firehose

OnlyMrGodKnowsWhy

Important copyediting news

Original Source

Americablog:

A newly-discovered anti-gay video making the rounds in Russia (see the video below with subtitles) claims that gays adopt children so that they’ll have a readily available source of kids to rape.
Even more troubling, the video bases its adoption-child-rape assertion on a debunked faux-scientific “study” from Mark Regnerus, a religious right researcher whose “gay parenting” study was roundly rebuked for only including two kids who actually grew up with gay parents. Yes, a whopping review of 2 children makes a scientific “study” of gay parenting. The “study” was also called “bullsh*t” by an auditor after it was published.

First: I don't know how Mark Regnerus sleeps at night.

Second: My heart breaks for the gay parents and their children—many of them Americans (and some of whom I recognize)—who are shown in this vile and offensive propaganda video.

And third: anti-gay propaganda attacking gay parents lays the groundwork for passage a yet another anti-gay law in Russia, one that would rip children from the homes of their gay or lesbian parents and place them in notoriously awful Russian orphanages. ("Of course [a lesbian parent] should definitely be deprived of her rights to the child," Alexei Zhuravlev, deputy of the Russian Duma, said in an interview. "Homosexuals must not raise children. They corrupt them. They do them much more harm than if the child were in an orphanage. I am deeply convinced of this.")

HuffPo:

After months of rumors, a bill was introduced in the Russian Duma that compares LGBT people to alcoholics and drug abusers and would deny LGBT Russians custody of their own biological or adopted children.

[Russian journalist Masha] Gessen had already sent her oldest son overseas, fearful that he'd be snatched by the government.

"My situation is that my partner and I are raising three kids, one of whom is adopted and two of whom are biological," Gessen explained to me yesterday on my radio program in an interview from Moscow. "In June the Russian parliament banned adoption by same-sex couples. It was a fair assumption that the law could be used to annul the adoption of our oldest son, so we made the decision to send our oldest son out of the country immediately."

But now, if the new law passes—the adoption law passed in four days—Gessen's biological children could be taken too.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Somalia beat the United States—and a host of other countries—at putting a woman in charge of its top financial institution. But even if the US Federal Reserve is behind on women’s empowerment, at least it isn’t facing the devastating effects of a drawn-out civil war.

Yussur Abrar, a former banker at Citigroup and AIG, became the governor of the central bank today, replacing Abdusalam Omer.

Omer left after getting into some hot water. A UN report accused him of serious laxity in managing the country’s cash-only financial system: Between September 2012 and April 2013, UN investigators say that 72% of withdrawals from the central bank went to individuals, typically government officials, and that $12 million of international aid sent to Somalia’s central bank during this time is unaccounted for.

The investigators put Omer, who took over the bank in January, at the heart of this mess. A Somali-American public administrator who helped pull the city of Washington, DC out of a financial crisis and became the chief of staff to DC mayor Anthony Williams, Omer resigned in 2001 after an investigation into fundraising irregularities. He later became the chief business officer of the school system there.

The UN says Omer helped design a new system to shift aid dispersement as a government official in charge of rebuilding Somalia’s fractured financial system. But when he was appointed to lead the central bank, he stopped reporting back to PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the international accounting firm charged with handling transactions between donors and the Somalian financial system.

Somalia hired a team of US lawyers to reply with the argument (pdf) that the UN’s investigation is bunk, the money isn’t missing, and that PWC failed in its fiduciary duties. Omer denies any mismanagement and says he resigned because of routine government restructuring.

In essence, the UN argues that Somalia’s transition government is caught up in a culture of casual corruption:

[P]rivate individuals, whether inside Government or outside, make requests to members of the leadership for private payments that cannot be resisted for personal or other reasons. The senior politician signs a note authorising payment that is honoured at the Ministry of Finance or the Central Bank directly. This custom is also called the “khaki envelope” procedure on account of the colour of the envelopes seen carried to the Ministry of Finance … as one senior official involved in Transitional Federal Government finances told the Monitoring Group: “Nothing gets done in this government without someone asking the question ‘Maxaa igu jiraa?’ (‘What’s in it for me?’)”.

