The Western black rhino was declared extinct today, and the top story on Yahoo News was Suri Cruise's new haircut.

[Edit: The link above was to an old news item, sorry, and now I can't find the correct one. Curse you, interwebz! However, in trying to find it, I did learn that they've found footprints of the Sumatran rhino someplace where they ( Read more... )

So the military has come up with a new medal to be awarded to drone pilots. Without getting into the question of whether remotely piloting a drone from the safety of, say, Peoria deserves a medal at all, or the broader question of the ethics of drones in the first place, this seems a rather odd method of implementation ( Read more... )

I'm all for freedom of speech, but sometimes there are statements that just go beyond the pale -- see for example this, this, and this, and that's just within the last five years (and doesn't include the Rape Nuts from the last election cycle).

Here's the latest installment: A regional media relations director for the Salvation Army apparently ( Read more... )

A hacker has discovered -- and, happily, disclosed -- a "blind spot" between Apple and Amazon's identity and account verification procedures:

Details are here and hereI have to say this had never occurred to me as a way to game the system, but it's scary easy because so much information is available online (names, addresses, phone numbers, email ( Read more... )

There are no words for how behind I am with so many things, as anyone might guess from the fact that I've only posted three times this month. Gaaah. Editing a 300+ page scholarly monograph on Freemasonry in your spare time can do that to you.

But at last, at last, here I am with my next installment in the 100 Things Challenge. Yay ( Read more... )

Arizona has passed a bill stating that life begins two weeks before conception.

::iz speechless::

Presumably that means everyone in Arizona will soon be singing this.

Also passed: a law protecting doctors from being sued if they withhold information that might lead a woman to get an abortion. Now, I'm fairly certain that's malpractice and ( Read more... )

Just wanted to bring this to people's attention. ofenjen's relatives have rescued Lily, an adorable tabby kitten who was -- get this -- shot and dumped at their place out in the country. (Grrr...so angry with idiot humans...) Vet bills will be steep (we've all been there, right?) so they're having an auction to raise some money at loveforlily. Some neat stuff up ( Read more... )

Latest leisure reading / nuclear apocalypse: The Pallid Giant. Set during the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, it concerns a diplomat who, discouraged by the bickering and pettiness he witnesses, learns from a scientist friend that homo sapiens may not be the first intelligent species to rise -- and fall -- on Earth. Rather eerie in its prescience; ( Read more... )

Watched a fascinating two-hour piece last night on the financial meltdown and how it happened. Turns out the number of bad mortgages exploded not because unscrupulous lenders wanted to screw home buyers, but because very rich people in places like China and Asia were eagerly hunting for places to put their money; American mortgages seemed like a ( Read more... )

I must thank the Octuplet Mom for waking me up this morning by providing me with inspiration for truly vigorous rant.  What kind of a moron is this woman???  Six kids, ages 2 to 7 (so that's six kids in five years -- ok, some of them are twins, but still), three of them disabled, and all of them on WELFARE, and what does this cosmically stupid ( Read more... )