The National Weather Service upgraded its flood predictions for Missouri, with several Mississippi River towns expected to see major flooding, meaning the water could reach some homes and businesses and shut down significant roadways. (April 22)
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The National Weather Service upgraded its flood predictions for Missouri, with several Mississippi River towns expected to see major flooding, meaning the water could reach some homes and businesses and shut down significant roadways. (April 22)
Continue reading …Fox talkers interview mom angry at Earth Day song; forget to disclose that she’s a Tea Party activist
April 22, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Fox & Friends interviewed a well-spoken attractive mom this morning who was upset about her first-grader’s participation in an Earth Day program. The children had been taught a song with these lyrics: Recycle, bicycle, don’t you drive by yourself Don’t buy those plastic products on the supermarket shelf. Boycott, petition, let the big business know That if we mess it up here there’s nowhere else we can go. The question Fox talkers and their viewers all want to know: Are these kids being educated or indoctrinated? Rachael Proctor is an attractive, well-spoken woman. In fact, when I saw her interview I wondered if she worked in media somewhere in Tennessee, because she was obviously quite comfortable in the interview with nice, clip-worthy answers at the ready for the questions tossed at her. As it turns out, she does work in media. As the communications director for Tea Party candidate Donn Janes in 2010, she wrote press releases like this one . She also co-hosts a Tea Party radio show with Mark Herr ( FreedomWorks member page ) for the Mid-South Tea Party, and is the President of HelpingOurWarriors.org , a non-profit organization “supported by the generous contributions of individuals, corporations and foundations.” On the MidSouth Tea Party site, she is listed as a steering committee member . Here is her bio as published on the Helping Our Warriors site: As an accomplished realtor and retail manager, Rachael has many skills that are beneficial to Helping Our Warriors. She was a highly successful Realtor in the Phoenix metro area for 4 years. Prior to that, she worked as a manager in the retail industry. Currently, Rachael volunteers all her time as a community organizer with various local groups. She specifically volunteers on outreach and educational committees and is the event coordinator for an annual community Fourth of July celebration. In addition to her leadership skills, Rachael’s exuberance and outgoing personality are major assets for the Helping Our Warriors organization. As the President of our non-profit, Rachael’s responsibilities will include preparing agendas and presiding over executive board meetings, representing our organization’s interests nationally, fund-raising, event coordination, community outreach and office management. Helping Our Warriors is incorporated in Arizona . She is also signatory to a Tenth Amendment lawsuit over the Affordable Care Act ( PDF ). Now, all of this doesn’t mean she didn’t state her honest views in the interview. I’m certain she did. But don’t you think her associations are relevant to the story? Fox presented her as just “an outraged parent”, without mentioning that this particular outraged parent belongs to an organization funded in large part by a large corporation inside the plastics and pollution industries. That would seem to be relevant information if one purports to be presenting a ‘fair and balanced’ story about a parent objecting to what their child is being taught in school, no? Even if we remove the Koch associations, it really does matter that this person worked for a Tea Party candidate and has more than a passing association with them when discussed in the context of whether children are being “indoctrinated or educated,” particularly in light of the Tea Party’s attack on public education. This is why Fox is not news, should not be considered news, and in fact, is a shining example of indoctrination taking the place of education. Update: Oops, looks like Glenn Beck’s site (TheBlaze) picked it up with the same omission .
Continue reading …Fox talkers interview mom angry at Earth Day song; forget to disclose that she’s a Tea Party activist
April 22, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Fox & Friends interviewed a well-spoken attractive mom this morning who was upset about her first-grader’s participation in an Earth Day program. The children had been taught a song with these lyrics: Recycle, bicycle, don’t you drive by yourself Don’t buy those plastic products on the supermarket shelf. Boycott, petition, let the big business know That if we mess it up here there’s nowhere else we can go. The question Fox talkers and their viewers all want to know: Are these kids being educated or indoctrinated? Rachael Proctor is an attractive, well-spoken woman. In fact, when I saw her interview I wondered if she worked in media somewhere in Tennessee, because she was obviously quite comfortable in the interview with nice, clip-worthy answers at the ready for the questions tossed at her. As it turns out, she does work in media. As the communications director for Tea Party candidate Donn Janes in 2010, she wrote press releases like this one . She also co-hosts a Tea Party radio show with Mark Herr ( FreedomWorks member page ) for the Mid-South Tea Party, and is the President of HelpingOurWarriors.org , a non-profit organization “supported by the generous contributions of individuals, corporations and foundations.” On the MidSouth Tea Party site, she is listed as a steering committee member . Here is her bio as published on the Helping Our Warriors site: As an accomplished realtor and retail manager, Rachael has many skills that are beneficial to Helping Our Warriors. She was a highly successful Realtor in the Phoenix metro area for 4 years. Prior to that, she worked as a manager in the retail industry. Currently, Rachael volunteers all her time as a community organizer with various local groups. She specifically volunteers on outreach and educational committees and is the event coordinator for an annual community Fourth of July celebration. In addition to her leadership skills, Rachael’s exuberance and outgoing personality are major assets for the Helping Our Warriors organization. As the President of our non-profit, Rachael’s responsibilities will include preparing agendas and presiding over executive board meetings, representing our organization’s interests nationally, fund-raising, event coordination, community outreach and office management. Helping Our Warriors is incorporated in Arizona . She is also signatory to a Tenth Amendment lawsuit over the Affordable Care Act ( PDF ). Now, all of this doesn’t mean she didn’t state her honest views in the interview. I’m certain she did. But don’t you think her associations are relevant to the story? Fox presented her as just “an outraged parent”, without mentioning that this particular outraged parent belongs to an organization funded in large part by a large corporation inside the plastics and pollution industries. That would seem to be relevant information if one purports to be presenting a ‘fair and balanced’ story about a parent objecting to what their child is being taught in school, no? Even if we remove the Koch associations, it really does matter that this person worked for a Tea Party candidate and has more than a passing association with them when discussed in the context of whether children are being “indoctrinated or educated,” particularly in light of the Tea Party’s attack on public education. This is why Fox is not news, should not be considered news, and in fact, is a shining example of indoctrination taking the place of education. Update: Oops, looks like Glenn Beck’s site (TheBlaze) picked it up with the same omission .
