''Whether the issue is improving the involvement of young women and girls in education, to climate change and all political, economic, and social issues in between, I think empowering women is central to what the world has to do in the 21st century,'' he said.

You're damn right.

-janelane

Global Initiative Takes on Gender Inequality - NYTimes.com

This is a story about a nearly 100-year-old book, bound in red leather, which has spent the last quarter century secreted away in a bank vault in Switzerland. The book is big and heavy and its spine is etched with gold letters that say “Liber Novus,” which is Latin for “New Book.” Its pages are made from thick cream-colored parchment and filled with paintings of otherworldly creatures and handwritten dialogues with gods and devils. If you didn’t know the book’s vintage, you might confuse it for a lost medieval tome.

Carl Jung and the Holy Grail of the Unconscious - NYTimes.com

Random Thoughts of the Day:

1. I wish Google Maps had an “Avoid Ghetto” routing option.

2. More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can’t wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that’s not only better, but also more directly involves me.

3. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong.

4. I don’t understand the purpose of the line, “I don’t need to drink to have fun.” Great, no one does. But why start a fire with flint and sticks when they’ve invented the lighter?

5. Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you’re going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you’re crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk.

6. That’s enough, Nickelback.

7. I totally take back all those times I didn’t want to nap when I was younger.

8. The letters T and G are very close to each other on a keyboard. This recently became all too apparent to me and consequently I will never be ending a work email with the phrase “Regards” again.

9. Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn’t work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ’s. We just figured it out. Today’s kids are soft.

10. There is a great need for sarcasm font.

11. Sometimes, I’ll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the hell was going on when I first saw it.

12. I think everyone has a movie that they love so much, it actually becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I’ll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone’s laughing at the right parts, then making sure I laugh just a little bit harder (and a millisecond earlier) to prove that I’m still the only one who really, really gets it.

13. How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

14. I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

15. I think part of a best friend’s job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.

16. The only time I look forward to a red light is when I’m trying to finish a text.

17. A recent study has shown that playing beer pong contributes to the spread of mono and the flu. Yeah, if you suck at it.

18. Was learning cursive really necessary?

19. Lol has gone from meaning, “laugh out loud” t... [ Read More (0.7k in body) ]

Random thoughts (not written by me, but I can relate to many of them)

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

Appalling does not even begin to describe systematic and unconscionable destruction of one of the greatest minds in the history of Computer Science all because of his sexuality. Professional exile, revoked security clearances, threatened imprisonment, and forced chemical castration all of which culminated in suicide.

Utterly Disgraceful.

Treatment of Alan Turing was “appalling” - PM | Number10.gov.uk

The new Obama flavor laptop border search policy makes an interesting statement about reasonable suspicion and terrorist watch lists:

The presence of an individual on a government-operated and government-vetted terrorist watch list will be sufficient to create reasonable suspicion of activities in violation of the laws enforced by CBP.

Objectively, I'm inclined to agree, and I'm glad they drew this line in the sand, as its an important negotiating point with regard to when searches should and should not be authorized. If you think about the way that reasonable suspicion is used by police officers in deciding whether or not to stop someone, clearly "suspect matched the description of a wanted felon" is sufficient to establish that, even if it later turns out of be a case of mistaken identity. A terrorist watch list is a similar kind of thing. If the United States had a real process for flagging people who are genuinely suspected terrorists, I'm sure that being flagged by that system would meet the criteria for reasonable suspicion.

I think that employing terrorist watch lists and passenger screening systems in making determinations about reasonable suspicion in the context of border searches is a good thing. It eliminates the rhetorical argument that if we constrained border searches of laptops to contexts where reasonable suspicion exists, we might miss a terrorist. People who are likely to be terrorists are going to be flagged by these systems, and so reasonable suspicion is going to exist in those cases. Therefore, requiring it would not hamper our anti-terrorism efforts.

However, it is possible to imagine a "terrorist watch list" that is so mismanaged that it is not objectively reasonable to suspect that people on the list might be involved with terrorism. Unfortunately, it sounds like that is exactly the kind of list that we have right now. A list with 1.2 million names on it including people who are dead, vague entries that seem to only include common place names, and people who are obviously not involved in terrorism. If the ACLU's characterization of this list is anywhere near accurate, the list is a complete joke. It simply is not objectively reasonable to suspect that someone on this list is dangerous.

