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February 28, 2016
Hollywood A-Listers To Protest Guns At The Oscars: ‘I’m Wearing The Victim Of Gun Violence’
MARLOW STERN02.28.1610:38 AM ET
Brady Campaign President Dan Gross on why several Oscar nominees will be wearing a bracelet to bring awareness to gun violence at tonight’s Academy Awards ceremony.
“What are you wearing?” It’s the question awards nominees dread the most on the red carpet, forcing them to feign interest in whatever fashion house hooked them up with free designers duds. But this year, several Academy Award nominees will give a very unique answer to Ryan Seacrest’s favorite query: I’m wearing the victim of gun violence.
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has decided to join forces with Hollywood for the movie industry’s biggest event in order to shed light on the 33,000 Americans killed every year by gun violence. Best Director nominee Adam McKay (The Big Short), Best Actor nominee Bryan Cranston (Trumbo), Oscar winner Patricia Arquette, Steve Carell, and others will be donning black and gold bracelets as part of Brady’s #ENOUGH campaign—an effort to bring awareness to scourge of gun violence in America, and the importance of strict background checks in order to prevent firearms from falling into the wrong hands.
“We developed the concept first and started reaching out once we got the concept, and the reaction was overwhelmingly positive,” Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign, told The Daily Beast. “It seemed like a natural fit with the Oscars and awards season, because one of the most common questions you hear is, ‘What are you wearing?’ and we felt it would be a powerful statement to say, ‘I’m wearing the victim of gun violence.’”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/28/hollywood-a-listers-to-protest-guns-at-the-oscars-i-m-wearing-the-victim-of-gun-violence.html
--------------------------
Irony dripping irony
Hollywood A-Listers To Protest Guns At The Oscars: ‘I’m Wearing The Victim Of Gun Violence
Hollywood A-Listers To Protest Guns At The Oscars: ‘I’m Wearing The Victim Of Gun Violence’
MARLOW STERN02.28.1610:38 AM ET
Brady Campaign President Dan Gross on why several Oscar nominees will be wearing a bracelet to bring awareness to gun violence at tonight’s Academy Awards ceremony.
“What are you wearing?” It’s the question awards nominees dread the most on the red carpet, forcing them to feign interest in whatever fashion house hooked them up with free designers duds. But this year, several Academy Award nominees will give a very unique answer to Ryan Seacrest’s favorite query: I’m wearing the victim of gun violence.
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has decided to join forces with Hollywood for the movie industry’s biggest event in order to shed light on the 33,000 Americans killed every year by gun violence. Best Director nominee Adam McKay (The Big Short), Best Actor nominee Bryan Cranston (Trumbo), Oscar winner Patricia Arquette, Steve Carell, and others will be donning black and gold bracelets as part of Brady’s #ENOUGH campaign—an effort to bring awareness to scourge of gun violence in America, and the importance of strict background checks in order to prevent firearms from falling into the wrong hands.
“We developed the concept first and started reaching out once we got the concept, and the reaction was overwhelmingly positive,” Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign, told The Daily Beast. “It seemed like a natural fit with the Oscars and awards season, because one of the most common questions you hear is, ‘What are you wearing?’ and we felt it would be a powerful statement to say, ‘I’m wearing the victim of gun violence.’”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/28/hollywood-a-listers-to-protest-guns-at-the-oscars-i-m-wearing-the-victim-of-gun-violence.html
--------------------------
Irony dripping irony
February 28, 2016
Antonin Scalia, who died this month, after nearly three decades on the Supreme Court, devoted his professional life to making the United States a less fair, less tolerant, and less admirable democracy. Fortunately, he mostly failed. Belligerent with his colleagues, dismissive of his critics, nostalgic for a world where outsiders knew their place and stayed there, Scalia represents a perfect model for everything that President Obama should avoid in a successor. The great Justices of the Supreme Court have always looked forward; their words both anticipated and helped shape the nation that the United States was becoming. Chief Justice John Marshall read the new Constitution to allow for a vibrant and progressive federal government. Louis Brandeis understood the need for that government to regulate an industrializing economy. Earl Warren saw that segregation was poison in the modern world. Scalia, in contrast, looked backward.
