Stories we just didn’t have room to share with you
In writing this newsletter, we scavenge every source we can find for things we hope you will be interested in. We save these ideas through the month, and then sift out the best when it comes time to start typing. This means painful decisions about what to run… is it more important to write about police militarization or environmental abuse? Is it more entertaining to tell you about the Sellwood Concerts or hidden camping destinations? Is it more useful to know about synthetic oil or your car’s battery? As you can guess, this process leaves us with a string of trails that seemed interesting but we just couldn’t follow to their ends. Now that it’s the end of the year, we thought we’d share some of these stories we’ve collected… some are funny, some are profound, and some will make you think. But we know you’ll find at least one thing to get you talking!
Insane Homeless Policies
Homelessness is endemic in today’s America, but there are good ways and bad ways to address it. Here are examples of both…
- Here’s What Happened When One City Gave Homeless People Shelter Instead of Throwing Them in Jail
- It Costs $21,000 More to Ignore the Homeless Than It Does to Give Them a Home
- Here’s What Austin’s Newest Housing For the Chronically Homeless Looks Like
- No Safe Place: How Cities Are Making it Illegal to Be Homeless
- How America Punishes People for Being Poor
- Are Tiny Houses a Viable Affordable Housing Solution?
Political Polarization
Why is our society becoming increasingly polarized? Partly because of the media we consume, and partly because research is increasingly showing there are biological differences in conservative and liberal brains.
- Why Conservatives Opt for Propaganda Over Reality
- The single most important fact about American politics
- Political Polarization & Media Habits
- Fixed vs. Growth: The Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our Lives
- The Surprising Brain Differences Between Democrats and Republicans
- Scientists Are Beginning to Figure Out Why Conservatives Are…Conservative
- Conservative and liberal brains may be wired differently
- Secrets of the Right-Wing Brain: New Study Proves Conservatives See a Hostile World
- You Can’t Trust The Supreme Court, Science Proves It!
Remember Democracy?
Snowden’s revelations were bad, but they’re part of a larger depressing picture. We found many post-mortems on our fondly remembered democracy…
- An Exceptional Decline for the Exceptional Country?
- How the ‘War on Terror’ Became a War on the Constitution
- Study: US Is Not A Democracy
- The McCutcheon Decision Is Our Rallying Cry
- These Americans Are Fighting for an Actual, Legitimate Democracy, By and For the People
BP Gulf Spill Response
The 2010 BP Gulf spill was one of the worst environmental disasters our country has ever experienced. BP has worked tirelessly to clean up the mess from the spill, but unfortunately they’ve worked harder on the PR mess than the environmental one.
- BP offers a lesson in how to sugarcoat an environmental disaster
- How Does the BP Oil Spill Impact Wildlife and Habitat?
- High Prices, Low Production; Gulf Oysters at Zero Population
- What BP owes America
Indoctrination Replacing Education
Education came under scrutiny this year as school boards began inserting revisionist history and revisionist science into textbooks. Texas and Colorado were this year’s battlefields, but don’t worry… the fight will be coming to a much nearer school soon.
- Proposed Texas Textbooks Deny Climate Change
- These Biased Ideas Are Presented As Fact In Texas Curriculum Standards
- Texas Textbook Battle Heats Up With Claims Of Conservative Bias
- Scholar Reviews Highlight Problems in Proposed Texas Social Studies Textbooks… Exaggerations, Distortions Reflect Flaws in Controversial Curriculum Standards
- Texas Rewrites History In Our Children’s Textbooks
- Putting Job At Risk, Kindergarten Teacher Refuses to Administer Standardized Test
- After weeks of student protests, Colorado school board gives a little ground on ‘positive’ history curriculum
- Students of Jefferson County Colorado Give the Nation a History Lesson
Ideas That Work
We don’t like to just harp on what’s wrong with the world; it makes more sense to figure out what to do to change it.
- How America’s Largest Worker Owned Co-Op Lifts People Out of Poverty
- An Economic Agenda for America: 12 Steps Forward
Endless War
If you’re dreaming about a peaceful society that doesn’t spend all its blood and treasure on war, then keep dreaming. It’s not even that our leaders are particularly evil, but the structure that supports war is now permanent.
Online Car Sharing
Car sharing sites are becoming increasingly popular, and drew our notice when one of our clients used the fact that we maintain her car as a selling point for people who want to rent it. Here are links to (and about) Getaround, the service where Stacey S. posts her car.
- Yelp reviews for Getaround
- The 4 Best Car Sharing Companies in Portland
- Getaround.com
- Getaround page for Stacey’s car
Legalized Marijuana
Legalized marijuana will be coming to Oregon in 2015. We strongly supported this ending of a senseless prohibition, and here are several links that scratch the surface of why…
- The Media Should Stop Pretending Marijuana’s Risks Are a Mystery — The Science Is Clear
- Legalizing Medical Marijuana Can Help Prevent People From Overdosing On Painkillers
- States with medical marijuana have 25 percent fewer prescription overdose deaths
- Former Undercover Drug Narc on Why Police Don’t Bust White People and How He Turned Against Drug War
- Marijuana doesn’t kill brain cells, may help prevent cancer
- Painkiller Drug Companies Are Funding Anti-Marijuana Research
Goodbye To The Right To Trial
Our Constitution’s 6th Amendment guarantees the “right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury” among other things. “Guarantee” and “Right” might not mean what we all think they mean, especially when trials become inconvenient to our corporate overlords…
- Buy a Box of Cereal, Waive Your Consumer Rights Goodbye
- Hobby Lobby Allegedly Fired Employee Due to Pregnancy
Can You Hide ANYTHING From Big Data?
We all know we’re tracked online by both business and government. But how deep does the tracking go? Here are several stories that will shock you.
