December 19th, 2005

hell&#39;s kitten

(no subject)

'War on Drugs:' A Foul Tragedy - A marijuana grower can get life in prison without parole, while a murderer might be in for eight years. No rational person can defend this.

Donald Rumsfeld Is Mad As a Hatter - We now have a certifiable loon in charge of the most powerful military on the face of the earth. Shouldn't someone do something?

Cancer team make 'super-broccoli' - Scientists are developing a "super-broccoli" which they hope will help people ward off cancer.

Music Companies Get Mean - Why is Sony BMG using its CDs to sneak unidentified software onto people's computers?
--...the deinstaller is even worse than the original XCP rootkit. After examining the deinstaller, Felten wrote on his blog, Freedom to Tinker, that it actually installs new versions of all the old files from the rootkit, and adds some new ones. ... It turns out XCP isn't the only piece of secretly installed and potentially malicious software Sony is distributing with its holiday CD releases."

Goodbye, New Orleans - The Bush administration has given New Orleans a quiet kiss of death with its final Katrina budget package. If we can't rebuild it right, we may as well kiss it goodbye.

Inuit sue US over climate policy - People living in the Arctic have filed a legal petition against the US government, saying its climate change policies violate human rights.

The Anti-Paparazzi Flash - A group of researchers at Georgia Tech has designed what could become an effective celebrity protection device: an instrument that detects the presence of a digital camera's lens and then shoots light directly at the camera when a photographer tries to take a picture. The result? A blurry picture of a beam of light.

Iranian leader denies Holocaust - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has courted further controversy by explicitly calling the Nazi Holocaust of European Jewry a "myth".

The Madness of Iran's President - The Iranian president's inflammatory comments about Israel are a godsend for Sharon and the Israeli right.

Literacy Falls for Graduates From College, Testing Finds - The average American college graduate's literacy in English declined significantly over the past decade, the test showed.
--Three percent of college graduates who took the test in 2003, representing some 800,000 Americans, demonstrated "below basic" literacy, meaning that they could not perform more than the simplest skills, like locating easily identifiable information in short prose. ... "We're seeing substantial declines in reading for pleasure, and it's showing up in our literacy levels," he said.

Spying and the Public's Right to Know - The New York Times doesn't have a good explanation for why it waited until after the 2004 election to print a devastating report against the White House.

The Pro-Life Continuum - From sperm to zygote to fetus to baby, isn't it time we brought some precision to the language of the reproductive rights debate?
--The labels we use should more precisely reflect the complexity of the reproductive rights debate. One way to do this is to abandon the empty term, "pro-life," and adopt labels that more accurately reflect a person's values and policies. Pro-sperm. Pro-zygote. Pro-fetus. Pro-baby. Where do you stand?
hell&#39;s kitten

Take 2

Thanks to paisleychick, I now have a paid account! For my first trick, I shall conduct a poll, concerning something I've been wondering about for a while....

Edit: clarified

When I post news links, what do you do most of the time?

I dont even glance at those posts
I skim over the summaries to see if anything stands out, but dont read the articles even if something does
I skim over the summaries to see if anything stands out, and read the full articles of those that do
I read all the summaries, but not the articles because they rarely/never sound interesting/relevant
I read all the summaries, but not the articles for other reasons
I read all the summaries, and the articles of those that sound interesting/relevant
I read all the articles you link to

Should I continue making news posts?

I dont care
  • Current Music
    Mannheim Steamroller - night on bald mountain