’ literally.

And yet, North Carolina just reversed its callous decision to stop issuing baby formula vouchers because of the federal government shutdown, the state Department of Health and Human Services announced on Thursday evening.
According to WRAL.com, Department director Aldona Wos said the state had secured contingency funds and money left over from the previous fiscal year to reopen the program.
They were actually going to cease WIC payments during the shutdown, yet McCrory will spend almost a quarter of a million dollars on remodeling bathrooms in his private living quarters. That’s during the shutdown while federal workers are furloughed.
According to the AP, planned upgrades include new marble, tubs and fixtures for six bathrooms on the upper floors of the Victorian-era home in Raleigh. The changes were included in a long list detailing $90 million in repairs and renovations to government buildings sent to legislative leaders last week by state budget director Art Pope. The $90 million was included in the state budget for the current fiscal year.
The Associated Press reports:

A written estimate provided to The Associated Press shows $100,710 of planned work to the governor’s master bathroom, including a new shower, tub, two lavatories and a water closet. The estimate also includes $15,800 for marble, ceramic tile and paint. All told, the project breaks down to about $420 per square foot.  

The $420 he’s spending on just one square foot could feed some of the poor and elderly in that state, let alone the amount of money McCrory is spending on toilets and such.
The decision to press ahead with the new work at the mansion comes just after (about a month ago) McCrory signed a state budget which affords big tax cuts for the wealthy while including no raises for teachers, dropping per-pupil school spending to among the lowest rates in the nation and slashing a program that provides dental work to low-income children.
Not to mention: How much is voter suppression efforts costing the taxpayers in North Carolina? It’s supposed to be for integrity, however, I see no integrity with this Governor or his repugican colleagues.
‘Fiscal Conservatives’, my ass.
North Carolina Democratic Party spokesman Ben Ray said, ”This is an junta and a legislature that rejected health care for 500,000 North Carolinians. So to drop $230,000 on a bathroom renovation just shows that Pat McCrony’s priority is not North Carolina, but himself.”
And that’s just the bathrooms. He’s having other work done at the mansion too.
Get his pampered ass out of the Governor’s mansion.

Obama Smacks Down a Disrespectful Ted Cruz During White House Meeting

Things didn’t go well for Ted Cruz when he tried to confront President Obama at the White House, as the president shot down his demand for changes to the ACA.
According to Politico, Sen. Cruz told President Obama:

I told the president exactly the same thing I have told you here today: That we need to work together and fund the government and at the same time provide substantial relief to the millions of people who are hurting because of Obamacare, who are losing their jobs, being forced into part-time work and losing their health insurance,” Cruz said. “If the outcome doesn’t impact people who are struggling, who are hurting because of Obamacare, then I don’t think it would be a good outcome.
…
I’m glad that we are finally having discussions. That is an improvement. There was an awful lot of talk but then, at the end of the day, the president still said he wouldn’t negotiate,” Cruz said. “We began talking, that was good today. But he continued to maintain that he will not negotiate or compromise on anything. And if that is the position, that’s not going to lead to a resolution.

Ted Cruz had the nerve to try to make demands to the President of the United States in the White House, and was immediately shot down. Ted Cruz thought that his grandstanding ACA lies would work on Obama, and by his own admission, was swatted away by the president.
Cruz is supposed to be the new leader of the repugican cabal, but he couldn’t hold a serious discussion without resorting to his same old debunked Obamacare talking points. Ted Cruz isn’t a leader. He is an empty suit. President Obama must have had a difficult time keeping a straight face while Cruz claimed that the ACA was killing jobs, full time employment, and healthcare.
Obama isn’t going to be bullied by Ted Cruz. The difference is that Ted Cruz is pretending that he is a leader with power, while Barack Obama is the twice elected President of the United States. President Obama has the numbers on his side. The American people are clamoring for Obamacare. Thanks to the Cruz led government shutdown, the ACA is getting more popular each day.
Foolish Ted Cruz believed all the nonsense that tea partiers like to think is true about President Obama, but the man he met today wasn’t some weak kneed socialist. Sen. Cruz met the real President Obama, who looked him in the eye, and told him no.
Ted Cruz better stick to fooling gullible repugicans with Obamacare lies, because he doesn’t have what it takes to challenge President Obama.

