Blog Heap o'Links for June 2012

On March 22, 2011, in an interview on Spanish-language television, President Obama, unbidden, brought up Fast and Furious in what were obviously considered remarks. He declared:

There have been problems, you know. I heard on the news about this story that — Fast and Furious, where allegedly guns were being run into Mexico, and ATF knew about it, but didn’t apprehend those who had sent it. Eric Holder has — the attorney general has been very clear that he knew nothing about this.

By the time the president volunteered these words, a cover-up was already well underway within his administration. … In particular, you’ll want to introduce yourself to “OCDETF" … unknown to the public — and boy, does the administration ever want to keep it that way. … Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. … Besides developing and exploiting informants, the agencies infiltrate criminal conspiracies with undercover agents, use the information gathered as the basis for wiretaps, and coordinate this eavesdropping with physical surveillance. It takes scores of agents to monitor bugs, conduct sometimes 24/7 spying on multiple subjects, and manage informants, who tend to be very high-maintenance. This costs money, lots of money. … investigative techniques for which federal law requires approval by the attorney general or his designee…. the Obama administration has offered a palpably false narrative about Fast and Furious. It is this: Acting on their own, recklessly irresponsible ATF agents in Arizona — under the ostensible direction of the local U.S. attorney, who was actually asleep at the switch — dreamed up the Fast and Furious investigation, with its rogue “gunwalking” tactic. … In fact, Fast and Furious was an OCDETF case. That made it a Main Justice case, not the orphan Arizona debacle of media portrayal. … the defining features of OCDETF are investigative coordination under the Justice Department’s leadership and the liberal sharing of information across the department’s array of agencies.

According to the letter, the wiretap applications contained a startling amount of detail about the [Fast & Furious] operation, which would have tipped off anyone who read them closely about what tactics were being used. Holder and Cummings have both maintained that the wiretap applications did not contain such details and that the applications were reviewed narrowly for probable cause, not for whether any investigatory tactics contained followed Justice Department policy. The wiretap applications were signed by senior DOJ officials in the department’s criminal division, including Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Blanco and another official who is now deceased.

The Justice Department moved Friday to shield Attorney General Eric Holder from prosecution after the House voted to hold him in contempt of Congress. The contempt vote technically opened the door for the House to call on the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia to bring the case before a grand jury. But because U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen works for Holder and because President Obama has already asserted executive privilege over the documents in question, some expected Holder's Justice Department to balk. Deputy Attorney General James Cole confirmed in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner that the department in fact would not pursue prosecution. The attorney general's withholding of documents pertaining to Operation Fast and Furious, he wrote, "does not constitute a crime."

Iran already today has enough enriched uranium to manufacture five atomic bombs. If Iran is not stopped, within a year it will have enough uranium for seven or eight atomic bombs. “In addition, the Iranians apparently possess a weapons development system which they are hiding from the international supervisory apparatus. The Iranians also have 400 missiles of different types, which can reach the whole area of Israel and certain parts of Europe. Those missiles were built from the outset with the ability to carry nuclear warheads. So the picture is clear. Five years ago, even three years ago, Iran was not within the zone of the nuclear threshold. Today it is. Before our eyes Iran is becoming a nuclear-threshold power. … Other developments are also feasible. But if the question is bomb or bombing, the answer is clear: bomb.… if Iran goes nuclear, four or five more countries in the Middle East are liable to go nuclear, too. … Iranian nuclearization will bring in its wake nuclear chaos. … A Western individual observing the fantastic ambitions of the Iranian leadership scoffs: ‘What do they think, that they will Islamize us?’ The surprising answer is: Yes… their rationality is completely different from our rationality. Their concepts are different and their considerations are different. They are completely unlike the former Soviet Union. They are not even like Pakistan or North Korea. If Iran enjoys a nuclear umbrella and the feeling of strength of a nuclear power, there is no knowing how it will behave.

