Archive for 2014
July 2, 2014
“SUPER BANANAS” enter U.S. market trials.
IT’S BASICALLY THE ACADEMIC ESTABLISHMENT LAUNDERING CONTRIBUTIONS FOR AN ALLY: WaPo: At time of austerity, eight universities spent top dollar on Hillary Clinton speeches. “In one previously undisclosed transaction, the University of Connecticut — which just raised tuition by 6.5 percent — paid $251,250 for Clinton to speak on campus in April. Other examples include $300,000 to address UCLA in March and $225,000 for a speech scheduled to occur in October at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.”
UPDATE: A reader notes that the President of the University of Miami, another Hillary-subsidizing school on the list, is none other than “Donna Shalala … Bill Clinton’s HHS secretary.”
TECH COMPANIES SEEMING LESS TRUSTWORTHY BY THE DAY: “Earlier today, we wrote about a ridiculous situation in which Microsoft was able to convince a judge to let it seize a bunch of popular domains from No-IP.com, the popular dynamic DNS provider, routing all their traffic through Microsoft servers, which were unable to handle the load, taking down a whole bunch of websites. Microsoft claimed that this was all part of a process of going after a few malware providers, though No-IP points out that Microsoft could have easily contacted them and the company’s fraud and abuse team would have cut off those malware providers. . . . That’s not a ‘technical error.’ That’s Microsoft blatantly making an extreme claim that convinced a judge to hand over a whole bunch of domain names without any kind of due process or adversarial hearing. While Microsoft may have then had a technical error on top of that, what kicked this off was a very, very big legal error.” If this is true, the lawyers involved may face discipline. And should.
AT AMAZON, Kindle Daily Deals.
HMM: Amid sexual harassment allegations, dating app Tinder suspends co-founder. So there’s sexual harassment at the company that produced an app for random hookups? Seems like a case of assumption of the risk, or maybe coming to the nuisance or something. . . .
HAS FACEBOOK FINALLY BETRAYED OUR TRUST? “What are the possibilities of this new reality in which a private company, responsible only to its shareholders, can change the mood of whole populations? The obvious question: Why advertise at all anymore?”
Or why do Facebook anymore? Also, to what extent might Facebook — or, given its connection to the 2012 Obama Campaign, has Facebook already — used this power to political ends?
THE WORLD’S NEWEST OIL PRODUCER: Kurdistan. I like the Kurds, and they deserve oil more than most in the region.
IN THE MAIL: From Sarah Hoyt, Wings.
Also, today only at Amazon: Over 40% Off Select Top Security Cameras.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 419.
GENERAL MOTORS GOES ALL-IN ON RECALLS:
One story you could tell is that this just goes to show how little GM has been able to change from its disastrous old ways. Low quality, indifference to the consumer … meet the new GM, same as the old GM.
But I wonder if something else isn’t going on, something smarter. I wonder if GM hasn’t decided to go hog wild on the recalls because at this point they have nothing to lose.
There’s a point in a bad scandal where things have gotten about as bad as they could possibly get. New revelations don’t make things worse, because they hardly could be any worse. Instead, they get lost in the deafening noise of prior bad news.
At that point, it’s a good idea to announce anything that you’ve been worrying about might one day come out. People won’t really notice now, and by the time they’ve recovered sufficiently to take an interest, your worrisome story is old news.
This was the logic behind “big-bath accounting,” which became very popular during the dot-com era. And it was sound logic. So I wonder if GM has decided to do something similar here. To wit: Recall every part that has ever given anyone any trouble. Suffer through the hit to your brand. And then know that you’re sailing into the future clean, without any potential scandals lurking under the rocks of your customer-service organization.
Yeah, but if you’re GM can you ever be sure of that? And how much did the U.S. Government know about this stuff before it sold its stock?
YEAH, THAT’S THE TICKET! Facebook Lawyer: That Emotion-Manipulation Study Was About Customer Service.
Related: Facebook Updated User Agreement With ‘Research’ Months After Emotion Experiment. “Unfortunately for Facebook, at the time the experiment was conducted the company’s policy said nothing about research — that bit was added in four months later following a wrist slap from the Federal Trade Commission for ‘unfair and deceptive’ user privacy practices, according to Forbes.” Can you say Class Action?
