Big Data is watching you

I am in the market for some patio furniture and looked up what was available online. Of course, in the days following that I saw ads for patio furniture popping up all over the place. This tracking of one’s online browsing and using that data to target marketing at you started out being something to be amazed by, then it turned to seeming creepy, and now it seems so routine that we scarcely even give it a thought.
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Another example for why we need proper gun training

My university sends out security bulletins alerting the campus whenever anything occurs that might pose a danger to people or property. Since we are in a city, they also report on things that happen off campus but in its vicinity. Most of the time this involves petty crimes. But yesterday came a more serious series of bulletins in the middle of the night, first calling for a lockdown of the campus because of reports of a shot being fired and then soon after giving an all clear.
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Militant Buddhist fundamentalists

Whenever I write about Buddhism in Sri Lanka and how militant Buddhists, including monks, have been leading the charge against minorities and even resorting to violence against them, western readers are often surprised. The image they have of Buddhism is that of a peaceful and contemplative religion. And they are right when it comes to the underlying philosophy of the religion.
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Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page on the US political system

The two authors of the study that looked at a large amount of data that enabled them to test various hypotheses about who runs America and came to the conclusion that the middle class and lower have no influence on policy had an extended interviewed on The Daily Show two days ago. They are careful to say that they themselves did not use the word oligarchy, which to them implies control by a very tiny group, say they top 0.1%. They think control here is by about the top 10%.
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Kidnapped girls in Nigeria

I have been following this terrible story out of Nigeria where the Islamist militant group Boko Haram that is so ruthless and reactionary that they make even the Taliban look progressive, has kidnapped an estimated 234 girls from a boarding school three weeks ago and taken them into the jungles and their fate remains unknown. Farouk Chothia gives some background on the group.
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This is the problem with ceremonial prayer

As justice William Brennan said in his incisive dissent to the majority ruling in the 1983 Marsh v. Chambers case that ruled that ceremonial prayer to open the legislative sessions was constitutional, the trouble with prayer is that you have no control over what the prayer giver will say even if you prescribe what prayers are acceptable, which you are not allowed to do anyway since that would be tantamount to having an official government prayer.
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Attacking the disabled

The assault on the poor has been extended even to the disabled and now even they are being portrayed as part of the ‘moocher’ class. Last year, there were a spate of news reports about the rise in the disability rolls following the recession. Of course, this set off a storm of speculation the ruling class, ever vigilant when it comes to rooting out any poor or working class families getting what they see undeserved relief, as to whether people were abusing the system to claim disabilities so that they could get some benefits while not working.
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