If you put important in quotes it clearly means that the people are not important. Also, I'm not sure which is the bigger mystery: UFOs or Blink 182's popularity.
The former lead singer of Blink 182, Tom DeLonge, has publicly admitted to his obsession with UFOs—but that still doesn’t explain why he was sending two cryptic messages about alien spacecrafts to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, as the Wall Street Journal reported earlier today.
"... the trial was presented with the prospect that a puck could be concealed in an anal cavity and not be detected by the wand. In preparation for these proceedings, in fact, a security employee actually tested the idea."
If you want to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gold coins from the Royal Canadian Mint, it’s not that hard really. Here’s how you do it. First, get a job at the Mint. Second, stick the gold coins, clinically speaking, “up your bum.” Third, walk out. That’s more or less how 35-year-old local Ottawa man, Leston Lawrence, allegedly did it and he tiptoed away with $180,000 in gold, the Mint thinks. They think that’s the case because they’re not actually sure how much is gone, nor are they totally sure Lawrence took it, but they’re pretty sure. And for now, that’s going to have to be enough.
This heist edition of Canadian problems are quainter than your problems comes via the just-concluded trial of Leston Lawrence for “smuggling-for-cash charges, including theft, laundering the proceeds of crime, possession of stolen property and breach of trust,” all of which the Ottawa Citizen reports to be illegal in Canada. Lawrence’s defense team utilized the the best defense is a good offense defense and declared the state’s case against Lawrence “appalling.” “This is the Royal Canadian Mint, your Honour, and one would think they should have the highest security measures imaginable,” the defense lawyer said in his closing remarks. “And here the gold is left sitting around in open buckets.”
Open buckets?! Oh Canada. How could he not steal them? To make matters worse, the Mint didn’t even notice that Lawrence had pilfered the coins; an alert bank teller flagged what he thought was suspicious banking behavior. All told, Lawrence walked out with what’s conservatively estimated at $179,015 worth of gold coins and cookie-size solid gold “pucks.” In fact, four of the pucks were found in a safe deposit box owned by Lawrence and 18 had been sold for approximately $6,800 each from November 2014 to March 2015.
Sure, your honor, it doesn't look good, but how did Lawrence, whose literal job was "to scoop gold from buckets so it could be tested for purity" each day, get the coins out of the mint? Here's how:
[The] Court was told Lawrence set off the metal detector at an exit from the “secure area” with more frequency than any other employee—save those with metal medical implants. When that happened, the procedure was to do a manual search with a hand-held wand, a search that he always passed. (It was not uncommon for employees to set off the detector, court heard.) Investigators also found a container of vaseline in his locker and the trial was presented with the prospect that a puck could be concealed in an anal cavity and not be detected by the wand. In preparation for these proceedings, in fact, a security employee actually tested the idea. ...
[T]he defence countered with a couple of important points. The Crown was not able to prove conclusively that the gold in Lawrence’s possession actually came from inside the Mint. It had no markings nor, apparently, had any gold been reported missing internally. The Crown was able to show the pucks precisely fit the Mint’s custom “dipping spoon” made in-house — not available commercially — that is used to scoop molten gold during the production process... [Lawrence's lawyer] implied there were many ways Lawrence could have legitimately obtained the gold — he could have bought the coins, for instance — and said he made no efforts to be devious with the gold buyers or the bank. Further, [he] said, the Mint isn’t even sure a theft took place.
"In an emailed statement Tuesday evening, a Mint spokeswoman said several security measures had been upgraded, including high definition security cameras in all areas, improved ability to track, balance and reconcile precious metal, and the use of 'trend analysis technology,' ” according to the Ottawa Citizen. Win or lose, that seems like a good start.
Slashdot reader schwit1 quotes the L.A. Times:
An hours-long standoff in the darkness of the high desert came to a novel end when Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies used a robot to stealthily snatch a rifle from an attempted murder suspect, authorities said Thursday.
Officials said the use of the robot to disarm a violent suspect was unprecedented for the Sheriff's Department, and comes as law enforcement agencies increasingly rely on military-grade technology to reduce the risk of injury during confrontations with civilians. "The robot was a game changer here," said Capt. Jack Ewell, a tactical expert with the Sheriff's Department -- the largest sheriff's department in the nation. "We didn't have to risk a deputy's life to disarm a very violent man."
It was only later when the robot came back to also pull down a wire barricade that the 51-year-old suspect realized his gun was gone.
by Andrew Liszewski on io9, shared by Alex Dickinson to Gizmodo
They’re supposed to be an alternative to pumpkins and skeletons for decorating your home come Halloween, but these porch light covers, featuring Iron Man, Darth Vader, and Stormtrooper masks, can just be left up all year round as a way to let the neighborhood know your house is a safe place for nerdy types.
