The NSA won't tell Congress how many Americans it's spying on because our democracy is broken. Congress is trying to learn more about the NSA's surveillance programs, and it's not going well. In a letter delivered today to director of National Intelligence James Clapper, a group of 14 legislators (eight Democrats and six Republicans) asked for a ballpark figure on how many Americans are having their data collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Section 702 is the legal justification for many of the NSA's most invasive programs, including PRISM. But we still don't have an exact idea of how broad its reach is. So Congress asked! It's not going well They've wanted that guess for a while now. You would think there would be some more tangible action Congress could take, given its constitutional mandate to provide oversight of the executive branch, but you would be wrong.
It's especially weird since the NSA's charter is for foreign intelligence, so the answer to "how many Americans are you spying on? " Letter to Director Clapper. History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places. Quora. Dominican Republic country profile. Once ruled by Spain, the Dominican Republic shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, a former French colony. The Caribbean nation is a major tourist destination. This, coupled with free-trade zones, has become the country's major employer and key sources of revenue, replacing dependence on sugar, coffee and other exports. Overview The largely mountainous country includes Pico Duarte - the highest point in the West Indies, the fertile Cibao Valley, swathes of desert, and Lake Enriquillo - the lowest point in the region.
The Dominican Republic is inhabited mostly by people of mixed European and African origins. Rapid economic development in the 1990s has increased national wealth and diversified employment opportunities, helping the country to rebound from the global market downturn of 2008, but a large gap remains in the distribution of wealth. The Dominican Republic is closely tied to the United States, its largest trading partner by far and home to a major diaspora. Facts Leaders Media. Kitten thinks it's a real tough guy. 7 things we've learned about Earth since the last Earth Day. This year, Google is celebrating Earth Day with five different Google Doodles illustrating the planet's major biomes: tundra, forest, grasslands, desert, and coral reefs. They're neat and definitely worth checking out. Personally, I like marking Earth Day by looking at some of the best new discoveries we've made about this breathing, seething, never-dull planet of ours — the only place in the universe where life is known to exist.
After all, a lot has changed since the first Earth Day in 1970. Back then, America's most urgent environmental problems were smog and water pollution. In the years since, we've made major progress mopping that up, only to confront fresh challenges like global warming and ocean acidification. Even today, our knowledge of the Earth keeps evolving with each passing year. So here's a list of some of the most surprising, hopeful, and worrisome things we've learned about Earth since the last Earth Day: (Wikimedia/NASA) Robinson Meyer recounts the backstory.
Quora. The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality. Star Wars | Christopher De Voss. In lieu of reblog Thursday, I have some exciting news. I’m announcing the birth of a new, exciting, epic, original, ingenious, bold, spicy, operatic, collaborative masterpiece: What is Long Awkward Pause you may ask…and even if you didn’t ask, you may ask after you recover from your excitement over this announcement.
(I will wait until you pick yourself up off the floor, dust your pants off, and compose yourself thus-ly.) Long Awkward Pause is a humor magazine collaboration between myself, Blurt, B.L.O.G., Monk Monkey, and Ramblings Of An Apathetic Adult Baby. We will take reader submitted topics and write about them either once or twice a month depending on schedule, earth rotation, Chick-fil-a openings, births, deaths, oil changes, and other such hazards of the blog world.
I’m really excited to work with these guys, and I hope you’ll be just as excited to read our stuff. You can view the site, here. For everyone who follows, you will receive one free email notification! It's Not All Genes: Getting Evolution Right When Explaining Human Behavior : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture. Lukiyanova Natalia/iStockimage One thing I've always loved about anthropology is its commitment to understanding humans by bringing to bear two divergent perspectives: evolutionary science, aimed at understanding the contribution of biology to our behavior, and field ethnography, a process whereby the anthropologist works to understand a social group's lived experience in the modern world from the inside out. Now, a new paper by biological anthropologist Agustin Fuentes of Notre Dame University, coming in the June issue of Current Anthropology (and already available online in open-access format), suggests that anthropologists can, and should, do a much better job of bringing together these two frameworks.
