I post this without comment. Judge for yourself. ~ Mike
From liveleak.com:
NYPD must be required to wear badge cameras!
Cameraman :
”We were arrested while filming an NYPD checkpoint on a bridge between a soon to be gentrified Bronx and a quickly gentrifying Harlem. We were charged with OGA, DisCon, and resisting arrest. I was holding a bag of yarn in one hand and a canvas in the other. My partner had food in his hands when he was tackled. Even though their violent actions were unjust, we did not resist. Simultaneous with our “arrests”, the checkpoint was closed down”
Read more at NYPD arrests 2 for filming cops. Seizes cameras SD card to destroy evidence. They took the wrong SD card
An amazing glimpse into one possible future for 3D printing.
http://www.gracesunnysun.com/google-application <–Click on this link to go to the new site for the video.
Senior year of college, I applied to Google with a visual cover letter to try to explain what my resumé could not – namely, how badly I wanted to work there. The day after I posted the video on YouTube, I got a call from a Mountain View number that I honestly thought was a friend pulling a prank (it was my recruiter, Selma).
The video’s a bit embarrassing to re-watch now since it’s so overly earnest and optimistic, but I think that’s the point. For people all over the world, Google isn’t just a company – it’s a dream place where technology has the power to change lives for the better.
P.S. The wish came true – I’ve been working as a communications specialist at Google since July of 2013.
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Full disclosure: Grace is my step-daughter. :)
UPDATE, 2013-APR-15: These are the shows from April 10 & 11
Homeless In Hawaii, Part 1 (Audio) https://thinkwingradio.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/thinkwing-radio-hawaii-homelessness-part-2-2013-apr-11.mp3
Homeless In Hawaii, Part 2 (Audio) https://thinkwingradio.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/thinkwing-radio-hawaii-homelessness-part-1-2013-apr-10.mp3
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Homelessness is a problem all over the world, and each place has it’s unique aspects.
Hawaii is a group of islands in the middle of the Pacific, meaning it’s surrounded by thousands of miles of ocean.
Most of us think of Hawaii as a paradise we would love to visit, even if just once. All the tourism guides tell us so.
Paradise must seem pretty good to a homeless person. But is the paradise they expect the paradise they find? Continue reading
I admire William Shatner’s ability to embrace his reputation for hamminess. Here he doubles down for a rematch against his early enemy, the Gorn.
Cute as hell, but I don’t recommend trying this at home:
I’ve become one of THOSE people. Cat videos.
I’ve learned of this one from a caller at KPFT-FM 90.1 Houston. He even has his own Wikipedia page.
In an era when companies are seriously talking about mining asteroids, there is an enormous untapped resource in space which is as close as low Earth orbit (LEO), and which is otherwise classified as ‘space junk’: Dead satellites. Continue reading
It’s worth waiting through the ad to watch the video. I promise. ~ Mike
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/undecided-voter/1418227/
Your cat has a secret life when it’s outside. The Kitty Cam project is an attempt to see the world they way your cat does when you’re not watching. The videos are ‘rough’ (cats make poor cinematographers), but as a peek into an unknown feline world, are fascinating.
“A window into the world of free-roaming cats”
From bisteinee (Youtube)
Papa, how do you like the iPad we got you?
So papa, how do you like the iPad we got you?
She: “Hey Dad, I didn’t ask you yet, but how do you like the new IPad we gave you yesterday as a birthday present?”
He: “I like.”
She: “You cool with handling the apps?”
He: “Hm…? What apps? Could you step aside, please?”
She: [Stares]
He: “What?”
NOTE, 2012-OCT-15: I think it’s important to note that the Rachel Maddow report which I’ve cited below was intended by her to be seen strictly as a commentary on the situation in Afghanistan at that time. The connection which I’ve drawn between her report and a what potential Libertarian future might look like in the USA is strictly my own. ~ Mike
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From The Rachel Maddow Show (Aired July 17, 2010)
The Rachel Maddow Show | Aired on July 17, 2010
The internet today is like looking something up in the Encyclopaedia Britannica used to be. You begin by searching for information on some obscure or famous battle or person or … something, and you end up browsing the thing like a catalog.
So it was when I was looking for information on foods dangerous to cats. I found a lot of information on that, but I also found these. They’re really funny and cute. By the way, the hard part was probably learning the lyric in Italian (“miau”).
There are more variations on the theme below the break, some quite creative. There is also a link to some background on the musical piece. Enjoy.
ALSO, for your Rachel viewing pleasure:
This color panorama shows a 360-degree view of the landing site of NASA’s Curiosity rover, including the highest part of Mount Sharp visible to the rover. That part of Mount Sharp is approximately 12 miles (20 kilometers) away from the rover.
This image is from a series of test images to calibrate the 34-millimeter Mast Camera on NASA’s Curiosity rover. It was taken on Aug. 23, 2012 and looks south-southwest from the rover’s landing site.
The gravelly area around Curiosity’s landing site is visible in the foreground. Farther away, about a third of the way up from the bottom of the image, the terrain falls off into a depression (a swale). Beyond the swale, in the middle of the image, is the boulder-strewn, red-brown rim of a moderately-sized impact crater. Father off in the distance, there are dark dunes and then the layered rock at the base of Mount Sharp. Some haze obscures the view, but the top ridge, depicted in this image, is 10 miles (16.2 kilometers) away.