An outage of Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud in North Virginia has taken down Netflix, Pinterest, Instagram, and other services. According to numerous Twitter updates and our own checks, all three services are unavailable as of Friday evening at 9:10 p.m. PT. Amazon’s service health dashboard indicates that there are power issues in its North Virginia data center, most likely caused by severe storms in the region. The outage underscores the vulnerabilities of depending on the public cloud versus using your own data centers. Independent checks by VentureBeat of Netflix, Instagram, Pinterest, and Heroku show each site not operating.

She had just gotten her hair done for a trip to Disney World that had been planned for next month, and was outside with her mother as they sold lemonade, candy and snacks under a canopy set up in front of their home. Two men opened fire around 10:40 p.m. Wednesday, and Heaven was struck in the chest. “I had just called Heaven. She was sitting right next to me on my shoulder. Just laying on my shoulder,” Banks said Thursday. Banks described the horrific sight of seeing her young daughter lying dead. “For her to die like this – 7 years old, lying on a slab cold, her eyes just open, blood coming out her nose – I just want him to turn himself in. That’s all that I ask of him. And I’m asking for Chicago to help me,” she said.

IBM calls it Intelligent Operations Center (IOC), and in the past three years has led over 2,000 projects to “monitor, measure, and manage city services such as water systems, public safety, transportation, hospitals, electricity grids, and buildings.” Just this past week, the company announced new projects in South Bend, Indiana, Davao, Philippines, and Lyon, France. In each of them, the company will be working to add sensors to everyday infrastructure, install software to integrate and manage the massive inflow of data, and provide city officials with the information and intelligence they need to run their cities better. Hopefully, the result will be better, more livable, and more sustainable urban environments.

Medicaid patients face grave difficulties obtaining timely and essential care, and suffer worse health outcomes as a result. Occasionally, the ensuing tragedies play out in newspapers, as with this 2007 report from the Washington Post: A 12-year-old Maryland boy named Deamonte Driver complained of a headache, which ultimately stemmed from an abscessed tooth. His mother had not noticed the problem, partially because she was working frantically to find a Maryland dentist to treat her other son, who had six rotten teeth. But of the approximately 5,500 dentists in the entire state, only about 900 accepted Medicaid. None of the children received routine dental care. By the time Deamonte complained, the infection in his tooth had spread to his brain. He was rushed to Children’s Hospital for emergency surgery and spent more than two weeks there. Then one night, he called his mother from his hospital room and told her, “Make sure you pray before you go to sleep.” In the morning, he was dead.

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts joked that he'll spend some time on an "impregnable island fortress" now that the court has ended a session that featured him casting the decisive vote to uphold President Barack Obama's health care law. [Ha ha ha. Not.]

'Google Glasses will be great for point-of-view porn' [Well, duh. How did you think they'd be used?] …quite what Google will think of the idea is another doesn't matter… [FIFY]

If you aren’t convinced of the enormous potential technology can play in transforming education, be sure to watch Nicholas Negroponte’s ”One Tablet Per Child Project.” Earlier this year, he airdropped tablets into two remote villages in Ethiopia whose people are essentially illiterate. These were new tablets in boxes, loaded with education apps and powered by solar panels — and without any sort of instructions. In the first two weeks of this two-year experiment, over 57 of the apps were being used on a daily basis, and many of the children were reciting and competing over their knowledge of the alphabet. If this doesn’t convince you of the power and potential of these new platforms and applications, hand a 2-year-old your iPad and watch what happens. The gestural interface of tablets nurtures a child’s natural curiosity and learning capacity.

Of all the confounding changes made in the latest Windows 8 consumer preview, few upset people quite as much as the removal of the Start button. But what hasn’t been clear is why Microsoft removed the feature, which has been a central pillar of Windows for over a 15 years. The answer might be obvious: People weren’t using it.

Alan Turing would have turned 100 this week, an event that would have, no doubt, been greeted with all manner of pomp -- the centennial of a man whose mid-century concepts would set the stage for modern computing. Turing, of course, never made it that far, found dead at age 41 from cyanide poisoning, possibly self-inflicted. His story is that of a brilliant mind cut down in its prime for sad and ultimately baffling reasons, a man who accomplished so much in a short time and almost certainly would have had far more to give, if not for a society that couldn't accept him for who he was.

