[videos]

My post on female instrumentalists a couple of weeks ago got a ton of terrific responses – I’ve thoroughly enjoyed investigating your suggestions! Throughout the next couple of weeks, I’m going to share videos of some of the artists mentioned in that post, going in order.

According to this report by Dana Goldstein, the forced pregnancy forces are gathering strength to fight the next battle in reproductive health care <s>-</s> access to contraception. Of course, access to birth control is supported by nearly 80% of the public and most people think it's nuts to even think about making it difficult to obtain. But these people take the long view…

Libertarian Davi Barker emails me a link to her (his?) remix of my “24 Types of Libertarian” cartoon, “The 24 Types of Authoritarian.”

S/he has changed all the words in my cartoon, turning it into a mocking of both liberals and conservatives. Good for Davi for posting such a good-humored response.

…The poll also finds that Obama is still more trusted than Republicans (43/26) and Democrats still lead Republicans on the economy (42/34). But the less popular party may win in November.

But here’s where it gets interesting…

Created ‘by a photographer for photographers’ it is able to download photos directly from multiple camera’s, USB sticks & memory cards simultaneously. Couple that with an extensive feature set that takes the pain out of renaming and re-organizing and you have a bona fide winner…

It’s been a while since we last mentioned the very awesome wallpaper-slideshow generator ‘CREBS’ (CREate Background Slideshow)…

[OFFS! Look, I get that she just wants this all to end and no longer cares whether Polanski gets punished for what he did to her. From what I've read, I sense that she has had the courage and strength to heal, which is exactly what I'd hope for her or any survivor. But damage is done to <b>society</b> every time Polanski's crime gets minimized.

-L]

A drunk man in Australia survives being bitten by a huge salt water crocodile after he climbed into its enclosure and tried to ride it.

[video]
Well, this is something you don't see every day. Ralph Nader hosted this interview segment with Fox News' Judge Andrew Napolitano and discussed his book, Lies the Government Told You. I'm surprised the judge is going to be allowed on Fox after making the statements he did about Bush and Cheney during the interview.

Windows: Can't decide whether you should commit your spare thumb drive to Windows recovery, Ubuntu, or some other live-booting OS? Run MultiBootISOs on your USB drive, and you won't have to choose—you'll just choose between them at start-up.

[ !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -L]

[Trigger warning for discussion of self-harm and suicide. -L]

This week the European Court of Human Rights temporarily halted the extradition of four terrorism suspects from the United Kingdom to the United States. The court concluded that the applicants had raised a serious question whether their possible long-term incarceration in a U.S. “supermax” prison would violate Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits “torture or … inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” The court noted that “complete sensory isolation, coupled with total social isolation, can destroy the personality and constitutes a form of inhuman treatment which cannot be justified by the requirements of security or any other reason,” and called for additional submissions from the parties before finally deciding the applicants’ claim. [...]

The devastating effects of isolated confinement on the human psyche have long been well known. In 1890, the Supreme Court described the results of solitary confinement as it had been practiced in the early days of the United States…

Kindra Arnesen is the wife of a Gulf fisherman and she's been kicking butt on exposing BP abuses. In this latest news, she's discovered that BP is claiming is that if fishermen choose not to take part in the oil spill cleanup, BP will consider that as potential income declined and deduct it from their claims…

While this would not technically abolish the Electoral College, it would have the same effect and create a de facto direct popular vote once enough states enter into a multistate compact. And for it to take effect requires only that roughly half of the states pass a bill, a much lower hurdle than a Constitutional amendment.

What is surprising, given its overwhelming support, is that the national popular vote plan has not already passed in a sufficient number of states. So far, it’s succeeded in only five. The effort to enact it has been under way for several years. This shows the power of status quo bias…

It’s hard to see this as anything else but a colossal failure on the part of the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress.

It seems like the more right-wing the Republican is, the more concerned they are about Obama turning white people into "slaves."

In June, an analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities confirmed that gap between rich and poor in the United States reached levels not seen since 1929. Between 1979 and 2007, the yawning chasm separating the after-tax income of the richest 1 percent of Americans from the middle and poorest fifths of the country more than tripled. But while the Bush recession which began in December 2007 temporarily halted the stratospheric advance of the wealthy, the rich – and the rich alone – have largely recovered their losses. Which means that the record level of income inequality in America is growing once again…

Here is a fact: There. Are. No. Jobs. I'm in Silicon Valley where the official unemployment rate dipped in May to 11.2%. This dip was, of course, because of so many people just giving up trying to get a job, certainly not because of some wave of hiring. The underemployed figure, known as "U-6," is 21.7% in California, 16.7% nationally.

