Cecil

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/07/30/cecil_the_lion_and_americas_broken_outrage_meter.html

"Vox Explains Liberals"

http://freebeacon.com/blog/vox-explains-liberals/

MOOC - Disrupting technology

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/539131/india-loves-moocs/

Do not talk to the Police

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

Nature - kids - change (for the worse)

..."One of my favorite parenting blogs, Free Range Kids, posted this absolutely incredible (and somewhat chilling) advertisement from the health food company Nature Valley Today. In it, grandparents describe their childhoods, filled with fishing, blueberry picking and even fending off bears. What do the kids spend their time doing? It involves a lot of glowing screens.

The video is chilling. What can we as parents do?

I wrote last week about my efforts to wean my daughter off of screens and why. I’m not naive enough to think it won’t be an ongoing battle throughout her childhood. How am I working on getting my toddler outside? Here are a few of the activities we enjoy doing:

1. Growing our own garden, both on our balcony and in the backyard.

2. Visiting “pick your own” fields of beans, berries and whatever else we can find.

3. Visiting zoos, public gardens, splash parks and public parks and allowing her to run free.

4. Running in sprinklers, playing in kiddie pools & sand tables.

5. Visiting friends’ backyards with play equipment & tree swings.

Comment below: How do you get your kids outside? Do you think free play is important?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=is5W6GxAI3c

Today's Totalitarians

http://thefederalist.com/2015/07/06/the-new-totalitarians-are-here/#.VZ2PcyOZo8w.email

"Totalitarians are a different breed. These are the people who have a plan, who think they see the future more clearly than you or who are convinced they grasp reality in a way that you do not. They don’t serve themselves—or, they don’t serve themselves exclusively—they serve History, or The People, or The Idea, or some other ideological totem that justifies their actions.

They want obedience, of course. But even more, they want their rule, and their belief system, to be accepted and self-sustaining. And the only way to achieve that is to create a new society of people who share those beliefs, even if it means bludgeoning every last citizen into enlightenment. That’s what makes totalitarians different and more dangerous: they are “totalistic” in the sense that they demand a complete reorientation of the individual to the State and its ideological ends. Every person who harbors a secret objection, or even so much as a doubt, is a danger to the future of the whole project, and so the regime compels its subjects not only to obey but to believe.
. . .
By attacking everyone in the public sphere from judges to writers, they’re sending a clear warning that there’s plenty of room in the bonfire. It is a vow that you will be held to account for your personal thoughts, even if you’ve already been defeated in a democratic or judicial contest.

No, even after losing, you will be forced to admit the error of your ways. You must accept that you’ve sinned. You must discard your own values and accept the ideas of your betters. You must denounce yourself for undermining the construction of a better world.

You, too, must love Big Brother."

"Fauxminists"

"When “fauxminist” outrage over a minor faux pas can ruin a Nobel winner's career, this is not good for women, for science, or for the culture."

http://observer.com/2015/07/lab-rats-how-the-misogyny-police-and-sloppy-journalists-smeared-a-
top-scientist/

"Morally superior"

http://www.therebel.media/_jobs_justice_climate_protesters

("You expect ME to give up my car, my meat, my jets, my house, my electricity????)

simple conversion of text message

datafile = 'mypost.txt'
def readfile(datafile):
    X = []
    def nonblank_lines(f):
        for l in f:
            line = l.rstrip()
            if line:
                yield line
    myfile = open(datafile,'r')
    for line in nonblank_lines(myfile):
        X.append(str(line))
    return X

numlines = len(readfile(datafile))
mylines = readfile(datafile)

for i in range(numlines):
    trythis = mylines[i]
    print ' '.join(str(ord(trythis[j])) for j in range(len(trythis)))

datafile = 'mypostcrypted.txt'

def getInts(ln):

    return [int(word) for word in ln.split()]

f = open('mypostcrypted.txt')

dat = [getInts(ln) for ln in f]

print len(dat)

for i in range(len(dat)):

    thisline = dat[i]

    print ' '.join(chr(thisline[j]) for j in range(len(thisline)))

A fundamentalist religion - named "Sustainability"

http://www.startribune.com/campus-sustainability-going-green-is-just-part-of-the-plot/310188031/

"The Church of Primitivism"

http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/sustainable-capitalism/

"Capitalism is inherently sustainable, relentlessly producing more human satisfaction using fewer resources. What environmentalists call “sustainability” ought to be called primitivism, producing less human satisfaction using more resources."

A WasteLand (Social Media)

It is distressing to watch the deliberate destruction of this great land - ... Ayn Rand died many years ago - but it is astonishing how much of what is happening in the US and around the world she saw coming ...

When the lights go out in NYC we will know ...