Just want to point out this Antares rocket on the International Space Station supply mission was outsourced to private industry. Way to go, guys! This video was taken from a passing plane.
One on one
Nikki Jean and Daryl Hall:
Happy Hour: Miles Davis – Surrey with the fringe on top…
http://youtu.be/8NcvedJcQTw
How they handle anti-Muslim racism
In other news, water is wet
Mortgage Misreporting Widespread and Intentional, Study Shows
Panhandle Slim… Art for Folk…
Ironic
Man, it’s getting hard just to survive these days:
John Spinello earned a small spot in pop culture history 50 years ago when he invented Operation, the battery-powered game that lets kids play surgeon.
But now, the 77-year-old Illinois man needs $25,000 in oral surgery and can’t afford to pay for it, having sold the rights to his creation for just $500.
Spinello says he’s not bitter and prefers to not focus on the healthcare crisis.
“Look, everyone needs medical care,” Spinello told HuffPost Weird News. “I prefer not to dwell on that aspect and focus more on the joy that the game has brought to so many over the years.”
To help him out, a couple of toy designer friends are trying to help him raise $25,000 for anticipated bills via a crowdfunding campaign at Crowdrise.com.
The campaign had raised more than $1,300 by Monday morning, mostly from toy industry insiders. A sister website, ILoveOperation.com, is selling copies of Operation personally signed by Spinello.
In addition, Spinello is planning a December auction of his original game prototype, hoping to raise at least another $35,000, according to toy designer Tim Walsh, who is organizing the fundraiser along with fellow designer Peggy Brown.
Uh oh
I’m not liking the sound of this:
There is good reason to be concerned that some independents, led by Maine Senator Angus King, could use their newfound authority in a closely divided Senate to promote the sort of “grand bargain” that has long threatened Social Security as we know it.
With the 2014 Senate competition hurdling toward November 4—when control of the chamber may or may not be decided, depending on potential runoffs in Georgia and Louisiana—the focuson independent candidacies has spiked. If Democrats and Republicans finish with even numbers of senators, even if a party has a one-seat advantage, a couple of ambitious independents could become definitional players.
As of now, one independent contender is polling well enough to be considered a serious prospect for election to the Senate, while another looks to be competitive in a wildly unsettled race. Kansas independent Greg Orman has been running even with Republican Senator Pat Roberts in a contest where the Democrat dropped out. And Republican South Dakota Senator Larry Pressler, who served as a Republican but backed President Obama twice, has retained credible numbers in a multi-candidate field for his old seat.
In Kansas, Orman has received a great deal of support from Democrats since their party’s candidate dropped out, and he is certainly more progressive than Roberts. Pressler, on the other hand, is trying to find his way around conservative Republican Mike Rounds and populist Democrat Rick Weiland.
If either Orman or Pressler were to win, they would join two New England independents, King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, in the 100-seat Senate.
Out of gas
The plan to sell off our public utility is dead:
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Philadelphia City Council members are effectively killing the proposed sale of the city’s gas utility to a Connecticut firm.
The deal required City Council approval. But Council President Darrell Clarke says there was “no appetite” for the proposed $1.86 billion sale of Philadelphia Gas Works to UIL Holdings Corp.
Mayor Michael Nutter’s administration had no immediate comment.
Nutter said in March that the sale would inject $424 million into the city’s distressed pension fund, freezing rates for three years and maintaining low-income and senior discount programs while safeguarding pensions.
Union leaders and several environmental organizations opposed the idea.
Yeah, I’m not keen on the idea of selling off our public assets to pay our bills. Call me old-fashioned!
I’m really glad I didn’t get FIOS
Especially after reading this:
Verizon Wireless has been subtly altering the web traffic of its wireless customers for the past two years, inserting a string of about 50 letters, numbers, and characters into data flowing between these customers and the websites they visit.
The company—one the country’s largest wireless carriers, providing cell phone service for about 123 million subscribers—calls this a Unique Identifier Header, or UIDH. It’s a kind of short-term serial number that advertisers can use to identify you on the web, and it’s the lynchpin of the company’s internet advertising program. But critics say that it’s also a reckless misuse of Verizon’s power as an internet service provider—something that could be used as a trump card to obviate established privacy tools such as private browsing sessions or “do not track” features.
Jacob Hoffman-Andrews, a technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wants Verizon to stop using the UIDH. “ISPs are trusted connectors of users and they shouldn’t be modifying our traffic on its way to the Internet,” he says. He calls the UIDH a “perma-cookie,” because it can be read by any web server that you visit and used to build a profile of your internet habits.