The Koch Brothers Seditious Shutdown Conspiracy Should Get Them 20 Years in Prison

The DOJ will have an easy time prosecuting and convicting the Kochs because there are money trails leading directly to PACs whose primary purpose was inciting opposition to…

There is a saying in the entertainment industry that any publicity is good publicity, and although it is primarily true for entertainers, it is not the case for politicians. For the dark money and puppeteers behind wingnut politicians, anonymity is the preferred state and any publicity is inherently bad regardless if they fund extremist politicians or schemes to shut down the government. After news broke that the billionaire oil magnates the Koch brothers funded the culprits behind the still-ongoing government shut down, they finally spoke out in a letter to Senators claiming their innocence and denying they had any part in teabagger and repugican machinations to hold the government hostage in exchange for killing the Affordable Care Act.
The Koch brothers’ letter claimed they had no part or took no position “on the legislative tactic of tying the continuing resolution to defunding ObamaCare nor have we lobbied on legislative provisions defunding ObamaCare,” but like their repugican lackeys; they are filthy liars. The Koch-funded FreedomWorks issued a letter in February that said, “Wingnuts should not approve a CR unless it defunds Obamacare.  This includes Obamacare’s unworkable exchanges, unsustainable Medicaid expansion, and attack on life and religious liberty.” If paying a surrogate to demand repugicans and teabaggers tie defunding the Affordable Care Act to keeping the government operating is not taking a position on the government shutdown and the continuing resolution, then the Sun rises in the West and the Earth orbits the moon.
Obviously the bad publicity frightens the Koch brothers and doubtless they are legitimately concerned they will lose influence with their right wing conservative base who are taking a beating in the public sphere for their fervent support of the government shutdown. Likely, the Koch’s are not happy their reputation could be further sullied for backing the lunatic fringe wing of the repugican cabal led by Michele Bachmann, Ted Cruz, and Steve King who championed the government shutdown strategy to eliminate the health law. It is also likely they did not miss Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s accusations they were behind the shutdown, or the articles, petitions and calls for the Justice Department to investigate them for sedition that never had a snowball’s chance in Hell of touching the Kochs.
However, there is a statute in the U.S. Code that does apply to the Koch brothers and every other wingnut that spent the past three years attempting to prohibit implementation of the Affordable Care Act and it is a legitimate and actionable offense the DOJ can prosecute with extreme prejudice. In 18 USC § 2384 – Seditious conspiracy, it plainly says; “If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspires to oppose by force the authority of, or prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.” For the Americans affected by the government shut down, and those who live in repugican states that rejected free Medicaid expansion written in the Affordable Care Act, it is highly likely they would support fining and imprisoning the Koch brothers for twenty years.
The U.S. Code says “if two or more persons” are involved in a conspiracy to oppose the authority of, prevent, hinder, or delay any law they shall be punished and that means that every single repugican, teabagger, wingnut media, and libertarian belief tank is in line to be prosecuted for seditious conspiracy by the Department of Justice. Every repugican in the House that voted to tie defunding the Affordable Care Act is part of the conspiracy, and that also applies to repugicans who voted in lockstep to prevent the law’s implementation by tying defunding the law to passing a continuing resolution to open the government.
The repugicans in leadership positions in the House and Senate are particularly culpable for preventing the law’s enactment and not because they wasted taxpayer time and money voting over forty times to repeal the law, but because their propaganda, lies, and misinformation incited hostility in the states to oppose the authority of the law. In states such as Arizona, Alabama, Oklahoma, Texas, Wyoming, and Missouri The repugicans refused to enforce the law, and after the general election at least three repugican states voted to arrest any federal official who tried to implement the law making them part of the seditious conspiracy as much as the Koch brothers who paid hundreds-of-millions to hinder the law’s implementation. One former repugican, Joe Walsh (r-IL) actually went so far as to provoke his supporters to “defy and or break the law” if faced with what he called “restrictions” in the federal health law. Three repugican cabal-controlled states openly voted to “nullify” the law.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was signed into law on March 23, 2010 and yet repugicans have never admitted it is the law of the land. It is true that after the 2012 general election Speaker of the House John Boehner had a moment of clarity and said “Obamacare is the law of the land,” but he, and his fellow wingnuts treat the law as if it is a piece of legislation still up for debate and negotiation. Since the law is over three-and-a-half years old, every repugican, teabagger, wingnut think tank, and even wingnut media is guilty of conspiring to oppose the authority of, or prevent, hinder, or delay the ACA and it is incumbent on the Department of Justice to charge every last one of them with seditious conspiracy under U.S. Code 18 USC § 2384, but especially Charles and David Koch.
The DOJ will have an easy time prosecuting and convicting the Kochs and their conspirators because there are money trails leading directly to PACs whose primary purpose was inciting opposition to the established law. There are also videos, angry screeds, and floor speeches from repugicans in the House and Senate demanding the ACA be defunded and delayed that would give any prosecutor an easy task of proving seditious conspiracy.
Americans have put up with criminal sedition from the Kochs and Republicans for too long and they cannot be held to a different standard or above the law because they are rich and powerful. In fact, their violation of the U.S. Code may well be the easiest, and only, means of stopping their continued assault on America’s representative democracy. Obviously the Koch brothers were rattled by charges they were behind the government shutdown through their funding efforts to hold the government hostage in exchange for eliminating the ACA or they would not have written a letter lying about their involvement. But they, their think tanks, PACs, and cohort in Congress and the states cannot deny they are guilty of seditious conspiracy to “oppose the authority of, or prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States” and no American should be satisfied until they are fined or imprisoned for twenty years. If there is any justice left in this corrupt nation, they will get both.
Author note:

The fact that states voted to arrest federal officials attempting to enforce the health law, coupled with the growing threats of armed violence against the government due to the health law’s enactment meets the definition of “by force” originally omitted in the U.S. Code’s description. By definition, a conspiracy means the planners, inciters, and funders are guilty the same as Osama bin Laden was guilty for recruiting, planning, and funding al Qaeda terrorists who flew commercial airliners into American buildings.

House Democrats Pull an End Around To Try To Overthrow Boehner and Reopen Government

186 Democrats signed a petition to demand a vote as soon as October 14th to reopen government, using the repugicans own bill against them.…

Remember when I wrote that Democrats were planning to use repugican’s own bill against them in order to fund the government? They signed the petition today. Democrats are trying to bypass Speaker Boehner in order to allow a quick vote on a bill to reopen the government.
So far, 186 Democrats have signed a petition to demand a vote as soon as October 14th to reopen government. This discharge petition only needs a majority of House members; it doesn’t rely upon repugican leadership.
The method of using discharge petitions to bring legislation for consideration is not unprecedented.
According to a Congressional Research Service study cited by Democrats, “seven discharge petitions have received 218 signatures over the last 30 years. And in all seven cases, the majority party agreed to bring the measure to the House floor.”
But then, they weren’t dealing with these repugicans.
“The only thing standing between this Congress and an open government is Speaker Boehner’s refusal to allow a vote on a clean continuing resolution,” said Congressman Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). “This measure can remove the Speaker’s undemocratic roadblock and finally allow a clean vote in the House of Representatives to open the government.”
What Democrats are trying to do here is reestablish the rule of the majority, thereby bypassing the tea party strangle hold on repugican cabal leadership. This CR would fund the government at levels set by the Senate if a majority of House Members sign onto a discharge petition. Click here to read what Democrats filed on the 4th to allow the signing of the petition today.
If Democrats can get to 218, the remaining two steps would be 1) Discharge the resolution from the Rules Committee for immediate House consideration. 2) Then debate a CR with the House and Senate agreed spending levels. This would be a substitute to H.R. 1164 – a repugican bill introduced more than 30 days ago. Then, they’d take an up or down vote.
The bill would then need to be passed by the much saner Senate.
“There is a growing number of repugicans who want the opportunity to work with us to end this crisis. We have seen it in press reports. And I have heard it in my own private conversations with my repugican colleagues,” said Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). “Today, we are offering my repugican friends, and the American people, a way forward.”
We’ll see if any of the House repugicans who have indicated that they want to end this shutdown have the courage to sign the petition.
If they don’t, this is a perfect example of why we can’t trust even moderate repugican lawmakers in the current repugican cabal. If repugicans try to shut down this attempt at democracy, the people must demand a vote.

National Cancer Institute director warns staff of increasingly dire effects of shutdown on science

National Cancer Institute headquarters, Bethesda, Maryland.

Harold Varmus, director of the National Cancer Institute, sent this email today to "NCI staff, grantees, advisors, reviewers and others," warning of increasingly damaging effects the ongoing federal government shutdown will have on cancer research and treatment at NCI. Even worse than the litany of known, present harm, is this grim prediction: the damage won't end when the government reopens.