You have to know someone to get a humiliating job standing on a corner waving a sign. And if you are over 40, things are even worse than that. [...]

Age discrimination is a thing with me because it is so blatant here. It's the culture here, some even say that for programmers it is "35 and out." At various times looking for work I've been told I "seemed tired" and things like that. I was even told once that I wouldn't be able to market some software because I "wouldn't be able to get my mind around" how it worked—when I had designed and written part of it in a previous life.

Continuing the criminal neglect of science and reason in policy making is governing malpractice.

[Read the article Digby links to. -L]

If you control the administration, the House and the Senate, aren't you pretty close to a temporary victory? Wouldn't you think (ignorant as you are of the rules of the Congress and also of the multi-dimensional chess game Democrats play) that controlling all these three would mean that you have been victorious? Or at least capable of — hmm — getting change done?

That paragraph is what an outsider might think, and it turns out to be all wrong. It turns out that having the administration, the Senate and the House means that your hands are tied! Probably behind your back. Except, of course, if your party is called the Republican Party.

Citing a possible flaw because U.S. authorities failed to turn over certain papers, Swiss authorities reject the extradition request that originated in Los Angeles. The Oscar-winning director is released from house arrest.

[Dammit. -L]

There's a been a rumbling from above for some time now that people who walk away from their homes when the economics no longer makes sense are behaving very badly. This is known as "strategic default" which simply says that homeowner looks at the numbers and determines that she is economically better off if she gives the house back to the bank .

Apparently this is immoral. Why this should be I don't know.

[Read the whole thing. -L]

My wife, a labor economist, is upset with NPR's "The Take Away" (and many other news programs) for reinforcing the myth that somehow the unemployed are to blame for not having a job. We all should be angry as well because the jobs just aren't there. In fact, the latest unemployment statistics show that there are five unemployed workers available for every vacant job…

<b>Every child knows how to play musical chairs. When you take away 8 million chairs, a lot of people are forced to scrounge around looking for seats that aren't there. Providing nourishment for the chairless is not the cause of the disappearing chairs. It's just the decent thing to do…</b>

Economist Dean Baker suggests that the Republicans are trying to keep unemployment as high as possible right now because they think that high jobless numbers will spell disaster for the Democrats in November…

…the Democrats are pushing austerity and deficit reduction–the financial industry's pet issue. If the Democrats are so worried about unemployment benefits deepening the deficit they should start plugging that money hole by raising taxes on billionaire hedge funds executives. Just ask the billionaires to pay the same income tax rates as the rest of us, instead of dodging behind the lower capital gains rate. Is that really such a hard sell, Democrats? <b>If the public knew that the top ten hedge fund managers were averaging $900,000 an hour (not a typo) during the worst economic year since the Depression–and paying lower income tax rates than the rest of us–the American public would be outraged.</b> Of course, to push this plan the politicians would need to have the guts to upset billionaires…

We're at a critical point in the jobs crisis. Nearly 30 million of us don't have jobs or have been forced into part-time jobs. It's not like there's no work to do. We have millions and millions of kids to educate. We desperately need to slash our energy use–and with an army of workers, we could weatherize every home and business in the country. Our bridges and roads will take decades to repair. We need to build an entire national system of efficient public transit.

When Wall Street is in trouble, we come to the rescue with trillions in bailouts. We've poured hundreds of billions more into two wars. But when it comes to investing in our people to get needed work done, we can't seem to summon the will or find the cash.

…There is no economic theory that can explain this obscene gap. It has nothing to do with talent or productivity or even luck. It's just raw power.

[Boldface emphasis added by yr humble linkspammer. -L]

Trailrunner7 writes "A security expert has released a stripped-down Ubuntu distribution designed specifically for reverse-engineering malware. The OS, called REMnux, includes a slew of popular malware-analysis, network monitoring and memory forensics tools that comprise a very powerful environment for taking apart malicious code. REMnux is the creation of Lenny Zeltser, an expert on malware reverse engineering who teaches a popular course on the topic at SANS conferences. He put the operating system together after years of having students ask him which tools to use and what works best. He originally used Red Hat Linux, but recently decided that Ubuntu was a better fit. REMnux has three separate tools for analyzing Flash-specific malware, including SWFtools, Flasm and Flare, as well as several applications for analyzing malicious PDFs, including Didier Stevens' analysis tools. REMnux also has a number of tools for de-obfuscating JavaScript, including Rhino debugger, a version of Firefox with NoScript, JavaScript Deobfuscator and Firebug installed, and Windows Script Decoder."