She called the Army's Family Advocacy program, an organization that supports families in crisis. After the counselor put her hand on Ashley's arm, told her she was in a safe place and to trust her, Ashley opened up. "I hadn't slept in over 24 hours," she told me on the phone. "It's the only reason she got me." What she meant was that as soon as she outlined the difficulties she and Rob had been going through, the session stopped, the advocacy worker got up and Rob was promptly picked up by the Military Police. Rob was now facing 72 hours confinement, domestic assault charges, and a dishonorable discharge that would cause the family to lose all the benefits they were entitled to. It didn't take Ashley long to realize Army officials were preparing to make her and Rob the "civilian sector's problem." None of this is unusual, but facing few options Ashley did something that's started a viral Facebook movement, garnered thousands of followers, and has so far saved her family. Without a voice and ignored, she wrote a pledge on her back, took a picture of it holding Rob's M4 assault rifle over her head and uploaded it. The response from other wives watching their husbands suffer post traumatic stress was immediate, and the sudden interest in her case from Rob's command soon followed. The Facebook Group Battling BARE was born and now receives pictures from military wives around the country silently screaming the same pledge on their naked backs.

The Europeans simply can’t afford to spend more on defense without cutting back social welfare programs, which the political class cannot do because it sparks riots in the streets. This is where we are currently heading—and if ObamaCare survives political as well as legal challenges, with its estimated cost of more than a trillion dollars, we will arrive at this destination all the more quickly.

Zlango, an app that enables users to communicate with images rather than words, just hit the 1.25 billion text mark. … “As consumers search for more ways to clearly communicate via texts, Zlango offers high-impact images to bring popular culture and visual expression straight to their phones.” The company has raised $22 million to date…

Still a BFD [twits the classless buffoon in the White House. Seriously!]

"Under [my] theory, the mandate is not a legal command to buy insurance," Roberts wrote. "Rather, it makes going without insurance just another thing the Government taxes, like buying gasoline or earning income."

Huh?

Yes, Roberts actually wrote those words in what will certainly go down as his most famous and studied work ever. Our Ivy League-credentialed chief justice just wrote that going without insurance can be taxed just like income and buying gas, without realizing that many people do not make income or buy gas.

It must have escaped Roberts that you can avoid making income -- which is ironic, since many of the folks celebrating his ruling avoid just that. And he missed that you can also avoid buying gas. Heck, Obama's energy secretary avoids that. But now, under Roberts's own theory and using Roberts's own words, you and I cannot avoid buying insurance without being taxed as a result. And as we mentioned, our Treasury secretary -- not to mention the former Ways and Means Committee chair -- manages to avoid being taxed.

What’s going on is nothing less than an organized campaign to silence conservative bloggers. The tactics range from annoying to illegal and they allegedly include harassment, posting people’s home addresses, going after family members of bloggers, smear campaigns, calling people’s places of employment, nuisance lawsuits, and SWATTing. … here are just SOME of the allegations that are being made against Brett Kimberlin, Neal Rauhauser, Ron Brynaert, & Nadia Naffe. Some of them are provable. Some can’t be proven unless the Department of Justice or FBI decides to get involved.

“The most successful educational approach to the Negro,” Margaret wrote sometime later, “is through a religious appeal. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the Minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

After a bitter partisan debate today, the House of Representatives voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for withholding certain documents related to the Fast and Furious gun-walking operation. Led by Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, 108 Democrats skipped the vote, storming out of the chamber in protest. The measure passed 255-67, with one member voting “present.” Seventeen of the Democrats who didn’t walk out voted with the Republican majority to hold Holder in contempt of Congress. Two Republicans, Reps. Steven LaTourette of Ohio and Scott Rigell of Virginia, opposed the resolution. …first time in the history of Congress that it has found a sitting U.S. attorney general in contempt of Congress.

The DoJ had asked for a restraining order against the state of Florida to halt the process of purging the voter rolls of ineligible voters. A federal judge in Talahassee denied the request, but had some harsh words for the state about determining citizenship.

