Archive for the ‘News’ Category
Photo courtesy of Boston University.
School newspapers have been known to indulge in a few ridiculous stories in the light-hearted spirit of April Fool’s day: claiming changes in meal plans are forthcoming, including silly animal pictures, or writing an article joking about sexual assault. No, we’re (unfortunately) not kidding.
This masterful demonstration in the fine art of bad taste was published by Boston University’s Daily Free Press, an award-winning student run newspaper.
The article (available here) was clearly designed as a joke, with repeated Disney references, in keeping with the theme of the rest of the paper.
The article includes hilarious faux-quotes from a source named Pocahontas, including, “…most of all I want to be able to party without worrying about being gangbanged by a bunch of short hairy BROS.” Oh, Disney characters worrying about gang rape… Gets us every time.
Besides the questionable content, the story may also hit especially close to home for Boston University students, given that star hockey player Matt Nicastro was recently arrested on charges of rape.
Perhaps the Daily Free Press also managed to forget the other pending case against hockey player Corey Trivino on charges of indecent assault and breaking and entering.
Thankfully, the Daily Free Press has already issued this apology letter for their momentary lapse in sanity and good taste.
Thanks to the U.S. Census Bureau
Now couldn’t be a better time to recount history … take 1940 for example…
1940 was the beginning of recovery from the Great Depression, war, and jobs were a hot topic. Sound familiar?
So when the U.S. Census Bureau released archives from 1940 this past Monday, online traffic bloomed to a soaring 22.5 million hits.
The American census, a tradition dating back to the late 18th century is globally recognized for its comprehensive record-keeping.
The rule is on “Census Day” every year the books are opened on the census of exactly 72 years ago.
Was 1940 that big of a deal or are Americans just Internet information crazed?
It’s amazing how we have 3.8 million pages of census data at our digital fingertips, while many methods for collecting census data are pretty old school.
Will 1940 have the answers for 2012? Surely 22.5 million people might find something.
Last week Google released a sneak peakof their new automobile. The video features Steve Mahan, a legally blind man, using the car to run his daily errands. His first stop of course is Taco Bell.
In 2010, Google announced a two year project to develop its own self-driving car. Although the company is not providing full details on the technology, the video mentions the use of radar and laser sensors.
What does this car mean for the the future of the auto industry? How will it change the rules of the road? And most importantly, would you feel safe enough to drive to Taco Bell in one?
photo cred: Facebook (Beautiful and Bald Barbie)
The toy-maker Mattel has officially announced it will be making a hairless Barbie doll.
Jane Bingham and Beckie Sypin, creators of the Beautiful and Bald Barbie Facebook page, have created a campaign that has garnered nationwide attention.
Bingham states:
“(We want girls to know) they’re not dependent on their hair for their self-worth and their beauty. Women and children, it’s looked down upon that you would go out without your hair. People would automatically assume that you’re sick and you should stay at home in bed.”
After 150,000 likes of the Facebook page in less than four months, Mattel heard the message loud and clear. However, instead of being sold in stores, the new hairless Barbie dolls will be distributed exclusively to hospitals throughout the U.S and Canada treating children diagnosed with cancer.
On their Facebook page, Mattel announced:
“Through a thoughtful approach, we made the decision not to sell these dolls at retail stores, but rather get the dolls directly into the hands of children who can most benefit from the unique play experience.”
A curious decision… do you think the dolls also be sold in stores in order to make it available to anyone?
It is also interesting to see the big role Facebook played in Mattel’s decision. What does this say about the increasing power of social media?
Yes, you heard right. Crushed bugs. In your frappuccino.
Your Strawberry and Creme frappuccino, to be precise.
What makes the lovely pink color of your icy refreshing beverage is called cochineal extract- a dye that comes from the body and skin of the female cochineal insect.
This little tidbit of information was revealed by a barista on a vegan website. Otherwise, we would have gone on drinking those delicious coffee-less strawberry frappuccinos without knowing about their buggy ingredients.
We are sure many would have preferred Starbucks had been a littler more upfront about their ingredients, especially when there are insects involved. However it would do us well to know that cochineal dye is found in numerous other products, like make-up, yogurt, and other drinks.
The FDA has approved cochineal dye and it is considered an alternative to chemical means of coloring food.