His revulsion toward homosexuality, a touchstone of his world view, appeared straight out of his sheltered, nineteen-forties boyhood. When, in 2003, the Court ruled that gay people could no longer be thrown in prison for having consensual sex, Scalia dissented, and wrote, “Today’s opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct.” He went on, “Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children’s schools, or as boarders in their home. They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a life style that they believe to be immoral and destructive.”
But it was in his jurisprudence that Scalia most self-consciously looked to the past. He pioneered “originalism,” a theory holding that the Constitution should be interpreted in line with the beliefs of the white men, many of them slave owners, who ratified it in the late eighteenth century. During Scalia’s first two decades as a Justice, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist rarely gave him important constitutional cases to write for the Court; the Chief feared that Scalia’s extreme views would repel Sandra Day O’Connor, the Court’s swing vote, who had a toxic relationship with him during their early days as colleagues. (Scalia’s clashes with O’Connor were far more significant than his much chronicled friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg.) It was not until 2008, after John G. Roberts, Jr., had succeeded Rehnquist, that Scalia finally got a blockbuster: District of Columbia v. Heller, about the Second Amendment. Scalia spent thousands of words plumbing the psyches of the Framers, to conclude (wrongly, as John Paul Stevens pointed out in his dissent) that they had meant that individuals, not just members of “well-regulated” state militias, had the right to own handguns. Even Scalia’s ideological allies recognized the folly of trying to divine the “intent” of the authors of the Constitution concerning questions that those bewigged worthies could never have anticipated. During the oral argument of a challenge to a California law that required, among other things, warning labels on violent video games, Justice Samuel Alito interrupted Scalia’s harangue of a lawyer by quipping, “I think what Justice Scalia wants to know is what James Madison thought about video games. Did he enjoy them?”
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/29/antonin-scalia-looking-backward
Looking Back On Scalia
Antonin Scalia, who died this month, after nearly three decades on the Supreme Court, devoted his professional life to making the United States a less fair, less tolerant, and less admirable democracy. Fortunately, he mostly failed. Belligerent with his colleagues, dismissive of his critics, nostalgic for a world where outsiders knew their place and stayed there, Scalia represents a perfect model for everything that President Obama should avoid in a successor. The great Justices of the Supreme Court have always looked forward; their words both anticipated and helped shape the nation that the United States was becoming. Chief Justice John Marshall read the new Constitution to allow for a vibrant and progressive federal government. Louis Brandeis understood the need for that government to regulate an industrializing economy. Earl Warren saw that segregation was poison in the modern world. Scalia, in contrast, looked backward.
His revulsion toward homosexuality, a touchstone of his world view, appeared straight out of his sheltered, nineteen-forties boyhood. When, in 2003, the Court ruled that gay people could no longer be thrown in prison for having consensual sex, Scalia dissented, and wrote, “Today’s opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct.” He went on, “Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children’s schools, or as boarders in their home. They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a life style that they believe to be immoral and destructive.”
But it was in his jurisprudence that Scalia most self-consciously looked to the past. He pioneered “originalism,” a theory holding that the Constitution should be interpreted in line with the beliefs of the white men, many of them slave owners, who ratified it in the late eighteenth century. During Scalia’s first two decades as a Justice, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist rarely gave him important constitutional cases to write for the Court; the Chief feared that Scalia’s extreme views would repel Sandra Day O’Connor, the Court’s swing vote, who had a toxic relationship with him during their early days as colleagues. (Scalia’s clashes with O’Connor were far more significant than his much chronicled friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg.) It was not until 2008, after John G. Roberts, Jr., had succeeded Rehnquist, that Scalia finally got a blockbuster: District of Columbia v. Heller, about the Second Amendment. Scalia spent thousands of words plumbing the psyches of the Framers, to conclude (wrongly, as John Paul Stevens pointed out in his dissent) that they had meant that individuals, not just members of “well-regulated” state militias, had the right to own handguns. Even Scalia’s ideological allies recognized the folly of trying to divine the “intent” of the authors of the Constitution concerning questions that those bewigged worthies could never have anticipated. During the oral argument of a challenge to a California law that required, among other things, warning labels on violent video games, Justice Samuel Alito interrupted Scalia’s harangue of a lawyer by quipping, “I think what Justice Scalia wants to know is what James Madison thought about video games. Did he enjoy them?”
