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“While scientists have no clear understanding of the mechanisms that prevent the fact-resistant humans from absorbing data, they theorize that the strain may have developed the ability to intercept and discard information en route from the auditory nerve to the brain. “The normal functions of human consciousness have been completely nullified,” Logsdon said.”
“The Internet might very well have been designed for confirmation bias. If you have a theory, you’ll find some site purporting it to be true. (I’m constantly amazed at how many people post Natural News stories on my feed, as if anything on the site is valid.) Levitin notes that MartinLutherKing.org is run by a white supremacist group. Even experts get fooled: Reporter Jonathan Capehart published a Washington Post article “based on a tweet by a nonexistent congressman in a nonexistent district.””
“As a Cochrane review of e-cigarettes is published, its author asks why vaping devices have divided the academic community.”
“The good news is there’s lots of research going on – finally. The most recent update of the Cochrane review found 26 studies in the pipeline that will help answer questions about the safety and effect of using e-cigarettes to quit smoking. The more studies we have looking at a question, the more certain we can be about the answer. The irony is that until we have the answer, narrow interpretations of the results of individual studies risk doing further harm, undermining public confidence in science and possibly discouraging quit attempts.”
“How do we decide what the Gadsden flag, or indeed any symbol, really means?”
“It is clear that the Gadsden Flag originated in the Revolutionary War in a non-racial context.”
“And yet, no symbolic meaning is locked in time.”
Petition to have Edward Snowden pardoned along with white house response
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snowden
Pardon Edward Snowden
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/15/opinion/pardon-edward-snowden.html
Op-ed: Why President Obama won’t, and shouldn’t, pardon Snowden
A former US gov’t lawyer and current Harvard Law professor makes the case.
Edward Snowden makes ‘moral’ case for presidential pardon
Why Obama Should Pardon Edward Snowden
https://www.lawfareblog.com/why-obama-should-pardon-edward-snowden
Three Years Later: How Snowden Helped the U.S. Intelligence Community
https://www.lawfareblog.com/three-years-later-how-snowden-helped-us-intelligence-community
No Pardon for Edward Snowden
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/440096/edward-snowden-pardon-opposition
Another Pardon Snowden website
https://www.pardonsnowden.org/
No pardon for Edward Snowden
“The rule is straightforward, but its implications are subtle. If journalists are encouraged to report extreme events, they guide both elite and public attitudes, leading many people, including experts, to feel like extreme events are more common than they actually are. By reporting on only the radically novel, the press can feed a popular illusion that the world is more terrible than it actually is.”
“The Republican National Convention proved yet again that the GOP talks about America and U.S. policy with an entire unique vocabulary. It hasn’t always been this way.”
“For several decades now, Republicans and Democrats have become more polarized. There are plenty of reasons for that, including the demise of the Southern Dixiecrats and the geographic sorting of the country into ideologically homogenous neighborhoods. But the two major parties are now divided by a common language: Democrats discuss “comprehensive health reform,” “estate taxes,” “undocumented workers,” and “tax breaks for the wealthy,” while Republicans insist on a “Washington takeover of health care,” “death taxes,” “illegal aliens,” and “tax reform.” When did the two major political parties create their own vocabularies?”
“When people are dying and you can only save some, how do you choose? Maybe you save the youngest. Or the sickest. Maybe you even just put all the names in a hat and pick at random. Would your answer change if a sick person was standing right in front of you?
“In this episode, we follow New York Times reporter Sheri Fink as she searches for the answer. In a warzone, a hurricane, a church basement, and an earthquake, the question remains the same. What happens, what should happen, when humans are forced to play god?”
“When a surge of patients — from a disaster, disease outbreak or terrorist attack — overwhelms hospitals, how should you ration care? Whose lives should be saved first?”
A site that allows you to judge how you’d respond to various moral dilemmas created by “intelligent” machines like driverless cars.
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