Should Starbucks have to divulge an ingredient that is fairly common in other products? Should they be more clear about what drinks are vegan-friendly.
Or do drinks with insects just really bug you?
Courtesy of http://www.sightline.org
President Obama is boldly indicating that King Coal might just relinquish the energy throne. New regulatory standards the Obama administration has proposed for carbon dioxide emissions essentially block the construction of any new coal-fired power plants.
Who could have seen this coming?
Well, not necessarily the coal being dethroned thing, but the things-actually-getting-done-during-an-election-year thing. Seriously, environmental legislation at a time like this is pretty surprising.
The possible diminishing of coal’s dominion is not much of a shock. Coal’s power has already been declining even without this recent “assault,” as some coal advocates in Congress may call it.
In light of the natural gas boom, which has driven down the price of natural gas, there has naturally been a decrease in the construction of coal-fired plants.
Though roughly half of US energy is derived from coal, King Coal’s grip on the throne is ebbing.
Should coal be toppled, there’s not much doubt that the fossil fuel lineage will continue to reside with the monarchy. Natural gas continues to rise from the rocky depths of the energy debate, and it may be the pretender to the crown.
Courtesy of Spanish National Police
What do we really know about sex trafficking?
In Madrid two prostitution rings were busted this week. When a 19-year-old woman was rescued from enslavement, authorities noticed a tattoo with a barcode on her wrist. Her abductors had branded their victim with an identifying tattoo after she once tried to escape.
Sex trafficking is a modern-day form of slavery. It is defined as a commercial sex act induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act is under the age of 18 years.
Sex traffickers frequently subject their victims to debt-bondage. After abducting young women, the traffickers tell their victims that they owe money (often relating to the victims’ living expenses and transport into the country). They are then coerced to pledge their personal services to repay the debt.
Once under their control, sex traffickers use a variety of methods to “condition” their victims including starvation, confinement, beatings, physical and sexual abuse.
In the United States it is estimated that over 75,000 victims are trafficked into America for sexual servitude and that is not factoring the 100,000-300,000 American children forced into prostitution under our noses.
If you think you have come in contact with a victim of human trafficking, call the National Human Trafficking Resource Center at 1.888.3737.888.
Here are some resource links for more information:
Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force Strategy and Operations E-Guide
https://www.ovcttac.gov/TaskForceGuide/EGuide/Default.aspx
Trafficking in Persons Report 2011
Photo courtesy of Beyond Hollywood
- The Hunger Games made a killing at the box office, taking in $152.5 million, making it the third best opening weekend of all time, as well as the best for a non-sequel. This indicates that this will be a huge franchise for years to come and that audiences are into a strong heroine who isn’t sexualized.
- UPDATE: We blogged at the beginning of the month about the MPAA’s refusal to rate the documentary Bully lower than an R for using the F-word. Well, studio head Harvey Weinstein and director Lee Hirsch have decided to release the doc unrated. This refusal to operate within the MPAA system might mean that more will see it without being turned off by the R, or that no one will see it because unrated films can be treated more harshly than NC-17 rated films. Hopefully for Hirsch and Weinstein, the intended audience will be able to see the documentary.
- And for fun, a random, very recently released trailer for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, not to be confused with the Spielberg-directed Lincoln also due out this year. AL: VH is a very self-explanatory, very history revisionist movie based on a New York Times bestselling novel and will be released June 22.
Did you like The Hunger Games? What do you think about the MPAA’s rating of Bully? Do you think Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter looks ridiculously awesome or ridiculously stupid?
Good thing we went to law school! Now we know how to beat the system!
More and more law students are graduating and passing the bar in the U.S.
But over the last few years there have been too many law graduates for the number of open positions at law firms.
Meanwhile, some law schools are actually increasing admittance rates.
So when a group of disappointed, legally knowledgeable lawyers have no jobs,what do they do? Sue the law school they attended, of course!
Unfortunately for the unemployed alums, the New York courts dismissed these mangy kids.
Still, considering the hefty sums paid out in tuition for graduate schools, is it unreasonable for unemployed graduates to be peeved??
We here at USDemocrazy recently discussed the questionable investment of a college education.
Since tuition costs are only increasing, are we entitled to know the outcomes (average entry level salariesfor graduates) before we make our first school payment? Is this a deal we need to shake on first… or do these crybabies need to knock it off?