- Meet The Woman Who Did Everything In Her Power To Hide Her Pregnancy From Big Data
- Google: Yes, we “Read” Your Gmail
- How Companies Learn Your Secrets
Pathetic Media
To make rational choices about the world around us, we need accurate information. Long gone is the time where the evidence of our senses told us all we needed to know; now we rely on media instead. And it sucks.
- Americans’ Confidence in News Media Remains Low
- Outsourcing the News- How covert consolidation is destroying newsrooms and circumventing media ownership rules
- Hilarious and Depressing Video Exposes How Phony Local TV News Has Become
- Journatic made ‘very poor decisions’ about content, say Aggrego founders
- How The Koch Brothers Are Hacking Science
- PhRMA’s Money Affects Human Lives–and Journalism Too
- How Sensational News Stories Distract Us From Real Crises
- The mystery of CNN 2014- How does CNN’s new ‘infotainment’ strategy affect journalism?
- Only 28 percent of Fox News climate segments are accurate
- Weekday Broadcast And Cable Evening News Economic Coverage Lacks Context, Economists
- How To Read Science News
The Edward Snowden Saga Continues
Edward Snowden started dropping his bombshells in 2013, but nothing much has changed over at the NSA since. It’s been an issue we’ve been following, but it seems every time we’re ready to write about it another bomb hits. Here are some of the links we’ve almost written about on Snowden and the Deep State.
- Snowden’s Lesson: The Govt. Carries Out the Constitutional Crimes, While the Public Is Legally Powerless
- Computer Programs Are People, Too- How treating smart programs as legal persons could change privacy as we know it.
- Anatomy of the Deep State
- Can the NSA Remotely Turn On Your Mobile Phone?
- How the FBI Is Creating Terrorists
- New Cases of Corporate Spying Bolster Troubling Trend: What Is Being Done About It?
- Timeline of NSA domestic spying
- Wyden: CIA ‘Embedded In A Culture Of Misinformation’
- Col. Manners Takes Your Top Secret Questions on CIA Practices, Invasion Etiquette and More
- Are You Ready for Life Under Total Surveillance?
- Obama to Call for End to N.S.A.’s Bulk Data Collection
- “We Can’t Just Give a Blank Check”: Lawmakers Call for Ending Secrecy of U.S. Intel’s Black Budget
- Police Testing New ‘Eye In The Sky’ Crime Surveillance System
- No-fly list used by FBI to coerce Muslims into informing, lawsuit claims
- ‘Nation’ Exclusive: Edward Snowden and Laura Poitras Take on America’s Runaway Surveillance State
Brave New Films
“Brave New Films”, brainchild of Robert Greenwald, produces documentaries and investigative videos “to educate, influence, and empower viewers to take action around issues that matter”. “Overcriminalized” is just one good example of the high quality they produce. This series of three films cover the criminalization of homelessness, using prison to treat mental illness, and drug war alternatives that work. And these are just the tip of the iceberg.
How Bad Is Corruption?
Corruption in America (and of course, beyond) is nothing new, but the extent and effect are pretty amazing…
- 250 Years of Campaigns, Cash and Corruption- Timeline of corruption in America
- The 10 most corrupt states in the U.S.
- The Impact of Public Officials’ Corruption on the Size and Allocation of U.S. State Spending
Flying Death Robots
Who doesn’t love flying death robots? The current epitome of American technology, these terminators-on-wings project our military power around the world without the messiness of actual war. So much potential for good, yet so much potential for abuse. The subject is bottomless, but here are some of the stories that caught our attention…
- Death From Above: How American Drone Strikes Are Devastating Yemen
- Drones podcast: An ethics special
- Drone News from the Bureau
- Global drone wars: current combat drones and their proliferation
- Robots Programmed to Behave ‘Morally’?
- 8 Things You Should Know About the Shocking Legal Memo That Justified Assassinating a U.S. Citizen
- How One New Drone Tech Finally Allows All-Seeing Surveillance
- John Oliver rips into the secret process used to choose drone strikes’ victims
Whistleblowers
In order for business or government to correct any mistakes, we have to know they exist. Here are several stories that show most people would rather live in a comfortable fiction than an uncomfortable reality, and that anyone rocking that illusory boat will pay a heavy price…
- VA hospital whistleblower tells of shoddy care of veterans
- Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From Times Reporter Over Refusal to Identify Source
- The Obama Admin Is the ‘Greatest Enemy of Press Freedom’ in at Least a Generation: 5 Prime Examples
- New Whistleblower Organization Launched on Anniversary of Snowden Revelations
- Rise Up for Risen! Raise the Shield!
- GM Punished Those Who Spoke For Safety
- US Condemnation of Press Restrictions Abroad Is Starting to Look Hypocritical
- We’re Living in a Golden Age of Investigative Journalism
The Brave New World Of Science
Not everything is doom and gloom. The world we’ll live in tomorrow is being created in the science labs of today. Tomorrow looks pretty amazing!
- Monkey controls limb movements of ‘avatar’ using its mind
- FDA panel debates technique that would create embryos with three genetic parents
- Amazing video shows bio-engineered ‘bulletproof’ human skin reinforced with spider silk
- Building heart tissue that beats: Engineered tissue closely mimics natural heart muscle
- How to erase a memory –- and restore it: Researchers reactivate memories in rats
- Corn-eating worm evolves to feed on GMO corn designed to kill it
- Should the Higgs boson have caused our universe to collapse? Findings puzzle cosmologists
- Liver Stand-In Could Replace Animal Testing
- How big is space? – interactive version
- Is this whale-shaped plane the future of airliners?
- How pickpockets trick your mind
- Tomorrow’s world: A guide to the next 150 years
- Why the age of the jetpack may finally be here
- Tissue engineering: Grow your own smart organs
