[Quote]:

The finding, published in June in the journal Physical Review Letters, threatens to set theoretical physicists back several decades by scrapping a whole class of theories that attempt to reconcile Einstein’s theory with quantum mechanics.

I’m sure the people in Louisiana and Mississippi appreciate!

Did you know Wednesday starts at 6:30?

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Despite recent negative press, a majority of Americans, 54%, think the U.S. Transportation Security Administration is doing either an excellent or a good job of handling security screening at airports. At the same time, 41% think TSA screening procedures are extremely or very effective at preventing acts of terrorism on U.S. airplanes, with most of the rest saying they are somewhat effective.

There is an old joke from the Soviet era:
“Why do we like Lenin? Because he played football with the children, when instead he could just have had them executed.”

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The United States’ most trusted authority on all things sea-people has finally confirmed that, no, there is no such thing as mermaids. Sorry.

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Leaders of an Allston school for children who are deaf and hard of hearing are looking to turn an insensitive Internet prank into something positive.

Young pop-sensation Taylor Swift recently announced that she will perform a live concert at whichever school in the country receives the most online votes through a promotional campaign.

As reported by the blog Gawker, online pranksters tried this week to make fun of Swift by voting, and recruiting others to vote, for her to perform at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Allston.

But, despite what the web pranksters might have believed, people who are deaf enjoy music.

And, the school’s headmaster, Jeremiah Ford, said he would be thrilled to have Swift perform at the school, should they win the voting.

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Imagine what might happen if civilians were given the power to issue tickets for minor traffic violations and other quality-of-life infractions — and keep 80 percent of the fines.

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I’d be lying if I said this story didn’t just make my day. According to Business Insider, Facebook employees are being strongly urged and in some cases required to use Android phones instead of their smartphone platform of choice. Why? Because the Facebook for Android app sucks.

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NEW YORK, Aug. 30 (UPI) — A New York Catholic priest who hosts a weekly television show said this week teenage boys often seduce men.

The Rev. Benedict Groeschel, 79, also said child sex abusers should not be jailed for a first offense, the National Catholic Register reported.

Groeschel, who has a weekly show on Catholic television network EWTN, made the comments in an interview with the National Catholic Register.

“People have this picture in their minds of a person planning to — a psychopath,” Groeschel said in the interview. “But that’s not the case. Suppose you have a man having a nervous breakdown, and a youngster comes after him. A lot of the cases, the youngster — 14, 16, 18 — is the seducer.”

My favorite part of Paul Ryan’s speech was when he talked about his upbringing. Hearing how he was carved out of a piece of pinewood by an old Italian man named Geppetto brought tears to my eyes.

[Quote]:

More than 100 Harvard undergraduates are under investigation for allegedly plagiarizing on a certain class’ final take-home exam last spring. The class? Government 1310: “Introduction to Congress.”

Give them an A+ and move them to the advanced group right away!

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Back in February I attended FOSDEM and two of my very dear friends were giggling out of excitement at their plans to roll out a new system that will force many apps to be modified to continue running. They have a beautiful vision to solve a problem that I never knew we had, and that no end user probably cares about, but every Linux desktop user will pay the price.

[Quote]:

“Then I had to deal with you people. And I’ll be honest — you’re crazy! You’ve made me pretend all year that making sure every Massachusetts resident had secure access to health insurance was somehow bad, and that Barack Obama’s desire to do this for the country is worse. You made me stand up and say that a deficit-cutting deal with $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in taxes wasn’t good enough! And don’t get me started on gays, guns or God.

“But I’ve done everything you’ve asked. And you’ve rewarded me for telling you what you wanted to hear. Why did I say a bunch of stuff I don’t believe? Because I know this: Once I get the power, it won’t matter what I’ve said before.

“That’s the flaw with all the comparisons of me to my dad. Dad gave back big bonuses. Dad put out 12 years of tax returns. Dad told the party where to get off. Well, my father was my hero. But you know what Dad never did? Dad never became the GOP nominee or the president. See if you can figure out the lessons I drew about the payoff for purity in American public life.

[Quote]:

Lewinski received his PhD from Union Institute and University in Ohio in 1988.

“He did his courses over the internet,” Haddad says. “At the end of it, they gave him a degree of a PhD. He called himself a police psychologist. I believe at the time I took his deposition, there was nobody else in the United States with that title. He made it up.”