Why can’t this president simply state the truth, that the Syrian people are rising out of decades of servitude and fear to bid for a new political life? On my recent visit to Syrian refugee camps in Turkey, ordinary Syrians asked me why the U.S. was not more concerned with their fate. But they ask and anguish less and less over Obama, knowing that their sorrows have not stirred his conscience. The Obama policy rests on a blissful belief that Syria will burn out without damage to American interests, and that the president himself can stay aloof from this crisis. By his lights, he has kept his compact with his progressive base – he liquidated the war in Iraq and has kept out of the conflict next door in Syria. It suffices that Osama bin Laden was killed, and drone attacks on Al-Qaeda continue apace.

It usually comes down to political will. The U.S. government does not have it .... the Russian government has .... hence they will use this weapon system (and others) if they have to.

The Soviets realized an important point during their conflict in Afghanistan .... that as long as the safe havens were permitted to operate in Pakistan, and having Afghan allies that were either corrupt and/or incompetent .... there was no chance of the Red Army being victorious. The same can be said today. As long as Pakistan permits the safe havens to operate on their territory, and as long as the Kabul government remains corrupt .... the Western effort to defeat the Taliban will also end in eventual defeat.

A political website that contained stinging criticism of the Obama administration and its handling of the Fast and Furious scandal was ordered to be shut down by the Obama campaign’s ‘Truth Team’, according to private investigator Douglas Hagmann, who was told by ISP GoDaddy his site contained information that was “maliciously harmful to individuals in the government.” … Turning to his contacts within government, Hagmann then spoke with another source who confirmed that the ‘Obama Truth Team’ was responsible for the shut down order.

tiny remote controlled vehicles based on insects are already likely being deployed.

Imagine a boat that moves through the water differently from any other boat in existence. It uses “supercavitation”—the creation of a gaseous bubble layer around the hull to reduce friction underwater—to reach very high speeds at relatively low fuel cost. Its speed and shape means it can evade detection by sonar or ship radar. It can outrun torpedoes. Its fuel efficiency means it has greater range and can run longer missions than conventional boats and helicopters.

Engineers have created a new camera with the capability of capturing over a gigapixel of data, a resolution that is significantly better than normal human vision.

Google Now will learn your daily commute home. And if there’s particularly congested traffic that would cause you to get home much later, it’ll send you a notification suggesting alternate routes. Another thing it does is update you on restaurants/retail stores as you’re walking past them, provides reviews of those stores, and other recommendations.

In a brief demonstration, Google showed off Jelly Bean’s revamped home screen, which now automatically rearranges icons when you’re moving apps and widgets around. The new OS sports a “refined dictionary” and a predictive keyboard (that’s hopefully better than past Android keyboards). Google is also bringing Voice Typing offline in Jelly Bean, which should be a big plus for dictation junkies.

Jelly Bean’s camera app has also been updating to allow for easier browsing of photos. The interface looks smoother and simpler than the Ice Cream Sandwich camera.

Feeling comfortable in his home crowd, Sullivan proudly defended his support for the NatGas Act during a debate two weeks ago. But Jim Bridenstine spoke to the inner-core of the conservative Oklahoma crowd. He called the bill a “big-government boondoggle” and boldly declared that “we ought not let Washington, D.C., control free markets with tax subsidies.” As they say, the rest is history. This must serve as an enduring lesson for those who desire to let the free market work – at least in the most conservative parts of the country.

[Jon Stewart dissects Fast & Furious and Obama's assertion of Executive Privilege - 2 videos]

The Southern Poverty Law Center has a new “Intelligence Report” titled “30 New Activists Heading Up The Radical Right.” It includes well-known conservative figures like Frank Gaffney, Pamela Geller, and David Yerushalmi, lumping them in with members of the New Black Panthers, the Ku Klux Klan, and neo-Nazis. … There are real haters in the world, however. They occupy both the left and the right – though the ones who impact the debate reside almost exclusively on the left. Here, then, are ten of the worst.

