Thursday, May 29, 2014


News Clips For The Day


The People Have Tweeted: Is Snowden a #Traitor or #Patriot? – NBC
— Becky Bratu
First published May 28th 2014

Edward Snowden’s exclusive, wide-ranging interview with Brian Williams attracted intense attention on social media Wednesday, with Americans divided on whether the fugitive leaker is a patriot or a traitor — but leaning toward the prior.

Tracking the two terms on Twitter over a 36-hour window (from 2 p.m. ET Tuesday through 2 a.m. Thursday), they were extremely close until Snowden spoke in the hour-long interview, his first with a U.S. television network, and #Patriot spiked. During the broadcast, tweets mentioning #Patriot outnumbered #Traitor nearly two to one.

With the help of Twitter, see how the conversation changed in the below video and chart. On the video, the green dots show those tweeting #Patriot, while the blue dots show those tweeting #Traitor.

The interview was referred to thousands of times on Twitter, and the hashtag #InsideSnowden was trending during the NBC broadcast of the hour-long interview, Snowden’s first with a U.S. television network.

Secretary of State John Kerry, during a live interview Wednesday on TODAY, made his opinion clear: “Edward Snowden is a coward, he is a traitor, and he has betrayed his country.”

Snowden classified himself as a patriot.

“Being a patriot means knowing when to protect your country, knowing when to protect your Constitution, knowing when to protect your countrymen from the — the violations of and encroachments of adversaries,” he said.

On social media, people aired their opinions all day.

Some remained undecided.

Many also referred to Snowden’s demeanor throughout the interview, as he appeared calm and calculated in his responses.

When asked by Williams about how he spends his time in Russia, Snowden mentioned watching the HBO crime TV series "The Wire," which first aired more than 10 years ago. His assessment of the show's second season, which he said was not great, generated more than 800 mentions — few in agreement.

From the Twitter comments:

Nathan Dilla @NathanDilla
Follow
The real question: Isn't it possible Edward Snowden is both a #Patriot to the American people AND a #Traitor to the US gov? #InsideSnowden
10:53 PM - 28 May 2014

Philip Schuyler @FiveRights
Follow
#InsideSnowden Snowden talks like a thinking person rather than a govt bot. SO refreshing.
10:47 PM - 28 May 2014

Spencer Oakes Dawson @EnviroSpence
Follow
Everything about #EdwardSnowden is calculated, intelligent, careful, caring, soulful. He cares about USA. #patriot #InsideSnowden @NBCNews
10:36 PM - 28 May 2014

Haley Ellingson @HaleyEllingson
Follow
So many conflicting feelings on #InsideSnowden. Good for Americans to be aware but gov. deserves secrecy on some topics. #Patriot #Traitor
10:41 PM - 28 May 2014


Bill Gibbons @BillBgibbons141
Follow
#Traitor People give away their personal information all the time. Read any EUA. When the next tragedy occurs, we'll wish NSA was listening.
10:46 PM - 28 May 2014

Michael Duchemin @michaelduchemin
Follow
Edward Snowden is a #patriot. John Kerry is a #traitor as are all politicians like him.
10:46 PM - 28 May 2014




There is one thing I couldn't include on this clip because my “blogger” publication program won't accept pictures, graphs, etc. That is a map of the US showing the origins of the “traitor” versus “patriot” votes. There are only two blue spots representing the “traitor” votes, as compared to nine for “patriot.” The two “traitor” votes are in Louisiana and the northern mid-west, maybe Iowa. The green spots are in the southwest including the northern part of Texas, the southern area of Florida, what looks to be Georgia, coastal and Piedmont North Carolina, Washington, DC, and the northern range from New York to upper New England.

I have been on the fence about Snowden because the CIA, NSA, etc. were definitely behind in their effectiveness about protecting us from terrorists and freaky right-wing/left-wing fringe groups, as witnessed by the felling of the Twin Towers on 9/11. I am one of those who thinks Snowden's courage and caring about the most important of issues in a functioning democracy make him a Patriot, but the intelligence community needs a way to keep track of everything if they have to, so that makes him a “traitor.” In other words, if another terrorist plot emerges they need to be able to link up the interactions between the bad guys and round them up. They do, however, need to be getting court permission for that action each and every time they go into people's personal information rather than keeping a “big brother file.” They will have that with the telephone companies compiling the data, and then giving the intelligence people access to it when they have their court order.

