The Great Cleveland Balloon Caper

Apparently as part of its fundraising efforts, in 1986 United Way decided to release over 1.5 million helium-filled balloons from the Cleveland city center, breaking the existing record for the Guinness book of records. Unfortunately, an impending thunderstorm required the premature release of the balloons and even then the weight of the rain resulted in the balloons being brought down within a limited area rather than rising up and being spread far and wide as originally intended.
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Tragic story of the death of an atheist

Greta Christina is appealing to the secular community to come to the aid of three young children who have become orphaned as a result of their mother being the victim of a murder-suicide. The mother was a nonbeliever just getting publicly involved in organized atheism, still very much a difficult thing to do in the US especially in the African-American community.
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Road rules for cyclists

Even those of us who recognize that cyclists are doing the Earth a service by not driving cars, are more vulnerable than people in cars, and try to be considerate of them on the road, cannot help but feel a pang of irritation when they don’t obey the rules of the road such as stopping at stop signs or stop lights and then even if they do, sometimes going through an intersection even when the light is still red.
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Death doulas

The thought of death is frightening to many. Our sense of our own existence is so strong that the idea of non-existence can have an unsettling effect, although we know in our rational minds that we have to die sometime and that we were non-existent before we were born so it would not be a new experience (or more appropriately non-experience) for us. When we go to sleep too we are to some extent non-existent in that we become oblivious to the world around us but that does not seem to bother us.
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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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Demonstrating the power of a union

Most people were taken by surprise that NBA Commissioner Adam Silver handed down the maximum penalty that he had the power to levy unilaterally ($2.5 million fine and lifetime ban from the NBA) to Donald Sterling, and also called for the other owners to force him to sell his team. Most observers had expected something a little less than the maximum, say a limited period of suspension.
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Private speech and public consequences

There have been some interesting nuances following the Donald Sterling uproar. Commenter jaytheostrich wondered in a comment on my post yesterday as to whether Sterling’s free speech rights were being violated because he was being punished merely for something he said, and whether it was legal to do so. Another commenter Suido responded by providing a link to an excellent cartoon by xkcd that seems to settle the freedom of speech issue in a pretty convincing way.
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