Diabetics need to closely monitor their blood sugar levels. However, this crucial routine becomes more than a chore since it usually involved drawing blood. That is why researchers are continually searching for non-invasive, not to mention not painful, ways to measure glucose levels. Researchers from the University of California San Diego are looking into using temporary tattoos to perform this … Continue reading
BANGKOK, Jan 28 (Reuters) – A Thai court on Wednesday handed a two-year jail term to a leader of the “red shirt” opposition movement for defaming a former prime minister, a move the group says is proof of the junta’s ambition to crush its opponents.
Thailand’s Criminal Court found Jatuporn Prompan, chairman of the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD), or red shirt group, guilty of insulting former Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva in two speeches in October 2009.
The ruling comes just days after ousted Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, whose government was backed by the red shirts before a May coup by the military, was banned from politics for five years.
Yingluck was removed from office for abuse of power in May, days before the coup, which the army said was necessary to end months of unrest.
The ban is the latest twist in 10 years of turbulent politics that have pitted Yingluck and her brother Thaksin, himself a former prime minister, against the royalist-military establishment that sees the Shinawatras as a threat and reviles their populist policies.
Red shirt leader Jatuporn has been in legal hot water before and has faced a number of court cases, including for slander.
“On October 11 the accused went on stage at Democracy Monument and spoke about Abhisit, and on October 17, he spoke again outside Government House,” a court official told Reuters.
“After reviewing the evidence the court found his words against Mr. Abhisit to be untrue.”
Jatuporn was granted bail of 200,000 baht ($6,000). His lawyer, Wiyat Chatmontree, said he would appeal the ruling.
The sentence was emblematic of the junta’s ambition to root out Thaksin’s influence, said a red shirt member, who asked not to be identified for fear of repercussions.
“The junta’s supporters want it to eradicate the Shinawatra clan from politics and that is exactly what they are doing.”
Thailand has been bitterly split between supporters of the Shinawatras in the agricultural north and northeast and the Bangkok-based royalist-military establishment, which sees Thaksin, a telecoms billionaire turned politician, as a threat.
Abhisit, head of the conservative, pro-establishment Democrat Party, faced popular opposition in 2010, after tens of thousands of red shirt activists demanding fresh elections took to the streets of the Thai capital, accusing his government of being elitist and army-backed.
His former deputy, Suthep Thaugsuban, led street protests in 2013 and 2014, backed by Bangkok’s middle classes, that helped lead to Yingluck’s ouster. (Reporting by Aukkarapon Niyomyat; Writing by Amy Sawitta Lefevre; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
Ben Carson is not a household name. He’s popular in far Right circles and unlikely to break out of them. He is also rather hateful and made one of the more absurd comments in the new “Cake Wars,” which are meant to show how fundamentalists are victimized.
Carson said: “What I have a problem with is when people try to force people to act against their beliefs because they say ‘they’re discriminating against me.’ So they can go right down the street and buy a cake, but no, let’s bring a suit against this person because I want them to make my cake even though they don’t believe in it. Which is really not all that smart because they might put poison in that cake.”
Apparently, he finds fundamentalist bakers poisoning people to be funny. Of course, if someone else were to suggest this it would be further proof of how fundamentalists are victimized.
Having grown up among these people, having attended their schools and bible college, I am familiar with their psychology. They need to be victims. One reason they act so offensively with so many people is to solicit rejection thus proving Biblical prophecy that they are being persecuted “for His sake.” Hardly the case, but it’s the best they’ve got, so they run with it.
The “Cake Wars” started because a few fundamentalist bakers refused to sell cakes to gay customers. Then, if charged with violating anti-discrimination laws, they weep, wail and flail about in the media limelight, basking in their persecution–it may be a long way from true martyrdom but they take what they can get.
Of course, they want anti-discrimination to be a one-way street–a special privilege reserved for Christians, but denied to everyone else. In their view, anti-discrimination laws ought to exist, provided Christians are exempt from having to obey them, even while regularly claiming the protection of those same laws. In reality it is illegal to discriminate against a Christian in all 50 states. Yet it is legal to refuse service to gay people in most states.
Anti-gay groups behind these Cake Wars know the law; some of them are even lawyers. What they also know is that the public, especially their donors, aren’t clued up on the facts.
Christian bakers have refused to sell cakes to gay couples because they are gay. But, the one case of a Christian baker and a bigoted fundamentalist Christian was NOT over his religion, but over his demanded the baker include a hate message on the cake.
In this case the baker was willing to sell to sell a cake and supply the customer with what he needed to write his own message. He insisted, however, that she be forced to write the hate message herself.
