Philly mayor hopes curfew plan brings back the love Philadelphians react to teen 'flash mob' attacks Police commissioner vows enforcementEarlier curfew in some parts of town follows rash of mob attacksThe mayor delivered a tough sermon on the attacksThe fight against teen violence also targets parents (CNN) -- Philadelphia has been plagued by teen violence, but the City of Brotherly Love is fighting back. Mayor Michael Nutter announced this week a robust initiative that began with a stiff curfew at 9 p.m. The effort comes after a string of attacks on residents by groups of young people who are alerted to sudden gatherings at a given place via e-mail and social media. "It's a growing problem in this country, police Commissioner Charles H. Nutter delivered tough remarks about the problem in a church sermon Sunday that has received national and international attention, a blunt no-excuses scolding that happened to coincide with the start of the England riots. He said fathering is engaging with the child and shaping them.
Gov. Rick Snyder signs redistricting bills designed to give GOP political edge With little fanfare Gov. Rick Snyder signed into law today new political maps for Michigan, redrawn by his Republican allies in the Legislature without Democratic interference. In a statement, the governor avoided the political reality that Republicans carved out for themselves. The GOP now has a 61-49 advantage in the state House, according to political analyst Bill Ballenger, a 23-15 edge in the Senate, and a 9-5 advantage in Michigan’s delegation to Congress. But Snyder did lament the decline in Michigan’s numerical clout in Congress. “At our peak, we had 19 seats in Congress. “This clearly shows why we need to fundamentally reinvent Michigan as place where businesses can grow and create jobs and people can raise a family." Michigan Democratic Party Chair Mark Brewer said Snyder signed into law "politically and racially gerrymandered maps" and in the process "broke his promise to voters that he would be a moderate and bipartisan governor."
Michigan medical marijuana law set for fall legislative review AP File PhotoAttorney General Bill Schuette The legislative push to place tighter controls on medical marijuana will begin in the fall and one change could make it a felony for a physician to authorize use of the drug by falsely certifying the applicant has a debilitating condition. Attorney General Bill Schuette, law enforcement officials and lawmakers said today the 2008 voter-approved law is intentionally vague, so as to allow profit-oriented marijuana dispensaries to openly sell the drug to customers who can now obtain a certificate with minimal effort online. When voters approved the citizen-initiated medical marijuana law, "they did not vote to legalize marijuana or a pot free-for-all, which is what we have here in Michigan,” Schuette said. “We need to bring this law back into line to what voters intended.” Bills introduced on the House’s last day in session before summer break on June 30 make a couple of big changes. Rep.
US railway blocked phones to quash protest - Americas A rail transit provider in the United States disabled mobile phone services to prevent a planned protest on Thursday, attracting criticism and unflattering comparisons to crackdowns on dissent in the Middle East. Demonstrators in northern California's Bay Area had planned a protest to condemn the shooting death of Charles Hill, who was killed on July 3 after Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police officers responded to complaints about a drunk man at a station in the city of San Francisco. Hill was fatally shot in the torso - police said he had lunged with a knife - and protesters responded eight days later with a demonstration that shut down three San Francisco BART stations. BART's police force had been criticised before, in 2009, after a white officer responding with several colleagues to a complaint restrained an unarmed black man on the ground of a train platform and then fatally shot him in the back. Unflattering comparisons Blackout a legal uncertainty
'Corporations are people, my friend...' Thank God for Mitt Romney. In a moment of candour he likely thought would win him much needed support from the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, the presidential candidate explained his thinking to a heckler - who asked why he didn't feel corporations should share more of the economic burden of reducing the deficit: "Corporations are people, my friend ... of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people. Where do you think it goes? In fact, he's right. Ironically, the idea of a corporation as a person, however defined, originated with the need to ensure that the corporations that arose with capitalism - and especially with the growth of larger firms with the industrial revolution - could both assume debts and liabilities and be held legally responsible for them in the same way that natural persons would be. This was an evolution of common law, where only a person could be sued or sue someone. The US is the vanguard of the 'Corporate People'
How America Could Collapse August 11, 2011 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. The following article first appeared on the Web site of The Nation. A few months ago, a friend in the entertainment industry told me of a new business model in Hollywood: hoarding videotapes. In the last few years, economists have spent a lot of time and energy thinking about bank runs. Worryingly, there’s been very little consideration of how systemic collapses can happen in another, perhaps more dangerous realm—the industrial supply system that keeps us in everything from medicine to food to cars to, yes, videotape. Barry Lynn of the New America Foundation has been studying industrial supply shocks since 1999, when he noticed that global computer chip production was concentrated in Taiwan. According to Lynn’s groundbreaking book End of the Line, the essential problem is a basic shift in the way that American multinationals operate.