Researchers from Bristol University have reconstructed the color patterns of a Cretaceous-era Psittacosaurus, revealing not just its colors and distinct shading patterns, but also clues about the life and environment in which this extinct dinosaur lived.
Dolphins can carry on conversations in an advanced spoken language made up of pulses and whistles, a new study has found.
While marine biologists have long understood that dolphins communicate within their pods, the new research, which was conducted on two captive dolphins, is the first to link isolated signals to particular dolphins. The findings reveal that dolphins can string together "sentences" using a handful of "words."
"Essentially, this exchange of [pulses] resembles a conversation between two people," Vyacheslav Ryabov, the study's lead researcher, told Mashable.
I love the hole in the wall for the TV/microwave. The flat screen monitor in the dining room does not belong. But that bathroom, though.
A delightful time capsule of shag carpet perfection.
If you've ever wondered what it would be like to live in '70s SHAG CARPET HEAVEN, well, check this out.
Matt Cuddy/Century 21 Cuddy
This yuuuuge house in Framingham, Massachusetts, is a total time capsule of 1970s glory.
Have you ever seen so much lime green in your life?
Matt Cuddy/Century 21 Cuddy
"The original owner built the house and customized it and did all the decor in the early ‘70s," realtor Matt Cuddy told BuzzFeed. And even though the new owners have lived in the house for more than 20 years, they haven't changed a thing.
Chances are you know you’re being tracked online. Most of us are at the point where we’re not surprised when an ad for something we searched for on one site appears on the next site we visit. We know that many pages (yes, this one you’re reading, too) drop cookies and other scripts into our browser to keep tabs on our activity and sell us stuff.
A new survey from a group of Princeton researchers of one million websites sheds some light on the cutting-edge tricks being used to follow your digital trail. Rather than placing a tracker on your browser, many sites are now “fingerprinting” — using information about your computer such as battery status or browser window size to identify your presence.
On this week’s What’s The Point, Arvind Narayanan, one of the authors of the Princeton study, discusses his research, the latest in online tracking and what you (and our lawmakers) can do to counter the trackers.
Read a partial transcript below. Here are a few of the tools and studies we mentioned in the show:
Arvind Narayanan and Steven Englehardt’s full paper (PDF)
Ghostery, an online tool that alerts you to the trackers on the website you’re visiting
Arvind Narayanan: In the ad tech industry, cookies are gradually being shunted in favor of fingerprinting. The reason that fingerprinting is so effective is that even if you have a device that you think is identical to the device of the person sitting next to you, there are going to be a number of differences in the behavior of your browser. The set of fonts installed on your browser could be different. The precise version number of the browser could be different. Your battery status could be different from that of the person next to you, or anybody else in the world. And it turns out that if you put all of these pieces of information together, a unique or nearly unique picture of the behavior of your device emerges that’s going to be relatively stable over time. And that enables your companies to recognize you when you come back.
Jody Avirgan: But how does it enable that? My actual finger’s fingerprint doesn’t change from today to tomorrow. But my computer’s battery status can change. So how do they know it’s still you?
Narayanan: The battery status is actually the only exception to that general principle. And that’s the reason why we’re still figuring out how that works. [Editor’s note: Earlier in the interview, Narayanan had mentioned that the rate at which your battery depletes might be an identifier.] But let’s say you’ve got 41 fonts installed on your browser today. You come back in a week, maybe you have 43 fonts installed. But 41 of those are going to be the same as what they saw a week ago. And it changes slowly enough that statistically you can have a high degree of confidence. In the industry they call these things statistical IDs. It’s not as certain as putting a cookie on your browser, but you can derive a very high degree of confidence.
Tracking’s chilling effect
Narayanan: The reason that this is really important, and perhaps the primary thing that motivates me to do this research, is this world of pervasive surveillance that we’re entering into — and I’m going to use that word surveillance very deliberately, because it is surveillance. Everything that we look at online and click on is getting stored in a database somewhere. And it’s being data-mined and various [decisions] are being based on that. Targeted advertising is a relatively innocuous example, but there are a variety of other things that can and do happen.
There is research that shows that when people know they are being tracked and surveilled, they change their behavior. We lose our intellectual freedom. A variety of things we consider important for our civil liberties — say, marriage equality — are things that would have been stigmatized just a few decades ago. And the reason we got to the point where it was possible to talk about it and try to change our norms and rules is because people had the freedom to talk to each other privately. To find out that there are like-minded people. As we move to a digital world, are we losing those abilities or freedoms? That is the thing to me that is the question. That’s the most worrisome thing about online tracking. It’s not so much the advertising.
If you’re a fan of What’s The Point, subscribe on iTunes, and please leave a rating/review — that helps spread the word to other listeners. And be sure to check out our sports show Hot Takedown as well. Have something to say about this episode, or have an idea for a future show? Get in touch by email, on Twitter, or in the comments.
