FIPID: August 2013

Fun Interesting Pertinent Information Dissemination

Top Picks
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Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior

Is Government's Renewed Push On Mortgage Fraud Too Late?

Are Innocent Citizens at Risk of Police Seizure of Their Cash, Cars and Homes?
It's called civil forfeiture. The seizures have long been a tool in the fight against illegal drugs. And the program is an enormous moneymaker for local police departments....

But many folks are unfamiliar with the idea of civil forfeiture, which is actually a case brought against, directly against a piece a property, where you don't need to be proven guilty of a crime for your goods to be taken away. And many of the conventional protections that you have under the criminal process are not afforded to you in a civil forfeiture case.

Modern-day Robin Hood | 60 Minutes
Billionaire Paul Tudor Jones' charity -- the Robin Hood Foundation -- fights poverty with the hard-nosed, business sense of Wall Street.

NSA Surveillance and Mission Creep
Last month, I wrote about the potential for mass surveillance mission creep: the tendency for the vast NSA surveillance apparatus to be used for other, lesser, crimes. My essay was theoretical, but it turns out to be already happening.
Other agencies are already asking to use the NSA data [and] The Drug Enforcement Agency is already using this data, and lying about it. (includes links to sources)

Perfect Moment | Scott Adam's Blog (Creator of Dilbert)
I also remember what it took to get to this place. I think of all the days in my youth when I worked on my uncle's dairy farm doing back-breaking labor under the boiling sun. I think of all the mornings I got up before dawn so I could shovel snow or mow lawns to earn money for college. I think of the four jobs I held during college. I think of the three years I worked my day job while going to school at night to get my MBA. I think of the six years I worked full-time at Pacific Bell while creating Dilbert morning, nights, and weekends. I think of the ten years I worked without taking a day off.

Russell Moore: From Moral Majority to 'Prophetic Minority'
'The Bible Belt is collapsing," says Russell Moore. Oddly, the incoming president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission doesn't seem upset. In a recent visit to The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Moore explains that he thinks the Bible Belt's decline may be "bad for America, but it's good for the church."

My first job: Hauling hay
"If we hauled a thousand bales in a day, we got $2.50," he said. "What the job taught me was possibly the value of money and how hard it was to earn it, and you didn't spend it foolishly."

CIA documents acknowledge its role in Iran's 1953 coup

The true cost of college and reasons for it

The Losses of Dan Gable

Politics and Business
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National parks take out the trash (cans)

US should leave Edward Snowden alone

A Message to Trayvon Martin Sympathizers

Obama administration asks Supreme Court to allow warrantless cellphone searches

More NSA Spying Fallout: Groklaw Shutting Down

For You To Borrow, Some Libraries Have To Go Begging

You give religions more than $82.5 billion a year

How low can you get: the minimum wage scam
Wonder why benefit spending is rising? Simple: corporations get away with crappy wages, so government has to make up the rest

Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years
“When a soldier who shared information with the press and public is punished far more harshly than others who tortured prisoners and killed civilians, something is seriously wrong with our justice system,” said Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project.

Science and Technology
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Gym workouts and sunbathing do more for your brain than crosswords and Mozart

Death-defying free dives push boundaries | 60 Minutes

Fun, Interesting, Disturbing and Offbeat
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Wozniak Says `Lot of Things Wrong' With Jobs Movie

No, You’re Probably Not Smarter Than a 1912-Era 8th Grader

The 19 Best Movies That You Didn't See in 2012 - Indie Gems to Watch

Police: Intruder who was strangled by female nurse was a hit man

Formicophilia
Formicophilia, a form of zoophilia, is the sexual interest in being crawled upon or nibbled by small insects, such as ants. This paraphilia often involves the application of insects to the genitals, but other areas of the body may also be the focus. The desired effect may be a tickling or stinging sensation, or the infliction of psychological distress on another person.

Lion Attacks an Intruder in Its Den at Taipei Zoo
A lion attacked a man who jumped into its zoo enclosure here Wednesday and shouted, "Jesus will save you!" at the animal, an eyewitness said.

Videos
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What Might Happen If A Football Coach Coached Soccer

Pop Sci BodyGuard Glove- POP SCI

Sprinter joins a rugby team.

Ozell Williams like to jump and flip and spin

Stopped engine aerobatics

Pics

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Dingo lunch

Untreated seropositive rheumatoid arthritis

Fun Interesting Pertinent Information Dissemination

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Feds tell Web firms to turn over user account passwords
Secret demands mark escalation in Internet surveillance by the federal government through gaining access to user passwords, which are typically stored in encrypted form.

