Der Spiegel has released another big story yesterday based on the Edward Snowden documents, this time targeting China’s top political leaders and companies that pose a threat to American technology companies. It seems likely that this news release was timed to coincide with Michelle Obama’s current visit to China so that the news would have maximum impact.
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In a comment on my post about voiceover artists, reader Anthony Burber referred me to an interesting article by a middle-school teacher Jessica Lahey who was concerned about the number of girls in her class who had an ‘upspeak’ in their voices or, even worse, adopted childish voices.
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As the Edward Snowden revelations keep coming out about how the NSA and GCHQ and the rest of the ‘Five Eyes’ club have been pretty much spying on everyone including the leaders of foreign governments, there have been loud protestations about these practices by foreign leaders that this was being done without their knowledge and consent. As Glenn Greenwald poses the question: “Were these top officials truly unaware, or were they pretending to be, in order to distance themselves from surveillance operations that became highly controversial once disclosed?”
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It is fascinating to see the evolution of the 24/7 news channels when they seize on one event out of many to devote almost their entire coverage. If the issue is not resolved quickly, the nature of the coverage descends into more and more bizarre speculations, almost completely unhinged from reality. Often these stories are about missing young women but the current one about the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 follows that familiar pattern and the news channel HLN ended up having a psychic to tell viewers what she had ‘seen’. You can see the segment here.
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It is a truism in the marketing industry that the 25-49 age group is the one you should be chasing. Not being a marketing guru, I am not quite sure why this is because it seems like older people in general are the ones with more disposable income, while younger people are dealing with the expenses of starting out in life, raising family, etc. Maybe it is because older people are more set in their ways and can’t be easily persuaded to chase after the next new thing or adopt the latest fashion.
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As the Snowden hits keep coming, the NSA seems to be flailing around like a punch-drunk boxer, aiming at random. For example, Dan Froomkin at The Intercept reports on the bizarre reaction by Robert Litt, general counsel to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, when asked by top news editors to show exactly what damage had been caused by the Edward Snowden revelations.
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Fox News is a favorite target of Jon Stewart who mercilessly lampoons their pretensions to being a news organization. It must clearly get under their skin since they know that young people watch the show in large numbers and this is the demographic TV lusts after. Every once in a while, someone at Fox decides to try and fight back.
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The Special Prosecutor appointed to investigate the Iran-Contra affair died yesterday at the age of 102. His work on the case highlights for me two things. One is the danger of prejudging people based on the labels that are affixed to them; and the other is how we have a system whereby criminal acts in the service of power are excused and condoned at the highest levels.
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I recently attended a Safe Zone training program at my university. It is designed to help faculty and staff be more aware of LGBT issues and thus create a more welcoming atmosphere. After completing it, one gets a Safe Zone badge that one can stick on one’s door so that anyone who comes there knows that you are accepting of them.
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Some time ago, I wrote about a study that said that we humans could smell 390 different smells. This seemed big enough to me but as commenter ChasCPeterson pointed out, this was not the full story because that number referred to the distinct number of olfactory sensors we have that can identify specific molecules but that we can actually smell combinations of these basic smells and the number of combinations can thus be much larger.
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