Two years ago, Chicago lawyer Melvin Brooks questioned Lewinski prior to this testimony in a case in which a police officer shot an armed teenager who was running away from him.

In a motion filed with the court, Brooks argued Lewinski’s degree “is not worth the paper it is written on,” and that Lewinski had conceded he is not an expert in biomechanics, use of force, ballistics, or any of the “hard sciences” like anatomy or physics.

Brooks lost his motion to bar the psychologist from testifying.

He also lost the civil suit against the police. In allowing Lewinski to give evidence, the judge cited his “extensive 40 years of experience domestically and abroad,” noting his explanations “were helpful to the jury.”

“You know the courts are buying into it for the most part,” Brooks says. “Which is somewhat unbelievable to me, because it’s really not based on science.”

In analyzing the shooting of Paul Boyd, Lewinski’s opinion was that the stress of the incident rendered the officer who did the shooting, “inattentionally blind.”

“Inattentional blindness” is a subject University of Illinois psychology professor Dan Simons knows well. While at Harvard, he and a colleague conducted experiments which demonstrated people can fail to notice things in front of them if they’re focused on something else. They co-authored a popular book on the subject in 2010.

Simons found that when asked to concentrate on a video of people passing basketballs around, they frequently failed to see a person wearing gorilla suit walk right through the scene.

Simons, who’s studied the phenomenon for 15 years, says he’s asked nearly every week to testify in court for one case or another. He says always declines, because while inattentional blindness may be an explanation for errors in judgement, you can never be certain. As for the Boyd case, Simons is reluctant to weigh in.

“It sounds like a case of misperception as opposed to inattentional blindness,” he offers tentatively.

Simons says years ago, Lewinski asked him to come and talk at one of the many training seminars he offers to law enforcement. Simons declined.

“Within the scientific world, he doesn’t really do anything on inattentional blindness that I know of. So would he count as an expert in the scientific world? No.”

 

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“It started as a routine traffic stop when 34-year-old Michelle Jordan, a 5-foot-2-inch mother and registered nurse, was pulled over for driving while talking on a cell phone, which is against the law in California. Two LAPD officers stopped her in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant. Its surveillance camera captured images from the traffic stop.

According to an Associated Press report, Jordan got out of the car and cursed the two officers who stopped her, witnesses and Jordan’s husband told KNBC-TV.

Arthur Corona, Jordan’s attorney, told CBS News, “At some point she was pulled out of her vehicle, thrown to the ground, handcuffed, brought back to the police cruiser, and then hip-tossed to the ground very violently, while in handcuffs.”

After being thrown to the ground twice, once while handcuffed, Jordan had cuts and bruises on her face, shoulder and upper body. Particularly outrageous to Jordan and her attorneys: after she was put in the back of the police car, the officers appeared to fist bump each other.

Sy Nazif, another of Jordan’s lawyers, said, “…as if to say, ‘Job well done today!’ They’re patting each other on the back. That, to me, was the most disturbing part of this video, of course, other than the violence itself.”

[Quote]:

(CNN) – A man trying to create a Bigfoot hoax on a highway died after being hit by two cars, officials in Montana said.

Randy Lee Tenley dressed in a Ghillie suit — camouflage designed to resemble heavy foliage — and stepped out onto Highway 93 Sunday night, officials said.

“He probably would not have been very easy to see at all,” said Jim Schneider, a state trooper.

A 15-year-old girl hit him with her car, another car swerved, and a third car driven by a 17-year-old ran him over, CNN affiliate KECIreported.

Tenley was “well into the driving lane,” and according to his companions he was “attempting to incite a sighting of Bigfoot — to make people think they had seen a Sasquatch,” Schneider said in the KECI report.

But authorities received no calls from drivers thinking they had seenBigfoot, the station reported.

Officials with Montana Highway Patrol District 6, which includes Flathead County where the incident took place, said Schneider was not available for comment Tuesday and that the official report on the incident had not yet been filed.

The county coroner’s office did not immediately return a call from CNN.

Category suggestion: Darwin Awards

Timetable and fares, in PDF. Oh, and sightseeing info for the Orkney islands, also in PDF.

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No need to mince words: This is psychological training. There’s no doubt the typical trip to the Apple store is on another echelon compared to big box retail torture; Apple’s staff is bar none the most helpful and knowledgable of any large retail operation. A fundamental part of their job—sans sales quotas of any kind—is simply to make you happy. But you’re not at a spa. You’re at a store, where things are bought and sold. Your happiness is just a means to the cash register, and the manual reminds trainees of that: “Everyone in the Apple Store is in the business of selling.” Period.