Austin City Limits will be taping a performance by Cyndi Lauper on Friday, Sept. 9th, at 8 pm at ACL Live at The Moody Theater (310 W. 2nd Street, Willie Nelson Blvd). We will be giving away a limited number of space available passes to this taping. Enter your name and email address on the below form by 9 am on Wednesday, Sept. 7th.
Winners will be chosen at random and a photo ID will be required to pickup tickets. Winners will be notified by email. Passes are not transferable and cannot be sold. Standing may be required. No photography, recording or cell phone use in the studio. No cameras or recording devices allowed in venue.
So, anyone can submit a nomination for SXSL. Just sayin'.
Austin’s South by Southwest has been a nationally recognized brand for years now, but when the president launches his own offshoot of the event, to be held at the White House – that’s a different level of recognition.
On Monday, Oct. 3, President Barack Obama is hosting an event called South by South Lawn. A White House announcement said the event, inspired by South by Southwest, will “bring together creators, innovators, and organizers who work day in and day out to improve the lives of their fellow Americans and people around the world.”
You might recall the President Obama participated in the SXSW Interactive Keynote Conversation on Friday, March 11, at the Long Center.
President Obama speaks with Evan Smith, CEO and Editor in Chief of the Texas Tribune, as part of the SXSW Interactive Keynote Conversation at The long Center on Friday, March 11, 2016. Erika Rich for American-Statesman
The president’s interview, conducted by Texas Tribune editor Evan Smith, focused on ways that technology and innovation can rapidly solve some of the country’s problems and how those same tech disruptions can also raise some unsettling problems.
The White House is seeking nominations of people who are “doing great work and should be there.” South by Southwest and C3 Presents are helping with the event, along with the American Film Institute and the President’s Committee on Arts and Humanities.
“It is a call to arms for every American to roll up their sleeves and make a positive mark on our country — and a celebration of the great work so many of us have already accomplished,” the White House said.
Like SXSW, South by South Lawn will include panel discussions on Interactive subjects, musical performances and a film portion including the 3rd Annual White House Student Film Festival.
“South by South Lawn will challenge young leaders to build on our progress toward an America that is more tolerant, fair, and full of opportunities,” the White House said.
Austin’s public radio station KUTX 98.9 marks a special milestone Thursday as morning DJ John Aielli celebrates 50 years on the air. Aielli’s show Eklektikos, which airs daily between 6 and 9 a.m. is the stuff of Austin legend, known as much for Aielli’s random musings and his thoughtful interviews with local artists as his eclectic mix of popular and classical music.
Joe Gross succinctly summed up Aielli’s unique position in Austin culture in his excellent 2012 profile on the radio personality, Conversations with KUT’s John Aielli:
To crudely paraphrase Lester Bangs, Austinites may never disagree on anything quite the way we disagree about John Aielli.
“He is very comfortable with people not liking everything he does,” says Paige Maguire, who used to do web design for KUT. “I think the key to his appeal and the key to people not liking him are the exact same thing. He is just operating in his own world.”
Representatives from the city will be on air to recognize Aielli’s achievements and declare “John Aielli Day” in Austin at 8:30 on Thursday. Then, fellow KUTX host Susan Castle will devote her daily “Ocho Loco” segment of listener suggested tunes to “Songs John Aielli Turned You On To” at 11 a.m.
Austin City Limits will be taping a performance by Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals on Thursday, Sept. 1st, at 8 pm at ACL Live at The Moody Theater (310 W. 2nd Street, Willie Nelson Blvd). We will be giving away a limited number of space available passes to this taping. Enter your name and email address on the below form by 9 am on Tuesday, August 30th.
Winners will be chosen at random and a photo ID will be required to pickup tickets. Winners will be notified by email. Passes are not transferable and cannot be sold. Standing may be required. No photography, recording or cell phone use in the studio. No cameras or recording devices allowed in venue.
Texas alcohol laws are so strange. Hopefully the TABC's quest to stop crowlers will be stopped soon.
Live Oak Brewing Co. scored an early victory Thursday in its legal quest to overturn a state law that requires breweries to give up their distribution and territorial rights.
District Court Judge Karin Crump sided with the Austin-based brewer and two other Texas craft brewers in their lawsuit against the state over Senate Bill 639, passed in 2013, according to Live Oak's Facebook page. It's a blow to Texas' longstanding three-tier system that requires suds to pass through distribution companies…
Here's a guy who doesn't need anonymity to be terrible. Also, this is the first time I've seen him pictured without a jester hat.
*Editor's note: This story has been updated throughout.
The controversial chairman of the Travis County Republican Party has given up his post by running for president as a write-in candidate, Texas GOP officials said Thursday, signaling the end of the Robert Morrow era in the state's fifth-largest county.