Facebook has purchased facial recognition startup Face.com … makes technology that can identify people in photos and even guess a person’s age.

Gen. Norton A. Schwartz presents the Silver Star awarded posthumously to Air Force Capt. Francis Gary Powers to the captain's grandchildren [photo]

More than 50 years after his plane was downed in the Soviet Union, Francis Gary Powers was posthumously awarded the military’s third-highest decoration on Friday.

Mr. Bloomberg said that he believed Mr. Romney would probably be better at running the country than Mr. Obama, according to two guests. But Mr. Bloomberg said he could not support Mr. Romney because he disagreed with him on so many social issues, these two people said. The mayor mentioned two such issues: abortion rights and gun control.

"I sometimes feel like I'm caught in a vise. Some people feel like I'm some kind of hero," he told The Times earlier this year. "Others hate me. They say I deserved it. Other people, I can hear them mocking me for when I called for an end to the destruction, like I'm a fool for believing in peace." [Apparent drowning]

In the monstrous clashes of the Second World War, individuals had no control over their own fate. It felt as if they were at the mercy of giant historical forces – as revealed in previously unpublished letters and diaries of the time. They not only give us an idea of personal experiences, but significantly reveal the attitudes and mentalities holding sway.

Guitarist songwriter Bob Welch, of early bluesy Fleetwood Mac, dead by suicide Jun 7 at 65 after failed back surgery. … Welch was a guitarist and vocalist for Fleetwood Mac from 1971 to 1974. He formed the British rock group Paris in 1976, and had hits including "Sentimental Lady" in 1977 and "Ebony Eyes" in 1978. Fleetwood Mac's Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham did backup vocals on "Sentimental Lady."

The beagle and her master, Amanda, had been apart for six months as Amanda served in the military. [Video]

[Video - trying out a prosthetic arm, feeding his baby, learning to walk.]

In 2004 George W. Bush’s re-election campaign worked to put anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives up for vote in several swing states in order to turn out more hard-core conservatives to the polls. This year the question is whether marijuana legalization measures will turn out young voters for Obama. [Just how stoned would you have to be to vote for Obama. Oh. Never mind. He won the last one.]

The current success of Marvel’s characters in all popular media has made Jack Kirby the posthumous poster child for numerous creators who are now victims of the comic industry’s tradition of work-for-hire agreements. … Stan, we love you man, but we need you now, more than ever, to stand up for comic creators or you will be always be cursed with the blame for Marvel cheating the same creators that you personally paraded as stars.

Humans and aliens may share the same DNA which could be part of a 'universal structure', according to researchers. The building blocks of life exist in low temperatures and low pressure meaning they are far more likely to flourish than if they were more complex. Whilst no concrete proof has been found yet, the finding makes it more likely they would develop on strange planets than had previously been thought. [I remember my physics professor in college alluding to much the same principle regarding the laws which govern where and how life would appear. Brought to Mindful's attention through Google news feed for "Urantia," which brought up this article thanks to a mention by commenter FizViz, Brighton UK.]

The Obama records which have not been released include; Passport records, Obama kindergarten records, Punahou School records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, University of Chicago scholarly articles, Illinois State Bar Association records, Illinois State Senate records/schedules (said to be lost), Medical records, Obama/Dunham marriage license, Obama/Dunham divorce documents, Soetoro/Dunham marriage license, Adoption records and of course the long-form Certificate of Live Birth. [Video]

Your house is doing just fine. [Illustration at link]

According to The Daily Mail, Google hopes to use the planes to “create 3D maps with much more detail than its satellite-derived Google Earth images.” That may sound like a worthwhile endeavor, but there are very real privacy risks involved. For example, the planes and the photographic equipment they employ are so sophisticated they “could potentially see into homes through skylights and windows.” The story illustrates a major problem: Technology is moving far faster than policy, laws and regulations have accommodated.