Here's a copy of the aforementioned email:

I am writing to keep you abreast of the ways in which the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and its extramural and intramural research programs have been --- and are likely to be --- affected by the current shutdown of the federal government. And I am also writing to ask for your help in responding to the difficult situation that we are likely to face when the government is reopened. As you have doubtless seen in the media, if not experienced directly, the NCI, along with the rest of the NIH, has been obliged to place on furlough many valuable employees, presently about 80 percent of our staff. While all components of the NCI have furloughed many personnel, most of those we have been able to exempt from furlough are in our intramural programs and needed to preserve ongoing research protocols, ensure laboratory safety, care for experimental animals, and, especially, serve our patients at the Clinical Research Center. This situation has been hard for everyone, particularly for many of our trainees, who have been told to limit their activities on campus to those permitted during the shutdown. They, like regular staff members, are unable to travel to scientific meetings or to perform much of the research they came to NCI to do.
Although the shutdown has been felt most acutely by our staff and investigators in the intramural program, the effects on the extramural research community are likely to become progressively greater as the situation persists. Presently, the vast majority of NCI’s extramural staff is furloughed, which means that many NCI staff members are unable to provide their usual administrative and programmatic support services to extramural grantees. Furthermore, many grantees, especially those responsible for planning collaborative work, including clinical trials, have been limited in their abilities to conduct important meetings that require NCI staff and support. Still, we have been able to exempt from furlough some program officers who provide oversight and guidance for clinical trials that were initiated prior to the shutdown. Moreover, the length of the shutdown has not been great enough to affect most ongoing research activities at extramural sites. Since the Payment Management System has remained operational, we also continue to process requests to obtain expected funds for most of the grants awarded to our extramural investigators. However, that may not be possible if an award was made with restrictive terms or if a request triggers a need for additional interactions.
Now that the shutdown is nearing the end of its second week, however, further consequences are coming into view. While grant applications can be accepted and stored at grants.gov, the NIH Office of Extramural Research has discouraged submissions, and applications will not be processed further until normal business operations are restored through Congressional appropriations. (See the OER’s message at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-13-126.html). Furthermore, NCI’s Division of Extramural Activities (DEA) has postponed until undetermined dates several site visits to evaluate re-competing centers and large grant applications, and it has postponed more than a dozen meetings to review grant applications. Thus, the NCI’s grant review cycle could be significantly delayed, threatening a smooth restart of NCI’s support of extramural research, even if the NIH reopens relatively soon.
This situation could have serious effects on the review and funding of virtually all NCI programs, including NCI-designated Cancer Centers, program project and SPORE grants, training awards, and individual research project grants. Questions or concerns about these matters should be sent to John Czajkowski, NCI Deputy Director for Management ([email redacted]), or to Dr. Paulette Gray, Director of the Division of Extramural Activities ([email redacted]).
Part of the reason I am writing at this time is to prepare you for the possibility that we at the NCI (and presumably others at the NIH) will be asking reviewers and advisors to adapt to abrupt and inconvenient changes in the scheduling of meetings to review grant applications and oversee programs. These changes may require you to alter long-standing plans to attend worthwhile events. But avoiding a major crisis in grant-making and program development this year may be possible only if all members of the NCI communities are willing to help alleviate the consequences of the shutdown.
Needless to say, all of us at the NCI hope that the current situation is resolved quickly, but we have no way to know when the shutdown will end. In the meantime, I encourage all of you to monitor major media outlets regularly, as we do, for updates on the status of federal operations. As long as the shutdown continues, the NCI will remain committed to advancing our common cause---research to control cancer---as best we can within the limits of the law. Your patience, persistence, and flexibility are very much appreciated during this unhappy and uncertain time.
Harold Varmus
Director, NCI

American education's use of "value added measures" is statistically bankrupt

by Cory Doctorow 

American teachers are widely assessed on the basis of "value added measures," a statistical tool for analyzing the outcomes of their teaching. But as Jerry Genovese points out, this is statistically completely bankrupt -- unless you randomize your samples, you get no insight into the quality of the teaching. I asked my father, Gord Doctorow -- a mathematician, math teacher, and professor of education -- what he thought of Genovese's piece, and he sent me some great material, which you'll find after the jump.

In the past few weeks I have been analyzing data from a research project. The topic is not important for our discussion here, the methodology, however, is. The approach I am using is called a gain score analysis. Participants are assigned to one of two groups, each group will receive a different intervention. For each group we measured our outcome variable at baseline, that is before treatment. After the intervention we will measure our outcome variable again. Gain score is defined as the final measurement minus the baseline measurement. In other word the magnitude of the change. By focusing on the magnitude of the change we don’t have to worry about the fact that the baseline scores were not identical. We use a statistical test to see if one group gained significantly more that the other.
A value added measure of teaching is also a gain score analysis. They measure the students’ performance at the beginning of the year and then measure their performance again at years end. The difference would be the gain score or, as it is called in education, the value added. The average gain score for a group of students is said to be the value added by the teacher.
What is wrong with this approach? After all it seems to be identical to what my colleagues and I are doing in our research. Unfortunately, there is a crucial difference. In my study the participants were randomly assigned to the two groups. A gain score analysis can not be valid if the group assignments are not random.

