December 2010
14 posts
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“But for all the tens of thousands of women who have been kidnapped and raped,...”
– Naomi Wolf
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Voyager near Solar System's edge →
Voyager 1 has been traveling for 33 years, and we are still learning things from it.
Now 17.4bn km (10.8bn miles) from home, the veteran probe has detected a distinct change in the flow of particles that surround it.
These particles, which emanate from the Sun, are no longer travelling outwards but are moving sideways.
It means Voyager must be very close to making the jump to interstellar...
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Incoming finance committee chairman relies on... →
The House Republican Steering Committee voted on Tuesday to name all committee chairman for the incoming Congress. Their choice to head the House Financial Services Committee, the committee in charge of overseeing the financial sector and the government’s implementation of new financial reforms, happens to be the member of Congress most reliant on contributions from the financial sector.
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Report: Wikileaks cables show Texas company... →
brbread:
[…] “another horrific taxpayer-funded sex scandal for DynCorp, the private security contractor tasked with training the Afghan police,” […] The story boils down to this: this company, headquartered in DC with Texas offices, helped pimp out little boys as sex slaves to stoned cops in Afghanistan
Remember, folks, those Wikileaks cables could put our allies in peril.
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The Party of NO NO NO NO NO holds the Senate... →
Today [Dec. 1], all 42 Republican Senators signed a letter declaring emphatically that they will not let the Senate consider any legislation or take any action at all, until the tax cuts for the wealthy have been extended.
The Democrats want to extend the tax cuts for people earning less than $250,000 a year, but that isn’t good enough. The Republicans are saying that driving up the deficit by...
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Public Disinterest →
In the beginning, there was the post office. Before the Internet, before cable, before TV, before radio, mail delivery was our major means of mass communication. The founders of the United States understood its importance and deemed that it must be a public institution. Article I, Section 8, Clause 7, of the U.S. Constitution states, “Congress shall have Power to establish Post Offices and Post...
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Julian Assange and the Computer Conspiracy; “To... →
Most of the news media seems to be losing their minds over Wikileaks without actually reading these essays, even though he describes the function and aims of an organization like Wikileaks in pretty straightforward terms.
Fascinating analysis of Wikileaks motivation.
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How the Bandit, Coors and a bunch of Makers... →
[…] while attempting to explain the plot of Smokey and the Bandit to my husband, it occurred to me that I didn’t really understand the back story that spawned this, one of my favorite childhood films. Why did Bandit and Snowman (and Fred) have a long way to go and a short time to get there? There was beer in most parts of Georgia by the 1970s. And even if you were trying to get booze to a dry...
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