We are one very big step closer to sending robots into our body for long-term, complex missions. New nano-generators can turn mechanical energy – like that of flowing blood – into electricity needed to power nanobots.

[Finally, some news from the Diaspora team!

...Diaspora aims to compete with Facebook. A project worth watching, although I don't know if I'm rooting for them or just rooting against Facebook.

-L]

…unfortunately, this federal court decision really doesn't affect us at all. In theory, the ruling only covers Massachusetts for the time being. The case was brought on behalf of the state, and unless and until it moves up through the 1st Circuit and possibly to the Supreme Court, the case only has persuasive precedential value. For now, [the Defense of Marriage Act] is still valid in California.

[But click through to read a verra satisfying paragraph from the judge's ruling. -L]

"Whether it is their residence, a second home or a house bought as an investment, the rich have stopped paying the mortgage at a rate that greatly exceeds the rest of the population."

[Click through for the whole piece. -L]

It’s now obvious that the stimulus was much too small; yet there’s virtually no chance of getting additional measures out of Congress. The [Obama] administration has chosen to deal with this by trying to have it both ways — condemning Republicans, rightly, for obstructionism, while at the same time claiming, falsely, that we’re still on the right track.

How did things end up this way? We’ll never know whether the administration could have passed a bigger plan; we do know that it didn’t try.

…based on public reporting [...] it looks as if top [White House] advisers convinced themselves that even in the absence of stimulus the slump would be nasty, brutish, but not too long.

…we could still fix this: a second big stimulus, plus much more aggressive Fed policy. But politically, we’re stuck…

In Cade's time [developed lithium treatment for manic patients] and the 50 years that followed patients would get their information about drugs from their doctors. But nowadays they can read the same reports their doctors do, contemporaneously. They find them online and use social networks to discuss them with other patients. This phenomenon has been called the "patient 2.0 movement," and it is changing the way doctors and scientists do their jobs.

http://e-patients.net/
http://www.patientslikeme.com/

…PatientsLikeMe introduced the first "real-time, real-world, open, nonblinded, patient-driven" lithium trial. Patients taking the drug off-label were encouraged to enter their blood levels (which were measured weekly because of lithium's toxicity at high doses) and their ALS functional rating scale score (a measure of disease progression) on an online spreadsheet. Patients who weren't taking lithium served as controls. Over 12 months, 149 patients taking lithium for at least two months and 447 controls tracked their disease progression for anyone to see.

…Bedlack worries the arrival of the virtual trial will encourage more patients to experiment with alternative and off-label treatments outside of properly designed clinical trials. "There’s still no substitute for the randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial," he says. But he hopes to find a happy medium between the old ways of doing research and new Web-based ones to encourage participation and reduce some of the burden on patients.

In an effort to educate patients in the 2.0 movement about the risks of experimental and even fraudulent treatments, Bedlack created ALSUntangled—a Web-based system monitored by an international team of scientists that investigates new treatments at the request of patients. It uses social networking tools to collect and review information then publishes its findings as open-access articles in a peer-reviewed journal, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis…

[Problematic assumption of skinny = healthy ahoy.

-L]

A star cluster sparkles, a new map reveals ancient light, a "dragon" emerges from a nebula, and more in the week's best space pictures.

The secret to lifelong happiness. If only it were so easy.

Biologists in Canada are encouraged that critically endangered Vancouver Island marmots ( Marmota vancouverensis ) are once again learning how to be marmots–a tough task since the species's population had crashed so far that the animals almost lost the knowledge of how to exist as a society.

The danger of using male bodies to represent all bodies became very clear once again last week when Northwestern Medicine in Chicago announced a new formula for figuring out a women’s maximum heart rate, considered a critical number in constructing an optimum workout.

The traditional formula (subtract a person’s age from 220) has led some women to experience frustration and exhaustion from workouts that should have been exhilarating, writes Tara Parker-Pope. The new formula for women, based on new research, is 206 minus 88 percent of age.

The new formula will also more accurately predict the risk of heart-related death during a stress test.