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Jonathan Franzen keeps marijuana in his freezer, author Elif Batuman writes in The Guardian. Batuman, a National Book Critics Circle finalist and the author of “The Posessed,” writes that while in New York around NBCC ceremonies, she attended a dinner thrown by her publisher, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, for its three NBCC finalists: Damon Searles, Jonathan Franzen and herself. When talk between her and her agent turned to who at the dinner might have marijuana, they agreed that Franzen was the most likely candidate. During the exchange, which Batuman outlines below, Franzen admitted that he had marijuana — but it was home in his freezer: I told him that I had loved Freedom, which is true and would have been a great ending point for our exchange. So it’s difficult to articulate what possessed me, at a later, boozier point in the dinner, to ask Franzen whether he had any weed… “Wheat?” Franzen’s agent repeated, frowning. “Why would you need wheat?” “Not wheat – weed.” She stared at me blankly. “Weed,” my agent repeated. “There’s some in my freezer,” Franzen said. “But it’s all the way uptown.” Franzen’s come a long way on drugs since he was a teenager. In his 2006 memoir, “The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History,” he wrote about that he was “not a worldly fourteen-year-old” — meaning that he did not indulge in marijuana: Regarding drugs, I couldn’t help noticing that a lot of kinds at school were getting high to fortify themselves for classes. Missouri schoolyard pot in 1973 was a weak, seedy product, and users had to take so many hits that they came inside reeking of smoke, the way the physical-science room reeked once a year, after the Distillation of Wood. But I was not a worldly fourteen-year-old. I didn’t even know what to call the stuff that kids were smoking. The word “pot” to me had the quotation-marked ring of moms and teacher trying to sound hipper than they really were, which was unpleasantly close to a description of myself. I was determined to say “dope” instead, because that was what my friend Manley said, but this word, too, had a way of losing its cool on my tongue; I wasn’t one hundred percent sure that actual pot-smokers called marijuana “dope,” and the long “o” shriveled in my mouth like a raisin, and the word came out sounding more like “duip.”
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Jonathan Franzen keeps marijuana in his freezer, author Elif Batuman writes in The Guardian. Batuman, a National Book Critics Circle finalist and the author of “The Posessed,” writes that while in New York around NBCC ceremonies, she attended a dinner thrown by her publisher, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, for its three NBCC finalists: Damon Searles, Jonathan Franzen and herself. When talk between her and her agent turned to who at the dinner might have marijuana, they agreed that Franzen was the most likely candidate. During the exchange, which Batuman outlines below, Franzen admitted that he had marijuana — but it was home in his freezer: I told him that I had loved Freedom, which is true and would have been a great ending point for our exchange. So it’s difficult to articulate what possessed me, at a later, boozier point in the dinner, to ask Franzen whether he had any weed… “Wheat?” Franzen’s agent repeated, frowning. “Why would you need wheat?” “Not wheat – weed.” She stared at me blankly. “Weed,” my agent repeated. “There’s some in my freezer,” Franzen said. “But it’s all the way uptown.” Franzen’s come a long way on drugs since he was a teenager. In his 2006 memoir, “The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History,” he wrote about that he was “not a worldly fourteen-year-old” — meaning that he did not indulge in marijuana: Regarding drugs, I couldn’t help noticing that a lot of kinds at school were getting high to fortify themselves for classes. Missouri schoolyard pot in 1973 was a weak, seedy product, and users had to take so many hits that they came inside reeking of smoke, the way the physical-science room reeked once a year, after the Distillation of Wood. But I was not a worldly fourteen-year-old. I didn’t even know what to call the stuff that kids were smoking. The word “pot” to me had the quotation-marked ring of moms and teacher trying to sound hipper than they really were, which was unpleasantly close to a description of myself. I was determined to say “dope” instead, because that was what my friend Manley said, but this word, too, had a way of losing its cool on my tongue; I wasn’t one hundred percent sure that actual pot-smokers called marijuana “dope,” and the long “o” shriveled in my mouth like a raisin, and the word came out sounding more like “duip.”