The “big brother file,” accessible immediately and perhaps too frequently, could be used to keep track of political enemies, political parties, street protesters on any number of issues, whistle-blowers, Civil Rights activists, and writers of politically oriented articles and books. Our democracy can't survive with that in place. I remember the 60s and 70s, when people from Martin Luther King to (possibly) President Kennedy were tracked by the intelligence community. A democracy has to allow freedom of speech and political affiliation even when the central government disagrees with their viewpoints. The occasional whistle-blower like Snowden ensures that this can happen. I definitely don't believe he should spend the rest of his life in prison.





Two Teenage Girls Gang-Raped, Hanged in India Village – NBC
- Reuters
First published May 29th 2014

NEW DELHI - Police have arrested one man and are looking for four other suspects after two teenage girls were gang-raped and then hanged from a tree in a village in the northern India state of Uttar Pradesh.

The two cousins, who were from a low-caste community and aged 14 and 15, went missing from their home in the Budaun district of the state when they went outside to go to the toilet on Tuesday evening.

The following morning, villagers found the bodies of the two teenagers hanging from a mango tree in a nearby orchard.

"We have registered a case under various sections, including that of rape, and one of the accused has been taken into custody. There were five people involved, one has been arrested and we are looking for the others," Budaun's Superintendent of Police Man Singh Chouhan told reporters.

Chouhan said a post-mortem confirmed the two minors were raped and died from the hanging. DNA samples have been also been taken to help identity the perpetrators, he added.

The victims' families say the girls were gang-raped and then hanged by five men from the village. They allege that local police were shielding the attackers as they refused to take action when the girls were first reported missing.

It was only after angry villagers found the hanging corpses and took the bodies to a nearby highway and blocked it in protest, say the families, that police registered a case of rape and murder.

A case of conspiracy has also been registered against two constables, said Chouhan, adding that they had also been suspended.

Sex crimes against young girls and women are widespread in India, say activists, adding that females from poor, marginalized, low-caste communities are often the victims.

A report by the Asian Centre for Human Rights in April last year said 48,338 child rape cases were recorded in India from 2001 to 2011, and the annual number of reported cases had risen more than fourfold - 336 percent - over that period.

Women's rights experts and lawyers say rape victims also have to endure harsh treatment from an archaic, poorly funded and insensitive criminal justice system.

Police often try to dissuade victims from complaining and suggest a "compromise" between the victim and the perpetrator, largely because of their insensitivity to sex crimes, but also because police officials are rarely held accountable.

Public outrage over the fatal gang rape of a woman in New Delhi in December 2012 pushed the government into passing a tougher new law to punish sex crimes. This includes sentences of up to two years’ jail for police and hospital authorities if they fail to register a complaint or treat a victim.




“Public outrage over the fatal gang rape of a woman in New Delhi in December 2012 pushed the government into passing a tougher new law to punish sex crimes. This includes sentences of up to two years’ jail for police and hospital authorities if they fail to register a complaint or treat a victim.” This sounds like some places in the US in the 1950's when “poor white trash” or black girls complained about rape. Police have been known to fail to follow up and make charges, and defense lawyers are famous for trying to destroy the woman's honor, criticizing how they are dressed and whether they have boyfriends.

I think that goes on less now. Growing up southern in 1950 did make me very conscious of whether my skirt was too short or not. Prejudice against women is worldwide, but definitely worse in some places and times than others. India needs to bear down on the problem and reform itself. I think they are doing it. It just takes time. A whole culture needs to become sensitized to the issues. I noticed in this article that many times the victims are poor people – from lower castes – so I would say that they need to rewrite some of their laws that don't protect the poor equally. I'll bet they don't get equal rights politically, either. It's an ongoing process, especially as the world sees such cases as this and makes an outcry against them.





Concussion Crisis: White House Summit Tackles Brain Injuries – NBC
BY LINDA CARROLL
First published May 29th 2014

Like every other parent in the U.S., President Barack Obama wants to know more about concussions and how they may affect his kids.