“Now we know for the first time what is normal for women, and it’s a lower peak heart rate than for men,” said Martha Gulati, MD, assistant professor of medicine and preventive medicine and a cardiologist at Northwestern Medicine and lead author of a study published June 28 in the journal Circulation. “Using the standard formula, we were more likely to tell women they had a worse prognosis than they actually did.”

"I want to focus for a moment on the distinction between voluntary and involuntary manslaughter. To convict on the higher charge of voluntary manslaughter, the prosecution would have had to prove that Mehserle’s fear of Grant and his friends was 'unreasonable.' It decided the crime was involuntary. In other words, Mehserle’s fear? That was reasonable."

…We have to explore that fear for what it is, rather than assign guilt for feeling it in the first place. You cannot let go of internalized racism (that is reinforced by our culture) without first owning it and peeling the layers back.

You would have to be living under a rock not to know that there is a serious battle for gay rights going on in this country. The long awaited new film The Kids Are All Right directed by Lisa Cholodenko (High Art) is timed perfectly to the debate, and shows just how far the issue has come to real people living it each and every day while legal and political factions still duke it out in the public arena.

I do believe that films can effect culture. They seep in to our culture’s soul and over time, make people think about things differently. This funny and accessible film starring Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as two long time married spouses who happen to be gay is one of those films. Here we have two pretty major female movie stars playing lesbians moms in a way we have never seen before in a mainstream movie. That alone is extremely exciting…

So before you click “Install” and add yet another one of the latest and greatest WordPress plugins, it’s important to take a moment and make sure it is actually in the best interest of your site…

A reader recently emailed me asking for some advice. She’s having her feminist “click” moment, and now finds that she is incompatible with almost everybody around her. Suddenly, the presence of rape apologism, racist jokes, sexist sneering, and other such Socialization Aids is inescapably fucking gross instead of invisibly malforming. She finds she can’t talk to anybody without finding out they believe something that is offensive, oppressive, and/or horrifyingly inhumane. She asked me, to briefly summarize: What the fuck do I do now?

…There’s a larger social/political/cultural structure at work when you try to live your feminist ideals, something bigger than you and your relationship with another individual. Sometimes the structure and your daily life can’t be separated viably. But other times, it’s just you and another person, and you want to know how to get along with them without considering your Feminist Value Points, or ethical consistency, or a life philosophy. The desire for positive human contact can easily outweigh all cerebral considerations, and that’s a good thing; without it, I don’t think any of us would even be able to get out of bed long enough to give a shit about feminism. I, personally, am invested in feminism and anti-oppressive ideas because I see these ideas as ways to create a world where more people are willing to connect with each other, because there are less artificial, constructed, hierarchical fault lines keeping them apart. So it’s not good enough for me to decide that my feminism just means I have to be lonely from now on. If I don’t connect with and care about people — real individual people — what the hell is feminism for?

[Discusses dropping relationships with people who take certain attitudes about rape. -L]

…I have less of a strict limit with abuse. If somebody voices out loud that some woman or another probably likes/deserves/wants abuse, that’s a warning sign, but not necessarily a “dead to me” sign. That’s because I know where they’re coming from. I used to believe that, too. I believed it about myself…

It takes practice to identify my limits. And that practice necessitates getting hurt a lot. The most important thing for myself here is to stop treating myself like shit every time I get hurt. It’s not wrong or bad or weak that I feel pain, and it’s not always something to be “gotten over.” I have to start from the premise that I am acceptable as I am, at this exact moment in time, that limits are not bad things, that selfishness is a good thing, that what I want or need is okay to want or need for no reason other than I want or need it. Only when I’m able to do this for myself do I feel comfortable moving into relationships with other people.

Feminist perspectives on science therefore reflect a broad spectrum of epistemic attitudes toward and appraisals of science. [...] The content of these perspectives, and the degree to which they generate transformative critique, depends not only on the types of philosophical and political commitments that inform them but also on the nature of the sciences and subject domains on which they bear. Feminist perspectives have had greatest impact on sciences that deal with inherently gendered subjects—the social and human sciences—and, secondarily, on sciences that study subjects characterized in gendered terms, metaphorically or by analogy (projectively gendered subjects), chiefly the biological and life sciences. Feminist perspectives are relevant to sciences that deal with non-gendered subject matters, but perspectives vary substantially in content and in critical import…

A federal court handed down a potentially powerful ruling on trans rights today, when judge Richard Story ruled that the Georgia State Assembly’s firing of trans woman Vandy Beth Glenn was illegal discrimination. The decision may help to give trans women the protection that cis women have legally had for decades: the right to not be fired for being a woman.