Here's what my Dad added:

I agree with Jerry Genovese. There are several methodological problems with value-added evaluations of teachers, as I understand the concept from Jerry's blog. First, the issue of comparisons: he's right that sampling has to be random. Not only that, the sample size has to be sufficiently large (sufficient power) and representative. To be representative, the proportions of certain demographically defined groups of students have to be proportionally represented in the comparison groups. Besides that, there is the issue of what constitutes an appropriate measure of value. In the case of student scores, we need to know whether the tests of student performance are good predictors of future success. In Finland, the students are not exposed to such tests until later on when they compete in the PISA, which is an international test of performance by country. Yet despite, or perhaps because of, this lack of emphasis, they greatly outperform American kids. The value that Finns use to compare teachers is based on rigorous standards of pre-service education, including attainment of a Master's degree, and very competitive salaries. These teachers are expected to be knowledgeable and innovative. In the U.S., the teachers are expected to get their students to attain scores on standardized tests in a high stakes environment, which inevitably leads to cheating and sacrifice of creative learning opportunities.
Finally, in order to do a proper comparison of teacher performance, you have to eliminate (control for) variations in the student populations being served. Students learn at different rates, are subject to cultural influences, have varying degrees of home encouragement and support, and the list goes on. There can be no meaningful comparison among teachers who have vastly different student populations because a significant variable plays a confounding role.

Value added measures of teachers are invalid

Random Celebrity Photos

Marilyn

In The News

Study: Farmer and hunter groups 'kept their distance' from each other in Stone Age 

"When farmers showed up from the Near East about 7,500 years ago, eager to grow their grains in the soil of Central Europe, they were met by indigenous hunters and gatherers. The locals, apparently, did not welcome them with open arms." New research suggests that "for some 2,000 years, these distinct groups refused to mesh and would rarely cross their cultural boundaries to find a mate."

What effect does mass surveillance have on journalism in the US? We're finding out. It's not good. 

" Mass surveillance of the kind practiced by the NSA produces a chilling effect on journalism, because sources do not feel they can have a private conversation with a reporter." That's the takeaway from a public comment issued by a group of scholars, journalists, and researchers from Columbia Journalism School and the MIT Center for Civic Media, responding to the Review Group on Intelligence and Communication Technologies convened by President Obama. [Tow Center for Digital Journalism] 

New head of CIA's National Clandestine Service profiled in Newsweek

In Newsweek, Jeff Stein profiles Frank Archibald, who was named head of the CIA's National Clandestine Service earlier this year. Stein describes him as "a nice guy in a killer job – literally;" an "affable, hulking former Clemson University football player, 57," who is now the guy in charge of the CIA division that handles the "agency's spies and hunter-killer teams, like the ones dispatched to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya and elsewhere in search of al Qaeda and other terrorist spore."

Father walking across US to raise bullying awareness after gay son committed suicide is killed

"An Oregon man who lost his gay son to suicide and was walking across the country to raise awareness about bullying is dead after being hit by a truck in eastern Colorado." Joseph Bell of La Grande, OR, who was 48, died on Wednesday after a truck hit him on a rural two-lane highway. "Investigators believe the driver fell asleep." 

Lavabit files opening brief in important online privacy case 

Kevin Poulsen, Wired News: "Secure email provider Lavabit just filed the opening brief in its appeal of a court order demanding it turn over the private SSL keys that protected all web traffic to the site." 

Judge fines self $50 for allowing his phone to go off during sentencing hearing 

Judge Hugh B. Clarke, Jr. of Lansing District Court in Michigan fined himself $50 after his cellphone went off at a sentencing hearing. The Judge told the WSJ he made a call during a recess and forgot to silence his phone when he returned to court in a hurry. “I don’t know why I even had it,” he said. 

US gov shutdown means imminent death for thousands of lab mice

NPR's "All Things Considered" did a piece this week about what the shutdown means for thousands of lab mice used in medical research at government facilities. In a word, death. 

Patriot Act author pushes bill to put NSA's data dragnet 'out of business'

"Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, who worked with president George W. Bush to give more power to US intelligence agencies after the September 11 terrorist attacks, said the intelligence community had misused those powers by collecting telephone records on all Americans, and claimed it was time 'to put their metadata program out of business."