Abrar has her work cut out for her in ways that few other central bankers do. She’s not worried so much about interest rates and market reaction as she is about constructing a modern financial system from the ground up. Somalia is deeply reliant on foreign aid, and if the international community loses trust in the transition government’s ability to dispense it, it could put one of the troubled nation’s main lifelines at risk.

See Spectacular Fall Colors By Closing Your Eyes And Pressing On Them

TechCrunch tested out the new fingerprint sensor in Apple’s recently announced iPhone 5s by registering a cat’s paw in Touch ID and using it to unlock the smartphone. It works!

The cat’s paw worked, and while it encountered more frequent failures than did a fingerprint, it was able to unlock the phone again repeatedly when positioned correctly on the sensor. Note that no other paw pads would unlock the device, and that cats essentially have unique “fingerprints” just like people, so this doesn’t make the Touch ID sensor any less secure.

video via TechCrunch

darthcamaro writes "At the Linuxcon conference in New Orleans today, Linus Torvalds joined fellow kernel developers in answering a barrage of questions about Linux development. One question he was asked was whether a government agency had ever asked about inserting a back-door into Linux. Torvalds responded 'no' while shaking his head 'yes,' as the audience broke into spontaneous laughter. Torvalds also admitted that while he as a full life outside of Linux he couldn't imagine his life without it. 'I don't see any project coming along being more interesting to me than Linux,' Torvalds said. 'I couldn't imagine filling the void in my life if I didn't have Linux.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I've stopped to talk to you ignorant 20-year-olds on Hawthorne and at 3rd and Morrison in the past and there are 5 things you need to Google to avoid another 5 decade loss for the cause you think you are helping with. Paul Erlich wrote The Population Bomb in 1968 when it was noted that 3rd world countries are overpopulated 5 decades ago. In 1971, the Concert For Bangledesh, George Harrison, Leon Russell, another decade-long attempt to save 3rd world children. Sally Struthers cries into the TV all through the 80's trying again, the Angelina Jolie method of saving kids all without abortions, pills, condoms. 1991 Micheal Jacksons We are the World, another try at the same failed method. Just stop and use the adoption money that probably doesn't make it to a kid anyway, to fund immediate abortions, pills, condoms or something that works. Anti-abortion Catholics say that technology will expand so all Gods children can be seated at the banquet of Christ. Send pictures of that table. I didn't buy an electric car and have only one child just to make resource room for your misguided adventure. Those that refuse to pay attention to History are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. Funny how none of these unplanned births don't live at your house. Sad.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

buzzfeed:

These comics all really capture how frustrating depression is. 

I’m putting this under a cut because it goes on at splendid length. But I could watch this man tear the deserving a new one alllllllll day.

A few highlights:

"…our star scoop ace shyster Walker the Witless,…"

"…The Telegraph’s human cockroach…”

"…this creep from the inner ring of Satan’s rectum…"

"…the envious, mean-spirited spite of an arse-hole journalist whose only attainment is the ability to sneer…"

"…you boil-in-the-bag scum, you purulent tit, you nauseating…”

(It warms up a bit there.)

Go on, you’ll like it. Mocking [most of] the British press and [many of] its lickspittle minions should be an Olympic sport anyway.

stephen-fry-me:

It’s hardly surprising I annoy some people. I annoy myself. But new depths were plunged today by some shiny faced, arse-witted creep called Tim Walker who published a nasty little piece in the Telegraph today implying that I don’t write or compose my own tweets. As you will probably know, I don’t read newspapers, but a friend sent me the link without thinking, so I couldn’t but read it.

Since I have a large number of followers it is natural that all kinds of charities want to use my twitter presence to advertise some national day of awareness, good cause gathering, benefit performance etc etc. I ask if they’ll be good enough to comply with the strictures laid down on my website. This is so they can get their message across at the right time, on the right day, phrased in the right manner and directed at a site that can take the extra burden of traffic. The last thing one wants to do is spontaneously agree to tweet a charity cause and then see their site crash. It has the effect of a DDoS attack (you’ll have to look that up, “Tim”) and this has happened too many times for me to allow it to happen again.