Morrow, an Austin resident who got the job in a surprise election earlier this year, appears to have forced his own resignation by filing to run — and successfully getting on the ballot — as a write-in choice. Under state law, the county chair of a political party is not allowed to also be a candidate for federal, state or county office, or even apply to be a candidate.
Prospective write-in candidates had faced a Monday deadline to submit 38 signatures to appear on the November ballot. Alicia Pierce, a spokeswoman for the Texas secretary of state’s office, said Thursday morning that Morrow met the threshold. Meanwhile, Evan McMullin, an independent candidate who has been making an effort at ballot access across the country, had his application rejected.
In a statement Thursday afternoon, state GOP Chairman TomMechler said Morrow "became ineligible to hold the office of Travis County Republican Chair" upon filing Friday to be a write-in candidate. Morrow told The Texas Tribune earlier Thursday he could not be ousted.
"They don’t have the grounds to do that, and anybody who says so is probably lying," Morrow said. "The case law on this is probably extremely thin."
Morrow has brought national notoriety to the Travis County GOP through his steady stream of tweets alleging conspiracy theories involving Democratic and Republican officials, including GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. Morrow camped out outside events Trump held Tuesday in Austin, wearing his trademark jester's hat and holding a large sign reading, "Trump is a Child Rapist."
On Thursday, Morrow suggested county party officials were trying to oust him because he had "embarrassed the living fuck out of Donald Trump" in recent days.
County party leaders had previously moved to limit Morrow's powers, creating a steering committee that assumed many of the responsibilities usually handled by the chairman. On Thursday morning, however, it looked like the party was preparing for further change, calling a news conference for Friday morning to "make an important announcement ... involving the future of the local GOP." Announcing the news conference, the party referred to its executive vice chairman, David Duncan, as its "acting chairman."
A party spokesman declined to elaborate on the announcement, but a person close to the party said the news conference will likely be about Morrow's fate. It was not immediately clear how the process of Morrow stepping down would unfold, and at least one party official cautioned that the party was still conferring over the issue.
The county party nonetheless has the support of Mechler.
"There is absolutely no place for rhetoric as distasteful as Mr. Morrow’s in the Republican Party of Texas," Mechler said in the statement. "We are excited to move forward with the Travis County GOP and the new incoming Chair as soon as an election is held to fill the position."
The bombastic Morrow fired back on Twitter by asking Mechler to perform a sex act on him. Morrow remained defiant as speculation built Thursday afternoon that an effort was afoot to see him out as chairman.
“If other people attempt to pull a coup like this, there will be trouble," Morrow added. "The bottom line is the Texas voters, the Republican Party, have spoken."
Morrow was elected chairman in March with 54 percent of the vote, unseating incumbent James Dickey. He quickly built a reputation for his conspiracy theories — which accuse politicians living and dead of adultery, murder and pedophilia — his lewd denunciations and his outlandish public appearances.
Read more of the Tribune's related coverage:
On the night he was elected to the chair of the Travis County Republican Party, Morrow spent most of election night tweeting about former Gov. Rick Perry’s sexual orientation and former President Bill Clinton’s penis.
A sentence I never expected to read: "“That is against the rules; every cup must come with beer”.
We’re on the ground in Rio covering the 2016 Summer Olympics. Check out all our coveragehere.
RIO DE JANEIRO — “We’ve got them all! We’re leaving today, and we finally have all 42 of them,” boasted one half of a couple in line for beers at the Olympic BMX Centre, claiming that they’d completed the elusive set of plastic souvenir cups from this year’s Olympics in Rio.
I was standing nearby with David Marquardt, a 30-year-old from Utah who said he’d been averaging about seven cups of beer a day and was seeking out the last two cups to complete his family’s set. “They don’t know what they’re talking about,” he joked under his breath. Marquardt’s theory is that there are only 41 variations of the cups — the number of sports listed on the official Rio site (counting each individual equestrian event) — and not the 42 that has been reportedwidely.
For the past two weeks, people at the Olympics have been losing their minds trying to collect yellow and blue plastic souvenir cups that feature the silhouetted athletes of each sport. The cups are sold only with the official Olympics beer — Skol — though many collectors are just dumping out the beer or paying full price (13 reais, or about $4) for an empty cup, several vendors confirmed. But although the cups, which are an advertising product for the beer, have been hugely popular, there is little in the way of official information from the company about the collectibles, which has led to the curious situation of visitors trying to complete a set of some indeterminate number.
“There are only 41, I am sure, one for every discipline,” said Marcela Rissato, Skol’s operations manager for the Olympics. There was speculation that a 42nd cup might exist for the unofficial gymnastics gala–– the friendly non-medal event in which Olympic gymnasts strip-tease or dance in wigs — or that maybe there were two cups for wrestling, one for Greco-Roman and one for freestyle. The confusion comes in part because no official marketing materials were released by Ambev, the South American distributor of Skol, stating the number of cups or how best to collect them. But the mystery has only fueled fascination, making the frenzy around the cups more happy accident than calculated guerrilla marketing. “I think we are bigger with the cups than the pins, compared to the other Olympic games,” said Rissato, referring to the more traditional on-site collectible.