In other words, this wasn’t about whether he would be sold cake, but about asserting the right to force another person to engage in speech she opposed. He wanted to compel someone to express views against their own will.
In the Colorado case a Christian baker discriminated against gay clients, the message on the cake was not the issue, the customers were. That Christian wanted to refuse service to customers because they were gay. As is being done with the current case the fundamentalists confused the issues. The Colorado court explained:
“Respondents argue that if they are compelled to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, then a black baker could not refuse to make a cake bearing a white-supremacist message for a member of the Aryan Nation; and an Islamic baker could not refuse to make a cake denigrating the Koran for the Westboro Baptist Church.
However, neither of these fanciful hypothetical situations proves Respondents’ point. In both cases, it is the explicit, unmistakable, offensive message that the bakers are asked to put on the cake that gives rise to the bakers’ free speech right to refuse. That, however, is not the case here, where Respondents refused to bake any cake for Complainants regardless of what was written on it or what it looked like.”
Nowhere are these litigants attempting to actually remove anti-discrimination laws. They use these laws all the time. There are many times more anti-discrimination suits based on religion than on sexual orientation.
The fundamentalist believes he is entitled to rights, which must be denied to all others. He thinks he should be protected from discrimination, while being free to invoke his faith anytime he wishes to discriminate.
Fundamentalists are becoming quite explicit in this. With the help of third-rate Republican office holders they are proposing legislation that exempts Christians and the religious from such laws, but not others. If you are a secular bigot you must obey the law, but if you are a bigot for Jesus, you are.
Their accusation that others are seeking “special rights” fits what they seek for themselves perfectly.
I personally find anti-discrimination laws to be a dog’s breakfast. They are contradictory and confusing. I’m willing to grant anyone an exemption, with one proviso. If a business wishes to discriminate against specific groups it must state so openly and clearly in their advertising and on their entrance.
If they want to be bigots in the name of God, then go ahead, but don’t hide the hate under a bushel. Do it openly and proudly. This way, they won’t accidentally attract victims to be humiliated by the refusal of service.
My guess is that almost none of the haters would actually go this far. It would negatively impact sales. Most Americans don’t like that sort of bigotry and that’s why anti-discrimination laws tend to be so popular, in spite of their crazy quilt nature.
If a business wants to refuse service to gays and blacks, that should be advertised on the front door and in their advertisments. Of course, that tips their hand to the rest of the population many of whom would find it disgusting and take their business elsewhere.
Conservatives should be happy, after all, that is letting the free market decide whether bigoted businesses or non-bigoted businesses succeed.
But, don’t expect conservatives to leap on this proposal. The free market is nothing more than a slogan not something they actually support. Meanwhile, they try to carve out special privileges for religious people, denied to all other Americans, which proves their contempt for equality of rights before the law.
WASHINGTON — Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) introduced legislation Wednesday to authorize military force against Islamic State militants — a step aimed at forcing Congress to take responsibility for a war it’s been funding for nearly six months with almost no debate on its duration, costs or potential toll.
Lawmakers have put no parameters on the U.S. military campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, since it began in August. Since then, the U.S. has spent more than $1 billion, participated in more than 1,700 airstrikes, and authorized sending roughly 3,000 U.S. troops to Iraq. All of this has happened without new war authorization.
Schiff’s proposed Authorization for the Use of Military Force would do three things: limit military action against ISIS to three years; prohibit the use of U.S. ground troops; and immediately terminate a still-active 2002 AUMF tied to the Iraq War. It also would end, in three years, a sweeping 2001 AUMF that President Barack Obama says gives him the authority to go after ISIS without new war authorization. Some in Congress disagree that Obama has that authority and insist he needs new authorization, which the president says he would welcome.
“There is no doubt that our current offensive amounts to war,” said Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “Congress should take action both to authorize its prosecution and to set limits on that authorization so it may not be used by any future administration in a manner contrary to our intent.”
Schiff’s AUMF would expire after three years.
Schiff is a lonely voice in the House. Even progressives, like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), have treated the need for new war authorization as an afterthought. It’s not much better in the Senate, where Democrats hastily passed an AUMF out of a committee in late December, knowing it was going nowhere. They did so to show their frustration over the lack of attention to the issue.
If the new Congress has revealed anything, it’s that nobody in Washington wants to go first when it comes to authorizing a war. The White House typically submits draft AUMF language to Congress as a first step to moving a bill, but administration officials say they want feedback from Capitol Hill before moving. Lawmakers, meanwhile, are grumbling about waiting for draft language from Obama when they could be moving forward with legislation on their own.
