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    Classical music as crime stopper

    It's certainly an interesting idea to stop crime, though I suspect it only moves the loitering elsewhere and we can't cover the entire world with classical music. From http://www.freenewmexican.com/artsfeatures/10701.html
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    Bush endorses Intelligent Design in the Classroom

    From http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/12278497.htm Of course, we know what the debate is about. It's not about the scientific evidence, because the answer there is the result of tens of thousands of researchers pursuing thousands of lines of evidence that all lead to...
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    TSA violated federal law, lied to public and Congress

    The GAO released a new report on the TSA's Secure Flight program. They try to sound positive about it, but it's clear that they violated federal law and lied to Congress about it. Here's an excerpt: While Secure Flight is an improvement over the older CAPPS program, it has serious security...
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    The Logic of Suicide Terrorism

    From an interview with Robert Paper in American Conservative about his new book Dying to Win: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism we learn about some of the real causes of suicide bombings from a man who's studied all of these attacks since 1980. It turns out that the largest source of suicide...
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    Stop renewal of USA PATRIOT Act

    It's time to register your opposition to the USA PATRIOT Act. The EFF action center makes it easy for you to email or fax your representatives in both houses of Congress.
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    Should this extremely late term abortion have been allowed?

    Should doctors have been permitted to remove a 16-year old fetus from a teenage boy? You don't get much later term than this. From http://www.thedailystar.net/2005/06/26/d5062601107.htm Biology definitely doesn't respect human social constructs of separate individuals.
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    Former head of RIAA laments Apple's DRM Strategy

    The Copyfight Blog points out the irony of the former head of the RIAA, Hilary Rosen, complaining about the use of a strategy that she endorsed for years--Digital Restrictions Management (DRM.) If the RIAA hadn't worked so hard to promote the DMCA, the market leader (Apple in this case)...
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    Digital Media Consumer Right's Act

    Congress is considering the Digital Media Consumer Right's Act, a reform of the DMCA that should protect our fair use rights and also protect innovation by making the Betamax decision, which allows engineers to make new devices like VCRs and DVD writers, part of the law. Please write your...
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    FCC Broadcast Flag is Toast

    In a stunning victory for innovation and separation of powers, the US District Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that the FCC doesn't have the power to require hardware manufacturers to support their broadcast flag technology which would prevent consumers from recording shows that were flagged...
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    New Strategy for Copyright Cartel: Police Payoffs

    With punishments for copyright infringement exceeding not only those for actually stealing DVDs or CDs from a shop but also punishments for serious crimes like rape, you would think that the copyright cartels would think that they'd purchased enough of our law. However, unsatisfied with buying...
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    Boy Scotts add Copyright Indoctrination badge

    Hollywood has created its own copyright indoctrination merit badge for the boy scouts. http://news.com.com/2061-10796_3-5693563.html?part=rss&tag=5693563&subj=news While I think a copyright badge could be great if the students learned about the history of copyright and their rights to fair...
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    The US is abandoning fundamental physics research

    While Hubble and Voyager's cancellation have made the headlines, there's been a gradual yet more substantial decline in resources for physics research in the US. A much more harmful event to astrophysics is NASA's cancellation of the Astrophysics Data Analysis and Long Term Space Astrophysics...
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    Universal Automobile Surveillance Coming to a Country near You

    How much surveillance are we willing to put up with? In countries with few freedoms, like the UAE, universal automobile surveillance is arriving now. From http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/03/328.asp However, in the UK, such surveillance has already been introduced as a voluntary private...
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    James Boyle Deconstructs Copyright Stupidity

    I enjoyed Boyle's April 21st article in the Financial Times. He doesn't pull any punches, and he makes he points effectively as possible in a short article. He points out how modern copyright extensions harm us more than they help us: then quickly gets to the core flaw in the concept of...
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    Ohio Police steal woman's identity for sting

    In an Ohio sting operation, a student intern with the US Marshals Office was given a fake identity so she could work undercover as a stripper for the club. Instead of fabricating an identity, they gave her the identity of another woman living in a different city in Ohio without asking for...
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    More Abstinence Insanity: Religious Groups mobilize against Vaccinations

    Cervical cancer kills about 250,000 women a year today and the death toll is expected to increase to a million a year by 2050. However, it's caused by the human papilloma virus (HPV), and we have vaccines that are soon to be approved, so it's not going to be a problem, right? Wrong. HPV is...
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    Big Brother in the Office

    From http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22409, a personnel monitoring system so invasive that it sounds like it comes from science fiction is coming to office near you (at least if you're in Japan, but it can easily be exported.) When I read Manna about how automation and computerization...
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    Starbucks patents evil

    In yet another incident showing how stupid the business method patents are, Starbucks is patenting a combination of loyalty and credit cards. This one has to rank up there with Amazon's 1-click shopping patent and Microsoft's double-click patent. From the Register:
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    RIAA Creative Accounting

    The RIAA has always wanted to claim that modern digital technology is a terrible threat to their business. However, if we look at the details of their claims, it becomes clear that they've engaged in some quite creative accounting to claim lost sales at a time when their sales are going up...
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    MGM v Grokster