Unlike the rest of us, Obama has the power to push research forward. To help shine a brighter light on the issue, the president convened a daylong summit at the White House Thursday that included researchers, parents, coaches, professional athletes and sportscasters.

The hope is that the summit will help educate parents and focus a spotlight on the need for more research on how to prevent, identify and respond to brain injuries in childrenwhile still promoting the value of team sports.

"The president thinks it's important for his own daughters and kids across the country to participate in sports. But as a parent himself he feels that there isn't enough information about concussions," said White House communications director Jennifer Palmieri.

Obama announced a host of initiatives designed to expand our understanding of concussions, starting with a $30 million project funded by the N.C.A.A. and the Defense Department to study the risks for and treatment of concussions.

"This is the first acknowledgment that concussions are emerging as one of the most important health issues of the decade," Dr. Douglas Smith, a professor of neurosurgery and director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, told NBC News. "It's been the elephant in the room. Now everyone is saying, how long has that elephant been there? Awareness is skyrocketing."

Philanthropist Steve Tisch, co-owner of the New York Giants and an Academy Award-winning film producer, has pledged $10 million to the department of neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA for the BrainSPORT Program, which has been renamed the UCLA Steve Tisch BrainSPORT Program.

The NFL itself has committed to spending $25 million over the next three years to support projects that will promote youth sports safety, including pilot programs to expand access to athletic trainers in schools.

"The world is a changing place with retired NFL players stating on camera that they wouldn't let their kids play contact sports. This is really bringing it to the level of a discussion for the family at the dining room table," Smith said.




I have long been turned off by the extreme emphasis on team sports, especially football, which Little Leagues, high schools, colleges and now the professional teams place above academics, the band or orchestra, arts teachers, well-qualified teachers of all subjects and just good citizenship among less than wealthy or highly intelligent students. High school used to be a place of status structures with the football team and wealthy people's children on top. I imagine it still is, as long as those rich people are on the school board and are pushing their kids to be stars in school rather than ordinary hard-working students, who may have a part time job on the side or worse, may need tutoring.

It is almost funny that now people have become conscious of the physical threat involved in contact sports, and they are shocked. Our society has almost worshiped team sports. I used to think it was the belief that “being a team player” is the top psychological characteristic a “good citizen” should have in a conservative society, but now I suspect that it is the very violence involved in football that makes it appeal to the masculine sex to such a degree I know I was shocked when I found out on the news that a large number of professional football players have enough brain damage to limit their lives as retired men. It makes me sad to see humans waste themselves in this way. It really is like the boxers of a few decades ago who likewise had “taken too many punches,” and ended up in nursing homes. Sports tend to be rough, but at least the individual sports like tennis are not, and basketball or baseball also are less dangerous. I've always like watching them more than football, anyway. They show more individual skill and I think they are very exciting.




Women are getting fed up with sexism in tech – CBS
By KIM PETERSON MONEYWATCH May 29, 2014

For decades, women in technology have complained of sexist treatment in the workplace -- and it doesn't seem to be getting better.

For nine women in the industry, the harassment and insults have become too much, and so they've recently published a strongly worded manifesto calling for change.

The women say they have all been groped at technology events. They have watched as men first assume they are secretaries or event planners, and then try to turn business meetings into dates. They've been pranked repeatedly, such as the time one left her desk and returned to find graphic pornography on her screen. Online, the women say, they have been called names, criticized for their looks and strongly encouraged to leave the industry.

"We are tired of pretending this stuff doesn't happen and continue to keep having these experiences again and again," the women write. "We keep our heads down working at our jobs, hoping that if we just work hard at what we do, maybe somehow the problem will go away."

The women include employees at Adobe Systems (ADBE), BuzzFeed, Kickstarter, Stripe and Mozilla, as well as software engineers and designers and technology journalists, Business Insider reports.

Women make up only about 30 percent of the technology workforce, according to LinkedIn. And they only hold about 15 percent of software engineering jobs.

Why aren't more getting hired? Facebook's (FB) chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, said she has heard plenty of reasons. One executive told her he'd like to hire more women, but his wife worried he would sleep with them. He probably would, he added. Another man said he would hire more women if only he found some that were competent, according to The Los Angeles Times.