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/29/antonin-scalia-looking-backward
February 28, 2016
Fed Up
February 28, 2016
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-america-made-donald-trump-unstoppable-20160224?page=13
No Shit -- 78
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-america-made-donald-trump-unstoppable-20160224?page=13
February 26, 2016
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed an exciting proof of concept of the thinnest, lightest solar cell ever made. The key to developing such a thin and light cell, according to MIT is a unique fabrication method.
Solar cells are typically made up of layers of photovoltaic materials and a substrate, such as glass or plastic. Instead of the usual method of fabricating each layer separately, and then depositing the layers onto the substrate, the MIT researchers made all three parts of their solar cell (the cell, the supportive substrate, and the protective coating) at the same time, a method that cuts down on performance-harming contaminants. In the demonstration, the substrate and coating are made from parylene, which is a flexible polymer, and the component that absorbs light was made from dibutyl phthalate (DBP). The researchers note that the solar cell could be made from a number of material combinations, including perovskite, and it could be added to a variety of surfaces such as fabric or paper.
And so, how thin is the thinnest solar cell, really? Well, it's about 1/50th the thickness of a strand of hair. To demonstrate this extreme, the researchers placed the cell on a soap bubble (which you can see in the image above). But, thin and lightweight might not always be the best, as the one of the study authors, Joel Jean, said in an MIT news release, "if you breathe too hard, you might blow it away."
http://www.popsci.com/mit-researchers-demonstrate-thinnest-solar-cells-yet?src=SOC&dom=tw
SOLAR CELLS SO THIN THEY COULD BLOW AWAY
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed an exciting proof of concept of the thinnest, lightest solar cell ever made. The key to developing such a thin and light cell, according to MIT is a unique fabrication method.
Solar cells are typically made up of layers of photovoltaic materials and a substrate, such as glass or plastic. Instead of the usual method of fabricating each layer separately, and then depositing the layers onto the substrate, the MIT researchers made all three parts of their solar cell (the cell, the supportive substrate, and the protective coating) at the same time, a method that cuts down on performance-harming contaminants. In the demonstration, the substrate and coating are made from parylene, which is a flexible polymer, and the component that absorbs light was made from dibutyl phthalate (DBP). The researchers note that the solar cell could be made from a number of material combinations, including perovskite, and it could be added to a variety of surfaces such as fabric or paper.
And so, how thin is the thinnest solar cell, really? Well, it's about 1/50th the thickness of a strand of hair. To demonstrate this extreme, the researchers placed the cell on a soap bubble (which you can see in the image above). But, thin and lightweight might not always be the best, as the one of the study authors, Joel Jean, said in an MIT news release, "if you breathe too hard, you might blow it away."
http://www.popsci.com/mit-researchers-demonstrate-thinnest-solar-cells-yet?src=SOC&dom=tw
February 20, 2016
Birth Defects in Brazil - Mosquito or MONSANTO
Source: Reality Sandwich
The microcephaly now reportedly affecting thousands of babies in Brazil, which the media have attributed to the mosquito-borne Zika virus, may not be caused by a virus after all. According to reports from a group of Argentinian doctors called Physicians in Crop-Sprayed Towns (PCST), a chemical called pyriproxyfen — which has been introduced to drinking water in mosquito-ridden areas of Brazil to cause deadly mutations in mosquito larvae — may be the real cause of the birth defect.
In 2014, there were 147 cases of microcephaly reported in Brazil. That year, the Brazilian government began putting the larvicide into drinking water in Pernambuco, the state now reporting 35% of Brazil’s 4000 new microcephaly cases.
The PCST doctors say that previous outbreaks of Zika that infected up to 75% of the population in affected countries did not show a spike in microcephaly cases. PCST (and the New York Times) note that in Colombia, none of more than 3000 pregnant women reported to be infected with the virus has given birth to an infant with microcephaly
Read more: http://realitysandwich.com/319585/birth-defects-in-brazil-mosquito-or-monsanto/
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