[Quote]:

The United States Air Force has been training young missile officers about the morals and ethics of launching nuclear weapons by citing passages from the New Testament and commentary from a former member of the Nazi Party, according to newly released documents.

[International Business Times]:

Indiana state lawmakers, who are analyzing the implications of amending its drug laws to decriminalize marijuana, were told by a panel of experts that the prohibition of marijuana in U.S. is a failed model and Indiana stands a chance to benefit from decriminalizing marijuana.

“The public recognizes that our marijuana laws have done more harm than good,” Daniel Abrahamson of the Drug Policy Alliance told the Indiana Legislature’sCriminal Law and Sentencing Policy Study Committee, according to an AP report. “The federal government cannot require states to make marijuana illegal.”

Abrahamson said, there have never been any instance where states were forced to ‘re-criminalize’ marijuana following decriminalization.

Lawmakers have approved medical marijuana in 16 states and the District of Columbia and has eliminated penalties on small amounts of marijuana in 13 other states.

[Quote]:

Sometimes it’s not the obvious things that create the biggest problems. In this case one of the hidden job killers in our economy today is the explosion of patent litigation.

Every technology company I have is getting hit by patent lawsuits that are the biggest bunch of bullshit ever. Every week it seems like a new one comes up. Between having to pay our lawyers a lot of money to review each, to increasing insurance rates and settlement costs because we can’t afford to pay to fight the nonsense, it’s an enormous expense. So much so that money that would have gone to new hires to improve and sell the product has to be saved to pay to deal with this bullshit.

I’m not talking about a new company that had an idea that someone beat us to. No sir. I’m talking about companies that have been doing business the same way for years that are getting hit by patent trolls . These aren’t operating companies that are trying to protect their business. These are companies that aggregate patents and raise capital for the sole purpose of suing companies and extorting money from them.

It’s bad for my little companies. It’s horrific for bigger companies. It’s so bad that major tech companies are buying big collections of patents not because they want to own the intellectual property but rather because they want the ability to respond to patent lawsuits with a lawsuit of their own. It’s like playing a game of thermo nuclear war. If all sides have “nuclear patents” they can respond to patent litigation with equal force . Another words, if you have enough “nucleur patents” no one will sue you for patent infringement because you have enough power to respond in kind. Its crazy and costing this country jobs.

[Quote]:

Indonesian officials are scrambling to find a solution to the latest dangerous trend in Jakarta: people who roam the city’s railway tracks looking for free "electric therapy."

As many as several dozen people per day intentionally try to electrocute themselves along the rails, according to local media reports, because they believe it can cure all kinds of diseases, from diabetes to high-blood pressure to insomnia. When trains approach, people briefly step aside but rush back quickly into a sleeping position on the tracks to feel electrical currents they believe will cure their ailments.

Residents say the unorthodox—and dangerous—practice started with a local rumor about a man who tried to kill himself by lying on the tracks. He was fed up after suffering paralysis from a stroke and medical treatment failed to cure his symptoms. He allegedly decided that being crushed by a train would be better than continuing his misery. But while lying on the tracks, he suddenly felt cured, according to the hearsay. It’s unclear whether any elements of the story were true.

[..]

“We encourage these people to seek professional medical help,” Ms. Utami [spokeswoman for Indonesia's Health Ministry] said.

[Quote]:

It’s certainly remarkable that those two emails show a consistent attitude: the Android team basically says "let’s just infringe" whenever an intellectual property issue comes up. If they did this to Oracle, what about the intellectual property of other companies like Apple, Microsoft, eBay and Skyhook?

With respect to the suitability-to-task of non-infringing alternatives, the Rubin email suggests that the primary reason for which they forged ahead with Java on an unlicensed basis was just that they didn’t want to drop a fair amount of code they had already written by then. That’s not the same as believing that other platforms would have been less suitable-to-task in technical terms than Java.