Wednesday 04-20-16

Does this surprise anyone, really

Big Science is broken

Science is broken.
That's the thesis of a must-read article in First Things magazine, in which William A. Wilson accumulates evidence that a lot of published research is false. But that's not even the worst part.
Advocates of the existing scientific research paradigm usually smugly declare that while some published conclusions are surely false, the scientific method has "self-correcting mechanisms" that ensure that, eventually, the truth will prevail. Unfortunately for all of us, Wilson makes a convincing argument that those self-correcting mechanisms are broken.
For starters, there's a "replication crisis" in science. This is particularly true in the field of experimental psychology, where far too many prestigious psychology studies simply can't be reliably replicated. But it's not just psychology. In 2011, the pharmaceutical company Bayer looked at 67 blockbuster drug discovery research findings published in prestigious journals, and found that three-fourths of them weren't right. Another study of cancer research found that only 11 percent of preclinical cancer research could be reproduced. Even in physics, supposedly the hardest and most reliable of all sciences, Wilson points out that "two of the most vaunted physics results of the past few years — the announced discovery of both cosmic inflation and gravitational waves at the BICEP2 experiment in Antarctica, and the supposed discovery of superluminal neutrinos at the Swiss-Italian border — have now been retracted, with far less fanfare than when they were first published."
What explains this? In some cases, human error. Much of the research world exploded in rage and mockery when it was found out that a highly popularized finding by the economists Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhardt linking higher public debt to lower growth was due to an Excel error. Steven Levitt, of Freakonomics fame, largely built his career on a paper arguing that abortion led to lower crime rates 20 years later because the aborted babies were disproportionately future criminals. Two economists went through the painstaking work of recoding Levitt's statistical analysis — and found a basic arithmetic error.
Then there is outright fraud. In a 2011 survey of 2,000 research psychologists, over half admitted to selectively reporting those experiments that gave the result they were after. The survey also concluded that around 10 percent of research psychologists have engaged in outright falsification of data, and more than half have engaged in "less brazen but still fraudulent behavior such as reporting that a result was statistically significant when it was not, or deciding between two different data analysis techniques after looking at the results of each and choosing the more favorable."
Then there's everything in between human error and outright fraud: rounding out numbers the way that looks better, checking a result less thoroughly when it comes out the way you like, and so forth.

                             

Still, shouldn't the mechanism of independent checking and peer review mean the wheat, eventually, will be sorted from the chaff?
Well, maybe not. There's actually good reason to believe the exact opposite is happening.
The peer review process doesn't work. Most observers of science guffaw at the so-called "Sokal affair," where a physicist named Alan Sokal submitted a gibberish paper to an obscure social studies journal, which accepted it. Less famous is a similar hoodwinking of the very prestigious British Medical Journal, to which a paper with eight major errors was submitted. Not a single one of the 221 scientists who reviewed the paper caught all the errors in it, and only 30 percent of reviewers recommended that the paper be rejected. Amazingly, the reviewers who were warned that they were in a study and that the paper might have problems with it found no more flaws than the ones who were in the dark.
This is serious. In the preclinical cancer study mentioned above, the authors note that "some non-reproducible preclinical papers had spawned an entire field, with hundreds of secondary publications that expanded on elements of the original observation, but did not actually seek to confirm or falsify its fundamental basis."
This gets into the question of the sociology of science. It's a familiar bromide that "science advances one funeral at a time." The greatest scientific pioneers were mavericks and weirdos. Most valuable scientific work is done by youngsters. Older scientists are more likely to be invested, both emotionally and from a career and prestige perspective, in the regnant paradigm, even though the spirit of science is the challenge of regnant paradigms.

Why, then, is our scientific process so structured as to reward the old and the prestigious? Government funding bodies and peer review bodies are inevitably staffed by the most hallowed (read: out of touch) practitioners in the field. The tenure process ensures that in order to further their careers, the youngest scientists in a given department must kowtow to their elders' theories or run a significant professional risk. Peer review isn't any good at keeping flawed studies out of major papers, but it can be deadly efficient at silencing heretical views.
All of this suggests that the current system isn't just showing cracks, but is actually broken, and in need of major reform. There is very good reason to believe that much scientific research published today is false, there is no good way to sort the wheat from the chaff, and, most importantly, that the way the system is designed ensures that this will continue being the case.
As Wilson writes:

Even if self-correction does occur and theories move strictly along a lifecycle from less to more accurate, what if the unremitting flood of new, mostly false, results pours in faster? Too fast for the sclerotic, compromised truth-discerning mechanisms of science to operate? The result could be a growing body of true theories completely overwhelmed by an ever-larger thicket of baseless theories, such that the proportion of true scientific beliefs shrinks even while the absolute number of them continues to rise. Borges' Library of Babel contained every true book that could ever be written, but it was useless because it also contained every false book, and both true and false were lost within an ocean of nonsense. [First Things]

This is a big problem, one that can't be solved with a column. But the first step is admitting you have a problem.
Science, at heart an enterprise for mavericks, has become an enterprise for careerists. It's time to flip the career track for science on its head. Instead of waiting until someone's best years are behind her to award her academic freedom and prestige, abolish the PhD and grant fellowships to the best 22-year-olds, giving them the biggest budgets and the most freedoms for the first five or 10 years of their careers. Then, with only few exceptions, shift them away from research to teaching or some other harmless activity. Only then can we begin to fix Big Science.

http://theweek.com/articles/618141/big-science-broken

Report shows 77.5 million people will not pay tax

By Kelly Sloan on April 18, 2016

   

(TRUNEWS) Tax day is here, and many Americans are scrambling to get their paperwork filed. But 77.5 million people have nothing to worry about- because they will not have to pay.