…Beth Littrell, an attorney with LAMBDA Legal who argued the case, praised the judge’s decision. However, she was cautious in her optimism, and quick to note that the ruling “is no substitution for a statewide law [protecting trans rights to work], but it does send a message.”

[Trigger warning for prisoner abuse and humiliation. -L]

Susan J. Douglas has written a book about American pop culture and its negotiations or wars with feminism. The full title of the book is Enlightened Sexism. The Seductive Message That Feminism's Work Is Done.

But it really is mostly about pop culture and the paradoxical messages it offers about the role of women. Like "you can be anything you want as long as you have big tits."

That's my summary of the book. It has much more than that, including theories about enlightened sexism and embedded feminism and how they interact. Here's Douglas's definition of the two concepts…

…these are the major concepts Douglas applies in a tour through the popular culture of the last thirty years or so. It's a fascinating tour to take, and I recommend it quite strongly, even if I'm not quite certain how we are to make it all into one tight theory. That would require that the same audiences were watching all the different shows, wouldn't it?

…My third a-ha! moment [while reading this book] had to do with Douglas' discussion of Janet Reno and why she provoked a certain kind of hatred. I'm not talking about criticizing what she did as the Clinton administration Attorney General but about the way her looks were covered in the media…

[Mmmmm, crunchy book review. Go read it all! -L]

Hundreds of workers in the Gulf Coast cleaning up BP’s oil disaster have reported symptoms of nausea, vomiting, nose bleeds, and headaches, but those “almost all have been heat related,” according to Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA Jordan Barab.

Barab – a former worker health and safety blogger at Firedoglake and his blog, Confined Space – says that despite widespread assumptions that workers are sick from exposure to oil, “we haven’t really found that yet.”

“We’re really looking, but haven’t found anything significant in the chemical samplings. We’re looking for people getting sick, but it tends to be overwhelmingly heat related,” Barab told Firedoglake earlier this week…

Barab says the challenges OSHA faces in the Gulf are similar to those of any other workplace for which the agency is responsible, namely that they can’t be everywhere at once…

While OSHA is conducting its own evaluations of worker health through site visits, agencies in states and the federal government are cobbling together reports from emergency rooms and poison control centers, as well as BP’s own reporting, that paint a dire picture of worker safety.

…Barab says Louisiana’s data is misleading. Louisiana is “cataloguing, not describing” its data, which makes it look like people are sick from oil exposure, when in fact, according to OSHA’s analyses, most workers are actually sick from heat. NIOSH, part of the CDC, is working with Louisiana to include “more precises causes” for illnesses reported in its data.

Protons are 0.00000000000000003 meters smaller than we thought. That sounds like nothing, but it means one of these things must be true: Undiscovered particles are lurking…

[BURG makes your boot sequence prettier. Follow the above link to see what you can do with it. Installation instructions here:

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/01/make-grub-themes-beautiful-look-nic<wbr>er.html

-L]

I thought that I had reached a sentencing pop-culture zenith a few years ago when, as detailed here, ESPN's Mike & Mike made fun of me on their ESPN morning radio show. But my good friend and colleague Professor Erik Luna has now clearly topped me; as detailed in this CBS News report, he got cited by Lindsay Lohan in a Twitter rant about her recent sentencing…

…it is truly heartening to learn that troubled hollywood starlets still take time to read legal scholarship, even though it seems most judges and practicing lawyers have given up on the stuff.

Audrey Kawasaki paints part-manga, part-Art Nouveau scenes of women in supernatural settings. Kawasaki places her subjects in a "sensually esoteric realm," where sea creatures, skeletons, and beasts from Japanese mythology roam. It's some sexy-odd phantasmagoria.

We can't wait until HBO's adaptation of George R.R. Martin's A Game Of Thrones hits our screens. But here's something to make the wait bearable: an exclusive first look at a new calendar featuring gorgeous art of the saga's castles.

[Wow. Wow. It... Wow. -L]

Matt Mullenweg wrote a filter function called capital_P_dangit() that correctly capitalizes the “P” in misspellings of WordPress where the “p” is lowercase. It may seem like a minor thing, but there are several issues at hand.

* The code literally breaks things like URLs on some sites. For example, suppose you installed WordPress in a /Wordpress directory. That would cause all kinds of trouble with things like images….

