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News & Politics

For rants and ravings about things going on in the world.

  1. trout just got real.

    It’s been an intense week. A hundred people got killed here at the Independence Square in Kiev, I found myself under sniper fire and got my journalism career kickstarted.



    PHOTOS: http://www.vice.com/nl/read/euromaidan-staat-in-de-fik
    http://www.demotix.com/news/3974240/...police-retreat
    http://www.demotix.com/news/3991334/...rol-parliament

    As some ...
  2. Riots look like video games

    The whole central square of Kyiv, Ukraine has been turned into a city of tents. Fires are burning in barrels to keep the people warm, as it's -20C during the day. Food is being handed out by volunteers. Politicians hold speeches on the stage. A big screen is covering the side of a building, providing video of the screen to everyone in the crowd. Having just flown in from Bangkok, I try to find a place to sit down and figure out what exactly is going on.

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    Updated 02-01-2014 at 01:14 AM by kotora

    Categories
    Video Games , Personal Life , News & Politics , Internet , Miscellaneous
  3. Glenn Beck and the Department of Irony

    Glenn Beck compared Bill Nye's criticism of creationists with the Catholic Church's treatment of Galileo, concluding that Nye was on the "wrong side of history."



    I know Beck long ago reached the level of self-parodying, but at this point I think he's in league with the manufacturers of irony meters, because he keeps making mine explode.
  4. ToraTravels: Shanghai, baby

    It takes about two to three days of being on the road to develop the nice hobo smell I mentioned earlier. That’s three days of walking around and sweating with a full backpack in the same clothes. Did I mention it's over 30 degrees? Whereas I don’t really care what I look or smell like in most Chinese places, I have to admit to feeling like a no-good bum upon arrival in Shanghai, after five days of traveling around from one hopeless place to another.

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  5. ToraTravels: Beijing - Shanghai. A Dirty Floor is Also a Bed

    Shanghai is the first civilized city I've seen in this country, and probably the only one. If 'civilization' means eating brand-name crap at overpriced stores in the company of twenty-three million people in the largest city in the world.

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    Shanghai baby!

    It took me a while to get there. First stop from Beijing was mount Wutai. My train departs on the night of october 1st, the founding day of the People's Republic and a national holiday. ...
  6. Chickens in bags, group drinking and no chocolate anywhere in sight

    From the first moment I set foot in the capital of this glorious People's Republic, one thought dominated my mindscape: Beijing is a giant Chinese restaurant. The most prevailing smell after smelling exhaust fumes waste is most likely to be soy sauce.

    Three weeks in China now, I've been spending most of my time in a town a hundred kilometers further to the north. About 350,000 live here, which is about one residential block in BJ.

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  7. Status update: Meow-meow confirmed alive!

    Seems like we all got carried away by cultural stereotypes. The little Chinese kitty was spotted alive and kicking in the Chinese restaurant I saw him getting carried into last week. They even have an older cat walking around the place, so I guess they don't eat cats there.

    At least for now.
  8. Lori Kilchermann is a yellow journalist

    In a 2012 story on a meth bust, the Ionia Sentinel-Standard, based in Michigan, decided to run a picture of the bust site farmhouse from 2 years earlier, when a political candidate had held a fundraiser. This led to accusations of the Sentinel-Standard and its editor, Lori Kilchermann, engaging in "yellow journalism," or distorting irrelevant details of a story for purposes of sensationalism or partisanship. These detractors also publicly encouraged others to cancel their Sentinel-Standard ...
    Categories
    News & Politics
  9. That pesky Fourth Amendment

    My public defender’s office handles a lot of interesting cases. One of the most notable to come out of my office in recent years was Maryland v. King, which involved a challenge to a state law that permits the police to obtain a DNA sample of all people arrested for a crime, before any conviction and without the need for any belief that the DNA was relevant to the crime the arrestee was detained for. DNA sampling was thus just another routine booking procedure like fingerprinting, but DNA tests ...

    Updated 06-04-2013 at 03:35 AM by Raistlin

    Categories
    News & Politics
  10. Information is the enemy

    [I wanted to rant on this issue, but I figured EoEO might be tired of my anti-Obama speeches. Though it is his fault for continuing to give me so much material. ]

    To the government, information is the enemy. That is why the US government has demonized Wikileaks, because it threatens to shame governments for their misconduct. So-called issues of “national security” may have merit on certain, specific occasions, but the broad way the label is used makes it clear that that is not the ...

    Updated 06-05-2013 at 02:30 AM by Raistlin

    Categories
    News & Politics
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