Nobody, and I really mean nobody, is to be trusted with a technical capability to listen to every room in the world, with listening profiles customizable at the identified-individual level, on the mere basis of “trust us”.
Month: June 2015
These 21 Republicans Voted Against the McCain-Feinstein Amendment to Prevent Torture – The Atlantic
The opposition in the effort to make sure that American interrogators never inflict severe pain or mental anguish on prisoners again
- Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a former U.S. attorney and state attorney general
- Tom Cotton of Arkansas, an Iraq War combat veteran
- Michael Crapo of Idaho
- James Risch of Idaho
- Daniel Coats of Indiana, who is not expected to seek reelection
- Joni Ernst of Iowa, who has served more than two decades in the Army Reserve and National Guard
- Pat Roberts of Kansas, a former chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, which oversees the CIA
- Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate majority leader
- David Vitter of Louisiana
- Thad Cochran of Mississippi, a former Eagle Scout and Navy veteran, and current chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee
- Roy Blunt of Missouri
- Deb Fischer of Nebraska
- Benjamin Sasse of Nebraska
- Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, who said during a congressional hearing into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, “I’m probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment.”
- James Lankford of Oklahoma, who holds a graduate degree in divinity and was formerly an evangelism specialist for the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma
- Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who is seeking the GOP presidential nomination and worked to strip federal courts of jurisdiction to hear cases from Guantanamo Bay detainees
- Tim Scott of South Carolina, an evangelical Christian who is opposed to abortion, gay rights, stem cell research, and euthanasia, and once fought to install the ten commandments outside a municipal building where he was an elected official
- John Cornyn of Texas, a former state attorney general and associate justice of the Texas Supreme Court
- Orrin Hatch of Utah, who called Jay Bybee, a primary author of Bush era torture memos, “one of the most honorable people you’ll ever meet” while defending him against torture critics who wanted to remove him from a federal judgeship.
- Mike Lee of Utah, who has opposed extending controversial portions of the Patriot Act as well as the indefinite detention of Americans in the War on Terrorism
- John Barrasso of Wyoming
Source: These 21 Republicans Voted Against the McCain-Feinstein Amendment to Prevent Torture – The Atlantic
Excerpt from Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice – The Atlantic
Trial consultants allow the affluent to manipulate the biases of those who judge them, putting justice up for sale.
from the perspective of a trial consultant, a system that is predictably unfair, in ways that are hidden from most court participants, is the best possible situation. It presents a golden business opportunity.
Source: Excerpt from Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice – The Atlantic
Why Mathematicians Are Hoarding This Special Type of Japanese Chalk
This spring, an 80-year-old Japanese chalk company went out of business. Nobody, perhaps, was as sad to see the company go as mathematicians who had become obsessed with Hagoromo Fulltouch Chalk, the so-called “Rolls Royce of chalk.”
With whiteboards and now computers taking over classrooms, the company’s demise seemed to mark the end of an era.
This isn’t just a story about a dead chalk company—it’s the story of a dead medium, the chalkboard, now being superseded by whiteboards and tablets. But it’s not hard to see chalk having old-fashioned appeal, much like vinyl records and mason jars.
Source: Why Mathematicians Are Hoarding This Special Type of Japanese Chalk
The False Promise of Black Political Representation – The Atlantic
The more white voters support a policy, the more likely it is to be enacted. The more black voters support a policy, the less likely it is to be achieved.
The story is similar for several other groups. The more that women, the poor, or Hispanics support a federal policy, the less likely the policy is to be enacted. Strikingly, as women move from universal opposition to a proposal to universal support, its odds of adoption plummet from 75 percent to 10 percent.
Source: The False Promise of Black Political Representation – The Atlantic