According to data from the Tax Policy Center, 45 percent of Americans will not owe federal tax because they have no income.

The non-partisan research group also reports the top 1 percent of taxpayers pay a higher rate than any other group, and their taxes are about seven times higher than those in the bottom 50 percent.

The bottom 40 percent usually get money from the government.

image: http://www.trunews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/r-476-300x200.jpeg

A general view of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) building in Washington May 27, 2015. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

People who earn six figures or more paid 79.5 percent of the individual income taxes in 2014.  They contributed four-fifths of the total amount collected, but only 16 percent of the number of returns sent to the IRS, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

“Liberals say that high earners pay a high share of taxes only because they have high incomes,” explains Chris Edwards, a tax policy expert at the Cato Institute. “But high earners also pay much higher tax rates than everyone else. For example, Congressional Budget Office data show that the average federal income tax rate for the top fifth of households is 14 percent, but the average rate for the middle fifth is only 2 percent.”

http://www.trunews.com/report-shows-77-5-million-people-will-not-pay-tax/

Wednesday 1-14-15

Just too much common sense


Charlie Hebdo Attack Demonstrates That Laws Don't Disarm Terrorists (But Screw the Rest of Us) 
France's gun controls mean only that weapons are unavailable to the innocent, leaving them at the mercy of predators.

Nobody yet knows exactly where the terrorists who murdered 12 people at Charlie Hebdo, a policewoman, and four hostages at a kosher market got their funding, backing, and equipment—French authorities and their colleagues elsewhere are investigating that as I write. But one question that appeared early in the media was about the "worrying level of firepower" brandished by terrorists in a country with strict firearms laws. Just how did the attackers acquire AK-style weapons in a country where gun ownership is tightly controlled by law, and where possession of handguns and semiautomatics is almost off-limits to civilians?
The obvious answer is that they didn't obey the law. They were terrorists with radical connections, criminal backgrounds and, no doubt, access to the black markets that everywhere make available the things people want that governments don't want them to have.
"The French black market for weapons has been inundated with eastern European war artillery and arms," Philippe Capon, the head of UNSA police union, told Bloomberg. "They are everywhere in France." Capon put the black market price of AK-47s at between 1,000 and 1,500 euros.
This squares with what the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey found in its 2003 annual report. As of that year, France had 2.8 million registered firearms, but an estimated 15 million to 17 million owned illegally. Smuggled guns "flow largely from east to west" in Europe the report found, fueled by simmering distrust of authorities in countries that suffered communist rule, as well as a mother lode of old Soviet weapons abandoned by collapsed regimes—weapons like AK-47s.

That's the supply side. The demand side likely consists of individuals who wants arms for themselves, criminals, and of course, terrorists. The Christian Science Monitor notes that raids by French police in October "found hundreds of illegal arms stashed away. The seized caches included machine guns, assault rifles, and automatic pistols."
This is an old story in all areas of life involving prohibitions, from weapons to drugs, from sex to forbidden literature. If people want something, somebody else will earn a buck by making it available. Supply will meet demand.
That's not to say that France's laws had no impact. It's impossible to know whether anybody at Charlie Hebdo or at the market could have successfully taken advantage of an opportunity to defend against murderers who didn't care about statutes and penalties. What we do know is that, under the law, the victims had no chance to find out. They had to settle for being legally disarmed when their assailants were not so encumbered.

http://reason.com/blog/2015/01/12/as-the-charlie-hebdo-attack-demonstrated

Tuesday 01-30-13

Going to be a little slow at blogging work is interfering, lol

The hypocrites are at it again, they shut down coal plants all over but the ones they use for them.

DC Power Plant Continues to Burn Coal, Environmentalists Fume

Washington, DC local residents and environmentalists gathered at a meeting room in a Methodist Church on Capitol Hill last Thursday to discuss their dissatisfaction with the Capitol Hill cogeneration plant.
The plant, which was completely coal fired for almost one hundred years, exclusively heats the capitol. However, since 2007, according to the Architect of the Capitol (AOC), the plant began to move from burning primarily coal to burning mostly natural gas--but not entirely. Coal is still burned at the plant, but the rate of its reduction is not fast enough for local environmentalists and lawmakers.
In March of 2009, anti-coal protesters blocked the gates of the nearly century old Capitol Power Plant for nearly four hours. No one was arrested. By May of that year, then Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D – CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D – NV) announced that the plant would switch over to natural gas as its sole energy source. The promise was made in large part as an effort from Democrats to limit carbon emissions in the nation’s capitol.
However, despite the Democratic leaders agreeing in 2009 that the AOC could still use coal in three particular circumstances, green advocates claim the the AOC is not doing enough to completely eradicate coal from the capitol plant.
In an e-mail statement to Breitbart News, the AOC wrote:

In 2009, the Architect of the Capitol worked with Leader Pelosi and Senator Reid to address the request that the Capitol Power Plant move away from using coal. With Congress’s support, the Architect of the Capitol has made significant investments and improvements at the Plant over the past several years. However, the Architect must maintain the capability to potentially use some coal to ensure that it can provide uninterrupted service to Congress, and outlined 3 instances when coal would need to be used:

• If there is an emergency and natural gas supplies are interrupted;
• Abnormally cold conditions place higher than normal demands on the Plant;
• Equipment outages or maintenance on the gas boilers require use of backup fuel.