The issue surfaced again recently when one woman working for GitHub, a company that runs online communities for coders, quit and said she had been harassed for months. An internal investigation led to the resignation of the company's CEO. Women also say it's hard to find their footing in a "brogrammer" culture that trades in derogatory comments. Take those of start-up founder Peter Shih, who published an online rant that discussed women he called "49ers" -- "the girls who are obviously 4's and behave like they are 9's." And who can forget about Pax Dickinson, the former chief technology officer at Business Insider, who would tweet such insights as this: "Tech managers spend as much time worrying about how to hire talented female developers as they do worrying about how to hire a unicorn."

The women behind the manifesto say they are angry, and that things have to change. To start with, they say they will no longer be quiet when they get abusive emails from men in technology. They won't stand for sexist jokes. They will call out inappropriate behavior when they see it online. The women are asking people in their industries to promote diversity in the workplace for all underrepresented groups, not just women. They want people in technology to donate time and volunteer at groups that are focused on diversity. "We are tired of our male peers pretending that because they do not participate in bad behavior, that it is not their problem to solve," the women wrote. "You might be surprised how few people want to help or engage on this still."

Twitter users seemed to largely support the women's efforts. "If you work in tech you need to read this," wrote one man. "This industry should have no place at all for prejudice." Another Twitter user added this: "You're insane if you don't think the lack of women in tech isn't aggressive marginalization."

But some people had little patience for the group's manifesto on the Hacker Newssite. One man said the women needed to take their crusade somewhere else. "If I get to choose between the male that just wants to develop software and the female who wants to tell me all about how terrible it is working in our industry as a woman, I'm going to pick the male." Another man agreed, saying he didn't care at all about the debate. "It seems that 'the men' can't do anything right and guess what, many of us are (tired) of it and have just checked out," he added, saying it's "not our problem anymore."




As a society we are not yet sufficiently sensitive to group dynamics and concerned about certain kinds of injustices to prevent the marginalization of white women. If they're black, they can bring up the civil rights issues, but if they are white they are the one who reminds the men of their (tiresome) wives and mothers. I am not married for a reason. I'm not “domestic” enough to want to clean house and cook all day long and bring my husband another beer when he shouts for it. I also don't keep quiet when confronted. "We keep our heads down working at our jobs, hoping that if we just work hard at what we do, maybe somehow the problem will go away," the women complain. They said they have been groped, maliciously pranked, called names, treated as secretaries, had their appearance demeaned and urged to get another job. The shocking thing about it is that nobody is hired in a technological job without the credentials for it, so there is no logical reason for the bias that is obviously very firmly entrenched.

There is a war that goes on between men and women in all too many cases, and I personally prefer to keep to myself on a job and do my work. I especially don't want a job that is high on the status ranking scale, like law offices and the medical profession. Sales is also very competitive. I want a job that is detailed and somewhat technical. I want to put most of my energy into the work itself rather than the political relationships on the job.

My favorite job in my life has been library assistant. I love books, so I think I serve society when I work in a library, and the work itself demands my attention and orderliness, but doesn't require a Ph. D. I'm not very theoretically minded without a practical, physical component to the work. I also would have loved being an archaeologist or a biological scientist. My husband was a zoology grad student and I saw none of that anti-feminism among that group of men. Women in biology are in the minority, but there are more of them as time goes on, and they weren't being treated disrespectfully at UNC.

I think what women in the tech fields have to do is study those subjects in larger numbers and write more “manifestos” like this one. They could also band together financially and start their own company. Women's issues have been discussed less in the last twenty years than in the '70s, and men are getting lax again. It's all those young men who still are not being properly trained at home by their mother and father – equally represented in their upbringing, of course. Young men need to help in the kitchen, help clean house, and do their own laundry. Then we will see a change.




Julia Collins Makes ‘Jeopardy!’ History, With Nearly $400K to Show for It – ABC




Julia Collins has racked up more wins than any other woman in “Jeopardy!” history, earning $391,600 in the process.

The success marks a dream come true for Collins, who predicted she’d become a champion on the show in her eighth-grade yearbook, she said.

“I was a pretty nerdy kid,” Collins says. “I liked to shout out the answers to the TV like everybody else does.”