One of the reasons I use WordPress is because of its philosophy on community, openness, and freedom, which fits along nicely with my own personal philosophy about most things in life. The idea that a piece of software could infringe upon those values is what bothers people…

How to remove the capital_P_dangit() filter

You can either install the Remove Wordpress to WordPress Filter plugin or add the below code to your theme’s functions.php file…

Government documents reviewed by TPM show the federal government dramatically underestimated the effects of an oil spill when signing off on the BP Deepwater Horizon lease. Check out our report.

British site yields stone tools from oldest known northern Europeans

Does it even reduce the deficit?

Street artist Blu has created a 10-minute animation of the history of life… [video]

It is only recently (the last decade or so) that neuroscientists have realized that the brain harbors a reservoir of neural stem cells, even into adulthood, waiting to be recruited to make new connections. This is an important part of neural plasticity and learning. Now that we know the stem cells are there, research is underway to learn as much about them as possible, including their regulation. Perhaps they play a role in certain diseases, like Alzheimers. Or perhaps they could be exploited to treat or prevent such diseases.

It has also been learned that not all brains are the same in terms of aging. Most brains atrophy and develop pathological signs of aging…

For now we are at the basic science level in addressing these questions – just figuring out what is going on. [...] there is one thing it seems we can say now based upon existing research – exercise, both physical and mental, is good for the brain and staves off the negative effects of aging.

A newly published study looking at the regulation of neural stem cells may ultimately illuminate one mechanism behind this…

[Much sciency goodness redacted-- oh, you have to read this, if only to get to the part about the protein called NOGGIN.

-L]

Archaeologists have finally discovered what lies at the end of a tunnel leading steeply downward from a 3,300-year-old royal tomb.

Take a moment and think off all the data you put other there on separate Web services. Email, photos, status updates, documents, location, contacts, and the list goes on. Many of the services are really good, but what if they went down? Where would are your data go? Or what if you could bring all that data into one place, so that you didn't have to login to Flickr, Twitter, Foursquare, and Facebook. Poyozo tries to get all your data in one place – on your own computer – and help "make life make sense." [...]

Simply install the Firefox plugin, choose what services you want to scrape, and you're good to go. Poyozo then provides an API that you can use to access and query your data. Visualize it any way you want.

What do you get when you combine some xenon, some fluoride, and pressures similar to those found at the center of the Earth? You get an ultra-battery, capable of storing more condensed energy than any other battery ever built.

I never knew that the way to get rich in America was to become a waiter. I mean, sure, I suspected; waiters are always driving those sweet ‘99 Hyundais, rolling with fat stacks of Washingtons, and spending holidays at their vacation homes in their regular homes. But still, it’s nice of Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Delano, to come along to alert the rest of us to the dread scourge of waiters earning a living wage.

…Emmer is proposing a wage cut for waiters and bartenders equivalent to $8361.60 a year. Even using Emmer’s inflated statistics, that’s cutting a $31,000 a year salary to $22,638.40…

Oh my, fetch me my smelling salts. A dirty fucking NONVIOLENT hippie dropped a piece of fabric over the balcony of the Hart Office Building? Now we’ll have to bring in masonry experts and industrial waste clean up crews and pay the janitorial staff overtime in order to expunge the fetid stench of “liberal” from the hallowed Atrium of Civility. How DARE that infidel violate the rarified hallways of Congress with his outrageous demands for congressional accountability!

The irony of this latest waste of taxpayer money? A scant two days ago, Hillary Clinton wagged her finger and issued a stern warning to all those naughty countries that are methodically extinguishing the rights of political protesters…

A tough law against illegal immigrants in Nebraska could revive the whites-only-at-night towns of our Jim Crow past. Afi-Odelia Scruggs of The Root explains how race is going to play a role, and that's why anyone who resembles a so-called illegal is right to worry.

[More about sundown towns:

http://sundown.afro.illinois.edu/sundowntowns.php

-L]

The three claims for relief are based on the Supremacy Clause, federal preemption, and the Commerce Clause. The complaint and the injunction papers sketch out a powerful argument about how national interests (imcluding foreign relations) are at stake in the regulation of immigration and how there must be one national immigration law, not a patchwork of 50 states' immigration laws…

The lawsuit does not seek to invalidate all of SB 1070 but targets sections 1 through 6 of the law, those sections most directly dealing with immigration. The United States does not challenge, for example, the sections of SB 1070 prohibiting the solicitation of work by day laborers. The lawsuit filed by by the ACLU, MALDEF, and others go further and target the day laborer and other provisions of the law…

Although United States v. Arizona has been assigned to Judge Wake, it has been reported that the United States will ask that the case be transferred to U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton, who has scheduled hearings for July 15 and 22 for other legal challenges already filed against SB 1070.

