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Shooting Reported at Connecticut Elementary School
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Eighteen children were killed on Friday morning in a shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., about 65 miles northeast of New York City, according to a person who had been briefed on the shooting. Another law enforcement official said preliminary reports suggested there could be as many as 20 fatalities.
Alan Turing should be pardoned, argue Stephen Hawking and top scientists
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Alan Turing, the Enigma codebreaker who was convicted of homosexuality in 1952, should receive a posthumous pardon, Professor Stephen Hawking and other leading scientists have urged.
In a letter to the Daily Telegraph, Hawking, the world-renowned physicist, and 10 other signatories say David Cameron should “formally forgive” the mathematician.
The letter comes after Lord Sharkey, a Liberal Democrat peer and one of the signatories, introduced a private member’s bill in the Lords to grant Turing an official pardon this summer.
Other signatories to the letter include Lord Rees, the astronomer royal, Sir Paul Nurse, the head of the Royal Society, and Lady Trumpington, who worked for Turing during the war.
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Turing’s work at Bletchley Park is widely credited with having helped speed the end of the second world war and he is increasingly acknowledged as the “father of the computer”.
Next time the Pope claims homosexuality is a threat to peace in the world, go tell him to take a long walk off a short pier.
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The G.O.P.’s Existential Crisis
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So Republicans have suffered more than an election defeat, they’ve seen the collapse of a decades-long project. And with their grandiose goals now out of reach, they literally have no idea what they want — hence their inability to make specific demands.
It’s a dangerous situation. The G.O.P. is lost and rudderless, bitter and angry, but it still controls the House and, therefore, retains the ability to do a lot of harm, as it lashes out in the death throes of the conservative dream.
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Mexican Drug Smugglers Are Launching Pot Into The U.S. With A Huge Pneumatic Cannon
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When we last checked in on the DIY innovations of Mexican cartel drug smugglers, we found them lobbing four-pound bales of marijuana over the Mexico-Arizona border with a trailer-mounted catapult. But technology never stands still. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents recently found 33 canisters of marijuana in a field on the U.S. side near the point where the Colorado River crosses the U.S.-Mexico border, and they think the pot got there after being launched from a huge pneumatic cannon.
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How fake images change our memory and behaviour
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Doctored images can affect what we eat, how we vote and even our childhood recollections. The question scientists are asking is why there’s nothing we can do to stop it.
Schmidt ‘very proud’ of Google’s tiny tax bill: ‘It’s called capitalism’
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Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt has dismissed criticism over how little corporation tax his company pays, saying it’s just capitalism.
Schmidt is “very proud” of the corporate structure Google set up to divert profits made in European countries, such as the UK, to its firms in the low-tax havens of Ireland and The Netherlands, thus minimising its tax bill.
“We pay lots of taxes; we pay them in the legally prescribed ways,” he told Bloomberg. “I am very proud of the structure that we set up. We did it based on the incentives that the governments offered us to operate.
“It’s called capitalism. We are proudly capitalistic. I’m not confused about this.”
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“Using dubious tactics dubbed the ‘Double Irish’ and the ‘Dutch Sandwich’, Google apparently was able to pay only 3.2 per cent in tax on its overseas profits in 2011 even though most of its sales were in countries with tax rates from 26 to 34 per cent,” the group’s privacy project director John Simpson said in the letter.
I can hear the NRA spokesman saying “See, if those kids were allowed to carry guns, they could have defended themselves”
Jon, have you considered setting up a new category named ‘This week’s Gun Killings’?
Tragic shootings in the US are so common that, these days, it’s only the larger-scale killings that get broad coverage.
Innocent children, inheriting the sins of their metaphorical fathers, I’m sorry to say.
Not the NRA, but close enough:
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Spaceman Spiff made a comment on environmental factors in the China stabbing – I agree: food additives, pesticide residuals, etc. But I would add cultural items to the mix including violent video games, TV shows, and in “certain nation states” (amongst others) that connote the theme that all conflict needs to be resolved through violence. Opinion on heavy video gaming and TV use: I have observed first hand what I would describe as serious issues in certain teens I have known that have been raised with unimpeded TV and video game access. Their maturity level lags their chronological age and their view of reality is greatly distorted. I also submit that the negative results of the toxic mix of these cultural items are significantly amplified in the mind of individuals that have limited outside social inputs to balance and/or counter them. In the case of Mr. Lanza, he was partially home-schooled, his mother was a gun enthusiast (read nut), and he was very withdrawn from outside influence. His mother did not work at the school as initially reported and in fact was equally high strung and perhaps equally withdrawn. What a bad feedback loop. Conjecture on my part, no doubt, but I am not so sure the points described about can be discounted.