Fuentes writes that he wants to "help frame a sincerely anthropological and emphatically evolutionary approach to the human experience. " Earlier this week, I had this email exchange with Fuentes — edited here for length and clarity. Barbara J. FBI head suggests agency paid more than $1M to access iPhone. WASHINGTON (AP) — FBI Director James Comey hinted at an event in London on Thursday that the FBI paid more than $1 million to break into the locked iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino attackers. Comey was asked during a question-and-answer session at an Aspen Security Forum event how much the FBI paid for the method from an unidentified third-party to access the phone.
He did not give a precise number but said it was "more than I will make in the remainder of this job, which is seven years and four months, for sure. " He added that he thought the payment was "worth it. " The Justice Department last month revealed that an entity outside the government had approached it with a method that could be used to open the phone used by Syed Farook, who along with his wife killed 14 people in the December attacks before dying in a police shootout. The revelation came after a federal magistrate had directed Apple Inc. to help the FBI hack into the phone.
The $2 Trillion Project to Get Saudi Arabia’s Economy Off Oil. Early last year, at a royal encampment in the oasis of Rawdat Khuraim, Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia visited his uncle, King Abdullah, in the monarch’s final days before entering a hospital. Unbeknown to anyone outside the House of Saud, the two men, separated in age by 59 years, had a rocky history together. King Abdullah once banned his brash nephew, all of 26 at the time, from setting foot in the Ministry of Defense after rumors reached the royal court that the prince was disruptive and power-hungry. Later, the pair grew close, bound by a shared belief that Saudi Arabia must fundamentally change, or else face ruin in a world that is trying to leave oil behind.
For two years, encouraged by the king, the prince had been quietly planning a major restructuring of Saudi Arabia’s government and economy, aiming to fulfill what he calls his generation’s “different dreams” for a postcarbon future. King Abdullah died shortly after his visit, in January 2015. All we need now is that giant rubber duckie..
6mz1D3k. Public advocate: FBI’s use of PRISM surveillance data is unconstitutional. A public advocate appointed by the nation’s secretive surveillance court last year argued that a little-known provision of the PRISM program, which enables the FBI to query foreign intelligence information for evidence of domestic crime, violated the Constitution. But the court disagreed with her. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court asked Amy Jeffress, the advocate, in August to assess the provision, according to a court opinion filed in November but released by the intelligence community only on Tuesday. The court, which weighs government applications for surveillance, traditionally hears arguments only from the government in closed sessions.
Its opinions generally are classified. [Read the court’s memo detailing the argument against the advocate] PRISM is an intelligence-gathering program whose name and scope were disclosed in June 2013 through leaks of documents by Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor. Checkpoint newsletter Read more:
Skye Halifax Green Skyscrapers To Be the Tallest Towers in Nova Scotia | Inhabitat - Green Design, Innovation, Architecture, Green Building. With projects like the Burj Khalifa under his belt, architect Adrian Smith has become synonymous with supertall skyscrapers – so it’s no surprise that his firm, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill, is the creative force behind Imperial Tower, a 116-story tower that’s proposed for Mumbai. The only problem with building such a tall tower in Mumbai is dealing with the wind, but AS+GG have come up with a solution for that.
The firm claims that the skinny tower is aerodynamically shaped to “confuse the wind.” Strange as that may sound, the tower will also feature several sky gardens that the firm says will further help to break up wind currents around the building. Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill was just named the winner of a competition for its design of Imperial Tower. In addition to helping to mitigate wind, AS+GG says the sky gardens will provide access to light and excellent views to the building’s 132 residential units. . + Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill via Gizmag. Uk.businessinsider. Prince Talks: The Silence Is Broken. John Nelson turns sixty-nine today, and all the semiretired piano man wants for his birthday is to shoot some pool with his firstborn son. "He's real handy with a cue," says Prince, laughing, as he threads his old white T-Bird through his old black neighborhood toward his old man's house. "He's so cool. The man knows what time it is. " Hard time is how life has traditionally been clocked in North Minneapolis; this is the place 'Time' forgot twelve years ago when the magazine's cover trumpeted "The Good Life in Minnesota," alongside a picture of Governor Wendell Anderson holding up a walleye.