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A conservative candidate for parliament in Dutch national elections has agreed with remarks by U.S. congressman Todd Akin, who claimed that women have a natural defense mechanism that usually prevents them from becoming pregnant in cases of “legitimate rape.”

Kees van der Staaij, leader of the small Christian fundamentalist SGP party, said Tuesday that after a woman is raped “the chance of pregnancy is very small.”

He says he opposes abortion even when a woman was raped.

Akin’s remarks caused a storm of protest in the U.S. and he has since said he was wrong, though he still opposes abortion.

Van der Staaij was quickly critized by Dutch leftist parties, who called for him to retract the remarks he made on television station RTL-Z.

That’s a bit disingenuous by the WP – ALL parties critized him. He has since refused to apologize. There’s a small contingent of voters who will vote for this sack of shit^* no matter what, so it probably doesn’t worry him at all. His party has been in hot water over their refusal to allow women on the ballot for their party as well.

* apologies to all sacks of shit everywhere

Quote

A newlywed woman from Quebec drowned Friday during her session in a river in Rawdon, about 75 kilometres north of Montreal.

Maria Pantazopoulos, 30, of Laval was standing at the edge of the Ouareau River when her gown became heavy as it soaked up the water and the current pulled her away.

A recent wave of “Trash the Dress” copycat photoshoots shows us that equality for women extends to the Darwin Awards.

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Written by the Rev Eva McIntyre on behalf of the Church’s Archbishops’ Council and the Time to Change mental health campaign, it suggests John the Baptist, St Paul, St Francis and other figures from the Bible may all have been mentally ill.

It even asks followers to consider accusations made in the New Testament that Jesus “had lost his mind”.

It reads: “Many of the people we read about in Bible stories might today be considered as having mental health issues.

“For example, ‘Would Jesus’ family maybe on occasion have said, ‘Cousin John is a bit odd, bless him!’ when John the Baptist took to his eccentric style of life?

“It has long been thought that King Saul, in the books of Samuel, was displaying mood swings that suggest he had bi-polar disorder and some think that St Paul’s Damascus Road experience was the result of some sort of breakdown or psychotic episode.

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This afternoon on Fox News’ America Live, correspondent Trace Gallagher reported on the “surprise” box-office success of Dinesh D’Souza’s new anti-Obama film, 2016: Obama’s America, noting that the film “had to rely on word of mouth, talk radio, plus cable news to get exposure.” Gallagher was right: D’Souza and his film have thus far received nothing but positive promotion from Fox News and Fox Business hosts despite its factual inaccuracies and dishonesty. By contrast, other media outlets have been more skeptical about D’Souza’s film and it assertions.

And the facts?

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Small business owner and candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Delaware Sher Valenzuela is slated to speak at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday as part of a platform meant to suggest business owners build businesses on their own with no assistance from government. The problem is that Valenzuela received millions of dollars in taxpayer funds as business loans from the US government, along with other government assistance. One Reddit user noticed the url for the full name of Valenzuela’s First State Manufacturing business was unregistered, and remedied that with full details.

to quote from the comments:

We all know damn well that when any of the GOP talk about ‘government hand outs’ they are using code to refer to anything poverty/welfare related and directed at some perceived huge black horde of public assistance leeches, not ‘honest folk’. It has nothing to do with cognitive dissonance. They just won’t say what they really mean out loud.

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Whether consumers respond by buying the more distinctive devices is another question entirely.

Consider the case of Windows Phone, Microsoft’s operating system for smartphones, which looks almost nothing like the Apple software for iPhones and iPads. Reviewers have praised Windows Phone for its fresh, distinctive design, with bold typography and a tile system for using phone functions.

But the phones, including the Lumia 900 from Nokia, have not sold well.

Microsoft’s product has not gained traction for a number of possible reasons, among them the big lead its rivals had in the marketplace and the relatively weak distribution of its main partner, Nokia. But the experience shows that any flourishing of innovative products prompted by the Samsung verdict may not translate into success for Apple’s rivals.

So this guy argues that because a company that DOES innovate isn’t doing well, other companies should not have to innovate and just copy Apple, and the fact that they should be allowed to copy Apple is GOOD for innovation?

Look, I dislike this patent war as much as the next guy, but this is ridiculous.