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By taking a fraction of our spending and buying US-made goods, we'll create a economic tidal wave. Watch the video and share it. Boom, you're helping make jobs. millionjobsproject.us
Magician, Comedian, and Actor Michael Carbonaro is the Magic Clerk who amazes some customers when he shows them how the Insta-Chick works. Just add a little water and you’ll have a cute baby chick just in time for Easter. A funny and entertaining clip from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. I think the two kids that got the free jar of jelly beans and other stuff will always remember that trip to the store.
By Tecca | Today in Tech – Thu, Mar 1, 2012
Ever since humans first invented guns, they've been inventing new uses for them. Some shoot bullets; others shoot lasers. But a strange and unsettling new gun being developed by Japanese researchers shoots sound waves in an effort to disrupt and silence anyone who dares speak out of turn.
The gun operates based on the concept of delayed auditory feedback. An attached microphone picks up the sound being made by the target and plays it back 0.2 seconds later. The effect is incredibly confusing to the human brain, making it all but impossible to talk or hold a conversation. The device doesn't cause the person it's being used on any physical harm — it simply messes with their head.
When the human brain hears its own speech perfectly in sync during normal speech, it easily processes the input and allows you to largely ignore the sound of your own voice. However, by offsetting the response just a bit, the brain hears your mouth speaking as well as the strange echo effect produced by the gun. This unusual combination is confusing enough to effectively shut down the part of your brain responsible for managing speech, and you fall immediately silent.
The first versions of the weapon — if we can even call it that — were dependent on a separate PC to process the input and relay it back to the speaker. However, the second prototype (pictured above) does away with the need for additional hardware and includes all the necessary processing bits within its casing, making it easily portable.
The developers say the gun could be used for seemingly innocuous purposes, such as enforcing rules requiring library patrons to keep quiet. It could also see action during large meetings when it is important that onlookers not disrupt the speaker; anyone who fancies a noisy outburst would immediately be silenced by the high-tech handheld.
The free speech implications of the speech jammer are somewhat disconcerting: A protestor or speaker at a political rally could be easily silenced just for having unpopular views. Political rallies and other protest gatherings could easily be quieted by the strange gun, should law enforcement or other agencies decide to equip themselves with the technology.
[Image credit: Cornell]
This article was written by Fox Van Allen and originally appeared on Tecca
Billionaire Donald Trump today offered Barack Obama a check for $5 million for his choice of charities if he would produce his college and passport records.
In an announcement that had been promoted on social media for days, Trump released the above video with the offer.
“We know very little about our president,” he said. “I have a deal for the president.”
“If Barack Obama opens up and gives his college records and applications, and if he gives his passport applications and records, I will give to a charity of his choice – inner city children in Chicago, American Cancer Society, AIDS research – anything he wants a check immediately for $5 million,” he said.
Trump set a deadline of 5 p.m. on Oct. 31.
The release, he said, “will end the question and indeed the anger of many Americans. They will know something about their president. Their president will become transparent, like other presidents. So all he has to do to get $5 million for a charity or charities of his choice, is get his colleges to immediately give his applications and records and also to release his passport records.”
Trump said, “When he does that to my satisfaction, if it’s complete, this check is delivered immediately. A lot of people will be very, very happy to see this happen. Frankly, it’s a check I very much want to write.”
“Once caveat: the records must be given by Oct. 31 at 5 o’clock in the afternoon. Mr. President, not only will I be happy, and totally satisfied, but the American people will be happy.”
Too many people put off something that brings them joy just because they haven't thought about it, don't have it on their schedule, didn't know it was coming or are too rigid to depart from their routine.
I got to thinking one day about all those people on the Titanic who passed up dessert at dinner that fateful night in an effort to cut back. From then on, I've tried to be a little more flexible.
How many women out there will eat at home because their husband didn't suggest going out to dinner until after something had been thawed? Does the word 'refrigeration' mean nothing to you?
How often have your kids dropped in to talk and sat in silence while you watched ' Jeopardy ' on television?
I cannot count the times I called my sister and said , 'How about going to lunch in a half hour?' She would gas up and stammer, 'I can't. I have clothes on the line. My hair is dirty. I wish I had known yesterday, I had a late breakfast, It looks like rain' And my personal favorite: 'It's Monday.' She died a few days ago. We never did have lunch together.
Because we cram so much into our lives, we tend to schedule our headaches.. We live on a sparse diet of promises we make to ourselves when all the conditions are perfect!
We'll go back and visit the grandparents when we get Steve toilet-trained. We'll entertain when we replace the living-room carpet. We'll go on a second honeymoon when we get two more kids out of college.
Life has a way of accelerating as we get older. The days get shorter, and the list of promises to ourselves gets longer. One morning, we awaken, and all we have to show for our lives is a litany of 'I'm going to,' 'I plan on,' and 'Someday, when things are settled down a bit.'
When anyone calls my 'seize the moment' friend, she is open to adventure and available for trips. She keeps an open mind on new ideas. Her enthusiasm for life is contagious. You talk with her for five minutes, and you're ready to trade your bad feet for a pair of Rollerblades and skip an elevator for a bungee cord.
My lips have not touched ice cream in 10 years. I love ice cream. It's just that I might as well apply it directly to my stomach with a spatula and eliminate the digestive process. The other day, I stopped the car and bought a triple-Decker. If my car had hit an iceberg on the way home, I would have died happy.