Though tame and middle-class by Watts and Roxbury standards, the North Side offers some of the few mean streets in town. The old sights bring out more Babbitt than Badass in Prince as he leads a leisurely tour down the main streets of his inner-city Gopher Prairie. He cruises slowly, respectfully: stopping completely at red lights, flicking on his turn signal even when no one's at an intersection. Tell FBI Director James Comey to Resign. FBI Director James Comey, Your recent statements and actions in the Apple vs FBI case have made it clear: you’ve lost touch with reality in your misguided crusade against basic encryption technology. You repeatedly stated, under oath, that the FBI had no alternatives other than forcing Apple to build a backdoor into the San Bernardino iPhone, a claim that technology and security experts quickly disproved.
If your statements to Congress were not outright lies, they imply that you are deeply ignorant of basic technology. In this modern age, that’s unacceptable for someone in your position. But the FBI’s very public mishandling of the Apple case is just the latest example of your dangerous lack of judgment and regard for civil liberties. Director Comey, you’re off the rails and your extreme behavior is putting lives in danger. We all know that the Apple v. We’re not the only people who are concerned for you. When even the NSA thinks you’re spying too hard, it’s time to resign.
Review: Toyota’s redesigned Prius in the real world. How do you change a standard-bearer? Like or not, Toyota's Prius was the first poster car for environmentalists, anti-establishment types, and the Hollywood beautiful. But even Earth-saving cars must be seen, and the redesigned Prius—influenced by Toyota’s nearly-$60,000 Mirai hydrogen fuel cell car (California market only)—beats the ugly drum with vigor. Later in life, Galileo went blind, but even he would have recoiled at the new Prius.
Beneath the skin, however, the redesigned Prius uses handsome, energy-stingy engineering. The new design's slashes and gashes hide the car's Toyota New Global Architecture (TNGA) platform, which actually lowers the car, provides additional high-strength steel, and nets 60-percent increased torsional rigidity. Helping it reach that low-drag figure are grille shutters that close when radiator airflow isn't needed. Inside, the familiar central instrument location remains. Jim Resnick Things are more conventional on the inside.
Uk.businessinsider. Stephen Jaffe/ReutersPresident Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton look at each other January 21 as they applaud a speaker at the winter meeting of the Democratic National Committee. In this excerpt from Clinton, Inc: The Audacious Rebuilding Of A Political Machine, Daniel Halper, a political writer and online editor at The Weekly Standard, compiles candid interviews with former Clinton administration aides, friends, and enemies to reveal how this dynamic political power couple positioned themselves for even greater success. In 1988, when Bill first considered a run for the presidency, he and Hillary had also considered the idea that she replace him as governor of Arkansas. By the time of his first inaugural four years later, the White House clearly was in her sights. This was part of the understanding she always had with Bill Clinton. He'd get his turn.
Clinton aides told me they were astonished after Bill's taking office, at a time when Mrs. Jim Watson/ReutersU.S. Mrs. Quora. Quora. Quora. What does depression feel like? Trust me – you really don’t want to know | Tim Lott | Opinion. This is Depression Awareness Week, so it must be hoped that during this seven-day period more people will become more aware of a condition that a minority experience, and which most others grasp only remotely – confusing it with more familiar feelings, such as unhappiness or misery. This perception is to some extent shared by the medical community, which can’t quite make its mind up whether depression is a physical “illness”, rooted in neurochemistry, or a negative habit of thought that can be addressed by talking or behavioural therapies. I’m not concerned about which of these two models is the more accurate. I’m still not sure myself. My primary task here is to try to explain something that remains so little understood as an experience – despite the endless books and articles on the subject.