The Leaders agreed to these terms, and since 2009, the Capitol Power Plant has worked within these terms, and has relied on natural gas as its primary fuel source. In addition, the AOC continues to provide information to the Leaders about annual fuel use at the Plant.
In Fiscal Year 2012, the Plant relied on natural gas for 92% of its energy needs. By comparison, in 2005, the Plant relied on natural gas 42% of the time.
The AOC has identified the construction of a cogeneration plant as the most environmentally and economically beneficial way to meet its goal to use natural gas 100% of the time, and Congress has been supportive of this project.
After more than 100 years in operation, significant investment is needed to replace aging infrastructure and to install new, energy-efficient equipment in the Plant, and implementing cogeneration will allow the Plant to discontinue the use of its 60-year-old, less energy efficient coal boilers.

Washington DC Councilman Tommy Wells sent a letter to Stephen Ours, Chief of the Permitting Branch of DC Air and Quality Division, to oppose "any permits that would allow the Capitol Power Plant to continue, and potentially expand pollution emissions." Wells references the Pelosi and Reid push to rid the plant of coal four years ago saying, "In 2009, positive steps were taken to reduce coal use at the plant. However, it appears many of those advances were undermined and coal use is as prominent as ever."
The DC Chapter’s Sierra Club stated late last week that “recently, the Defense Logistics Agency solicited bids for 20,000 tons of coal for delivery to the Plant in 2013. This comes to more than 220,000 pounds of coal burned per day during heating season.”
The Sierra Club and Washington DC Councilman Tommy Wells claim the emissions from the portion of the plant will cause “significant health hazards to children in the area,” Wells said in his opposition letter to Ours.
Advocates for coal energy disagree, saying that governmental entities like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) "exaggerate" coal energy's "health risks," and that the EPA "relies on dubious co-benefits to make the utility MACT rule look reasonable." The MACT standard is, according to the EPA, "a level of control that was introduced by Title III of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments."
In a letter, the AOC responded to complaints from environmentalists:

While the AOC has reduced coal use at the CPP over the past several years, it cannot cease using coal until the new cogeneration plant is constructed. As a result, the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) secures a certain quantity of coal for the AOC should any of the three circumstances listed above occur.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/01/28/DC-Power-Plant-Continues-To-Burn-Coal-To-Dismay-Of-Local-Environmentalists

Army drill scares residents on Houston's south side

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- The sight of Army helicopters and the sound of gunfire created a lot of concern Monday afternoon in one Houston neighborhood.
  We received a lot of phones calls, Tweets and Facebook posts from worried neighbors, wondering what was going on.
SkyEye 13 HD was over the south side where at first look, it appeared there was a massive SWAT scene happening.
With military helicopters flying above her southeast Houston neighborhood, Frances Jerrals didn't know what to think.
"When you see this, you think the worst. When you hear this, you think the worst," Jerrals said.
And so, she passed along her concern.
"She told me 'don't come home it sounds like we're in a war zone. Guns, shooting, helicopters flying around the house,'" Isaac Robertson Jr. said.
The U.S. Army along with other agencies took over the old Carnegie Vanguard High School near Scott and Airport. There were armed men in fatigues, plenty of weapons and what many thought were real live rounds
"I felt like I was in a warzone." Jerrals said. "It was nonstop. I was terrified."
Turns out, it was a multi-agency training drill that Jerrals wished would have come with warning.
"They could have done a better job in notifying the neighborhood," Jerrals said.
The Army did not give any details of what the training is for. Some people we spoke to needed no explanation.
"If it's to protect our kids, I'm all for it," neighbor Glenn DeWitt said.

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=897131

And an email from a friend asked a good question, if it is ok for them to have personal defense, but it is not for us?

Homeland Security Wants 7,000 AR-15s For “Personal Defense”

While the feds are busy trying to find ways to ban semi-automatic weapons for civilian use, they’ve been buying them for themselves. New York State Senator Greg Hall, a Republican, issued a press release last week bringing this issue to light

General Service Administration (GSA) request for proposal (RFP) on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security and member components such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seeking over 7,000 AR-15’s and matching 30 round clips.”

So, what’s the feds’ excuse? Well, these AR-15s are for “personal defense,” particularly for “use in close quarters.” Apparently, they’re really good for that. So, why can’t American “civilians” have them for personal defense use in close quarters as well? Because although all people are equal, some are more equal than others

Homeland Security continues to buy up all the ammo and guns while demonizing gun owners. They’ve already declared protests to be forms of low-level terrorism. So all those people marching in protest against gun control measures were committing low-level acts of terrorism according to DHS. But what about all those people protesting in favor of gun control? Those are just people exercising their 1st Amendment rights.

