This is the way to deal with frightened passengers

By now pretty much everyone must have heard about the academic who was taken off a plane and questioned by authorities because the passenger seated next to him while the plane was waiting to be cleared for takeoff had alerted the authorities that he was behaving suspiciously, concentrating on writing strange symbols on a piece of paper and rebuffing her attempts at conversation as she tried to find out what he was up to. It did not help that he was youngish, swarthy looking, and bearded.
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When numbers are outlawed, only outlaws will have numbers

Via Mark Frauenfelder, I came across this fascinating little video that informs me that being in possession of a particular number is now illegal in the US and why. I cannot tell you the full number because I don’t know it but apparently knowing it and even writing it on a piece of paper could land me in prison. All I know is that the number is a prime number that has 1419 digits that begin with the sequence 85650789657397829.
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Keeping track of where elected Republicans stand on Trump

The website Talking Points Memo (TPM) is doing a public service by keeping a scorecard of where elected Republicans stand vis a vis Donald Trump. They have split them up into five categories 1) Endorse, 2) “Supporting the Nominee”, 3) Mum’s the Word, 4) Fuzzball and 5) NeverTrump and are tracking their movements across categories. You can see the definitions of those terms here.
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