My PA went to extreme lengths, when this creep from the inner ring of Satan’s rectum called “to check the facts” (HA!) to explain that, as is clearly stated on my website http://www.stephenfry.com, I will often tweak the wording of a charity tweet that I am asked to make if it’s a bit stilted or not in my style but otherwise - every day, on my diary, through the magic of syncing - there will be some tweet reminders for me placed there, naturally after I have been consulted and have approved the charity or cause. I try and ration these to about three a day maximum. I can’t tweet about everyone who’s walking to John O’Groats or has written a song for Syria. I don’t want my twitter stream to be nothing but a bulletin board for good causes. But you would have to have the brains of lobotomised donkey not to understand that this is how life would be with a following of 6 million +

@ThatTimWalker, this sneering and disgusting insult even to the reeking heap of disgraced ordure that is the British press, was told all this very clearly and patiently by my distressed PA who, knowing the British print media, was all too aware that this noxious boll-weevil would go ahead and print insinuating drivel whatever she said. Indeed, apprised of the truth, he still managed to extrude a semi-literate gossipy turd about seeing me at a meeting with Andy Serkiss and witnessing me taking out my phone and tweeting. I was complying with two charity tweets that my diary alarm pinged me to make. If I’m late, the charities might waste money that they have paid to whoever is hosting their server cluster so that it can take the extra traffic. That wouldn’t occur for a second to a (clearly digitally illiterate) gossip-monger. No, no.  From this he hopes his pitiful readership will infer that I am not master of my own twitter account but somehow in hoc to … to whom? We can be completely exact about what happened when he was at the same restaurant as me and watched me tweeting.

The tweets he witnessed me making at 11am on Thursday 19th September 2013 were

Challenging ideas underlying psychiatric services. Follow PAVO & Jacqui Dillon in the debate today at #shapingmhpowys. Read http://powysmentalhealth.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/unconventional-wisdom-organic-reasons.html.

and…

A sketch about tea-fighting … tinyurl.com/teafighting

A favour to a friend of a friend, and…

Wanted posters aren’t just for Wild West outlaws, composers may have a price on their head too http://bit.ly/b3oIAN #DeloitteIgnite

…which was part of my ongoing duties as curator of a celebration of the bicentenaries of Verdi and Wagner at the Royal Opera House. I had promised each organisation that I would tweet at that time so their servers could be ready for the traffic. A child of ten who understands twitter would see the need for such precautions and preparations. But then, no child of ten would want to be a rejected and scorned gossip columnist for the Daily Telegraph. I can’t think of a more embarrassing occupation in the world. I’d rather be chief enema-administrator to Jabba the Hutt.

I notice even now as I write this that my diary reminders are beeping to tell me to post two more promised tweets: one for the RAF Benevolent Fund and one for an LGBT parenting group. If I happened to be doing this in a restaurant witnessed by our star scoop ace shyster Walker the Witless, he would no doubt adduce this as more proof of my not tweeting my own tweets.

The fact is this. No one else on earth knows my Twitter password: Every tweet I make is my own aside from (obvious to anyone with the wit to see them) these charitable tweets that I have consented to post.

Walker concludes his vicious little paragraph firstly by telling an outright lie: that I “buttonholed” my dear friend Christopher Hitchens’s brother at the luncheon after Christopher’s memorial service in New York. Not true. I could see Peter Hitchens in the doorway of the Waverly Inn, standing utterly alone  (as he does intellectually, morally and socially amongst his brother’s friends) and, taking pity, I just came up to chat. He responded so rudely, so vilely and with such lack of human decency, that I couldn’t but tweet at the extreme difference between two products of the same parents. Probably a misjudgement on my part. I make many. But then Peter Hitchens is proportionately as joyless and unlovable a person as his so deeply missed brother was joyful and loveable and I was upset at such charmless rudeness. And I was, I freely admit, a little drunk. Which is just what Christopher would have wanted me to be.

Making mistakes on Twitter, especially if a little in one’s cups, is like making mistakes in life. Tweet in haste, repent at leisure. Of course I’ve done it many more times than once. I’d be inhuman not to. But I’ve done it, not some ghost-writer or assistant.

The Telegraph’s human cockroach ends by wishing I would give up twitter for ever.

