Society's ChildS


Rainbow

Mozilla's CEO resigns under pressure - he was anti-gay rights

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© Reuters/MozillaOutgoing Mozilla chief executive Brendan Eich.
Tech workers in Silicon Valley debated on Friday whether Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich got the comeuppance he deserved or was himself a victim of intolerance when he resigned under pressure this week amid outrage over his opposition to same-sex marriage.

Some, especially a dating website that had urged its users to boycott Mozilla's popular Firefox web browser, cheered Eich's resignation after less than two weeks as CEO of the nonprofit software company. Others viewed him as a victim and called his critics intolerant of people with different views.

Mozilla co-founder Eich, who invented the programming language Javascript, donated $1,000 in 2008 to support Proposition 8, which sought to ban same-sex marriage in California. Voters approved the measure, but it was struck down last June by the U.S. Supreme Court.

USA

Symbolic? Atlanta Braves accidentally torch American flag during opening game

Before their home opener Tuesday night, the Atlanta Braves paid tribute to baseball legend Hank Aaron on the field. Meanwhile, the organization set off a fireworks display at the back of the stadium that went... just a tad awry.

The explosives somehow drifted into the vicinity of Old Glory and lit it ablaze, making for a PR executive's nightmare: a burning American flag.

Julie Paulk, a fan who attended the game posted an image of the flag to her Facebook page:
flag burning
© twitter

Comet

Should one prepare for a collapse or not?

Economic collapse
© yoism.org

Thinking about collapse is very useful because it allows you to prepare for it. And preparing for collapse is very useful too - from the pragmatic perspective of risk management. Consider the possibilities.
  • If you prepare for collapse and it doesn't happen, then you look a tiny bit foolish.
  • If you don't prepare for collapse and collapse does happen, then you look a tiny bit dead.
Now, which would you prefer to be, foolish or dead?

This type of reasoning is very basic, and is used for such things as calculating the amount of insurance to buy or the amount of cash to keep in reserve in order to avoid being bankrupted should the worst-case scenario unfold. In order to do that, you have to have some idea of what the worst case scenario is. People seem comfortable with this kind of reasoning.

Cow Skull

Rancher: Armed feds are surrounding my farm‏

A two-decades-old battle between a Nevada rancher and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has resulted in officials armed with machine guns surrounding the ranch and forcibly removing the owner's cattle, according to the rancher's family.

Cliven Bundy, the last rancher in Clark County, Nev., has been fighting a "one-man range war" since 1993, when he decided to take a stand against the agency, refusing to pay fees for the right to graze on a ranch run by his family for centuries.

Bad Guys

Psychopath Ben Stein: Poor people are jealous, lazy drunks who don't appreciate indoor plumbing

Ben Stein
© Unknown
Conservative pundit Ben Stein suggested that only government-sanctioned religion could save poor Americans from their own "self-sabotage," reported Right Wing Watch.

"What will make the genuinely poor stop sabotaging themselves?" the actor and TV host asked Friday in The American Spectator. "Maybe, just maybe, if we let God back into the public forum it would help. I have seen spiritual solutions work miracles."

Stein argued that anyone concerned about wealth inequality was just jealous of billionaires, whom he described as necessary and beneficial to American society.

Comment: He is in essence blaming the victim, the poor, of a society that continues to disregard their betterment in favor enriching the few. The last few years since the 2008 financial crisis has shown that the money flows to the top, but doesn't flow back down. If individuals like Stein had their way, the remaining social safety net would be discarded in favor of letting the poor fend for themselves. He has little compassion and it would seem little ability to feel empathy - Psychopath.


Cloud Lightning

Pat Robertson asks God to 'deliver us from this president' - Is he asking for someone to assassinate Obama?‏

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In the video embedded below, televangelist Pat Robertson beseeched God to remove President Barack Obama from office "before it's too late."

Robertson began by implying that Obama is not Christian but Muslim. He pulled a quote from a 2012 speech in which Obama said that "the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam."