Read more: http://politicaloutcast.com/2013/01/homeland-security-wants-7000-ar-15s-for-personal-defense/#ixzz2JOR1JZuG

Friday 01-18-13

Here is a kind of fun site, could be good for home schoolers also

Usefulcharts.com: Charts...useful ones

Remember that time in junior high school where you had to memorize all the classifications of animals?
Yeah, there were classes and phyla, kingdoms and domains. You studied really hard, made flash cards and aced that baby - followed immediately by a complete mental purge of any and all animal classification that deviated from "cat" and "dog."
But if you want to remember that information, no worries: UsefulCharts has you covered. A quick glance at the Classification of Animals & Living Things chart and you'll have a renewed understanding of the entire Eukaryote Domain and be impressing your friends with knowledge of the Sarcopterygii Class.
According to UsefulCharts creator Matt Baker, the site is created for the "visual learner."
In a politically fueled place like D.C., you wouldn't be caught dead stumbling over the Political Spectrum. But if you're more interested in the politics of our northern neighbors, UsefulCharts has a - you guessed it - chart for that.
What I also found interesting was UsefulCharts' bizarre choices. A personal favorite: Muppet Voices Chart. Did you know that Miss Piggy, Fozzie, Animal, Bert, Grover, Cookie Monster and Yoda (not a Muppet, know I) were all voiced by the same person? I didn't, until I read the chart.
Curious about personality? The Myers-Briggs Chart outlines the various types of personalities, with descriptions. There's also a chart for mental disorders.
While the charts are free to view, downloadable copies for print cost $1.95. Once downloaded, Baker says an unlimited number of copies can be printed and distributed as long as they're free. Posting onto public websites is prohibited, however.
If you love a chart and want something fancier, some are available as posters.
"The goal is to present useful information in the form of charts so that students, teachers or simply those interested in increasing their general knowledge can absorb the information quickly and visually," says Baker in his FAQ section.
Even if you aren't cramming for a test or trying to impress friends with your vast knowledge of Hindu Gods & Goddesses, UsefulCharts is just that ... useful.
Because even though those in the Proboscidean Order never forget, sometimes we do.

http://wtop.com/262/3191514/Usefulchartscom-Chartsuseful-ones

U.S. Supreme Court sinks Florida city over floating home

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When is a floating home not a vessel? The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday told a Florida city its argument did not hold water, and that an abode on water was nothing but a home.

In a 7-2 decision, the court ruled that a gray, two-story home that its owner said was permanently moored to a Riviera Beach, Florida, marina was not a vessel, depriving the city of power under U.S. maritime law to seize and destroy it.

Justice Stephen Breyer said nothing about former Chicago trader and Marine pilot Fane Lozman's home that would have led a "reasonable observer" to conclude it could be used to transport people or things over water, but for the fact that it floated.

"Not every floating structure is a 'vessel'," Breyer wrote for the majority. "To state the obvious, a wooden washtub, a plastic dishpan, a swimming platform on pontoons, a large fishing net, a door taken off its hinges, or Pinocchio (when inside the whale) are not 'vessels'."

Riviera Beach, near Palm Beach, had seized Lozman's home after he resisted a court order that he pay $3,040 in dockage fees, and destroyed it after being unable to sell it.

Tuesday's decision reversed a lower-court ruling upholding the fees, and clears the way for Lozman to seek compensation.

Pamela Ryan, the city attorney for Riviera Beach, said in a statement she was disappointed with the ruling but accepts it, and that the city will revise its marina policies.

Lozman, 51, cheered the decision. "I feel like I'm floating on a cloud," he said in a phone interview. "I have been fighting this city for 6-1/2 years and it is humbling to get a reversal."

He said he now lives in North Bay Village, a suburb of Miami, and owns a financial software display company.

The definition of "vessel" is particularly important, given that admiralty law imposes different obligations on owners with respect to such things as staffing and taxation.

It is also a victory for the casino industry, which in court papers argued that more than 60 riverboat casinos should not be subject to U.S. maritime laws designed to protect seamen, on top of state laws to license and regulate the gaming business.

The decision limits special rules and remedies of maritime law to matters that "genuinely involve maritime commerce and transportation," Jeffrey Fisher, a Stanford University law professor who represented Lozman, said in a phone interview. "That something floats and might be towed from Point A to Point B does not mean those rules and remedies should apply."

COURT SEEKS CONSISTENCY

Lozman bought the 60-by-12 foot home in 2002. Four years later, he towed it to a Riviera Beach marina, where he kept it docked.

Although he was able to move the home in this manner, Lozman said it should not be covered by maritime law because it lacked the usual seafaring features such as a motor and GPS device, and needed land-based sewer lines and an extension cord for power.

The legal battle started after Lozman resisted new rules governing houseboats at his marina and opposed a proposed $2.4 billion luxury redevelopment of the marina.

In his opinion for the court, Breyer said the decision was consistent with the laws of California and Washington that also treat structures like Lozman's as land-based homes.

"Consistency of interpretation of related state and federal laws is a virtue" because it makes the law easier to understand and follow, Breyer said.

Joining Breyer's opinion were Chief Justice John Roberts, and Associate Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Anthony Kennedy, dissented, in the term's first dissenting votes from a full court opinion. Sotomayor objected to the "reasonable observer" standard adopted by the majority.

The case is Lozman v. City of Riviera Beach, Florida, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 11-626.

http://news.yahoo.com/supreme-court-says-floating-home-not-vessel-154307160--finance.html

Writing An Awesome Letter To A 7-Year Old, And Gaining A Lifetime Customer For LEGO

Customer service is without doubt a huge arrow in the marketing quiver, and a smart customer service representative is worth his or her weight in gold. I was reminded of that again reading this story about LEGO.

Seven-year-old Luka Apps spent his Christmas money on the LEGO Ninjago Ultra Sonic Raider set. Against his father’s advice, young Luka took his newly aquired Jay ZX with him when they went shopping. And then, disaster struck: the figure went missing, never to be seen again.

