firehose

The Civil Rights of Children, Georgia Edition:

The Obama Administration last week warned against over-discipline in the nation’s schools. An important new lawsuit in Georgia offers a glimpse of how high that cost can be for young offenders.

Article by Andrew Cohen.

In Less Than 5 Years, Unions Could Lose Their Legal Rights - And It's The Supreme Court's Fault:

By Ian Millhiser.

*The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday in a challenge to President Obama’s power to name several recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board. By most accounts, the argument did not go well for the administration. Justice Stephen Breyer said that he could not find anything in the Constitution that will “allow the president to overcome Senate resistance” to nominees. Justice Elena Kagan suggested that “it was the Senate’s job to decide” when it is in recess. Chief Justice John Roberts claimed that the Senate has “an absolute right to refuse” to confirm a nominee.*

An anonymous reader writes "Philip Guo, an Asst. Professor of Computer Science at the University of Rochester, has written a thoughtful article on his education in programming. Guo explains that he was no particular coding wizard while growing up, but when he jumped into a CS major when he went to college at MIT, he received all sorts of passive and active encouragement — simply because he 'looked the part.' He says, 'Instead of facing implicit bias or stereotype threat, I had the privilege of implicit endorsement. For instance, whenever I attended technical meetings, people would assume that I knew what I was doing (regardless of whether I did or not) and treat me accordingly. If I stared at someone in silence and nodded as they were talking, they would usually assume that I understood, not that I was clueless. Nobody ever talked down to me, and I always got the benefit of the doubt in technical settings.' Guo compares this to the struggles faced by other minority groups and women to succeed in a field that is often more skeptical of their abilities. 'I want those people to experience what I was privileged enough to have gotten in college and beyond – unimpeded opportunities to develop expertise in something that they find beautiful, practical, and fulfilling.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MSNBC

Judge upholds health law subsidies Washington Post A federal judge in the District dismissed a lawsuit Wednesday that would have gutted the president's health-care law by preventing the government from giving out subsidies to people buying health insurance in dozens of states. The federal subsidies are ... Federal judge finds in favor of Obama administration in crucial Obamacare lawsuitWashington Times UPDATE 1-US judge rejects challenge to Obamacare insurance subsidiesReuters Judge dismisses lawsuit challenging Obamacare's tax creditsMinneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal WTAQ all 29 news articles »

by Operaiter

Eclectic Method remixes the classic 1987 sci-fi action film RoboCop in this video. The song is available to download online from Soundcloud.

‘Robocop,’ the classic, is getting remade and re-released next month. It’s directed by José Padilha with Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson, and Michael Keaton. But remember the original that predicted a future in which the justice system was run by corporations and Detroit was nearing collapse? Well to jog your memory Eclectic Method has spliced it down and jumbled it up into a robostep video noise track.

video and image via Eclectic Method

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

During a ceremony at the Sistine Chapel on Sunday in which he baptized 32 children, Pope Francis encouraged mothers in attendance to breastfeed hungry infants in public, saying it was even acceptable in church.

WASHINGTON—With the Affordable Care Act now making it possible for a greater number of Americans to purchase medical coverage, the nation looked back this week and fondly recalled a simpler time when its health care system was broken beyond any hope...

LOS GATOS, CA—In a swift and unexpected departure from their present business model, officials from Netflix revealed Wednesday that the company is currently considering adding a good movie to their online streaming service.

bison2winquote:

- Chun-Li, Super Street Fighter II Turbo (Capcom)

ruinlion:

MY ENTIRE LIFE HAS BEEN A LIE

This Rodney Dangerfield movie is different from what I remember.

Today's GO GATAH news comes to us from Adam Silverstein of Only Gators Get Out Alive. Take it away, Adam!

One of five former Gators back in Gainesville, FL this spring taking classes in pursuit of their college degree, defensive end Jarvis Moss saw his semester start off on the wrong foot. Moss late Monday night was arrested and charged with a felony for tampering with evidence as well as a misdemeanor for possession of less than 20 grams of cannabis after he was stopped near 900 NW 7th Ave in Gainesville. He was initially pulled over for running a stop sign, but the arresting officer smelled "a strong odor of ‘fresh' cannabis coming from the vehicle" and "observed the defendant chewing intently." Upon asking Moss to open his mouth, he identified "large pieces of cannabis ... that he was trying to swallow." Additionally, according to the police report, Moss "denied eating cannabis" after being read his Miranda rights but "did admit to smoking cannabis earlier."

Wait a second ...

- Drugs
- Moving violation
- Arrest
- Trying to eat drugs

IT'S THE FLORIDA SUPERFECTA

Allegedly a back injury is behind the maneuver. From a post on Reddit and confirmed by Wil Wheaton. Scroll down the Reddit post to find the section pasted below. The reply from user 'wil' is Mr. Wheaton.

[–]AmishAvenger 1162 points 2 days ago*

Frakes had a back injury, caused by having a job moving furniture. The result is the "Riker Lean," where you often see him on set leaning on chairs or consoles, or with one leg propped up on something. You can also see his body is tilted a little when he's standing up straight.