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[UPDATE: 7:25 p.m.] Android devices have been found to cache location data in a similar manner. — Freaked out that your iPhone may be tracking your every move? So are Senator Al Franken and Representative Ed Markey, who have called on Steve Jobs to explain the situation. Researchers found that iPhones and iPads track and record users’ locations by latitude and longitude, sometimes hundreds of times a day, for up to a year, storing the file in an unencrypted format on the device. “Anyone who gains access to this single file could likely determine the location of a user’s home, the businesses he frequents, the doctors he visits, the schools his children attend, and the trips he has taken-over the past months or even a year,” Franken wrote in his letter to Steve Jobs. Franken highlights some of the potential dangers of this system, noting someone in possession of a stolen iPhone or iPad could “easily download and map out a customer’s precise movements for months at a time.” The senator also points out that there’s no indication the software can tell the difference between minors and adults meaning that “the millions of children and teenagers who use iPhone or iPad devices also risk having their location collected and compromised.” Franken is joined by Representative Ed Markey in calling for clarity. Both want to know why Apple is collecting this information, how it is collected, what it is used for and who it’s been shown to. They also want to know why consumers haven’t been told their devices are recording their movements, and why the information has not been encrypted. Franken asks, “Does Apple believe that this conduct is permissible under the terms of its privacy policy?” While Franken has asked for a “prompt” response, Markey was more direct: He would like answers within 15 business days.
Continue reading …[UPDATE: 7:25 p.m.] Android devices have been found to cache location data in a similar manner. — Freaked out that your iPhone may be tracking your every move? So are Senator Al Franken and Representative Ed Markey, who have called on Steve Jobs to explain the situation. Researchers found that iPhones and iPads track and record users’ locations by latitude and longitude, sometimes hundreds of times a day, for up to a year, storing the file in an unencrypted format on the device. “Anyone who gains access to this single file could likely determine the location of a user’s home, the businesses he frequents, the doctors he visits, the schools his children attend, and the trips he has taken-over the past months or even a year,” Franken wrote in his letter to Steve Jobs. Franken highlights some of the potential dangers of this system, noting someone in possession of a stolen iPhone or iPad could “easily download and map out a customer’s precise movements for months at a time.” The senator also points out that there’s no indication the software can tell the difference between minors and adults meaning that “the millions of children and teenagers who use iPhone or iPad devices also risk having their location collected and compromised.” Franken is joined by Representative Ed Markey in calling for clarity. Both want to know why Apple is collecting this information, how it is collected, what it is used for and who it’s been shown to. They also want to know why consumers haven’t been told their devices are recording their movements, and why the information has not been encrypted. Franken asks, “Does Apple believe that this conduct is permissible under the terms of its privacy policy?” While Franken has asked for a “prompt” response, Markey was more direct: He would like answers within 15 business days.
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Type: CE Title: Belkin Conserve Switch F7C01110q AV Energy-Saving AV Surge with Remote See all customer reviews Product Description: Surge,PRT,10OT,1800J Features: Control power to your home entertainment system with a single click. The wireless remote switch lets you shut off power-including standby power – to up to eight devices at once Two Always-On Outlets stay on for devices that need continuous power, like your DVR or cable box. Place remote on a desk or shelf, or mount it on the wall – 60 foot range; line of sight not required Ships in Certified Frustration-Free Packaging See the details
Continue reading …Ford makes list of the 25 most EV-friendly cities, still likes selling cars to residents elsewhere
April 22, 2011 No Comment
So, you saw a Volt , Leaf , or Focus Electric and were convinced to go green, but are unsure whether your local municipality is as eco-friendly as you are. Well, Ford has done your homework for you (without even demanding your lunch money in return), and identified the “25 Most Electric Vehicle-Ready Cities” in the US. What makes a metropolis worthy of such status in the eyes of the Blue Oval boys? A utilities structure that allows off-peak charging, for starters, plus reduced red tape for getting your EV permits and inspections, incentives for offsetting up-front customer costs, urban plans for charging infrastructure , and EV-friendly city advisory committees. If your town’s lacking in those areas, perhaps it’s time to give your city counsel a ring — part of being an eco-warrior is political activism, right? PR’s after the break. Continue reading Ford makes list of the 25 most EV-friendly cities, still likes selling cars to residents elsewhere Ford makes list of the 25 most EV-friendly cities, still likes selling cars to residents elsewhere originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Apr 2011 20:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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