Luka decided to write a letter to the folks at LEGO asking for a replacement:

Hello,

My name is Luka Apps and I am seven years old.
With all my money I got for Christmas I bought the Ninjago kit of the Ultrasonic Raider. The number is 9449. It is really good.
My Daddy just took me to Sainsburys and told me to leave the people at home but I took them and I lost Jay ZX at the shop as it fell out of my coat.
I am really upset I have lost him. Daddy said to send you a email to see if you will send me another one.
I promise I won’t take him to the shop again if you can.
~Luka

A short time later, Luka received a reply from Richard, a LEGO customer service representative. Richard wrote that he had spoken to Sensei Wu, a master from the Ninjago line.

Luka,
I told Sensei Wu that losing your Jay mini figure was purely an accident and that you would never ever let it happen ever again.
He told me to tell you, ‘Luka, your father seems like a very wise man. You must always protect your Ninjago mini figures like the dragons protect the Weapons of Spinjitzu!’
Sensei Wu also told me it was okay if I sent you a new Jay and told me it would be okay if I included something extra for you because anyone that saves their Christmas money to buy the Ultrasonic Raider must be a really big Ninjago fan.
So, I hope you enjoy your Jay mini figure with all his weapons. You will actually have the only Jay mini figure that combines 3 different Jays into one! I am also going to send you a bad guy for him to fight! Just remember, what Sensei Wu said: keep your mini figures protected like the Weapons of Spinjitzu! And of course, always listen to your Dad. 

So, I hope you enjoy your Jay mini figure with all his weapons. You will actually have the only Jay mini figure that combines 3 different Jays into one! I am also going to send you a bad guy for him to fight! Just remember, what Sensei Wu said: keep your mini figures protected like the Weapons of Spinjitzu! And of course, always listen to your Dad.

As Richard’s letter made its way into social media and generated tremendous amount of publicity for LEGO, the company earned scores of brand evangelists and at least one lifelong customer.

All because of one very nice Ninja warrior in its customer service department.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/avidan/2013/01/14/writing-an-awesome-letter-to-a-7-year-old-and-gaining-a-lifetime-customer-for-lego/?utm_campaign=forbestwittersf&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

Saturday 06-09-12

Cool Tool


I would say good for him, i wish him the best.

Iowa NAACP leader quits over same-sex marriage flap

DES MOINES — A prominent leader in the Iowa/Nebraska branch of the NAACP — the country’s oldest civil rights group — announced today that he is resigning as branch president and a national board member in the wake of the national organization’s decision to endorse marriage between people of the same gender.



The Rev. Keith Ratliff Sr. of the Maple Street Missionary Baptist Church in Des Moines issued a statement saying he was stepping down from the NAACP national board and as Iowa/Nebraska state conference president “due to the NAACP’s position and support of same-sex marriage.

“I want to thank the NAACP for the privilege to humbly serve in such an organization and thank all those I had the privilege to work with in the states of Iowa, Nebraska and throughout the country,” Ratliff said in the statement. He was unavailable for further comment.


Ratliff has been an outspoken critic of same-sex marriage rights and has spoken at Statehouse rallies seeking an amendment to the Iowa Constitution to undo a controversial, landmark state Supreme Court ruling in April 2009 that gave legal status to civil marriages involving same-gender couples. The proposed constitutional amendment would define marriage in Iowa as only between one man and one woman.

Earlier this year, the national board of directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People voted to support marriage equality.

During a Statehouse rally in March 2011, Ratliff said his support for traditional marriage was biblically based, adding, “This isn’t a private interpretation, a Burger King religion, and by that I mean a ‘have it your way’ religion.”

http://qctimes.com/news/local/iowa-naacp-leader-quits-over-same-sex-marriage-flap/article_ce71937a-afec-11e1-96dc-0019bb2963f4.html


Feds plan to chop down Idaho man’s $14,000 treehouse





Tremain Albright has spent more than $14,000 building and renovating a treehouse along the Kootenai River in Bonners Ferry, Idaho. But the Army Corps of Engineers says the house must be torn down or the city could lose more than $128,000 in federal funding.



KTVB reports that the Army Corps of Engineers says the house is too close to a water levy in the river and could damage the levy if the tree were to collapse.


"It's a sad day, I'm not real happy," Albright told the station. "It's very special. There's probably nothing else like it … within the state of Idaho."

Albright says the money he spent on the treehouse was used converting it into a guesthouse, and he had received a special variance exemption back in 2007 that he thought was permanent. The Army Corps of Engineers will most likely cut down the treehouse on June 15.

"I still feel like this is just an action of big government," Tremain said. "We were totally helpless. The city's helpless, and they are pretty much held under the gun."


http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/feds-plan-chop-down-idaho-man-14k-tree-201209155.html

..

Tuesday 10-11-11

Nothing really new here, it is just a natural outgrowth of the DMV around the country switching to video to capture your likeness for your divers license. They have were they want you.

FBI to launch nationwide facial recognition service
By Aliya Sternstein 10/07/2011

The FBI by mid-January will activate a nationwide facial recognition service in select states that will allow local police to identify unknown subjects in photos, bureau officials told Nextgov.

The federal government is embarking on a multiyear, $1 billion dollar overhaul of the FBI's existing fingerprint database to more quickly and accurately identify suspects, partly through applying other biometric markers, such as iris scans and voice recordings.

Often law enforcement authorities will "have a photo of a person and for whatever reason they just don't know who it is [but they know] this is clearly the missing link to our case," said Nick Megna, a unit chief at the FBI's criminal justice information services division. The new facial recognition service can help provide that missing link by retrieving a list of mug shots ranked in order of similarity to the features of the subject in the photo.

