I0S 7 MOTION GRAPHICS MAKING SOME USERS MOTION SICK: “It’s not the zoom animations that are responsible. It’s a new ‘parallax’ function that causes the background of the phone to subtly move back and forth, a feature that leads to an effect not unlike car sickness.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 10 things Obamacare won’t tell you: The health exchanges, central to the law, are also its biggest mystery. “You might want to avoid signing up on Day One.”

VIDEO: Sen. Heidi Heitkamp Makes Sexist Remark.

CATFIGHT: Model Punches Topless Protester On Catwalk. (NSFW).

SPACE: Watch Live Sunday as Orbital Sciences’ Spacecraft Heads for the ISS (Again). “The Virginia company is one of two — along with SpaceX — with a contract to deliver cargo to the station now that NASA has retired the space shuttle. Sunday’s expected rendezvous will mark Cygnus’ second time approaching the station, and is a key milestone for Orbital. Engineers will perform the final demonstration maneuvers in a bid to show NASA it has the right stuff. Although Orbital lacks the mainstream recognition of SpaceX, which has already made two cargo deliveries to the station, it is a veteran of the industry and has been sending things into space since 1982.”

UPDATE YOUR DISASTER-PREP at the Amazon Emergency Essentials Store.

Also, now on sale: Adobe Elements 12.

Plus, coupons galore in Grocery & Gourmet Food.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Preserve Battery Life In IOS7. So far, I’m preserving battery life by not upgrading. “Be not the first on whom the new is tried” is my motto where operating systems are concerned. Anybody know if the Mophie Juicepack for my iPhone 5 will work on a 5S? I may upgrade my phone and give the 5 to the Insta-Wife, who’s pondering entering the smartphone world at last.

Also at the link: “15 Tricks To Make The Transition To iOS 7 Easier.”

A TENNESSEE FOOD BLOG: Tennessee In The Kitchen.

LATEST TEEN-PANIC STORY: Friends Without Benefits: What Social Media And Porn Are Doing To Teenage Girls.

THIS IS INTERESTING: OTC Pain Relievers, Age, and Exercise. “Older adults taking NSAIDs respond to resistance training better than those using resistance training alone. Studies on younger adults appear to produce opposite results.”

FAST SUPERSEDANS: 2014 Audi RS7 vs. 2014 BMW M6 Gran Coupe, 2014 Mercedes-Benz CLS63 AMG S-model.

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Plus, save on Road Trip Essentials.

Also, 25% or more off on select baby items at the Fall Baby Sale.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Coventry Student Suspended for Keychain. “NBC10′s Tony Gugliotta reports tonight that a seventh-grade student in Coventry public schools has been suspended for three days after his friend took a two-inch keychain shaped as gun from his backpack.” This counts as a “firearm replica?” It’s a key fob.

Meanwhile, note that while the schools are reaching new heights of absurdity, they’re not excelling at their supposed job of teaching students:

According to data provided by the state Department of Education, only 68% of students in Joseph’s class are “proficient” in math. Just 26% achieved “proficient with distinction” on the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP) tests conducted last year.

Sending your kids to public school is looking more and more like parental malpractice.

SPYING: FBI has been using drones since 2006, watchdog agency says.

FAULTY JUSTICE: Italian Earthquake Scientist Speaks Out against His Conviction. “A year ago an Italian court sentenced six scientists and an ex-government official to six years in prison for manslaughter. More specifically, the judge found them guilty for failing to give adequate advance warning to the population of L’Aquila, a city in the Abruzzo region of Italy, about the risk of the April 2009 earthquake that caused 309 deaths. As they await word of their appeal, the scientists maintain that the true culprit in that disaster was the government’s inability to communicate nuanced scientific information to L’Aquila’s citizens.” The Italian justice system seems to be pretty much a joke.

POPULAR MECHANICS: 5 Tools You Should Keep In Your Car. Number one is the LifeHammer, which has been mentioned here before.

BRUCE SCHNEIER: NSA Spying Is Making Us Less Safe. “They’re not just spying on the bad guys, they’re deliberately weakening Internet security for everyone—including the good guys. It’s sheer folly to believe that only the NSA can exploit the vulnerabilities they create. Additionally, by eavesdropping on all Americans, they’re building the technical infrastructure for a police state. We’re not there yet, but already we’ve learned that both the DEA and the IRS use NSA surveillance data in prosecutions and then lie about it in court. Power without accountability or oversight is dangerous to society at a very fundamental level.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 40 Things Every Self-Respecting Man Over 30 Should Own. I’ve got most of ’em. I don’t carry a leather wallet, though. Just not practical for me. I carry one of these.

CHANGE IS SLOWER THAN I THOUGHT: “Only about 12 per cent of all commercial aircraft are now Wi-Fi enabled.”

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 142.

DETROIT’S PENSION MADNESS:

I’m rarely speechless, but I’m having trouble putting my emotions into words after reading the latest report on the Detroit pension situation. Now, I admit it: I’m kind of naïve. Usually when I see an underfunded pension, I think to myself “poor pensioners — undone by a combination of stupid tax rules, volatile stock markets and mismanagement by trustees who tried to restore depleted fund assets with an investment approach you might call ‘desperate optimism’.” Thus, I was not entirely prepared for the new revelations about the Detroit trustees’ custom of handing out annual holiday “bonuses” to workers, retirees and the City of Detroit. Between 1985 and 2008, they handed out roughly $1 billion this way. Had they been invested, one estimate says those funds would be worth almost $2 billion today — or more than half the current shortfall in the funds.

These “bonuses” were used to lower the contribution the city was required to make, to give retirees a little something extra around Christmas time, and to fund individual savings accounts that workers are offered along with their pensions. In 2009, when the financial markets were completely frozen and the automakers were shotgunning through the bankruptcy courts, the pension trust paid 7.5 percent interest into those accounts — which is about 7.5 percent more than they would have gotten at a bank. This while the pension funds were busy losing about a quarter of their value.

I literally slapped my forehead while reading some of the explanations that the trustees offered for their behavior.

They did this for the same reason a dog licks himself: Because they could.

WASHINGTON POST: ObamaCare Fight Re-Energizes Tea Party Movement.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, PHILISTINES WOULD SHUT DOWN SCIENCE EDUCATION. And They Were Right! “On 1 October, NIH will shutter its nine-person Office of Science Education (OSE) and cease to conduct a range of activities designed to foster health science education among elementary and secondary school students and the general public.”

Chris Mooney, call your office.

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