She did say, however, that Skol is attempting to crack down on any vendors selling the cups — which at their core are ad space — without any of the beer they’re advertising. “That is against the rules; every cup must come with beer,” Rissato said.
Their success at that has been questionable. The yellow cerveja stands at every venue have been unusually packed, but not because people are clamoring for the Bud Light of South America. There are two lines at the stands — the first to pay and the second to collect your beer after selecting your cup — and each person takes about five minutes to sort through the stack of randomly sorted cups in search of certain sports. Most vendors look exasperated — JUST PICK A CUP ALREADY — while others have been angered as crazed cuppers rummage through the supply boxes behind their stands.
Tracking down a complete set shouldn’t be impossible. Each sport’s cup was manufactured in equal number, Rissato said, but Skol doesn’t know how many cups exist in total, let alone where to find each kind.
“We don’t know which sports we will get,” said Mônica De Azevedo, a vendor coordinator. Each stand gets a couple of boxes filled with cups each morning, she said, but the stands don’t know what each day will bring. Some vendors have decided that the best way to quell the crowd is to memorize their stack. “If you show them the photo and Portuguese word, that’s your best chance,” said Marquardt, who managed to pick up one of the equestrian cups he needed when we were together — the rider that “looks like he’s taking a pee.”
So what becomes of the collectibles once they’re back home? A Canadian couple from Alberta holding a stack of about 20 cups told me that they planned to use them for beer pong, which seems a lot more reasonable than displaying 41 yellow cups across your mantel. As for Marquardt and his family, they weren’t totally sure what they’d do with their collection. “We thought maybe this would be an ‘Antiques Roadshow’-type situation, where if you have a full set, the value multiplies tenfold,” he said. “But we’ll probably just use them as party cups.” For now, they’re displaying their complete set at Flamengo beach.
Tonight three legends of swimming—Michael Phelps, Chad Le Clos, and László Cseh—turned in identical times to share silver in the 100m butterfly. Last night, Simone Manuel tied for gold with Canadian Penny Oleksiak in the 100m freestyle
. Modern timing systems are capable of measuring down to the millionth of a second—so why doesn’t FINA, the world swimming governing body, increase its timing precision by adding thousandths-of-seconds?
Thirty years ago, a Williamson County murder set in motion a shoddy prosecution — one in which ignored witness accounts and withheld evidence led to the conviction of an innocent man.
Michael Morton spent 25 years in prison for his wife's bludgeoning death before DNA analysis finally freed him, a miscarriage in justice that still reverberates through the state's criminal cases.
Christine Morton was beaten to death in their family home on Aug. 13, 1986. Michael Morton should never have been a key suspect: He had left for work early that morning. The couple's three-year-old son Eric, who witnessed the murder, described a man who looked nothing like his father. Neighbors had reported a man lurking in the neighborhood. A canceled check made out to Christine Morton was cashed with a forged signature after her death, and her credit card was used fraudulently in San Antonio.
But police pointed to Michael Morton anyway, and Williamson County District Attorney Ken Anderson was adamant he had his guy — a jilted man he believed had punished his wife for not agreeing to have sex the night before.
Morton insisted he did not kill his wife, but a jury sentenced him to life in prison.
“I could see how helpless they were to help me. They felt horrible. They were just, they were adrift.”—Michael Morton on his parents
Throughout his decades in lock-up, Morton lost the confidence of his in-laws and watched his relationship with his son disintegrate; the boy was raised believing his father had killed his mother. Morton was particularly dismayed by how the ordeal affected his parents, who never questioned his innocence.
"I could see how helpless they were to help me. They felt horrible. They were just, they were adrift," Morton said in an interview with The Texas Tribune this summer. "We spent all of our money. We were asking for help from any quarter, and they just watched me as the years go by."
Being a father himself put his parents' grief in perspective.
"I try to imagine watching my son turn gray in the penitentiary," he said. "It deepened our relationship, and it made it more nuanced and more — it made the bond more powerful, stronger. Their joy was indescribable when I got out. I think they were happier than I was."
Clearing his name
It took 20 years of waiting and fighting for Morton to clear his name. In 2008, signs of a botched case emerged, when Morton and his lawyers first learned of Eric's description of his mother's killer, the check and the credit card use.
In 2011, DNA testing of a bloody bandana found near the crime scene revealed Christine Morton's blood and the DNA of another man — not Morton. That same year, the DNA was matched to Mark Alan Norwood, who had a criminal past including drug possession, assault and burglary charges in California and Texas.
From there, the case against Morton unraveled. After getting a file unsealed that contained an investigator's reports on the murder, Morton and his legal team discovered that many of the notes – including information about the lurking man and the details about credit card and check fraud – were missing.