Today, an agent would have to already know the name of an individual to pull up the suspect's mug shot from among the 10 million shots stored in the bureau's existing Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Using the new Next-Generation Identification system that is under development, law enforcement analysts will be able to upload a photo of an unknown person; choose a desired number of results from two to 50 mug shots; and, within 15 minutes, receive identified mugs to inspect for potential matches. Users typically will request 20 candidates, Megna said. The service does not provide a direct match.

Michigan, Washington, Florida and North Carolina will participate in a test of the new search tool this winter before it is offered to criminal justice professionals across the country in 2014 as part of NGI. The project, which was awarded to Lockheed Martin Corp. in 2008, already has upgraded the FBI's fingerprint matching service.

Local authorities have the choice to file mug shots with the FBI as part of the booking process. The bureau expects its collection of shots to rival its repository of 70 million fingerprints once more officers are aware of the facial search's capabilities.

Thomas E. Bush III, who helped develop NGI's system requirements when he served as assistant director of the CJIS division between 2005 and 2009, said, "The idea was to be able to plug and play with these identifiers and biometrics." Law enforcement personnel saw value in facial recognition and the technology was maturing, said the 33-year FBI veteran who now serves as a private consultant.

NGI's incremental construction seems to align with the White House's push to deploy new information technology in phases so features can be scrapped if they don't meet expectations or run over budget.

But immigrant rights groups have raised concerns that the Homeland Security Department, which exchanges digital prints with the FBI, will abuse the new facial recognition component. Currently, a controversial DHS immigrant fingerprinting program called Secure Communities runs FBI prints from booked offenders against the department's IDENT biometric database to check whether they are in the country illegally. Homeland Security officials say they extradite only the most dangerous aliens, including convicted murderers and rapists. But critics say the FBI-DHS print swapping ensnares as many foreigners as possible, including those whose charges are minor or are ultimately dismissed.

Megna said Homeland Security is not part of the facial recognition pilot. But, Bush said in the future NGI's data, including the photos, will be accessible by Homeland Security's IDENT.

The planned addition of facial searches worries Sunita Patel, a staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, who said, "Any database of personal identity information is bound to have mistakes. And with the most personal immutable traits like our facial features and fingerprints, the public can't afford a mistake."

In addition, Patel said she is concerned about the involvement of local police in information sharing for federal immigration enforcement purposes. "The federal government is using local cops to create a massive surveillance system," she said.

Bush said, "We do have the capability to search against each other's systems," but added, "if you don't come to the attention of law enforcement you don't have anything to fear from these systems."

Other civil liberties advocates questioned whether the facial recognition application would retrieve mug shots of those who have simply been arrested. "It might be appropriate to have nonconvicted people out of that system," said Jim Harper, director of information policy at the libertarian Cato Institute. FBI officials declined to comment on the recommendation.

Harper also noted large-scale searches may generate a lot of false positives, or incorrect matches. Facial recognition "is more accurate with a Google or a Facebook, because they will have anywhere from a half-dozen to a dozen pictures of an individual, whereas I imagine the FBI has one or two mug shots," he said.

FBI officials would not disclose the name of the search product or the vendor, but said they gained insights on the technique's accuracy by studying research from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

In responding to concerns about the creation of a Big Brother database for tracking innocent Americans, Megna said the system will not alter the FBI's authorities or the way it conducts business. "This doesn't change or create any new exchanges of data," he said. "It only provides [law enforcement] with a new service to determine what photos are of interest to them."

In 2008, the FBI released a privacy impact assessment summarizing its appraisal of controls in place to ensure compliance with federal privacy regulations. Megna said that, during meetings with the CJIS Advisory Policy Board and the National Crime Prevention and Privacy Compact Council, "we haven't gotten a whole lot of pushback on the photo capability."

The FBI has an elaborate system of checks and balances to guard fingerprints, palm prints, mug shots and all manner of criminal history data, he said.

"This is not something where we want to collect a bunch of surveillance film" and enter it in the system, Megna said. "That would be useless to us. It would be useless to our users."

http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20111007_6100.php?oref=rss

This is what i was reffering to last week. It is almost sickening watching politicans, play up to or denounce these riots. It is amazing they we almost on polar opposite sides when it came to the tea party gatherings (protests). But the Tea Party protestors were not destructive of property and were not jailed. Amazing.

Mike Krieger: "Rebellion Has Arrived In America"

The Bill of Rights is a literal and absolute document. The
First Amendment doesn't say you have a right to speak out unless the government
has a 'compelling interest' in censoring the Internet. The Second Amendment
doesn't say you have the right to keep and bear arms until some madman plants a
bomb. The Fourth Amendment doesn't say you have the right to be secure from
search and seizure unless some FBI agent thinks you fit the profile of a
terrorist. The government has no right to interfere with any of these freedoms
under any circumstances.

- Harry Browne

The inherent right in the people to reform their government,
I do not deny; and they have another right, and that is to resist
unconstitutional laws without overturning the government.

- Daniel Webster

It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an
irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.

