Animal lovers protest Miami-Dade mayor and commission

Animal lovers protest Miami-Dade mayor, commission - Miami-Dade - MiamiHerald.com: "His voice shaking with anger, Zoo Miami spokesman Ron Magill told the Miami-Dade County Commission Tuesday that as one of nearly 500,000 voters who volunteered to raise their own property taxes to save unwanted pets, he was “insulted’’ that anyone suggest he didn’t know what he was voting for. . . ." (read more at link above)

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Mermaids of Weeki Wachee Springs (video)

The Mermaids of Weeki Wachee Springs: "In a town with a population of four, “live mermaids” perform three or four daily shows for an entrance fee of just $13."

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Dissident Chen Guangcheng Goes Global (video)

A Dissident Goes Global: "The Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng has become a celebrity and a headache for the Chinese authorities."

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Remembering Robben Island (video)

Remembering Robben Island: "Ahmed Kathrada recalls his time in prison on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela."

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Obama a/k/a "George Bush 2.0" supported by Michele Bachmann!

"Tonight on MSNBC, we show you an eloquent & impassioned speech in defense of the Obama WH's position on NSA - from Rep Michele Bachmann"
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 24, 2013

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Dancing the Night Away (video)

Dancing the Night Away: "Lincoln Center's Midsummer Night Swing celebrates its 25th anniversary season."

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Touring ‘Game of Thrones’ (video)

Touring ‘Game of Thrones’: "The hit HBO series is drawing fans to Northern Ireland, where key scenes from the show are filmed."

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US government killed a 16-year-old American boy

The US government killed a 16-year-old American boy. Shouldn’t it at least have to explain why?

The Drone That Killed My Grandson  - NYTimes.com: "After the deaths of Abdulrahman and Anwar, I filed another lawsuit, seeking answers and accountability. The government has argued once again that its targeted killing program is beyond the reach of the courts. I find it hard to believe that this can be legal in a constitutional democracy based on a system of checks and balances." (read more at link above)

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Google's Larry Page on the internet

Google's Larry Page on Why Moon Shots Matter | Wired Business | Wired.com: " . . . Page: Consider our own history. When we started Google, it wasn’t really obvious that what we were doing wouldn’t get regulated away. Remember, at the time, people were arguing that making a copy of a file in a computer’s memory was a violation of copyright. We put the whole web on our servers, so if that were true, bye-bye search engines. The Internet’s been pretty great for society, and I think that 10 or 20 years from now, we’ll look back and say we were a millimeter away from regulating it out of existence.

Wired: My guess is that talking to regulators is probably not your favorite thing to do.

Page: I like talking to everyone. That’s just the way I’m wired. But I do think the Internet’s under much greater attack than it has been in the past. Governments are now afraid of the Internet because of the Middle East stuff, and so they’re a little more willing to listen to what I see as a lot of commercial interests that just want to make money by restricting people’s freedoms. But they’ve also seen a tremendous user reaction, like the backlash against SOPA. I think that governments fight users’ freedoms at their own peril. . . ." (read more at link above)

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Guardian "last bastion of good quality reporting" says internet pioneer Vint Cerf

Internet pioneer Vint Cerf talks online privacy, Google Glass and the future of libraries - The Next Web: "“Having spent time in England since the 1970s, I’ve read a lot of the different newspapers, and I’ve been disappointed that The Times (a Murdoch-owned daily) has disintegrated,” he says. “As far as I can tell, The Guardian may be the last bastion of good quality reporting.”" (read more at link above)

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Economist article on Kim Dotcom launch of MEGA - comments enlightening

Enlightening--The Economist is hardly a "revolutionary rag"--

Comments from the Economist article on Kim Dotcom launch of MEGA-- 

The S.W.A.T. team attack on his residence to arrest this guy is one of the biggest (and most ridiculous) example of governments out-of-control, responding to the wishes of politically influential businessmen (the movie industry). If you haven't actually seen it, look it up on YouTube and have a look. It's so outrageous it's laughable. It's lucky no one was killed by the police.

