[Quote]:

Though courteous and hospitable, the commanders expressed ugly views. Asked about an Islamist acid attack on schoolgirls in Kandahar, one said: “What else do they deserve? A good woman needs only Islam, not school.” With justification, they also slammed the failure of President Hamid Karzai’s government to control Afghanistan’s runaway crime. Yet their response to this problem was of the well-advertised Taliban kind. “Under Hamid Karzai, not one murderer has been executed in public!” exclaimed the more senior man in wide-eyed amazement. “No robbers have had their hands cut off!”

In many Taliban-held areas, the threat of such punishments is said to have banished crime. And local people, sick of the lawlessness, seem glad of this. Even some living in government-controlled cities are reported to journey to Taliban sharia courts for justice, spurning the corrupt government alternative.

Moar

[Quote]:

Pope Benedict XVI cautioned young people Saturday about the presentation of love on the Internet, saying they risk losing respect by pursuing affection being pitched like "merchandise."

"Much love is proposed by the media and Internet, but this isn’t love but selfishness," Benedict told some 100,000 Catholic children from throughout Italy.

Yeah, instead, kids, talk to your priests!

Preikestolen, Norway

[Quote]:

People who were raped and molested by priests are gathering in Rome this weekend to launch a petition demanding the United Nations designate systematic sexual abuse of children as a crime against humanity.

Organizers said the Sunday gathering would mark the first time that abuse survivors from around the world will gather for a day of healing and to demand greater accountability from the Vatican. A few hundred people from a dozen countries are expected.

Organizers had hoped to stage the demonstration in St. Peter’s Square, but said they had to move it a few hundred meters (yards) away because the Holy See declined to give them access.

[Quote]:

A trial court has sanctioned and fined three Chevron lawyers for obstructing the trial where Chevron faces a multi-billion dollar judgment for the deliberate dumping of 18 billion gallons of toxic waste, according to court papers made available today.

Alberto Racines and Diego Larrea, both of whom have worked on Chevron’s legal team in Ecuador since the trial against Chevron began in 2003, were fined by Judge Nicolas Zambrano this week for repeatedly filing the same motions in an effort to delay the seven-year Ecuador trial.

[..]

“The evidence clearly shows Chevron used illegal practices that resulted in the massive destruction of the rainforest in Ecuador and the decimation of indigenous groups and other local residents,” said Pablo Fajardo, who represents dozens of indigenous and farmer communities suing the oil giant for dumping more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into the Amazon rainforest.

“To help Chevron evade its obligations, Chevron’s lawyers are trying to sabotage the Ecuadorian legal system in addition to violating their professional obligations,” he added.

[Quote]:

In other words, people, when faced with a choice, will inevitably choose the Dick-Measuring Device over molestation? "That’s what we’re hoping for. We’re trying to get everyone into the machine."

[Quote]:

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, a lot of ink (and no small number of pixels) has been devoted to what impact unlimited, anonymous special interest money may have on our political system.

But in the Kentucky Senate race pitting Democrat Jack Conway, the state’s attorney general, against Republican nominee Rand Paul, we’re getting a look at another potential — and potentially disastrous — effect of the ruling that’s received far less attention: a scenario where deep-pocketed corporate criminals take advantage of the new campaign finance landscape to undermine the American justice system.

As ABC News reported this week, “A local millionaire has helped launch a barrage of ads attacking the Democratic candidate – a candidate who, as the state’s attorney general, is prosecuting the businessman’s nursing home for allegedly covering up sexual abuse.”

[Quote]:

According to a new Bloomberg poll, six in ten Americans think most of the money spent to rescue banks will be lost forever. Six in ten think the economy shrunk over the past year. One in two think federal income taxes have gone up in the past two years.

Wrong. Wrong. And wrong.

[Quote]:

The pastor of a Rockdale County megachurch has publicly announced he is gay.

Jim Swilley, bishop of Conyers’ Church in the Now, said he hopes his coming out will change attitudes toward homosexuality.

“I know a lot of straight people think it is a choice. It is not,” Swilley told Channel 2’s Diana Davis.

Swilley, 52, founded the church 25 years ago. He seemed the stereotypical picture of a pastor, with four kids and a wife who doubled as his associate pastor. But Swilley said he’s known he was gay since he was little boy. He said his wife, Debye, also knew his secret from the start.

The coming night the Netherlands is going to practice the Tea Party’s favorite activity: turn the clock back.

[Quote]:

The Obama administration cut taxes for middle-class Americans, expects to make a profit on the hundreds of billions of dollars spent to rescue Wall Street banks and has overseen an economy that has grown for the past five quarters.