- Samuel Adams

Rebellion Has Arrived in America

As most of you know, I spend almost as much time studying social changes and geopolitics happening around the world as I do studying markets. While carefully observing those areas are always important to a macro investor such as myself, when you are smack in the middle of a Fourth Turning they take on an increased level of importance. What has shielded the U.S. from a lot of the social strife sweeping the rest of the globe at the moment has been the U.S. dollar’s reserve status since this allows us to print seemingly infinite amounts of paper dollars and shove them down the throats of the rest of the world for their resources. This keeps the populace fat, happy and most importantly asleep and apathetic. Well I am pleased to announce that those days are OVER. The American populace is now in the very beginnings of a state of open peaceful rebellion against the criminal oligarchic mafia that runs the nation through fraud and corruption. The status quo is likely to become increasingly defensive as a result and may lash out aggressively like a cornered rat, but they cannot and will not win. They can only really win when they own your mind and that battle has already been lost. Six months from now the state of rebellion will have moved from just beneath to the surface to the forefront of everyone’s mind. It will be a peaceful and constitutional rebellion and it will end with new ways of doing things, more freedoms and a very long road toward rebuilding a safe, fair, free and localized society once TPTB’s prison planet grid of control has been torn down forever.

Occupy Wall Street

I will be the first to admit that I faded the whole idea of this “Occupy Wall Street” protest. I had already seen several failed attempts at protest in NYC come and go and I just sadly assumed the spirit of that once great city had died forever. I am extraordinarily happy to report that I was wrong. When I watched some video of police brutality at NYC protests this weekend I was stunned. Not because the cops acted like some mercenary storm trooper thugs, but because this protest that has started the week before still had momentum! Check out this link regarding what is going on. It has two must watch videos. http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=194965 The first one already has over 400k watches on youtube. This is the spark I have been waiting for and I am pleased beyond belief that it happened in Manhattan right where it should. How about this appearance of Cornel West at the protest on Tuesday. http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/09/cornel-west-at-occupy-wall-str... I am proud of my old home today. This is a big deal. The serfs are coming together. Keep it up.

Most of you reading this right now are thinking that this is interesting but he is exaggerating and this will blow over. I am here to assure you that it is not and this whole thing is about to grow exponentially as the economy continues to stagnate and people climb the learning curve. Are you aware that the founder of Salon.com, David Talbot, is publicly calling for an “American Spring?” This of course is a reference to the Arab Spring, in which revolution swept across North Africa earlier this year and led to the collapse of the Tunisian and Egyptian governments and then major government bribes to the people living in the oil rich kingdoms. Mr. Talbot writes “In these increasingly hard times, Salon is dedicating itself to an American revival. Our editorial mission will become more explicitly and aggressively populist. We will be publishing more investigative pieces, exposing the shadow dance of power. And both Democratic and Republican targets will be fair game, since both parties are increasingly under the control of the same corporate forces.” His full piece is here http://www.salon.com/about/american_spring/index.html?story=/about/insid... You need to read it if you want to understand where all of this is headed. How about journalist Chris Hedges talking about “Occupy Wall Street” http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/09/chris-hedges-occupy-wall-stree... We the people now understand it is not “rich vs. poor,” businessperson vs. teacher.” It is serf vs. oligarch. They are 0.1% and we know what they are up to. GAME ON.

Jaime Dimon Proves he is a Complete and Total Psychopath

I am not even going to write my own thought paragraph about how delusional and insane this man’s statements were the other day on banking regulations. Rather I will provide links to articles by people that have done a great job of exposing the absurdity of this parasitic oligarch’s comments. My favorite line by far on this is from fellow ex-Wall Streeter Nomi Prins who writes:

“There are few things more cringe-inducing than a government-subsidized bank CEO spouting self-serving, entitlement-laden idiocy to the world just because he and his bank might be subject to some extra constraints. That hasn’t stopped JPM Chase CEO Jamie Dimon from acting like a spoiled, sociopathic brat while characterizing proposed Basel III capital requirements and regulations as ‘anti-American’ at every opportunity. They are not ‘anti-American’ but globally risk-mitigating in a time of widespread economic Depression, a point lost in the haze of Dimon’s megalomania.”

Her full article is here http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-jamie-dimon%E2%80%99s-shameful-.... Precious metals hero and money manager Eric Sprott chimed in with this letter to the Globe and Mail. http://www.businessinsider.com/eric-sprott-jamie-dimon-letter-2011-9

Jaime Dimon is a real piece of work. It is as if he is asking for a custom made guillotine (metaphorically speaking of course as I do not condone violence in any way shape or form). At least Lloyd Blankfein had the sense to read the writing on the wall, shut up and hire an attorney.

So in conclusion, rebellion has arrived on America’s shores and it is about time. The moment is here for each of us to make important decisions. Save freedom and liberty or allow the oligarchs to enslave us and your children for generations. Peter Orzag recently wrote that “We need Less Democracy.” http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/94940/peter-orszag-democrac... This is what these guys are gunning for. Just think about who this “WE” he is talking about is.

And don’t kid yourself. Pretty much everyone on this list is a serf no matter how rich you are. Don’t kid yourself.

Peace and Wisdom,
Mike

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/mike-kireger-rebellion-has-arrived-america

I guess i will start a new tag or label, flash of the obvious. It is so obvious it makes you wonder why there is even a discussion about it. You would think that judges are suppose to be able to think to be come a judge, but i guess not. It is no wonder why this country is in trouble.

Judge: Americans do not have right to choose food
Decision in farm dispute bars families from drinking milk from their own cows

A Wisconsin judge has decided – in a fight over families' access to milk from cows they own – that Americans "do not have a fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow."

The ruling comes from Circuit Court Judge Patrick J. Fiedler in a court battle involving a number of families who owned their own cows, but boarded them on a single farm.