The district attorney's office had withheld it. Morton was released from prison.
Shortly after Morton's release, the tables turned on his prosecutor. An investigation into Anderson — who was then a Williamson County state district judge — began. In 2013, Anderson resigned his post, lost his license to practice law and was sentenced to 10 days in jail. That same year, Gov. Rick Perry signed into law what's known as the Michael Morton Act, which requires prosecutors to share their case files and all relevant documents and evidence with defendants.
State Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, was a co-author of that legislation.
"Michael's willingness to use the tragedy he endured to advance change was key to bringing about needed reform to our justice system," Ellis said in a statement. "The Legislature had tried and failed to bring more fairness and transparency to the discovery process for years, and Michael's work and dedication to fixing our broken system helped move us forward.”
“Get legal representation right away because the vast majority of us have never had, probably will never have, a serious interaction with the police.”— Michael Morton on encountering law enforcement
Morton quickly became the public face of prosecutorial reform, speaking shortly after his bill's signing to the Texas District and County Attorneys Association. Morton's address followed "a very significant moment for our profession," said Rob Kepple, the association's executive director.
"It was a tremendously gracious and moving and compelling talk," Kepple said. "And I think prosecutors really took his message to heart about needing to be good prosecutors, because it is an important job, but also needing to make sure that we were doing it the right way and we were being fair."
Morton harbors no animosity toward law enforcement — they're the good guys, he says — but warns anyone who will listen to get legal representation the moment they're fingered.
"The vast majority of us have never had, probably will never have, a serious interaction with the police," he said.
And while Morton wants to see more Michael Morton Acts throughout the country, his first priority is ensuring every state has a fair compensation package for people imprisoned for crimes they did not commit.
Texas’ compensation program — generally a lump sum payment of $80,000 for each year spent behind bars, plus monthly annuity payments — is among the most generous in the nation. The Texas policy is based on the Tim Cole Act, legislation enacted in 2009 and named after a former Texas Tech University student wrongfully convicted of aggravated sexual assault in 1985.
When he lobbies for fair compensation nationally, "I love reminding people that Texas has the most generous and comprehensive compensation package for its exonerees than any state in the country," Morton said. "Nobody comes close. And I love the looks on the faces, especially the looks from the Northeast, when I tell them surely they can do as good as Texas."
A relatable case
Morton's case resonated deeply with Texans, and that, he says, is because it seemed relatable.
"They just see it as a nightmare," he said. "... I was just some guy living in the suburbs. Just like them. Married with a kid. Had a job. Had a mortgage."
Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, which worked on Morton's case, said Morton's faith and resilience were inspiring — but that everyone who worked on the case also came to care deeply for Christine Morton.
"Everybody looks at these cases, and people understandably feel terrible for crime victims, but Michael was both an innocent person wrongly convicted and a crime victim as well," Scheck said. "He lost his wife, who he loved dearly, and then lost his child for many, many years. And that is unspeakably cruel."
"Everybody goes through some sort of trial sooner or later. Our trials are what form us. In a way, you can look at it and say these trials are necessary."— Michael Morton
Since being freed, Morton has found love again, marrying his wife Cynthia in 2013. He also mended his relationship with his son.
"He had spent much of his life believing that I was this monster that killed his mother ... He completely had to reinterpret who he thought I was and what he knew," Morton said. "And I was quite amazed at the speed at which he did it."
Though the past 30 years have been a rollercoaster, to say the least, Morton says adversity is what lets you know you're alive.
"Everybody goes through some sort of trial sooner or later," he said. "Our trials are what form us. In a way, you can look at it and say these trials are necessary."
Check out a timeline of events in the Michael Morton case, and read more of the Tribune's coverage of wrongful convictions:
Texas has paid 101 men and women who were wrongfully sent to prison $93.6 million over the past 25 years, state data shows. The tab stands to grow as those wrongfully imprisoned individuals age and more people join the list.
Freed after a decade on Texas death row for a murder he says he didn't commit, Alfred Dewayne Brown thinks he's entitled to compensation from the state, but Comptroller Glenn Hegar is saying no.
Although a Dallas County district judge decided he was innocent eight years ago, Ben Spencer remains behind bars for a 1987 aggravated robbery he insists he did not commit.
Texas Tech has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune. A complete list of Tribune donors and sponsors can be viewed here.
There are dozens of amazing teenage athletes at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, but nobody has a story like swimmer Yusra Mardini, who is competing under the International Olympic Committee flag as part of the refugee team.