Despite considerable research showing that children of same-sex parents fare just as well as children with heterosexual parents, two papers - a review of existing studies and a new study - published today in Elsevier's Social Science Research, find insufficient data to draw any definitive conclusions. …finds that much of the science that forms the basis for the highly regarded 2005 official brief on same-sex parenting by the American Psychological Association does not stand up to scrutiny.

Humans and aliens may share the same DNA which could be part of a 'universal structure', according to researchers. The building blocks of life exist in low temperatures and low pressure meaning they are far more likely to flourish than if they were more complex. [I had a physics teacher in college forty-some years ago who alluded to much the same principle.] Compare Urantia Paper 49 There are great differences between the mortals of the different worlds, even among those belonging to the same intellectual and physical types, but all mortals of will dignity are erect animals, bipeds. [Brought to Mindful's attention through Google news feed for "Urantia," which brought up this article thanks to a mention by commenter FizViz, Brighton UK. Fiz is a bit vague in this comment. But, thanks!]

Websites will be legally obliged to provide victims with the identity of people who post abusive and defamatory online messages about them under plans by the Government. Major reforms of the libel laws will also see internet service providers (ISPs) given greater protection from being sued if they help to identify so-called trolls. … after a mother who was targeted by online trolls won backing from the High Court to have her tormentors' identities disclosed.

The research appears to cast aside the widely-held 'inflationary' theory of the origins of the universe, that it began with the Big Bang, and will continue to expand until a point in the future, when it will end. … They say that this means that this means that the universe cycles through aeons dominated by big bangs and supermassive black hole collisions.

Compare Urantia Paper 12:
The entire seven superuniverses participate in the two-billion-year cycles of space respiration along with the outer regions of the master universe.

[Brought to Mindful's attention through Google news feed for "Urantia," which brought up this article thanks to a mention by commenter FizViz, Brighton UK.]

In celebration of George H. W. Bush’s birthday, his granddaughter Jenna Bush-Hager interviewed him on NBC’s The Today Show. In the emotional tribute, the former president choked up when reading a letter he wrote to his children. [Video]

'Car Talk' will continue in reruns and as print column. But after 25 years of puzzles, puns, and other antics, 'Car Talk' will end in September.

“Barack Obama was definitely the first ‘Internet President,’” she said, describing her experiences during the last cycle as “quite a roller coaster ride.” This time, however, Ettinger won’t say if she still supports Obama.

"In March, General Keith Alexander, speaking before Congress, and in May, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, during an interview with ABC News, outwardly named China as the main perpetrator and identified criteria for defining cyber war." … It appears that Russia and China are targeting us, and we are targeting Iran.

“I have been fighting political Islam my whole life,” Jasser, a devout Muslim and the son of Syrian immigrants, told The Daily Caller. His new book, “Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight to Save his Faith,” deals with the ongoing conflict between freedom-loving moderate Muslims and political Islam.

The Pentagon announced the replacement of the commander of United States Special Operations in South Korea after a media report quoted him as saying that American and South Korean troops have been parachuting into North Korea on spy mission

Think about this. Obama comes to a graduation, speaks etc. then decides to leave before the Thunderbirds can complete their air show. They had to fly around, & waste fuel. Thousands of people – the graduating cadets, parents, friends, observers in the vicinity parked in lots waiting to see them fly, inconvenienced, so Obama – his “highness’ could leave to go campaign in Denver! How disrespectful of EVERYONE in attendance. … Not too many who witnessed this will be voting for him.

The unbelievable images, which truly jump from the screen, have been made into an hour-long Memorial Day documentary called 'Sky Soldier: A Vietnam Story in 3-D'

Stirring speech.

If his poll numbers continue to be tepid into October, Obama will need a big distraction to take him through Election Day -- something that will have strong appeal beyond his swooning acolytes. Military action….

Within 20 feet of the finish line, Arden McMath, a sophomore from Arlington High School, collapsed in front of [Meghan Vogel]. Rather than run by her, Vogel helped McMath to her feet and helped her across the finish line. The crowd came to its feet with the roar growing louder with each step.