Collins, 31, a resident of the Chicago suburb of Wilmette, made history when she won her 17th straight game Tuesday, and then added another victory Wednesday.

Only past contestants Ken Jennings (74) and David Madden (19) have won more consecutive non-tournament games than this. The show premiered 50 years ago.

Collins' appearances on the show answer a question for her friends and family: Why did she quit her consulting job and take her time finding new work?

"I did a lot of hemming and hawing about why I was less aggressive than I could have been," Collins said, explaining that she was prohibited by the show from talking about the program at all between mid-January, when she started taping them, and April, when they started to air, or the $10,000 to $35,000 she was winning a day.

Beyond financial flexibility, she also finds empowerment in her success. Girls have sent her emails saying they feel like they have to dumb themselves down. Not so, Collins says.

“If someone doesn’t like you because you’re smart,” she said, ”that’s their problem.”




“I was a pretty nerdy kid,” Collins says. “I liked to shout out the answers to the TV like everybody else does.” I think there are some people who just like learning more and more new things. They are smart, but they are also curious and love to exercise their mind. Often they are couch potatoes or otherwise “nerdy.” From their earliest years they have been reading for pleasure above and beyond their school requirements, and have compiled lots and lots of “data.” That's what Jeopardy is about – specific information. It is not theoretical, artistic or philosophical. There are many kinds of intelligence.

Collins, according to her Wikipedia biography, “received a bachelor's degree from Wellesley College in 2005 and a master's degree in engineering from theMassachusetts Institute of Technology in 2010,” so she has been taught a great many facts. She also has very quick recall. Often I will know the answer to a question on Jeopardy after I think for a few seconds, but can't come up with the man's name, especially in time to beat all the other contestants to the draw on their little clicker devices and turn the answer around into a question. I like her because she is a woman doing well, and because she isn't a braggart like two other champions they showed recently. I also like the Asian man Arthur Chu. Both are very good, but relatively modest and self-effacing. Jeopardy really is one of the better shows on television of any kind. I look forward to it every day.





The Divide Over Involuntary Mental Health Treatment – NPR
by KIRK SIEGLER
May 29, 2014

The attacks near the University of California, Santa Barbara, are renewing focus on programs aimed at requiring treatment for people who are mentally ill as a way to prevent mass shootings and other violence.

In California, a 2002 law allows authorities to require outpatient mental health care for people who have been refusing it. Proponents argue that this kind of intervention could prevent violent acts.

But counties within the state have been slow to adopt the legislation, and mental health professionals are divided over its effects.

Do Family And Friends Know Best?

The story behind Laura's Law begins in 2001. In rural Nevada County, near Lake Tahoe, 19-year-old Laura Wilcox was shot and killed by a 41-year-old man with a history of mental illness. He had walked into the county's behavioral health center and opened fire.
Tom Anderson was the county's chief public defender at the time and represented the gunman in court. He recalls that the man's family had tried to alert mental health officials numerous times before the shooting.

"[Officials] were declaiming privacy issues and stuff and wouldn't communicate with the family," Anderson says. "He ... started amassing guns and setting up booby traps around his house, and he had this psychosis of he was going to be attacked any minute."

Now Nevada County's presiding judge, Anderson is also a vocal advocate for Laura's Law, which was passed by the state Legislature in 2002. The law allows counties to compel outpatient treatment for people whose family or friends are concerned about their mental state. It's seen as an intermediate step before someone is forced into inpatient psychiatric care.

Anderson says this tool could be one way to prevent future violent incidents, including mass shootings. And, he says, the patients often respond positively.

"The beauty of the program — the wonderment of it to me — is that roughly about 60 percent of the people that they do outreach to, where they go out to intervene after a person has been referred, voluntarily accept services at that time," he says.

A Question Of Rights

So far, only two California counties — Nevada County and Orange County — have gone forward with implementing Laura's Law. And the state hasn't allocated any funding to it.
The legislation is controversial. There are concerns that involuntary treatment could make mentally ill people vulnerable to civil rights abuses.