Of course if unemployed law school graduates are frustrated with the system, they can always take another tack:
photo via politico.com
It looks like everyone should just shut the heck up about Rick Santorum leaving the Republican presidential race, because the boy is on fire.
On Saturday he topped Mitt Romney in the Louisiana primary, where his conservative credentials played well.
On Sunday in Wisconsin he slapped down a New York Times reporter who asked him to clarify his statement calling Mitt Romney “the worst Republican in the country to put up against Barack Obama.”
Whoa! HEY! Wait a minute! Time out! BULL HOCKEY!
What he said, Jeff Zeleny — you idiot — is that Mitt Romney is the worst Republican to run against the president on the issue of healthcare. Okay? Rick Santorum still believes the likely nominee Mitt Romney is the worst Republican in that respect, but you have no right to distort his words by asking him — with your greedy questions — if he meant the worst Republican to run in general or the worst Republican to run on that super-huge issue. I mean, really. In the words of Rick Santorum: “Come on man, what are you doing?”
Opponents from the Romney campaign and elsewhere have seized on this “tantorum” as evidence of the candidate’s not-ready-for-primetime demeanor, but we believe that any doubts about the presidential-ness of Santorum’s outrage ought to be put aside.
Surely we all remember this famous exchange between the recently-inaugurated President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and a reporter from the New York Times who took one of his remarks out of context:
NYT: President Roosevelt, do you really think we have nothing to fear?
FDR: . . . What? What did you just say?
NYT: You said that we have nothing to fear. You said–
FDR: –What speech did you listen to?
NYT: Are you saying we don’t have to fear poison ivy and black widow spiders and eating raw cookie dough and slivers and–
FDR: NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FEAR ITSELF YOU MORON. Stop. Distorting. My words. It’s bull#@$%. . . . C’mon man, what are you doing?
The case of Trayvon Martin’s death continues to dominate headlines.
There has been a public outcry for justice of the death of Trayvon. In what was called the “Million Hoodie March”, hundreds of protesters took to the streets on Wednesday to mourn Trayvon’s death and to demand the arrest of the person responsible.
Even President Obama spoke out about the death of Trayvon.
The shooter, George Zimmerman has now become a household name. The 28 year-old neighborhood patrol volunteer mentioned in his 911 call that he considered Martin as:
“a real suspicious guy… looks like he’s up to no good or he’s on drugs or something…And he’s a black male…Something’s wrong with him…These a**holes, they always get away.”
He described Martin as having his hand on his waistband, carrying an object, and coming towards him. This prompted him to shoot, despite the 911 dispatcher’s advice to not chase the boy.
Geraldo Rivera, while appearing on Fox and Friends stated:
“I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin’s death as George Zimmerman was… I’ll bet you money, if he didn’t have that hoodie on, that nutty neighborhood watch guy wouldn’t have responded in that violent and aggressive way.”
Rivera went on to tweet:
“It’s sad that I have to be the one reminding minority parents of the risk that comes with being a kid of color in America–channel the rage”
Craig Sonner, the legal advisor to Zimmerman, had the following to say:
“This case is spinning out of control… I hope there’s a way to rein things in so it doesn’t become an issue of a racial battle. I hope that things come back so that there can be a time for justice and for healing and not for just skipping the whole judicial process and going straight to sentencing.”
This case has brought Florida’s Stand Your Ground law under much scrutiny:
“[Stand Your Ground] gives the benefit of the doubt to a person who claims self-defense…In Florida, if people feel they are in imminent danger of being killed or badly injured, they do not have to retreat, even if it would seem reasonable to do so. They have the right to ’stand their ground’ and protect themselves.”
What are your thoughts about the “Stand your ground Law? What about Rivera’s argument… is Martin’s attire to blame for his death?
A new phenomenon has been sweeping job interviews. Many employers are checking out perspective employee’s social media profiles…and it gets worse…
The Maryland Department of Corrections has taken to asking job seekers to log-on during the interview so they can see information found behind the privacy filter. But some companies are going even further, asking applicants to give them their username and password.
If you’re getting the heby-jebies you’re not alone. Facebook is taking offense to this and posted on their privacy page that they will “take action to protect the privacy and security of our users.” To Facebook, this is an invasion of privacy (ironic right?). But that doesn’t mean they’re wrong.