"The income of the top 1 percent nearly quadrupled from 1979 to 2007, but the typical family’s incomes barely budged." | PolitiFact

Famous 5-4 Decisions by the One Percent Court

Egypt May Not Need Fighter Jets, But The U.S. Keeps Sending Them Anyway
The U.S. started sending M1A1 Abrams tanks to Egypt in the late '80s. In all, the U.S. sent more than 1,000 tanks to Egypt since then — valued at some $3.9 billion — which Egypt maintains along with several thousand Soviet-era tanks.
"There's no conceivable scenario in which they'd need all those tanks short of an alien invasion," Shana Marshall of the Institute of Middle East Studies at George Washington University, told me.
A thousand tanks would be helpful for large land battles, but not for the threats facing Egypt today, such as terrorism and border security in the Sinai Peninsula, according to Robert Springborg, an expert on the Egyptian military at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. In fact, he said, at least 200 of the tanks the U.S. has sent to Egypt have never been used.
"They are crated up and then they sit in deep storage, and that's where they remain," he told me.
The story with F-16 fighter jets is similar. Since 1980, we've sent Egypt 221 fighter jets, valued at $8 billion. "Our American military advisers in Cairo have for many years been advising against further acquisitions of F-16s," Springborg said. Egypt already has more F-16s than it needs, he said.

Why I changed my mind on weed | Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent

Which Nations Hate The U.S.? Often Those Receiving U.S. Aid

NSA Phone Snooping Cannot Be Challenged in Court, Feds Say

Russia makes it illegal to insult the “feelings of religious believers”

20 Places to Educate Yourself Online for Free

Terrifying video shows moment a pair of divers were almost eaten by two hungry humpback whales

After WWII, Europe Was A 'Savage Continent' Of Devastation

Intro - Imagine a world without institutions. No governments. No school or universities. No access to any information. No banks. Money no longer has any worth. There are no shops, because no one has anything to sell. Law and order are virtually non-existent because there is no police force and no judiciary. Men with weapons roam the streets taking what they want. Women of all classes and ages prostitute themselves for food and protection.

Story - This is not the beginning to a futuristic thriller, but a history of Europe in the years directly following World War II, when many European cities were in ruins, millions of people were displaced, and vengeance killings were common, as was rape.

THE COMIC-CON 2013 COSPLAY GALLERY (850+ PHOTOS)

VOLVO'S NEW 'TENT' ELECTRIC CHARGER (Check out the photo)

Do Women Earn Less than Men?

Politics and Business
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Enigma codebreaker Alan Turing to be given posthumous pardon (Never should have happened. Never should have happened to a hero.)

Why a former NSA chief just made a big mistake by dissing hackersFormer NSA and CIA chief Gen. Michael Hayden speculated on Tuesday that hackers and transparency groups would turn to cyberterror attacks if the United States captured NSA leaker Edward Snowden. He went on to dismiss Snowden supporters as “nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous, twenty-somethings who haven’t talked to the opposite sex in five or six years.”

Proof Of Politics: Indiana Fudges Truth On Health Exchange Rates To Make Obamacare Look Bad

Blond beauty set to sue NYPD over sexy photos swiped from iPhone
Pamela Held, 27, of Deer Park, is poised to sue the city and the Police Department, accusing a cop of invading her privacy by forwarding the provocative images from her iPhone.
Held’s nightmarish ordeal unfolded the night of Feb. 6 when five cops in a police van pulled over her Sentra in Ridgewood because it had no inspection sticker. The cops found prescription drugs in the car, so the officers, including Christian, hauled Held and her pal to the stationhouse.
When cops began grilling her about her whereabouts that night, Held told them she was visiting a friend and had text messages to prove it. She gave one officer the security code to open her phone and pointed out the messages. Then police left the room, with the phone, while she was processed on misdemeanor drug charges.

Halliburton pleads guilty to destroying Gulf spill evidence

Texas childbirth death rates rise
"...nationally the risk of death associated with a full-term pregnancy and delivery is 8.8 deaths per 100,000, while the risk of death linked to legal abortion is 0.6 deaths per 100,000 women. That means a woman carrying a baby to term is 14 times more likely to die than a woman who chooses to have a legal abortion.

In Texas, the statistics are worse. In 2011 Texas women died in childbirth at a rate of 24.63 per 100,000."

US lawmaker compares Edward Snowden with Mahatma Gandhi

Bartitsu: The Lost Martial Art of Sherlock Holmes

Experiments in Speed

Experiments in speed. Inspired by those great men of the salt flats, those men that in the 60s pushed the Land Speed Record from the 300s up towards the 600mph mark in jet-propelled cars built in their sheds. We decided to do what we do: build a bicycle, but this time, in the spirit of those pioneers of speed, build it to see how fast we could go…