Just heard former US Sec. of Defense Rumsfeld on the Laura Ingraham radio show being very critical of President Obama's supervision of the CIA 'kill list' .... that this is NOT the job of a U.S. President. He also added that the last time a President had such a 'hands on' involvement on military/covert operations was President Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam war. Over the years I have been both a supporter and critic of Donald Rumsfeld .... but on this issue he is right.

a BBC documentary now airing in Britain, reveals that not only did British officials provide the Japanese with all the technology and know-how they used to attack Pearl Harbor, but that for 20 years, a distinguished British peer fed them so much crucial military information that, without his actions, the attack might never have happened.

Espionage software that was recently found targeting Iranian computers contains advanced Bluetooth capabilities, taking malware to new heights by allowing attackers to physically stalk their victims… could even surveil smartphones not infected by the malware…. With a size of 20 megabytes, Flame is a massive piece of malware whose discovery might be the security equivalent of oceanographers finding a previously unknown sea. Expect new factoids to trickle out steadily for the foreseeable future. [h/t Drudge]

Some folks have accused me of “fabricating” quotations I attributed to Army Brig. Gen. Neil Tolley regarding U.S. surveillance operations in North Korea. [Tale of one reporter's trial and victory in the information wars.]

China's censors have blocked internet access to the terms "six four", "23", "candle" and "never forget", broadening already extensive efforts to silence talk about the 23rd anniversary of the bloody 4 June crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. [h/t Drudge]

…the new communist leaders realized the propaganda value of the “napalm girl” in the photo…. She was forced to quit college and was trotted out to meet foreign journalists. The visits were monitored and controlled, her words scripted. “I wanted to escape that picture,” she said. “I became another kind of victim.”

The "word" on Richard Dawson, who has died at the age of 79, is that he set out to be Peter Sellers or Jack Lemmon and was frustrated that he wound up being Bill Cullen…. I had one brief (very brief) encounter with Mr. Dawson around 1983…. [I knew turning to ME for this would be the right link to do.]

The legendary Dick Beals — a star of radio, cartoons and more commercials than just about anyone — has died in a Southern California nursing home at the age of 85.

Doc Watson, who died Tuesday at age 89, never had a hit record, and none of his albums ever went gold. This truth, a shame considering his talent, his influence on the guitar and the beauty of his dynamic baritone, should serve as inspiration to any musician interested in the long game, in making music that endures not because of its shock value or its keen marketplace vision but because within its measured tones lies universal truth.

The cross-country cycling trip started last October in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, to raise money and awareness for the ASPCA and local shelters. Ted bikes, while his cat Pikachu ("Pika" to his friends) rides behind in a covered, secure cat shelter…. Back on the road this month, Ted and Pika will make their way with the help of friends, old and new. Just a few days ago via Instagram, Ted posted a map and an upbeat plea for shelter on the road. "Do you know anyone along this route? This is the path I'm taking north into Colorado, if you know anyone I could stay with on the way, hit me up!"

Let's put it this way: if you can build a $100 billion company by using the Internet to replace the college yearbook--imagine what you can do if you use the Internet to replace college. That's what is just beginning to happen. It all became official when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology appointed as its new president the guy who is responsible for MITx, the school's free online education program.

Louisiana… preparing to shift tens of millions in tax dollars out of the public schools to pay private industry, businesses owners and church pastors to educate children.

The President's policies are failing the American people…. President Obama is pretty much in a corner. It's a very desperate situation for him…. — Allen West [video]

The Birmingham News, the Press-Register in Mobile, and The Huntsville Times are moving to a three-day-a-week-in-print schedule.

“We are no longer a newspaper company,” Sun-Times Media Holdings LLC Editor-in-chief Jim Kirk said in a memo to staff. “We are a technology company that happens to publish a newspaper. We deliver content. And we will deliver content on many platforms and in ways that we haven’t yet fully considered.”

Unger’s strips featured sagging, plump characters with craggy faces, big noses and sprigs of hair. Its witty captions commented on the way we live now. The strip was an influence on later comic creators including The Far Side’s Gary Larson and Dilbert’s Scott Adams, according to Universal.