OUTER BANKS BEWARE: Tropical Storm Arthur strengthens, nets hurricane watch.
JAMES TARANTO: Free Speech Movement: Four lawsuits challenge campus censorship.
FIRE is attempting to light one. The Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education today filed four lawsuits challenging campus censorship at institutions across the country:
• At Citrus Community College in Glendora, Calif., Vincenzo Sinapi-Riddle “was threatened with removal from campus by an administrator for asking a fellow student to sign a petition protesting NSA surveillance of American citizens.” He was accused of expressive activity without a permit and outside the designated “free speech zone,” which according to FIRE’s calculations “comprises just 1.37% of campus.”
• At Iowa State University, two members of the campus chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, had “received university approval for a group T-shirt that featured ISU mascot Cy the Cardinal’s head in place of the ‘O’ in NORML.” But “criticism from members of the public and state officials” led the university not only to rescind approval of the shirt but to ban another “that simply said ‘NORML ISU Supports Legalizing Marijuana.’ ”
• At Chicago State University, the plantiffs are faculty members who write for a blog called CSU Faculty Voice, which “is often highly critical of the CSU administration’s perceived corruption and incompetence.” The blog’s logo is a photo of a CSU sign, with “Chicago” crossed out and “Crony” written in, along with the logo “Where we hire our friends.”
• At Ohio university, student Isaac Smith belongs to a group called Students Defending Students, which “provides free assistance to students accused of campus misconduct.” Administrators ordered Smith and his fellow members to stop wearing a shirt promising “We get you off for free,” on the ground that it “objectified women” and “promoted prostitution.”
The four cases are part of a new FIRE effort called the Stand Up for Speech Litigation Project, which also encompasses two earlier cases, one from California’s Modesto Junior College and one from the University of Hawaii at Hilo, in which–no joke–administrators tried to prevent students from distributing copies of the U.S. Constitution on campus. Although he wasn’t referring to these cases, they bring to mind Ezra Klein’s infamous observation: “The issue of the Constitution is that the text is confusing because it was written more than 100 years ago.”
Punching back twice as hard. If you like what FIRE is doing, you can donate here.
IT’S NOT BY ACCIDENT, EITHER: Green groups keep Aboriginal people in poverty.
INSUFFICIENT OPPORTUNITY FOR GRAFT, TOO MUCH OPPORTUNITY FOR FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE ON THE PART OF POOR PEOPLE AND MINORITIES: Lefty Media Slam ‘Parasitic’ Ridesharing Companies Like Uber.
CHANGE: Pentagon sends attack helicopters to Iraq.
The United States has sent Apache attack helicopters to Iraq as part of the buildup in U.S. military personnel, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
Officials would not say how many of the armed helicopters have been sent to the country, stating only that they will be based in Baghdad and could assist with evacuations of American personnel.
The Pentagon also sent over additional surveillance drones.
President Obama on Monday sent 200 additional U.S. troops to Iraq to protect diplomatic facilities and personnel amid growing fears that Sunni militants in the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) could overrun the country. The order brought the total number of U.S. ground forces in Iraq to 750.
On Monday, the State Department announced it was relocating some of its personnel from Baghdad.
Sounds like a bang-up approach.
TRANSPARENCY: Medical staff warned: Keep your mouths shut about illegal immigrants or face arrest. “A government-contracted security force threatened to arrest doctors and nurses if they divulged any information about the contagion threat at a refugee camp housing illegal alien children at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, sources say. In spite of the threat, several former camp workers broke their confidentiality agreements and shared exclusive details with me about the dangerous conditions at the camp.”
ANNALS OF BUREAUCRACY: How the EPA’s empire-building got in the way of its science.
ARE HYATT HOTELS censoring right-leaning Internet sites?
WASHINGTON POST: Obama White House Continues To Pay Women Less Than Men.
BECAUSE THEY DESERVE IT. AND BECAUSE IT’S FUN. ‘Why Embarrass Journalists?’