Pansynthesis

U.S. had advance warning of abuse at Afghan prisons, officials say – The Washington Post Even as other countries stopped handing over detainees to problematic facilities, the U.S. government did not. Daily Kos: Now I’m a f’ing hero (NSFW) The word “Hero” is thrown around like a Frisbee, both by the left and the right, [...]

BBC News – Joking and pretending ‘key to toddler learning’ Parents who joke and pretend with their children are giving them a head start in life, researchers at Stirling University have found. The study suggested that both activities are important in building social and life skills children need. It also showed that pretending and joking [...]

Why Homelessness Is Becoming an Occupy Wall Street Issue | Mother Jones …most ordinary, biologically necessary activities are illegal when performed in American streets—not just peeing, but sitting, lying down, and sleeping. While the laws vary from city to city, one of the harshest is in Sarasota, Florida, which passed an ordinance in 2005 that [...]

We’re a culture, not a costume tags: racism Hypothes.is: A Peer-Review Layer for the Whole Internet A team of long-time leaders of the Internet community have come together behind Dan Whaley, one of the forefathers of contemporary search engines, to build a system called Hypothes.is: an “open-source Internet platform to crowdsource peer-review on information everywhere.” [...]

Google Reader to Get Google+ Integration | Mashable! • Todd Wasserman The changes, which are “highly requested,” according to Google software engineer Alan Green, include a new design and the retiring of features like friending, following and shared link blogs inside of Reader, which will be supplanted by Google+. The history of the typewriter recited [...]

‘The First Amendment Is Our Permit’ | The Nation In the past year, when people across the Middle East occupied public squares, leaders in Washington cheered them on and warned other governments against using force. (See the video below.) Those other societies didn’t even have a First Amendment to cite. Yet official Washington affirmed the [...]

gabrielleabelle: Mississippi Personhood Amendment The reason I’m posting this here is because I made a meager donation to the Jackson Women’s Health Organization this morning, and I received a personal email back hours later – on a Sunday – thanking me and noting that I’m one of the first “outside” people to contribute. So if [...]

URGENT: Defend #OccupyWallStreet from eviction tomorrow by Mayor Bloomberg tags: call_for_action 2011_protests united_states occupywallstreet occupysolidarity [ETA: THE EVICTION HAS BEEN CANCELLED.  SEE LIVEBLOG, WITH LINKS TO ARTICLES AND PICTURES.] [ETA 2: MORE LIVEBLOG - THIS ONE CONTINUES INTO THE MORNING.] Computational Model of Peace Predicts Social Violence, Harmony | The model runs census data through [...]

Newt Gingrich On Occupy Wall Street: Barney Frank, Chris Dodd Should Go To Jail (VIDEO) Occupy Wall Street protesters — as well as the rest of the American public — have a right to be angry about the economic situation in the country, but they shouldn’t be mad at Wall Street: They should instead be [...]

Clay Shirky on institutions vs. collaboration | Video on TED.com In this prescient 2005 talk, Clay Shirky shows how closed groups and companies will give way to looser networks where small contributors have big roles and fluid cooperation replaces rigid planning. [With subtitles and interactive transcript] tags: video Daily Kos: Wall Street Protests | Senator [...]