I won’t do so, not for him nor anyone else. Aside from any other consideration, having a following vaster by millions than his disgusting rag means I never ever have to submit myself to the horror of a print interview ever again in my life. Ever. Imagine what joy that means! When I do a The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug press junket next week, for example, I will do no print media; when I have to offer some PR for an up-coming BBC 2 series on being gay around the world called Out There: no print media. No magazines and certainly no newspapers. And it’s all because of people like Tim Walker. One of the chief glories of twitter, from my point of view, is that it allows me to short-circuit loathsome bottom-feeders of his kind. If I do a TV chat show, or a radio interview people are free to think I’m a wanker, because at least it’s me they’re listening to or watching. Not some “profile” version of me filtered through the envious, mean-spirited spite of an arse-hole journalist whose only attainment is the ability to sneer.

Walker repeats the story of how I “gave twitter up” for a while (as has every sane person I know: many magnificent writers, comedians and artists have given up completely precisely because of the viciousness, disingenuous, calumny and boring presence of people like this Walker excrescence)  and concludes that he wishes I would leave permanently. Which shows his complete ignorance of twitter. All he has to do is block me or unfollow me and then, to all intents and purposes I have left. D’uh. Do you actually even know how twitter works, you boil-in-the-bag scum, you purulent tit, you nauseating anus?

So why did he write this nasty screed, knowing full well it insinuated all kinds of things that weren’t true? Well, “because he’s a journalist” is answer enough obviously, but why else, we can’t but wonder? 

Snide resentment? Lazy page-filling? Because he happened to be in the Wolseley Restaurant, saw me on my smartphone and thought he’d cobble together a toxic mix of gossip, guesswork and malice? Who knows what goes on in the acid-dripping voids of empty space between the ears of such low-life insults to DNA?

Perhaps I should only ever tweet the mood I’m in, what I’m eating for breakfast and how obscene beyond measure it is that the Leveson Enquiry has been effectively shelved, or any other things that come into my head? Perhaps every email or message to my website from others asking me to tell my followers about their charity evening should be ignored. Perhaps I should behave with the grace, charm and sweetness of nature of @ThatTimWalker and tell all the charities to fuck off? Would that be the right thing to do? Is that what you’d do, Tim, if you had 6 million followers? Just ignore all charitable requests, or spontaneously RT the ones in a million you happened to spot and thereby cause their sites to crash? Hmmm?

I really would be fascinated to hear his advice on how I should deal with the hundreds and hundreds of requests that come to my site every week asking for a little twitter nudge. Lines of communication are open, Mr Walker “part time West End star” (that’s what it says in his biog: your guess is as good as mine the mind boggles, but refuses to picture the sight). You are welcome to insult me as aggressively as I’ve insulted you, but you’re not allowed to lie again: just give me a sensible solution as to how to run a twitter identity and pass on charitable news? Is there’s something I’ve missed?

As it happens, I spent this morning doing an hour’s filmed interview for a foreign news crew who are doing a ten part series about England and what it means to be English. 

"Is there anything that makes you ashamed to be English?" I was asked.

"Yes," I said. "Our printed press."

"Oh," he said, resignedly. "That’s the answer everyone gives."

I wonder why.

Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Climate-change skeptics can always seize on some inconvenient truths about the effect of human carbon consumption on sea levels. On average, the ocean rises only a wee 3.2 millimeters (0.13 inches) a year—about the length of a small black ant. And, in places like Alaska and Canada’s Hudson Bay, sea levels are actually dropping up to 3 centimeters (1.3 inches) a year.

Still, next week the big kahuna in climate-change research, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), will announce that overall sea levels could rise by as much as 97 centimeters (3.2 feet) by 2100, according to Nature, which saw a leaked report. In 2007, it projected a maximum rise of only 59 cm. (The lower limit of its estimate went up from 18 to 28 cm.)

But skeptics shouldn’t dismiss the finding. As Nature explains, the new model accounts for all of the factors causing rising seas, while the IPCC’s 2007 calculations were based on factors that explained only 60% of them. And many of those are exactly the same factors causing water to swell in, say, Mississippi while it recedes in Canada’s Hudson Bay.

The 40% hole in IPCC’s old model

In the 2007 estimate, the main factors in the oceans’ rise were the expansion of the water due to warming, and the melting of glaciers. About a sixth of the increase also came from the melting of Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. The IPCC’s latest model includes other factors. For instance, after humans suck fresh water up from the ground, they pump it into the ocean. Intensive use of water for aquaculture, for example, is causing sea levels around China’s Yellow River delta to surge around 25 centimeters a year.