From the outside it may look like malingering, bad temper and ugly behaviour – and who can empathise with such unattractive traits? There is a paradox here. What People Can Learn From How Animals Think. For 2,000 years, there was an intuitive, elegant, compelling picture of how the world worked. It was called “the ladder of nature.” In the canonical version, God was at the top, followed by angels, who were followed by humans. Then came the animals, starting with noble wild beasts and descending to domestic animals and insects. Human animals followed the scheme, too. Women ranked lower than men, and children were beneath them. The ladder of nature was a scientific picture, but it was also a moral and political one.
It was only natural that creatures higher up would have dominion over those lower down. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection delivered a serious blow to this conception. Modern biological science has in principle rejected the ladder of nature. We always should have been suspicious of this picture, but now we have no excuse for continuing with it. De Waal outlines both the exciting new results and the troubled history of the field. The Skills Everyone Should Have by Age 18, According to a Stanford Dean. Uk.businessinsider. Why We Get Headaches From Exercise. Quora. EXCLUSIVE: Mexican Cartel Hitmen Forced to Wear Women's Lingerie After Capture. Quora. The Legal Lessons of Bergen-Belsen, on the 71st Anniversary of the Camp's Liberation. German spies imply Snowden leaked files for Russia. Quora. The Income You Need to Live Comfortably in 50 U.S. Cities.
Justin Trudeau’s Canada is the best hope for the global economy — Quartz. 10 Good Financial Rules of Thumb. Businessinsider. Quora. ELI5: Why did the Pilgrims starve their first Winter in Plymouth when there is abundant fishing & shellfish there? : explainlikeimfive. You may hate Donald Trump. But do you want Facebook to rig the election against him? | Opinion. Fill Out a Thin Resume by Scanning Through Job Postings. Why The Night Manager Is Even Better Than Bond. Inside the strange, retro world of Russian womanhood schools. The Appeal of the Coachella Way of Life. History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places. Heatmap News Shows You What’s Going on Around the World. Quora. Many Middle-Class Americans Are Living Paycheck to Paycheck. The Only Appropriate Response To Spilled Guinness, RIP. The Only Appropriate Response To Spilled Guinness, RIP.
WiFi capacity doubled at less than half the size. Straight outta compton. Quora. How the Internet is changing the English language. Quora. Ed Miliband says Panama Papers show ‘wealth does not trickle down’ | UK Politics. So I went to a museum... This Guy With Four Daughters Just Might Be The Funniest Dad On Twitter. New study: A tetanus booster every 10 years is unnecessary. ELI5: How can explosives like C4 be so stable? : explainlikeimfive. Easy Stretches Almost Everyone Can Do to Stay Flexible. Quora. Quora. Dyson hand-dryer spreads more germs than paper towels, study finds | | The Times & The Sunday Times. Greenland is melting much faster than scientists expected.
The Scientific Reasons Why People Cheat, In One Video. Businessinsider. How Burner Phones Are Changing The US/Mexico Border. Germany to Prosecute Satirist for a Poem Mocking Turkey's Erdogan. Oil industry knew of 'serious' climate concerns more than 45 years ago | Business. History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places. Uk.businessinsider. Children of older mothers do better: The benefits associated with being born in a later year outweigh the biological risks associated with being born to an older mother -- ScienceDaily.
Ohio State Turns the Concept of 'Safe Space' Against Student Protesters. The Untold Story of the Teen Hackers Who Transformed the Early Internet. Uk.businessinsider. 'The system is rigged': widespread dissatisfaction among US voters | US news. Britain is 'surveillance society' Welcome To Adal Industrial Plc. BBC - Essex - Prefab houses still going strong. Uk.businessinsider. “I had so many advantages, and I barely made it”: Pinterest engineer on Silicon Valley sexism. No One in Nation Notices Total Disappearance of Chris Christie. Employment status affects our morals around money. From Chaos in Libya to the Edge of ISIS in Northern Iraq. The Anomaly of Barbarism. Net Neutrality Rules in Danger. Uk.businessinsider. Luck Is a Bigger Contributor to Success Than People Give It Credit For. History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places. History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places.
Putting Time In Perspective - UPDATED. Tips from a Recruiter: Don't Make Me Read Your Resume.