Many people have their lives thanks to the efforts of Mardini and her sister just over a year ago. The sisters were fleeing Syria along with 18 other people when the refugees’ dinghy began sinking in the Aegean sea during a trip to Greece. The motor had failed, the nobody on the boat could swim except the sisters. It’s a story that often ends in tragedy, but they ensured that didn’t happen. The two women leaped out of the boat, into cold waters and pushed the boat three hours in open water to prevent it from capsizing, eventually making it to land. It was a move that not only saved the lives of the 18 people in the boat, but ensured the sisters lived.
It sounds like a horror story, but instead Mardini used the moment in her life for motivation.
"I remember that without swimming I would never be alive maybe because of the story of this boat. It’s a positive memory for me."
Now living in Germany, life is much better. Initially she began training and was being considered as an Olympic hopeful for the 2020 games in Tokyo, but the refugee team allowed for Mardini’s dream to be realized much sooner. She is working tirelessly not only in swimming, but in changing the perception of refugees around the world.
"I want everyone to think refugees are normal people who had their homelands and lost them not because they wanted to run away and be refugees, but because they have dreams in their lives and they had to go,"
Just making it to the Olympics would have been an achievement enough, but the 19-year-old just won the first heat in the women’s 100 meter butterfly.
All right, I need to vent. For months, I’ve watched Donald Trump decry as “rigged” everything from the Democratic primaries, the Republican primary rules (that’s right, the same rules that helped him win the nomination) and the fall debate schedule. And I’ve winced as many Bernie Sanders supporters have accused the Democratic National Committee of “rigging” the primaries and thrown around wild, roundly debunked conspiracy theories about deleted votes.
Here’s the truth: Washington is rigged, but not in a literal sense and not in any of the nefarious ways those loud voices are contending. Instead, the blame may lie more with voters than politicians: Our legislative process is not designed to withstand the current levels of partisan polarization in the electorate.
Voters’ vexation with standard-issue, do-nothing D.C. politicians and party elites helps explain the Trump and Sanders phenomena of 2016, and the “rigging” theories seem to arise out of that frustration and suspicion. Yet much of this anger with “insiders” is misdirected. If only our political problems were due to “rigging” elections, we could arrest someone and get on with it. But our problems are much more structural.
In 2012, my colleague Nate Silver wrote: “Why is compromise so hard in the House? Some commentators, especially liberals, attribute it to what they say is the irrationality of Republican members of Congress. But the answer could be this instead: Individual members of Congress are responding fairly rationally to their incentives.” That’s truer than ever: When narrow primary bases dominate elections, everyone loses. And politicians as a whole get blamed.
Sure, many politicians on both the right and left fan the flames of partisan hysteria and feed off their base’s fire — and they tend to get disproportionate attention. But in my experience, most candidates and officeholders don’t see the world as red versus blue: They genuinely run for office to solve problems, not to please special-interest groups or for self-glorification. Unfortunately, they increasingly find themselves trapped in a voter-driven vicious cycle that shows no sign of abating.
Here are the five steps to how it works:
1. Geographic sorting — Voters tend to cluster near other people who share their cultural and political values, and the parties’ coalitions have become far more geographically isolated in recent decades. In the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon election, 52 percent of the nation’s voters lived in states decided by 5 percentage points or less. In the 2012 Obama-Romney race, just 17 percent of all voters lived in such states.
As a corollary, there are far fewer truly competitive congressional districts. Just 90 of 435 House districts had a Cook Political Report Partisan Voter Index score, an attempt to measure the partisan lean of an area independent of the candidates on the ballot, between D+5 and R+5, down 45 percent from 164 in 1998.
Sure, gerrymandering has played a role in the House, but sorting is the dominant factor: In the impossible-to-gerrymander Senate, the number of seats with a score between D+5 and R+5 has declined from 52 in 1998 to 28 today.
2. Straight-ticket voting — Voters are splitting their tickets — voting for a Republican for one office and a Democrat for another — at lower rates than we’ve seen in decades. They’re just not making distinctions between parties’ presidential and congressional candidates like they used to. The decline of local news readership probably plays a role — after all, these outlets have traditionally provided an avenue for candidates to build a personal brand independent of their party’s.
In turn, that’s further narrowing the trading range of Senate and House seats that are truly up for grabs in November. Even a 53 percent Democratic district or 54 percent Republican district can now be considered a safe seat in most cases. Most races are no longer contests between two candidates with unique backgrounds and qualifications; more often they are censuses of how many Republicans or Democrats live in a given state or district.
3. Primaries have become the new general elections — The Cook Political Report currently rates just 37 of 435 House seats as competitive this fall, less than 9 percent of the House. As a result, primary elections have become tantamount to general elections in the vast majority of seats. Because primaries are held on many different dates, they tend to generate less national attention and attract disproportionate shares of hardcore, ideological party activists to the polls.
In 2014, only 14.6 percent of eligible voters participated in congressional primaries — a record low, according to the Center for the Study of the American Electorate. That means a tiny fraction of voters who are the most hardened partisans are essentially electing more than 90 percent of members of Congress. And these low-turnout primaries are often easy prey for ideological interest groups who demand purity.