I'd guess this has something to do with that. For each time we see him sit down, he probably had to do that same move dozens of times for each take. Just lifting one leg and sitting right down was probably easier for him than turning, contorting his back, and squatting down over and over. It's the same thing with the Riker Lean: he probably had no problem standing up for a few minutes, but shooting that show probably resulted in standing on set for hours on end. Dude had to find a way to work around his injury by leaning on things, or he wouldn't have made it.

EDIT: Apparently my highest-rated comment is about Jonathan Frakes' back injury, and how it affected his time on the set of TNG. Could be worse, I suppose...

[–]wil 906 points 1 day ago

Confirmed.

Source: I served on the Enterprise with Riker for 5 years.

Original Source

submitted by throwawayaccount0333
[link] [3 comments]

Today, Netflix shares are falling, and one reason for the sell-off is yesterday’s US court decision overthrowing “net neutrality” rules—but investors may be acting prematurely.

Net neutrality is the idea that internet service providers (ISPs) have to treat all data flowing through their networks equally: They can’t, for instance, make Netflix’s streaming videos travel more slowly than web pages from Quartz. The US Federal Communications Commission put in place three basic rules in 2010 to enforce this: ISPs had to be transparent about their approach to network congestion, couldn’t block high-bandwidth users, and couldn’t unreasonably slow their traffic. Yesterday, a federal appeals court overturned these rules after a challenge by Verizon, the top US telecom.

This matters because Netflix takes up about a third of US bandwidth at peak hours. Like other online companies that guzzle traffic (e.g., big sites like Google and Yahoo), it makes money on top of infrastructure built by ISPs, but doesn’t give them a cut of the proceeds beyond standard access fees. AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre speaks for broadband providers when he said companies like Netflix want to “use my pipes free, but I ain’t going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it.”

Net neutrality, the telecoms say, makes investments in broadband infrastructure unaffordable. Net neutrality’s supporters worry that without it, ISPs might be able to limit competition, or discriminate against online services based on the type of content, not just how much bandwidth it takes up.

The basic question—one at the heart of a lot of internet issues—is to what extent the internet’s pipes should be considered public infrastructure, like roads, water lines or telephone lines. Such “common carriers” may not unreasonably discriminate against their customers. The FCC doesn’t consider ISPs common carriers but “information services,” exempt from regulation as new, developing technologies.

The federal appeals court said, in essence, that the FCC can only impose net neutrality on the broadband providers if it first declares them common carriers. It could now take that step. The carriers’ allies in Congress have long opposed such a move, but they probably couldn’t force the Obama administration to block it. Congress itself could also put in place—or prohibit—net neutrality rules, although it’s unlikely to do either.

Even failing a common-carriers declaration, net neutrality isn’t buried. Both its opponents and proponents believe the court decision has unintended consequences that will empower the FCC to enforce the essentials of net neutrality without re-classifying ISPs. Even if they aren’t considered common carriers, the FCC is empowered to regulate them under a different statute.

That’s not anyone’s ideal outcome, which might put more pressure on Congress to act. But in the meantime, Verizon can’t be entirely pleased with an outcome that may push the FCC into taking action—and Netflix can breathe a sigh of relief that there are still avenues to protect if from data charges that could wreck its business model.

diddo sculpts a life-sized human skull out of street cocaine


diddo sculpts a life-sized human skull out of street cocaine


diddo sculpts a life-sized human skull out of street cocaine

Cocaine is a hell of a drug

As That's Nerdalicious points out, it appears that neither the wielder of the Enterprise pizza cutter nor the singer of the Star Trek theme song in this video are Sir Patrick Stewart himself. Probably a good thing. He's already raised the bar impossibly high. Previously in Sir Patrick Stewart Is a God Among Twitter Users

After watching this clip, I wasn't convinced They Came Together is an actual movie and not just an elaborate prank. But no: It has an IMDB page. It's premiering at Sundance this month. It's real. Says David Wain in a statement: “After having already made world-changing cinematic statements on adolescence (Wet Hot American Summer), religion (The Ten), service (Role Models), and community (Wanderlust), I teamed up with Michael Showalter to take on a topic that (to our knowledge) has yet been seen in the movies: ROMANCE — particularly heterosexual romance between two white people. Our next idea was to mix this romance story with humor - so you could almost call this a Romantic-Comedy, so to speak.” It could either be brilliant or the worst thing ever. If the latter, just treat this clip as a particularly funny short film. An equally amusing poster is behind the cut.

by @juan_domenech

I got an email last night from a Princeton student named Shubhro Saha, who told me that he’d created an application called PHONY, which generates random HONY posts. (http://bit.ly/1cX9DSQ)

"It’s an experiment in seeing how well a computer can generate HONY-style posts," he explained. "The app rearranges dialog from previous posts and presents the result beside a stock photo image."

So, anyway, I tested it out…

Here comes the maker movement, an agile band of tinkerers and do-it-yourselfers. You, too, can join. All you need is a credit card and an appetite for vulgar hustling… more»

Be kind

Photos of three mountaineers hiking across Ben Nevis, the tallest point in the British Isles (4,406 ft.) in 1929.