Robertson stopped there, but in the actual speech, which Obama gave in 2012, the president went on to say that the future must neither belong to people who attack Christians and Jews.

Eye 1

Multiple students stabbed at Franklin Regional High School, US‏

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© Bill Rehkopf/NewsRadio 1020 KDKA
At least 20-people have been injured in a stabbing at Franklin Regional High School in Murrysville.

Murrysville police Chief Thomas Seefeld says 19-of the victims are students, one of them is a school security guard.

A school security guard called in the stabbing at 7:13 a.m.

Seefeld wouldn't detail the carnage beyond saying, "The juvenile went down the hallway and was flashing two knives around and injured the people."

Police say the 16-year-old male student suspect is in custody and is a sophomore at the high school.

He was transported from the Murrysville Police Department by police car, and reportedly taken to a local hospital for superficial wounds, and then returned.

Bullseye

Low-income Americans targeted by high tax preparation fees

In December, they begin showing up in empty storefronts in neighborhoods where empty storefronts are easy to come by. Cars with phone numbers brightly displayed on the doors roll down the streets, and signs pop up along the sidewalks promising fast money.

For millions of low-income Americans, tax season means the biggest one-time influx of money all year. It also means the annual sprouting of commercial tax preparers: some of them big-name franchises, some mom-and-pops and some, as 20-year-old Brittany Dixon discovered this year, shockingly expensive.

She told the preparer not to file, she said, and found a service willing to do her taxes at no cost. But by then, the first preparer had already filed and taken its cut. "That was my whole car note," Ms. Dixon said.

Read more at the NY Times.

Light Sabers

New York Festivals honors RT with prestigious gold medal award for the second year in a row

RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan
© RIA NovostiRT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan

"The Russian RT news channel has been honored with a prestigious gold medal award at the New York Festivals, besting the US-based CNN news channel, and claiming an additional two bronze medals," RT's press service told RIA Novosti.

RT News Channel, previously known as Russia Today, is a Russian international information TV company.

RT is the first Russian channel presenting round-the-clock news in English, Arabic and Spanish.

The RT editor-in-chief is Margarita Simonyan and in late 2005 the network began English-language news broadcasts from Moscow.

RT has 22 bureaus in 19 countries, with offices in Washington, New York, London, Berlin, Cairo and Baghdad, employing over 1,000 media professionals around the globe.

The network has a global reach of over 644 million people in more than 100 countries.

In 2010, the network became the first ever Russian TV channel to be nominated in the Emmy International Television Awards.

In 2012, the news channel received a second Emmy nomination for covering the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Last year, the channel took the top prize for best round-the-clock news channel at Europe's most prestigious gathering of TV officials, the Monte-Carlo Television Festival.

And last year, the news channel also won the top prize at the New York Festivals.

Stormtrooper

The new Ukraine: WWII, Holocaust memorials in Odessa vandalized by Kiev Nazi protesters

Hungarian jews
© en.wikipedia.org/Deutsches Bundesarchiv/cc-by-sa 3.0
Southern city of Ukraine, Odessa has been vandalized by the activists from Kiev. The protestors are leaving Nazi symbols behind them on the monuments of WWII. They are also demanding the arrest of those who wear St. George's ribbons, symbol of WWII heroes. On Tuesday the main monument to Holocaust victims in center square in Odessa was horribly vandalized, reports the RT media.

The activists left the monument with the symbols of swastikas and wolf hooks. Those exact symbols that represent Nazi ideology and bring all the memories of severe WWII period.

The Holocaust memorial in Odessa was opened last October as a remembrance of thousands of Odessa residents that died in 1941.

Roman Schwartzman, head of the association of former Nazi prisoners comments on this, "Out of the 25 thousand of people killed about 22 thousand were Jews, mainly children, women and old people. The rest were Soviet soldiers and marines who protected the city from the Nazis. All were burned by Romanian occupants."