Scientists enhanced the color in one version to show the Martian scene under the lighting conditions we have on Earth, which helps in analyzing the terrain. A raw version is also available.
The 34-millimeter Mastcam takes images with lower resolution, but a much wider field of view than the 100-millimeter Mastcam. A sharper version of the same scene from the telephoto 100-millimeter Mastcam can be seen at PIA16104.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
A chapter of the layered geological history of Mars is laid bare in this postcard from NASA’s Curiosity rover. The image shows the base of Mount Sharp, the rover’s eventual science destination.
This image is a portion of a larger image taken by Curiosity’s 100-millimeter Mast Camera on Aug. 23, 2012. See PIA16104. Scientists enhanced the color in one version to show the Martian scene under the lighting conditions we have on Earth, which helps in analyzing the terrain.
For scale, an annotated version of the figure highlights a dark rock that is approximately the same size as Curiosity. The pointy mound in the center of the image, looming above the rover-sized rock, is about 1,000 feet (300 meters) across and 300 feet (100 meters) high.
› Annotated version
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
On Monday’s show, we had to listener comments which I felt deserved a little more research.
One caller cited an alleged quote from President Obama in which he claimed that Obama favored well-armed civilian militias:
“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”
I expressed doubt as to either the veracity or context of the quote. He later emailed me this link on YouTube. The video contained no larger context for the quote. I then did a little more research Continue reading
George Yoshitake, Don Luttrell, and four other officers stood directly underneath an exploding nuclear warhead 55 years ago — and lived to tell their tale.
The blast was just a test, a bit of Cold War marketing designed to make the concept of nuclear war less scary for the public, but the 2-kiloton atomic explosion set off over the Nevada nuclear test site (and over the heads of those six men) was very real.
John F. Kennedy Moon Speech – Rice Stadium
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.~ President John F. Kennedy at Rice University (September 12, 1962), John F. Kennedy Moon Speech – Rice Stadium
The Curiosity Rover is scheduled to land on the Mars on August 5, 2012. This date is not optional. If it doesn’t land, it will crash; game over.
This is the riveting and pulse-thumping video which NASA has released to explain the process of getting this probe from a speed of 13,000 mph to -0- in just 7 minutes.
Published on Jun 22, 2012 by VideoFromSpace
NASA’s Curiosity rover is a 1-ton robot that will make an unprecedented Mars landing on Aug. 5, 2012. See how the risky maneuver will keep rover team members in suspense for 7 fateful minutes. Credit: NASA
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Note: I originally mis-stated the Mars atmospheric entry speed of Curiosity as 1300 mph. – Mike
Grace S. Sun, my step-daughter, created this really lovely stop-action animated video to the song, “The Line”, by Noah and the Whale.
All the artwork is her original work, as is the animation itself.
Enjoy!
Republicans — i.e., Rightwingers, Conservatives, Tea Party-types, Libertarians/Anarchists, etc. — usually win on ‘framing’.
Progressives argue about why this is. The solution for Progressives seems simple (like tell the truth and use rational arguments), but implementation of a successful strategy has proven elusive.
What the Right does is frame issues in ways which bypass people’s normal higher intellectual faculties, and instead aim for the ‘gut’. Rightwing messengers strike fear into their listeners with words and phrases having visceral impact, like freedom, ‘loss of liberty’, taxes, ‘change’, Socialist, Fascist, Communist, Death Panels, appeasement, ‘gays’, and, weirdly, Canada, Europe, the United Kingdom, etc.
Some of these Rightwing political ‘hooks’ are lies, distortions, or simply make no real sense, but fear and anger are powerful motivators, and if there’s one thing the Right is great at, it’s instilling fear and anger; then these scared and angry people vote their fears.
So, how do Progressives harness this strategy? Lying and fear-mongering (not to mention staying ‘on message’) is something which are not usually part of the Progressive mind-set. Progressives just don’t do well at it.
Until now. Continue reading
An easily grasped summary of the ‘economic eco-system’, courtesy of Nick Hanauer, author of The Gardens of Democracy.
Increasingly, SpaceX is looking like the real world version of science fiction’s space entrepreneurs.
Bullies are evil. Bullying is evil. Bullying creates lifelong scars. Bullying damages and even destroys lives.
It used to be possible to end bullying by growing up, changing schools or jobs, moving, or simply by changing the social circles in which you were involved.
The internet has made bullying global and, by the nature of the internet, potentially eternal and inescapable.
Totally by accident, I ran across a vicious case of cyber-bullying against this woman. It’s been going on for over a year, and since everything posted in the internet is eternal, this bullying may follow her for the rest of her life, and even beyond.
I don’t know the facts about the potentially slanderous and libelous allegations made prolifically on the internet about her, but the nature of the postings is a classic example of the evil that has been named cyber-bullying.
She recently posted two PSA videos about bullying which are obviously very personal and deserve to be seen more widely.
12h 
Kitt Hodsden @kitt : She said yes! http://youtu.be/5_v7QrIW0zY /via @andrewhedges Retweeted by Estelle Weyl
He must be part of a group of theater people. – Mike