4. Congress grinds to a halt — The enormous pressure to please narrow, extreme and grossly unrepresentative bases of primary voters has straitjacketed members who would otherwise be willing to collaborate across the aisle, ditch talking points or behave in a way that reflects their true conscience. No one wants to risk alienating their base unnecessarily for fear of becoming the next Eric Cantor.
One vehemently anti-Trump GOP member recently confessed to me that the NRCC, his party’s campaign committee, had pressured him not to declare #NeverTrump until after his state’s candidate filing deadline had passed, for fear that his stance would generate a primary challenge on the right and jeopardize the seat. My hunch is that some GOP members will be more willing to speak out against their nominee after their primaries pass.
The big picture, however, is that the tyranny of primaries has turned Congress into a legislative graveyard. The last two full Congresses, the 112th and 113th, were the two least productive in history. Last week, federal officials confirmed the first local transmission of the Zika virus in Florida, yet Congress is still struggling to pass emergency funding because of partisan squabbling over abortion and environmental regulations.
5. Anger at politicians grows — Every year, legions of candidates take to the airwaves with trite tropes about how “Washington is broken” and how they can fix it, in most cases by just fighting the other party harder. But most candidates end up contributing to the very problem they’re decrying. When no one gets anything they want and Congress can’t address basic problems, voters grow even more disillusioned with D.C. and hungrier for an outsider.
This has been especially true among Republican primary voters, who hold their own leaders in contempt for having fallen short of overturning President Obama’s agenda after hearing overzealous campaign promises in 2010 and 2014. So while Hillary Clinton was barely able to turn back an insurgent in the Democratic primaries, Trump was able to co-opt the entire GOP by capturing 14 million votes from a pool of 220 million eligible U.S. voters.
How do we escape this insidious cycle of polarization? I have no easy solutions. But it might be time for a national conversation about how we can structurally modernize our system of elections to incentivize bipartisanship instead of fringe behavior. I tend to think redistricting reform is a bit overrated and primary reform is underrated. Left untouched, our politics will reach a breaking point — maybe we’re already there. And ultimately, voters get the government they deserve.
On Thursday, the Jinmao Tower in Shanghai opened its glass skywalk to the public. Daredevil visitors can now walk or sit on the glass walkway for up to 30 minutes.
Here's the catch: there are no handrails to hold onto. Instead, you'll be harnessed to an overhead rail while you move around freely on the 60-metre long walkway.
The taco deprivation in New York is so intense, the price that would get you a handful of tacos in San Antonio would get you one there, and an Austinite is taking advantage of the dire situation.
Elsie Shutt founded one of the first software businesses in the U.S. in 1958. And the programmers were all women.
Courtesy Elsie Shutt
Note: This episode originally aired in October, 2014.
Mark Zuckerberg. Bill Gates. Steve Jobs. Most of the big names in technology are men.
But a lot of computing pioneers, the ones who programmed the first digital computers, were women. And for decades, the number of women in computer science was growing.
But in 1984, something changed. The number of women in computer science flattened, and then plunged.
Today on the show, what was going on in 1984 that made so many women give up on computer science? We unravel a modern mystery in the U.S. labor force.
Music: "GUI" and "Arp and Piano Beat." Find us: Twitter/ Facebook.
First released in 1971, popular video game Oregon Trail has taught generations of children about pioneer life on the famed trail that connected Missouri to Oregon. Now, 45 years later, Oregon Trail has reportedly made its way from the computer screen to the table top.
The Oregon Trail Card Game, a card and dice game based on the classic computer game from Pressman Toy Company, will be released exclusively in Target stores in the future, according to Polygon. The two- to six-player games features supply cards for 200 pounds of food, clean water, 100 bullets, clothes, medicine, and oxen to start. As the gameplay goes on, the players (ages 12 and up) draw cards that tell them about their progress or the random hardships they’ll face throughout their journey to the Beaver State.
There are also trail cards for towns and forts so players can pick up additional supplies, along with calamity cards, such as snake bites, broken wagon axles, extreme cold, and death from typhoid or dysentery. Along the way, pioneers slowly die off until the last ones in the party make it to the end of the trail to win the game. The game even comes with gravestones, so players can write down their names and how they died on their final resting place.
Right now, there is no word on an exact release date.
Live Oak Brewing Co. scored an early victory Thursday in its legal quest to overturn a state law that requires breweries to give up their distribution and territorial rights.
District Court Judge Karin Crump sided with the Austin-based brewer and two other Texas craft brewers in their lawsuit against the state over Senate Bill 639, passed in 2013, according to Live Oak's Facebook page. It's a blow to Texas' longstanding three-tier system that requires suds to pass through distribution companies…
Courtesy Elsie Shutt
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July 27, 2016 - 7:00am