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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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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Yesterday came reports of the ghastly mess involving the execution of a death row inmate in Oklahoma because states are experimenting with a new drug cocktail since the old drugs are no longer allowed to be exported to the US from Europe because of European disapproval of their use for executions.
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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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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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The right to abortion has been severely restricted in the US by making it harder to get one and Ohio is one of the worst states in this regard. To counter this, the Cleveland Skeptics and Northeast Ohio Secular Woman are challenging Center for Inquiry Northeast Ohio in a local Bowl-a-thon for abortion access.
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Via Taylor Berman I came across these two videos of Pancho the Chihuahua who seems to have mastered yoga. I am going to show the videos to Baxter the Wonder Dog and see if he might want to try it.
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Once again we have a situation in which the city of Portland, Oregon dumped all the water in its reservoir, all 38 million gallons of it, because cameras seemed to show that someone has urinated into it. After observing the group of five young men near the reservoir, police went out there and arrested three of the men and charged one of them.
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I have recently been praising the city Cleveland for taking a progressive attitude towards LGBT rights. They are even hosting the 2014 Gay Games to be held August 9-16. But some Muslim can drivers have given the city a black eye by walking off their jobs because they refuse to drive taxis that carry ads for the games.
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