 . . .  criminal justice is just another system. You can analyse it and hack it, like everything else. And please, please don't tell me this system isn't flawed to the point of being nearly totally broken and doesn't need a healthy bucket of public ridicule. (read more at link above)

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"deserve neither liberty nor safety"

Germans Loved Obama. Now We Don’t Trust Him. - NYTimes.com: "Perhaps instead of including a quote from James Madison in his speech, arguing that “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare,” Mr. Obama should have been reminded of the quote from another founding father, Benjamin Franklin, when he said, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”" (read more at link above)

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Rand Paul says catch terrorists the old-fashioned way (video)

Rand Paul: Catch Terrorists the Old-Fashioned Way: Video - Bloomberg: "June 18 (Bloomberg) -- Rand Paul, a Republican U.S. Senator from Kentucky, discusses what he sees as a credibility gap on intelligence gathering by the NSA. He speaks on Bloomberg Television's "Market Makers.""

OK--but how about catching terrorists the constitutional way!

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The Criminal Charges Against Aaron Swartz - Prosecutorial Discretion

The Volokh Conspiracy » The Criminal Charges Against Aaron Swartz (Part 2: Prosecutorial Discretion): "But the broader point is that if we think agressive prosecution tactics such as this are improper, we shouldn’t be focused just on the Aaron Swartz case. Rather, we should be shining a light on the federal criminal system in its entirety. These sorts of tactics have been going on for years, without many people paying attention. If we don’t want a world in which prosecutors have these powers, we shouldn’t just object when the defendant in the crosshairs is a genius who went to Stanford, hangs out with Larry Lessig, and is represented by the extremely expensive lawyers at Keker & Van Nest. We should object just as much — or even more — when the defendant is poor, unknown, and unconnected to the powerful. To do otherwise sends an extremely troubling message to prosecutors that they need to be extra sensitive when considering charges against defendants with connections. We have too much of a two-tiered justice system already, I think. So blame the system and aim to reform the system; don’t think that this was just two or three prosecutors that were doing something unusual. It wasn’t." (read more at link above)

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How to Go Undercover in Hong Kong video

NSA Leaker: How to Go Undercover in Hong Kong: Video - Bloomberg: "Bloomberg's Rosalind Chin reports on the obstacles NSA leaker Edward Snowden faced as he hid in Hong Kong. (Source: Bloomberg)"

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Keeping the Internet free

Not too long ago . . .

Keeping the Internet free - The Washington Post: "While the Internet cannot fall into the hands of those who would censor and restrict it, the United States should put more effort into remaking the current model so that it can serve what has become a global infrastructure. Ambassador Terry Kramer, who headed the U.S. delegation in Dubai, was clear that a power grab by the repressive countries was a non-starter. “No single organization or government can or should attempt to control the Internet or dictate its future development,” Mr. Kramer insisted. The conference did serve to highlight broad, opposing camps over Internet freedom. After the United States pulled out, 89 nations signed the agreement, including Russia, China, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela. The blank screen of the Internet censor is not likely to disappear soon. A long and fateful battle looms for digital freedom."

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Web inventor says governments stifling net freedom

Web inventor says governments stifling net freedom (Update): ""The dream is of a more open web," Berners-Lee told the gathering in the Swiss ski resort, citing social media as a way of breaking down barriers.But he said the recent suicide of Aaron Swartz, a 26-year-old US Internet activist who faced charges of illegally copying and distributing millions of academic articles, highlighted government efforts to police the Internet."He downloaded a lot and so the secret service in the US decided that he was a hacker. For them that isn't the term of great praise that it is when I use it. For me a hacker is someone who is creative and does wonderful things," he said."

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Sailing Around the World With Three Cats

Sailing Around the World Or Three Cats in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Man) | Features & Opinion | RIA Novosti: ". . . . "I had my 'children' sailing with me," Morozov said. "I have had my cat Tsilya for seven years now. She gave birth to a daughter some 15 miles from Miami, and so I named the kitten Miami. And I adopted a tomcat, Ali, in Grand Bahama. It happened like this: Something bit Tsilya quite badly on a marina berth where we were staying, and I took her to a local shelter for an examination because she was already pregnant and I was worried about possible complications. At the shelter, I saw Ali. He only had three legs, having lost his left hind leg in a road accident. Ali sat on top of my bag and looked at me as if to say, 'You just can't leave me behind, buddy. I really want to go with you.’" So Morozov took the disabled cat along with him, introduced him to Tsilya and showed him around their yacht. . . ." (read more at link above)

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