BP is reportedly comfortable with Abu Dhabi taking a stake as large as 10%, according to a published report.

The interwebs are all abuzz (ha!) with a new report that cellphones might be responsible for the losses in honeybee populations. Specifically, the news stories reference this paper:

[quotes and takedown redacted]

4. They put the cell phones in the freakin’ hive (see photo). Now, granted, maybe that is where Eddie Izzard takes his phone calls. But most people do not stand inside–or next to–active beehives when they are chatting about what to get for dinner. This design is rather analogous to strapping cellphones to your scrotum. I’m betting you’ll get an effect–but is it a real one that the average scrotum owner needs to worry about?

…This is a classic example of Bad Science Reporting. OMG RADIATION IN MAI BEEZ!!!

One of Britain's rarest birds successfully raises four chicks at a secret location in the centre of Birmingham.

The Post's ombudsman made it clear that they are determined to cater to the conservative movement. The NY Times ombudsman revealed the same thing in his post-ACORN apologia promising to consult FOX News as a legitimate source in the future. Despite all their blathering about unbiased reporting,the two most politically influential papers in the country are admitting openly that they are capitulating to the sustained, cynical right wing campaign to force the media to treat it with kid gloves. They're not even trying to hide it anymore.

I think Ana Marie Cox has it right in the article when she says that the Washington Post didn't know they weren't getting a doctrinaire conservative in Weigel. In fact, from their reaction it appears that they don't actually know what movement conservatism is, nor do they care…

When it comes to environmentalism, there’s a real danger in taking an absolutist position, which is that people will tune you out completely, since they find that impossible.

Which is too bad, because on the whole, Cox is right. Air conditioning is one of the great environmental disasters of our time. It’s way overused, and to make it worse, it allowed people to build bigger houses and public buildings on the grounds that they could cool them off pretty easily, and it discouraged the use of more energy efficient ways to cool off your home. It’s created cultural acclimation of the sort where people will never accept anything less than air conditioning, even when opening a window would actually be just as good. [...]

From my war on A/C, I’d say that in many places, you could cut it by 70% with a few small adjustments to our cultural expectations of what temperature a room should be, and by getting people to consider taking many steps to cool off before resorting to the A/C, such as wearing fewer clothes at home, opening windows, using fans, building in places where there’s shade, drawing curtains, shutting doors to rooms you’re not using instead of air conditioning the whole house, etc.

The Legal Intelligencer reports on a recent ruling that GlaxoSmithKline is a citizen of Pennsylvania (where it has its corporate headquarters), preventing removal of a products liability case to federal court. This marks a change from the pre-Hertz decisions…

Workman v. Greenwood Cmty. Sch. Corp., <i>_F.Supp.2d___</i> (S.D. Ind. Apr. 30, 2010), is an interesting case. The court issued a preliminary injunction enjoining school district officials from allowing any prearranged, predetermined student-led prayer at the high school’s commencement exercises.

Some readers may find this list of 100 Informative You Tube Videos for Educations helpful. It appears to be geared to both K-12 teachers and college professors.

The Supreme Court of Washington ruled yesterday that a 90-day notice requirement in medical malpractice cases violates the separation of powers. The court struck down the certificate of merit requirement last September.

…with all of the resources we have available in free software and the ability to dig into
the open source and change for our own tastes, we all occasionally run into a wall of
lack of inspiration of just what to customize, or what new usability tweak to try out. So
I've gathered up some of the things I've done to my Ubuntu system to help it look great
and work better…

Learn the basics of the Linux operating systems. Get to know what it is all about, and familiarize yourself with the practical side. Basically, if you’re a complete Linux newbie and looking for a quick and easy guide to get you started this is it.

Nearly three dozen emergency 911 operators staged a wildcat sickout Thursday at the Metropolitan and West Hills 911 call centers, causing the Los Angeles Police Department to have administrators and other personnel work their shifts.

The Large Hadron Collider doubles its rate of particle collisions, paving the way for a new phase of operation.

[I don't know what this means, but YAAAAY SCIENCE!! -L]