FIPID: FIPID - 08/08/13

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…