Ice sheets: frozen floods in the making

The IPCC also changed its thinking on the impact of melting ice sheets. That added 21 cm to its maximum projection for 2100 sea levels. The big variable is the rate of melting, since the ice sheets hold enough water to boost sea levels by 65 meters (213 feet) if they were to melt entirely.

Besides pouring water into the sea, the melting of the ice caps takes weight off the upper part of North America. This has two effects: that part of the continent sticks up higher out of the water, so the islands of Graves Harbor, Alaska, now form a peninsula. And the continent as a whole tilts, so parts further down the US east coast—such as Boston—sink lower in the water.

Gravity will send seas surging southward

This tilting effect is exacerbated by another, separate consequence of melting. The ice sheets of upper North America and Greenland are so massive that their gravitational pull yanks the oceans toward them. When the ice melts, that pull lessens, sending the oceans surging southward.

The net result of all this is that for every one meter that the seas rise due to Greenland’s melting, its land mass will pop an extra 2.5 meters out of the sea, driving ocean levels at points southward up as much as an extra 1.3 meters.

And while the IPCC report is of an unprecedented thoroughness, some scientists consider it still to be too conservative, says Nature. Another model—one that’s historically been more accurate—puts sea levels up to 1.4 meters higher in 2100, flooding the homes of up to 187 million people.

doctorwho:

@bbcdoctorwho - On this day 50 years ago, filming began on a new BBC TV Series called Doctor Who…

At the 2013 Gamescom in Germany, Stabyourself.net recorded 974 people playing their custom Super Mario Bros. time trail level. After collecting all 974 playthroughs, they merged them into a single chaotic video that evokes nostalgia as all 974 players simultaneously run, jump, and try to survive in a race to the finish line.

There was a 3 second penalty for dying which explains all the frozen Marios. Also note that enemies and objects may not appear synced to the players – that is due to the way Mari0 (and the original SMB) works. Best time (blue Mario): 41.32 seconds

video and image via Stabyourself.net

via Motherboard

bedfish:

only 90s kids remember ios 6

Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Hey, I was on The Collapsed Psi talking about BAHFest. Check it out!

Now that the weather finally is cooling down, it's time for a fun rainy day activity for the youngsters. While you'll do the fun part on a sunny day by applying NeverWet to your sidewalk with a stencil, the real pay off occurs when it rains and the area you painted stays dry.

Link

Grammer is reported to be playing Bonaparte, a famous mercenary who is recruited to join the Expendables for their latest mission. Early reports had Stallone and his producers recruiting Nicolas Cage for the role, but Cage has opted to use his talents elsewhere. Instead, Grammer will be on hand to demonstrate that he's a good hand in a fight.

Librarian Fired After Defending Child Who Loves to Read

houghtonlib:

Apian, Peter, 1495-1552. Astronomicum Caesareum, 1540.

*GC5.Ap34.540a

Houghton Library, Harvard University

This more complex volvelle has multiple moving parts, including several outer dials, with a smaller, independently rotating disk inside. Click here for a larger version of this image than Tumblr file sizes permit.

houghtonlib:

Four weeks. A loud book, [ca. 1910]. Novelty hollow book with cap pistol mechanism laid inside a book.

zMS Am 2893

Houghton Library, Harvard University

And, they shake their pom-poms! Expectant Alpaca Mama Lily (due in November) and daughter Rose do a little celebrating upon arrival two weeks ago at Children’s Zoo at Celebration Square. They are even having a Royal Alpaca Party on September 28! How posh!

“Hello CO! Just wanted to share with you our newest zoo residents- alpaca mom Lily (sporting the white fleece) and her one year old cria, Rose (adorned in scarlet). Donated to us by a private owner, these two are pure pedigrees with fancy lineages (pinky up!)… but within the first day in their new enclosure, they were ready to get down and dirty. Watch their little pom-pom tails and fluffy ‘tocks just wiggle with excitement! This was their first day in their exhibit after a looooong trailer ride. We all love your site! Cordially, Lizzy S.”

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: alpacas, Unusual Animals