The judge said the arrangement is a "dairy farm" and, therefore, is subject to the rules and regulations of the state of Wisconsin.

"It's always a surprise when a judge says you don't have the fundamental right to consume the foods of your choice," said Pete Kennedy, president of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, which worked on the case on behalf of the farmers and the owners of the milk-producing cows.

The judge's original ruling came in a consolidation of two cases that presented similar situations: Cows being maintained and milked on farms for the benefit of non-resident owners. He refused to grant a summary judgment declaring such arrangements legitimate, deciding instead to favor the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, which opposed them.

"Plaintiffs argue that they have a fundamental right to possess, use and enjoy their property and therefore have a fundamental right to own a cow, or a heard (sic) of cows, and to use their cow(s) in a manner that does not cause harm to third parties. They argue that they have a fundamental right to privacy to consume the food of their choice for themselves and their families and therefore have a fundamental right to consume unpasteurized milk from their cows," the judge wrote.

Bunk, he concluded.

"They do not simply own a cow that they board at a farm. Instead, plaintiffs operate a dairy farm. If plaintiffs want to continue to operate their dairy farm then they must do so in a way that complies with the laws of Wisconsin."

He cited an earlier consent decree involving one of the farm locations, which had been accused of being the source of a "Campylobachter jejuni infection" and said there are state reasons to require standards and licenses.

Identifying the cases as the "Grassway plaintiffs" and the "Zinniker plaintiffs," the judge said both were in violation of state rules and regulations.

It was, however, when the plaintiffs petitioned the judge for a "clarification" of his order that he let fly his judicial temperament.

"The court denied plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment, which means the following:


"(1) no, plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to own and use a dairy cow or a diary (sic) herd;
"(2) no, plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow;
"(3) no, plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to board their cow at the farm of a farmer;
"(4) no, the Zinniker plaintiffs' private contract does not fall outside the scope of the state's police power;
"(5) no, plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of their choice; and
"(6) no, the DATCP did not act in an ultra vires manner because it had jurisdiction to regulate the Zinniker plaintiffs' conduct."
"It is clear from their motion to clarify that the plaintiffs still fail to recognize that they are not merely attempting to enforce their 'right' to own a cow and board it at a farm. Instead, plaintiffs operate a dairy farm," he wrote.

Kennedy said the ruling is outlandish.

"Here you have a situation where a group of people, a couple of individuals, boarded their cows which they wholly owned, with Zinniker farms, and paid them a fee for the boarding."

He continued, "The judge said people have no fundamental right to acquire, possess and use your own property."

The dispute is part of a larger battle going on between private interests and state and federal regulators over just exactly who makes the decision on the difference between a privately held asset and a commercial producer.

The Los Angeles Times recently profiled a case in which prosecutors had arrested the owner of a health food market and two others on charges of allegedly illegally producing unpasteurized dairy products.

The arrests of James Cecil Stewart, Sharon Ann Palmer and Eugenie Bloch just a few weeks ago advanced the government's crackdown on the sale of so-called raw dairy products.

But Fiedler's arguments weren't unique.

Attorneys for the federal government have argued in a lawsuit still pending in federal court in Iowa that individuals have no "fundamental right" to obtain their food of choice.

The brief was filed early in 2010 in support of a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund over the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's ban on the interstate sale of raw milk.

"There is no 'deeply rooted' historical tradition of unfettered access to foods of all kinds," states the document signed by U.S. Attorney Stephanie Rose, assistant Martha Fagg and Roger Gural, trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice.

"Plaintiffs' assertion of a 'fundamental right to their own bodily and physical health, which includes what foods they do and do not choose to consume for themselves and their families' is similarly unavailing because plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish," the government has argued.

WND has reported several times on fed crackdowns on producers of raw milk for friends and neighbors, including when agents arrived to inspect a private property belonging to Dan Allgyer in Pennsylvania at 5 a.m.

The Iowa case alleges the federal restrictions on raw milk are a violation of the U.S. Constitution, according to a report at Natural News.

The federal attorneys want the case dismissed.

"The interest claimed by plaintiffs could be framed more narrowly as a right to 'provide themselves and their families with the foods of their own choice,'" the government document states. But the attorneys say that right doesn't exist.

"The FDA essentially believes that nobody has the right to choose what to eat or drink," said the Natural News site, which explains it covers topics that allow individuals to make positive changes in their health, environmental sensitivity and consumer choices.

"You are only 'allowed' to eat or drink what the FDA gives you permission to. There is no inherent right or God-given right to consume any foods from nature without the FDA's consent."

The Natural News report continued, "The state, in other words, may override your food decisions and deny you free access to the foods and beverages you wish to consume. And the state may do this for completely unscientific reasons – even just political reasons – all at their whim."

The report blames the aggressive campaign against raw milk on large commercial dairy interests, "because it threatens the commercial milk business."

The reason cannot be safety, the report said, since a report from the Weston A. Price Foundation revealed that from 1980 to 2005 there were 10 times more illnesses from pasteurized milk than from raw milk.

The federal government attorneys say the FDA's goal is to prevent disease, and that's why the "ban on the interstate sale of unpasteurized milk" was adopted.

The attorneys conceded that states ordinarily are expected to regulate intrastate activity but noted, "it is within HHS's authority … to institute an intrastate ban as well."

Natural News reported the ban could be seen as violating the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which leaves to states all powers not specifically designated in the Constitution for the federal body.

http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=352249#ixzz1aRgOZXXU