Two implications follow from that:
1. If the list is ever used in a real prosecution to establish reasonable suspicion of someone who does not turn out to be a terrorist but is prosecuted for some unrelated crime, that person might be able to challenge the reasonableness of that suspicion because the list is too unreliable.

2. It would behoove those who wish to make use of these lists in this fashion to make sure that they are reliable, so the courts will take them seriously when they are relied on in a context where they run up against Constitutional rights.

Reasonable Suspicion and Terrorist Watch Lists

The detailed chemical structure of a single molecule has been imaged for the first time, say researchers.

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Single molecule's stunning image

When Jim Sanborn shows you his latest art, the jaw drops and elegant words fail.

Dr. Frankenstein's lab has nothing on Sanborn's studio in Maryland.

A polished aluminum sphere perches by the ceiling, coupled to a cylinder that could be a meat smoker from Mars. A glass tube the size of your thigh runs down almost to the floor, ringed with gleaming copper halos like a Buck Rogers ray gun. It's all totally Ed Wood -- except that Sanborn's scientific madness works.

What we have here is a real, honest-to-God, no-holds-barred, fully operational electrostatic particle accelerator.

Blake Gopnik - The Story Behind Jim Sanborn's Latest Artwork, 'Terrestrial Physics' - washingtonpost.com

I've read the case and I don't think I'm over-reacting at all. There seems to be a serious disagreement of fact between the justices as to how substantial this person's likelihood of success is. Its impossible to evaluate without more information. But thats not wants important. What's important is the underlying question of whether a person who is actually innocent must be executed because the procedure says that is what is supposed to happen.

Scalia certainly seems to welcome that debate:

If this Court thinks it possible that capital convictions obtained in full compliance with law can never be final, but are always subject to being set aside by federal courts for the reason of “actual innocence,” it should set this case on our own docket so that we can (if necessary) resolve that question.

As I previously stated, there should be no debate about that. The answer is yes.

Stevens writes:

Imagine a petitioner in Davis’s situation who possesses new evidence conclusively and definitively proving, beyond any scintilla of doubt, that he is an innocent man. The dissent’s reasoning would allow such a petitioner to be put to death nonetheless. The Court correctly refuses to endorse such reasoning.

Good.

Hearing on innocence claim ordered | SCOTUSblog

Is this a crazy view?

Mr Sullivan,

I'm not sure what Conor Clarke's email address is so I'm emailing you. Mr. Clarke suggests that Scalia and Thomas are not crazy in holding the view that federal courts are powerless to help a convicted but demonstrably innocent death row inmate.

I think this is one of those moments when there is a clear division between right and wrong. The basic principle that the United States of America does not execute people who are demonstrably innocent should not be subject to debate. We must not become so committed to upholding our procedural rules that we contemplate killing innocent people simply because that is what the rules say that we are supposed to do. In such a case, it is the rules that must bend, and it is the responsibility of everyone involved to ensure that they are bent. The alternative is simply evil and history should have taught us all that lesson by now.

Reasonable people can disagree in such a case about exactly how the rules ought to be bent, but this passage in the dissent seems to reach toward the conclusion that they cannot and must not be bent, and that position is simply wrong and incompatible with life in a mature and free society that recognizes the fallibility of human institutions.

Thank you,
Tom Cross
Atlanta, GA

RE: Why Justice Scalia Wants to Execute the Innocent

Les Paul, whose innovations with the electric guitar and studio technology made him one of the most important figures in recorded music, has died, according to a statement from his publicists. Paul was 94.

Paul was a guitar and electronics mastermind whose creations -- such as multitrack recording, tape delay and the solid-body guitar that bears his name, the Gibson Les Paul -- helped give rise to modern popular music, including rock 'n' roll. No slouch on the guitar himself, he continued playing at clubs into his 90s despite being hampered by arthritis.

R.I.P. Les Paul