Most voters don’t believe it.

[Quote]:

The latest statistics from Web metrics company Net Applications pegged IE6′s usage share at 15.6%, which means it’s the world’s third-most-used browser edition. Many of the holdouts are enterprises locked into IE6 because the commercial software or home-grown applications they use work only in that browser.

Organizations running IE6 have told Gartner that 40% of their custom-built browser-dependent applications won’t run on IE8, the version packaged with Windows 7. Thus many companies face a tough decision: Either spend time and money to upgrade those applications so that they work in newer browsers, or stick with Windows XP.

[Quote]:

See that little bright spot on the plume on the left, just above the Sun’s edge? That spot is the same size as the Earth. The image to the right should make that fairly clear; I made the Earth pretty close to the right size for comparison. Our planet is about 13,000 km (8000 miles) in diameter, so that one minor prominence is roughly 50,000 km high. That’s 30,000 miles. And it’s positively dwarfed by the Sun itself. A million Earths could fit inside the Sun.

In case you woke up today feeling important.

[Quote]:

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A senior Pentagon official broke Department of Defense rules and lied to military officials when he set up a network of private contractors to spy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the New York Times reported Friday.

The Times cited an internal investigation stating that the official, Michael Furlong, set up an unauthorized spy network starting in late 2009 and “deliberately misled” top generals about it.

Pentagon rules forbid using contractors as spies.

Captcha is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer. The process usually involves one computer (a server) asking a user to complete a simple test which the computer is able to generate and grade. Most often they’re images, with words in them obscured by lines and distortion to prevent OCR software from reading it.

You’d think this was something marketing couldn’t possibly ruin, right?

 

 

 
Wrong.

[Quote]:

This is going to be terrible. In fact, future historians will probably look back at the 2010 election as a catastrophe for America, one that condemned the nation to years of political chaos and economic weakness.

[Quote]:

WASHINGTON — Nearly 18 billion dollars earmarked for reconstruction in Afghanistan remain unaccounted for, snagged in a “labyrinth” of contract bureaucracy, a sweeping US government audit has shown.

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said 17.7 billion dollars was obligated over three years to nearly 7,000 contractors, but the Pentagon, State Department and US Agency for International Development were unable to say how much money has been spent.

The audit addresses fiscal years 2007 through 2009, but the problems go back to 2002 when the United States began funding Afghan reconstruction, because “much of the data available from the agencies prior to 2007 was too poor to be analyzed,” the report said.

Not shown: the air support.

[Quote]:

he United States spent $80 billion on spy activities in 2010, the first time the government has officially announced the total tab for intelligence spending.

The amount included $53.1 billion on non-military intelligence programs, a 6 percent boost from the previous year, according to a statement released Thursday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The military spent an additional $27 billion on its intelligence apparatus, said Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan.

No further details were released.

Okay, about these details:

It’s approximately the same size as the Department of Veterans Affairs, or the Department of Transportation. It’s about 5 times the budget of NASA.

It is 8 times the size of the entire GDP of Afghanistan, or roughly equivalent to the entire military budget of China, and $30 billion more than the entire military budget of Russia.

[Quote]:

This is the “world’s first true Android”, called the Actroid-F. She’s (I’m sorry, it’s) designed to be used in hospitals and other locations involving natural human-to-human communication, and can move its eyes, open and close its mouth, tilt its head, nod, smile, replicate breathing, and bow; and is 1.4 meters tall when seated. She made an appearance at a two-day laboratory fair at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), where a teleoperating station equipped with a camera was showcased, enable the android to replicate the head and facial movements of the operator, as well as following manually-inputted commands.

Those subtle facial movements are going to be useful, they’ll include

Disdain for your meat-based processor.

Puzzlement that you are still alive.

A small frown to indicate that you should more quickly bleed out.

A slight, polite smile from one T-600 to an earlier model as it crushes a human skull underfoot.

[Quote]:

The story of industries paying lobbyists to influence legislation that benefits their business is nothing new—but what about when that industry is a privately-owned and operated prison system?

NPR reports that Arizona Senate Bill 1070 (PDF), the immigration bill that requires anyone who can’t produce papers proving they are in the country legally to be arrested, was drafted with the help and influence of Arizona’s private prison companies.

“According to Corrections Corporation of America reports reviewed by NPR, executives believe immigrant detention is their next big market. Last year, they wrote that they expect to bring in “a significant portion of our revenues” from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that detains illegal immigrants.”

Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law – NPR