"You do have to be conscious that even though these people are mentally ill, they do have rights," says Steve Pitman, board president of the Orange County chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Pitman, whose brother dealt with mental illness for 50 years, says family members need more power to intervene and force treatment. He says they're the ones who often know what's really going on, while police or a county mental health official may have just a few minutes to drop by for a welfare check.

"The problem in so many of these cases is that when they're interviewed to see if they meet those kind of threshold requirements, they don't give off any signals of being a danger to themselves or others," Pitman says. "Somebody who's experienced in these kinds of things knows all the right answers to give. They don't want to go to the hospital, so they say all the right things."

That scenario echoes Elliot Rodger's alleged behavior prior to theSanta Barbara incident, in which he allegedly killed six people, then himself.

But Pitman and others are cautious about linking policy changes like Laura's Law too closely to recent mass shootings. For one thing, they say, intervention cases that fall under Laura's Law may take weeks, if not months, to fully implement. And that may be too late.

"I simply don't think that involuntary commitments are going to be an effective tool toward stemming mass shootings," says Jeff Deeney, a social worker in Philadelphia who writes about mental health forThe Atlantic.

Deeney says just a tiny fraction of mentally unstable people are a threat to public safety.
"I think what we don't have that people want so desperately is the program that stops nonviolent non-offenders from committing their first violent crime because of a mental illness," he says.

Deeney wants to see the conversation shift away from involuntary treatment programs like Laura's Law and toward preventive measures at high schools and college campuses.




“In California, a 2002 law allows authorities to require outpatient mental health care for people who have been refusing it. Proponents argue that this kind of intervention could prevent violent acts. But counties within the state have been slow to adopt the legislation, and mental health professionals are divided over its effects.” Laura's Law was named for a murder victim who was innocently working in the county's behavioral health center when her killer walked in and shot her for no reason. He had a history of problems, and his family had tried to notify mental health officials that they considered him to be dangerous. Those officials refused to talk to the family members, claiming “privacy issues.” Bureaucratic BS run amok.

Laura's Law allows counties to compel outpatient treatment when their families or others are afraid of what they will do, and stops short of hospitalization, even if they are personally opposed to getting treatment. Many people “don't believe in psychiatry,” thinking it's all a bunch of mumbo jumbo or even thinking it is against their religion. Therefore they are unlikely to accept mental health drugs and therapy voluntarily. Tom Anderson of the Nevada County court favors the law, stating that the patients, though their treatment was compelled, often do improve very much with care.

Unfortunately, there are a number of counties which have not enacted the law, according to the article, fearing that those so compelled to take treatment are made “vulnerable to civil rights abuses.” I don't see that happening. I also just think that the public good requires efforts to stop these killings. They are in the news much too frequently. The complaint about the law was made, too, that it often takes too long to “fully implement” and the person in question is at a crisis point immediately. Jeff Deeney of the Atlantic Monthly said that what is needed is a way to stop people from committing the first shooting. Until that time they are not identified and the law doesn't step in. Deeney said he wanted to see more emphasis on “preventative measures at high schools and colleges.”

I disagree. Nobody in today's large high schools knows the at risk students well enough to prevent them from erupting in fury when they've been bullied one too many times, and the teachers too often “don't want to get involved.” The mentally ill teenager so often just seems like “a very quiet kid.” The family is in a position to know much more about them and predict the violent episodes. Also, psychiatric drugs are now very well refined in what they do and not subject to the harmful side effects that they used to have. A bipolar or schizophrenic person nowadays under the proper medication will be just like everybody else. In the practical world, it beats Freudian psychotherapy or pastoral counseling all the time.

I don't think such people's “civil rights” are at risk. After all, the aim is to prevent them from buying a gun, so that particular civil right needs to be removed. I agree with Anderson, who says that the patient, 60% of the time, does accept and benefit from the mandated treatment. It's a clear improvement. Their medical records, after all, are under the HIIPA law and should not become common knowledge to be used against them.

The only people I can think of who bear a serious stigma are the sexual offenders, whose name and address are published. They aren't even mentally ill, most of the time, and absolutely must be restrained because they are so dangerous. I have no sympathy for most of them because they have simply allowed themselves to slip into something which is basically “evil,” an unpopular term these days. They are criminals and the ultimate“bully.” Rape is an assault, not sex. They should go to prison and never get out.