    The Supreme Court is hearing arguments on the MGM v Grokster case this week. While as an individual P2P product, Grokster isn't important, this case could potentially reverse the Universal v Sony Betamax case that has protected innovators for decades. Without Betamax, makers of VCRs, CD/DVD...
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    Republican Political Correctness Machine Hits Florida

    Political correctness is back in fashion, but from the other side of the political spectrum and with bills that could be far more damaging than the campus speech codes of the past. A few weeks ago, the Republican PC machine struck Ohio, and now they're after Florida. The bill described here...
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    Creationism vs Imax

    Some IMAX theatres, mostly in the South, are refusing to show films that discuss cosmology or geology out of fear of fundamentalist protests. Films like Galapagos, Volcanoes of the Deep Sea, and Cosmic Voyage are among those affected. Many of these IMAX theatres are housed in science museums...
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    Survey: Religion not the source of tension between Arabs and West

    From the recently published executive summary of the Center for Strategic Studies survey. The study draws seven conclusions: 1) Arabs hold coherent notions of what constitute the values of Western and Arab societies. They associate the West with individual liberty and wealth, while they...
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    TV: Is it news or government propaganda?

    The Bush administration has introduced a new level of propaganda into our TV media: the prepackaged "news" report, which are designed to fit seamlessly into TV news. and where the "reporters" are careful to avoid saying that they work for the US government. The Government Accountability...
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    Ex-GOP Party Head sentenced to 7 months in prison

    The courts are getting around to sentencing (low level) people for election crimes in the 2002 election. From the AP article at http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=568887: State Democratic Chairwoman Kathy Sullivan wrote a letter asking that McGee not be sentenced to prison. She said...
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    Professors Targeted by Hate Group

    In InsideHigherEd (http://www.insidehighered.com/insider/professors_targeted_by_hate_group), we find a real problem with anti-semiticism and academia: If you want to see the anti-semitic group's comments, check http://www.vnnforum.com/showthread.php?t=15840&page=90&pp=10
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    France: Passengers to face trial for preventing a violent deportation

    From StateWatch While sovereign states have the right to deport illegal immigrants, I think it's important that people like these four passengers don't ignore such treatment of someone unlike them.
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    Testing Darwin

    From http://www.carlzimmer.com/articles/2005/articles_2005_Avida.html That's how science works, and hey, isn't it cool to see creationists doing something useful?
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    $8.8billion of Iraqi oil revenue missing

    From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/file_on_4/4216853.stm
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    "The truth is, personal accounts will not even come close to making Social Security solvent."

    The Bush administration is starting to come clean and tell the press that personal accounts won't solve the Social Security problem. From the LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-na-s...print.story?coll=la-headlines-business "A Bush aide, briefing reporters on the condition of...
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    The Dangers of Legislative Activism

    Why do we never hear about the dangers of legislative activitism thwarting the intent of the Consitution? While the article doesn't call it that, we can read about the extraordinarily dangerous and foolish support of legislative activisim from the Palm Beach Post report on a meeting between...
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    A Mathematician Looks at the Election: Does Bush have a Mandate?

    Well-known mathematician and author of Innumeracy, John Paulos, has an article about the numbers in the latest election and whether all the hype about a Bush mandate means anything.
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    Is having a slim majority better than a mandate?

    From Mark Schmitt's blog: From Lou Dubose and Jan Reid?s new book on Tom DeLay about the Republicans' 50%+1 strategy in Congress: It's a different turn to American politics, but the advantages are clear: You get all the credit You get more money from contributors, because you don't...
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    Is radical cleric James Dobson the new GOP Kingmaker?

    Can radical cleric James Dobson capitalize on Bush's win to dominate the GOP and roll back civil rights, or will he find that he was used by the GOP and receive little or nothing for his efforts? From Slate:
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    E-voting Forensics

    The EFF presents a balanced view of e-voting issues with the November election. While it seems unlikely that the results of the Presidential election will be changed, some votes have simply been lost and it's clear that current electronic voting systems do not have the necessary reliability or...
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    Prisoner freed based on forged fax

    From Bruce Scheier's blog:
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    E-voting Experts Report on Election

    Keep track of e-voting issues at http://www.evoting-experts.com/, with noted computer security experts like Avi Rubin and Ed Felten. Here's Ed Felten's description of his e-voting experience this morning in New Jersey:
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    Voting Returns and Information by State

    ResearchBuzz has published a state by state list of links for voting returns and information at http://www.researchbuzz.org/archives/002117.shtml
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    Vandalism against Kerry Campaign Headquarters

    There have been a number of recent incidents of vandalism on Democratic campaign headquarters, including the following locations: Fair Oaks, CA Lawrence, KS Lafayette, LA (twice) Grand Rapids, MI Boone, NC Toledo, OH State College, PA Galveston, TX
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    Why I believe in our President

    Why I believe in our president by Thomas F. Schaller, Executive Editor 10.26.04 I believe in President George W. Bush. I've always believed him. I believe the president invaded Iraq to secure liberty and democracy for the Iraqi people. I believe he had compelling evidence that Iraq was...