Privacy filters are there for a reason and Facebook is threating legal action against anyone who tries to violate it:
Facebook takes your privacy seriously. We’ll take action to protect the privacy and security of our users, whether by engaging policymakers or, where appropriate, by initiating legal action, including by shutting down applications that abuse their privileges.
However, there is an easy way around this, don’t put anything on Facebook, Twitter, or Youtube that you wouldn’t want your grandmother to see.
College debt now surpasses 1 trillion, reports the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Stop for just a moment. Think about that number.
You actually can’t. Our brains are unable to comprehend the enormity of a trillion dollars.
The debt accumulated by American students has ballooned to this incomprehensible number due to tuition hikes and an increase in the number of individuals attending college.
In Maryland public tuition is slated to increase by up to 3% in the coming fiscal year. In other states students could be socked with increases between 20% and 40%.
But if college grads are burdened with high student loans, could it dampen their future prospects? Will they be able to pay decent rent? A down payment for a first home?
There are some promoting the idea of forgiving the loans debts of American students in order to stimulate the economy. They even have an online petition you can sign if you support the cause.
Others think this is a terrible idea.
Your thoughts?
Looking for Baltimore City housing? Local leaders, especially Mayor Stephanie Rawlings Blake, sure hope you are.
Every decade since 1960, the City’s population has been steadily declining. Baltimore City residents have been moving their families out of the City and into homes in the surrounding counties. This wouldn’t be so bad, except for one problem…many of these prior city homeowners never sold their old Baltimore residences.
Now Baltimore has an excessive amount of boarded-up vacant houses. These vacants overrun many inner-city neighborhoods in East and West Baltimore, created blight for current City residents.
Why did this happen?
The majority of homeowners who fled Baltimore City over the decades were middle-class professionals with families. They were seeking safer environments and better schools for their kids. Their houses were difficult to sell, so many just left their homes boarded up.
This rash of vacant properties is turning into a headache for ALL citizens of the city.
With so many plots of City land being uninhabited, Baltimore is not getting the amount of revenue it needs from property taxes. To cover the shortfall in city revenue, other current residents have to pick up the slack. While Baltimore County property tax rate is just 1.1% of the cost of a house, the City tax rate is more then double that, standing at 2.268%, the highest of any Maryland jurisdiction.
This creates yet another problem. The high property tax rate in the City drives away potential new home buyers, and even causes some residents to leave the City. A terrible downward spiral ensues.
Every ten year’s a population census is taken. The Mayor has set a goal of adding 10,000 household owners to Baltimore by 2020. There were hopes that by 2010, the City’s population would be increasing for the first time in four decades, but instead, since 2000, it lost another 30,000 individuals.
In comparison to previous decades, this loss wasn’t so bad, and many downtown neighborhoods grew by as much as a staggering 20%. With house rehabilitation projects underway in the City, and programs in the works to make Baltimore a safer environment, government officials are optimistic about the future.
Now that Baltimore is trying to reclaim its name as Charm City, the only question left is, are you looking for a house?
27
Is This Thing On?
by stretch
News
Image courtesy of the Huffington Post.
President Obama managed to spark a firestorm of criticism with a recent “open mike” moment.
The Prez was quietly sharing an aside with outgoing Russian President Dmitri Medvedev when his words were picked up by the microphones of reporters without his knowledge.
The comments, during a visit to a nuclear summit in South Korea, pertained to the delicate issue of a European based US missile shield… a particularly objectionable program to the Russians.
The Guardian reports Obama stated,
Medvedev replied:
Obama then elaborated:
Medvedev responded:
Although the comments may read like a bad break up speech (”I’m sorry I just…need my space.” *cue tears*) Republican pundits argue that the comments are an alarming indication of Obama’s future plans.
Mitt Romney criticized the comment in a tweet reading, “Fill in the blank. @BarackObama: I’ll have more flexibility to _______ after the election. #ObamaFlexibility.” Mike Turner, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, sent a terse memo demanding immediate explanation of the comments, stating,
(Ouch. Read the rest of the written take down here.)
The White House, initially mute on the topic later released a statement defending the realities of election year limitations. Deputy National Security advisor Ben Rhodes said,