Now....go on and have a nice day. Do something you WANT to...not something on your SHOULD DO list. If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting? I had a friend from high school that I was always going to call and never did. The other day her name was in the obituaries so we never had that chat.
Make sure you read this to the end; you will understand why I sent this to you.
Have you ever watched kids playing on a merry go round or listened to the rain lapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly's erratic flight or gazed at the sun into the fading night? Do you run through each day on the fly? When you ask, 'How are you?' Do you hear the reply?
When the day is done, do you lie in your bed with the next hundred chores running through your head? Ever told your child, 'We'll do it tomorrow.' and in your haste, not see his sorrow? Ever lost touch? Let a good friendship die? Just call to say 'Hi'?
When you worry and hurry through your day, it is like an unopened gift....Thrown away.... Life is not a race. Take it slower. Hear the music before the song is over.
Show your friends how much you care. Send this to everyone you consider a FRIEND including me if you consider me a friend. If it comes back to you, it affirms your circle of friends.
To those I have sent this to... I cherish our friendship and appreciate all you do.
Life may not be the party we hoped for... But while we are here we might as well dance!
Plans to drug test welfare recipients gain momentum
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Conservatives who say welfare recipients should have to pass a drug test to receive government assistance have momentum on their side.
The issue has come up in the Republican presidential campaign, with front-runner Mitt Romney saying it’s an “excellent idea.”
Nearly two dozen states are considering plans this session that would make drug testing mandatory for welfare recipients, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. And Wyoming lawmakers advanced such a proposal this week.
Driving the measures is a perception that people on public assistance are misusing the funds and that cutting off their benefits would save money for tight state budgets — even as statistics have largely proved both notions untrue.More here.
| "This is My View and That is My Doo" | ||||||||||||
Lisbon,
Months before websites all over the internet voluntarily went dark
in protest of SOPA, the internet censorship bill which was being
considered by congress, Obama signed onto the Anti-Counterfeiting
Trade Agreement.
He did so way back in October of last year using his claimed
authority to make 'executive agreements', which basically means he
doesn't intend to, or even believe he needs to, get the congress to
ratify this TREATY.
Yesterday the European Union signed onto ACTA without any debate.
ACTA has become a reality far worse for internet freedom than
either SOPA or PIPA ever even threatened to be.
Here's what you really need to know about ACTA...
Goodman Green
- Brasscheck
EU signs ACTA, global internet censorship treaty
Rady Ananda
Activist Post
Today, the European Union and 22 member states signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced. They have now joined the US and seven other nations that signed the treaty last October.
This signing ceremony merely formalized the EU’s adoption of ACTA last month, during a completely unrelated meeting on agriculture and fisheries, reports TechDirt.
Though initiated by the US, Japan is the official depository of the treaty.
Removal of the Three Strikes clause, in which users accused of three counts of piracy would be barred from the internet, paved the way for the EU to adopt ACTA last month.
Related to ACTA, a chapter in the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) “would have state signatories adopt even more restrictive copyright measures than ACTA,” reports the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Both ACTA and TPP were developed without public input and outside international trade groups, like the World Trade Organization and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Leaked cables published by WikiLeaks in 2009 exposed early drafts of ACTA, resulting in a firestorm of controversy. Those cables, coupled with later releases, showed that ACTA negotiations began in 2006 and were controversial even to participating states. An historical summary of the treaty’s progress through December can be found here.
ACTA Violates Magna Carta and US Constitution
Like PIPA and SOPA, two domestic internet censorship bills that prompted major websites to blacken their name or website in a Jan. 18th protest, ACTA allows accusers of copyright infringement to bypass judicial review. Lack of “due process” makes these bills and ACTA unconstitutional and violates the Magna Carta, a charter signed in 1215 on which most Western law is based, including the US Constitution. It is often cited as the most important legal document in the history of democracy.
(The USA PATRIOT Acts, Obama’s assassination program, and the National Defense Authorization Act that allows indefinite detention are among many recent laws passed in the US which directly breach the Magna Carta.)
“The Constitution states only one command twice,” explains Peter Strauss of Cornell University Law School, further elaborating:
The Fifth Amendment says to the federal government that no one shall be ‘deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.’ The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, uses the same eleven words, called the Due Process Clause, to describe a legal obligation of all states. These words have as their central promise an assurance that all levels of American government must operate within the law (‘legality’) and provide fair procedures.Not only due process, but US adoption of ACTA also violates Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which provides that the president “shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur.”
The Senate never voted on ACTA.
During the Jan. 18 internet blackout, Darrell Issa (R-CA) introduced OPEN, (H.R. 3782, the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act). Heather Callaghan points out that even though OPEN targets foreign-based websites,
[T]he bill’s wording is wide open to pursue American sites. Just one example: when describing an infringing site, it starts with those ‘that are accessed through a non-domestic domain name,’ but continues in section (8)(A)(ii) for any site that ‘conducts business directed to residents of the United States.’As this slew of internet censorship bills and treaties make their way into law, “the United States fell 27 places on the Reporters Without Borders tenth annual Press Freedom Index of 2011 to 47th overall,” reports Activist Post.
Today’s signatories included the EU, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Last October, Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and the United States signed ACTA.
Though involved in early ACTA negotiations, Switzerland and Mexico have not yet ratified it. However, “Since the agreement remains open to signature until May 2013, it is possible that other states may make a move to join it as well,” said Maira Sutton of EFF.
Read original here