“There is plenty of responsibility to go around,” Schiff told The Huffington Post. “I place more responsibility here than at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. They don’t have to make the first step. There is nothing holding us back except political timidity.”
For now, Schiff is on the lookout for co-sponsors for his bill. He doesn’t have any yet, but he said he plans to reach out to lawmakers in both parties. Nobody in the Senate has introduced AUMF legislation, though Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a vocal proponent for passing new war authorization, has called for using last year’s committee-passed bill as the base for new legislation in this Congress.
Schiff acknowledged that his proposal is probably more narrow than the White House wants, and that Obama will likely look to Republicans to give him broad authority. Secretary of State John Kerry told senators in December that the administration would oppose an AUMF that explicitly prohibits U.S. ground troops, which some Democrats have insisted on. Republicans appeared more amenable to Kerry’s request.
Still, Schiff said, some in the GOP are wary of another potentially protracted war in the Middle East.
“Many of us are skeptical of another broad AUMF considering what’s happened with the last one,” Schiff said. “There will be some interesting bedfellows on this.”
Snowpocalypse 2015 was such a big nothing in some areas, especially in New York City, that one weather forecaster even apologized.
So what’s a network hyping a storm supposed to do? On Tuesday night’s “Daily Show,” Jon Stewart said they had some options.
“Acknowledge that conditions had changed. Ease up on the breathless hype. Focus your attention on New England, where it was actually really snowing,” Stewart suggested. “Or desperately cling to the original narrative like dingleberries on a sheep’s ass.”
Stewart played clip after clip of reporters overreacting to small amounts of snow. However, he aimed his sharpest icicles at CNN, which sent Don Lemon out in a “Blizzardmobile.”
“Blizzardmobile? Settle down, Batman, it’s a Ford Explorer,” Stewart said. Then, referring to some of the highly controversial statements Lemon has made on the air recently, Stewart showed an image of the CNN reporter working from a Dairy Queen truck.
“And by the way, with the way you’ve been reporting lately, you’re lucky you’re not in an actual ‘Blizzardmobile,’” Stewart said.
But the CNN “Blizzardmobile” gave Stewart an idea: Maybe the “Daily Show” can take it to the next level.
Stewart sent correspondent Jordan Klapper out in a car, a bicycle and a sled to to interview people about everything from Yemen to the Greek election.
Check it out in the clip above.
Casio announced that it is now offering an iPad application to reproduce their popular synthesizer CZ series on your iPad – called “CZ App for iPad“.
Mitsuoka Motors is going to release a premium model for 2015 of their 2-seater convertible car Mitsuoka Himiko on January 30. They are limited to only 15 cars.
Himiko is made based on the third-generation Mazda MX-5 Roadster, and it is a beautiful car with a retro and edgy pioneering look.
The 2015 year model offers 36 colors for its exterior and 6 colors for a 2-tone Wrapping Option as an accent color.
Filming for the forthcoming—and much-troubled —Steve Jobs biopic started yesterday. With that came confirmation of the main cast that will feature in the film.
Unless you are sporting a pair of headphones, it’s hard to look stylish with a pair of earphones. Beats has tried that with their earphones by giving it a distinctive flat and red cable, but many other manufacturers have since copied that style, making it less unique in the process. That being said this doesn’t mean that manufacturers can’t stop trying.
For those in the market for a new pair of stylish/funky earphones, you might be interested in the Glow earphones. As the name suggests, these are earphones where the cable will actually glow/light up and pulse to the rhythm of the music you are listening to. It probably won’t be as obvious in the daytime, but if you’re out at night for a run or maybe a party, then these earphones could come in handy.
While its use will probably make more sense for joggers at night, the Glow earphones aren’t really designed to be used as a fitness earphones, but rather they are marketed as a fashion/lifestyle product, but who’s to say how you use them, right? The earphones glow courtesy of Corning’s Fibrance light-diffusing fiber, which is a piece of optical fiber that is thin and flexible enough to slip into the cables of an earphone.
The headphones will also come with a inline remote control that will allow the user to answer their calls, send canned responses to text messages, activate voice control, and control the volume of their music/calls. Interestingly enough its creators have designed the earphones for Android users in mind and have reserved the more advanced features for Android devices.
They do state that if they can raise enough money, they will bring an iOS developer on board to give it the same advanced features as Android. The Glow earphones come in red, green, or blue and if you’d like to help with their Kickstarter campaign, head on over to their Kickstarter page for the details.
Glow Earphones Will Light Up And Pulsate According To Your Music , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
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