The Simian Line: Depression, Mental Illness Note: Other quotation sections to consider are Suicide, Self-Injury, and Misery/Despair/Anxiety/Grief. Depression Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. There’s no grand excellence to it. I realized that I had granted my illness lordship over me. The worst way to have chronic depression is to have it unconsciously, to be in a burning rage and not know you are angry. God, whoever He was apart from being all that was best and strangest in Jesus, seemed content to leave me in the muck till I died, and let no one pull me out of there. The returning illness would once again shoot crippling arrows into my life ... ... Oh shut up. What a time.
INFOGRAPHIC : Software Piracy The Untold Tales Piracy and illegal file sharing is a curse for any developer and software company. As soon as the new version of a popular piece of software hits the streets, it is pretty much being pirated before you can say “o-arrr!”. Same with games, music and movies. For every person who buys something legally, there’s probably 10 who are taking the risk of stealing it. Our infographic this week is on this very subject and comes courtesy of Starmedia. Finally, the infographic looks at some illegal download stats. Let us know in the comments what you think of the infographic.
FedEx and Pepsi Are Top Defense Contractors? 5 Corporate Brands Making a Killing on Americas Wars | World September 3, 2011 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Chances are, if you’ve ever sent a package overnight, bought a PC or a can of soda, you’ve paid your hard-earned money to a major Pentagon contractor. While large defense corporations that make fighter jets and armored vehicles garner the most attention, tens of thousands of “civilian” companies, from multi-national corporations hawking toothpaste and shampoo to big oil behemoths and even local restaurants scattered across the United States, all supply the Pentagon with the necessities used to carry on day-to-day operations and wage America’s wars. In 2001, the massive arms dealers Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman ranked one, two and five among Department of Defense contractors, raking in $14.7 billion, $13.3 billion and $5.2 billion, respectively, in contracts. America’s recent wars have obviously been good to these companies. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Why the Breakfast Most Americans Will Eat Today Is a Corporate Scam | Food September 2, 2011 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Breakfast in America is a corporate scam. Not all of it. Seeking to provide sanitarium patients with meatless anti-aphrodisiac breakfasts in 1894, Michigan Seventh-Day Adventist surgeon and anti-masturbation activist John Kellogg developed the process of flaking cooked grains. In pre-Corn Flakes America, breakfast wasn't cold or sweet. "Breakfast was the biggest meal of the day. The Great Cereal Shift mirrored -- and triggered -- other shifts: Farm to factory. "Cold cereals are an invention of vegetarians and the health-food industry, first through Kellogg's and then through C.W. "These companies realized early on that people like sugar, and kids really like sugar -- so they shifted their sales target from adults concerned about health to kids who love sugar. As is orange juice, another breakfast contrivance marketed as healthy for kids. Tropicana, meanwhile, is owned by PepsiCo.
E Ink promises thinner, lighter, higher resolution, and color e-paper displays New Tech Gadgets & Electronic Devices E Ink is already doing swift business in the growing e-reader market, but just like any technology company, it can’t sit still for fear of being overtaken or made redundant. With that in mind, the company has used IFA 2011 to show us some future products and the latest updates to its displays that are coming to market. E Ink’s biggest success to date has to be the monochrome display found inside the best selling e-reader on the market: the Amazon Kindle . First of all, the displays are made in rolls of up to 1km in length and over a meter wide. The resolution on the Kindle is SVGA, a mere 800 x 600 pixels and 167dpi. Anyone wondering what comes next for the Kindle also got a hint from E Ink as to whet we can expect from the next iteration of the device. If Amazon decides to create a Kindle Color instead, E Ink also has that covered with its latest Triton display. We can also look forward to E Ink’s displays getting thinner, lighter, and a lot more durable (shatterproof).
Protests Erupt in the US and Bolivia Targeting 'Progressive' Presidents Who Are Failing to Protect the Environment | Environment September 6, 2011 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. In many ways the two protests could not be more different. And yet, on separate sides of the equator the protests share a profound commonality. A Pipeline for Climate Poison and a Road through the Rainforest The protests in Washington, which are ongoing, target a proposed 1,700-mile pipeline, the Keystone XL, that would carry petroleum mined from Canada's Tar Sands through the central U.S. to Texas for refinement. The legal authority to permit the pipeline's construction or stop it lies with President Obama. Thus far the President has sent mixed messages about the Tar Sands project. "His environmental policies have been terrible," said one of the Washington protesters, Nancy Romer, a member of the Brooklyn Food Coalition, explaining why environmental groups have decided to hold Mr.