Hopefully this will be an example to all those corrupt professors responsible for NCAA football cheating. Our friend Otherwise called this one to my attention. Former UNC professor charged HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. — A former professor at the center of an academic scandal involving athletes at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been charged with a felony, accused
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Our social media activities would benefit from a dose of critical thinking. A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on. – Terry Pratchett I had an exchange with my sister earlier about something she had shared on Facebook. If you haven’t seen it, it’s the one alleging that 11 US states now have
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Government shutdown, debt crisis reveal how much GOP has in common with other sociopaths… Is this to be an empathy test? Capillary dilation of the so-called blush response? Fluctuation of the pupil. Involuntary dilation of the iris? I believe Philip K. Dick had it right in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Technology had, in that not-so-distant future, created androids that were
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UEFA (the governing body of European football) has given its tentative approval to moving the 2022 World Cup to the winter. The prospect of a winter World Cup in 2022 took a step forward after European football chiefs agreed a summer event could not be played in Qatar. Summer temperatures in the Gulf state can reach 50C, sparking health fears
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Adapted from a piece that originally ran in December 2011. _____ When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal. -Richard Nixon to David Frost British television journalist David Frost is dead at 74. While it isn’t necessarily clear that a man who spent time as a comedian and game show host ought to have his visage
Read moreBack in 2008 North Carolina – the state in which I was born, raised, and lived 32 years of my life – absolutely shocked me by voting for Barack Obama over John “The Maverick” McCain. Obama is hardly any kind of messiah figure, of course. But in symbolic terms, this was huge – North Carolina cast its electoral strength behind a
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The Edward Snowden/NSA/PRISM uproar continues, and in the argument over whether or not he’s a Real American Patriot or your basic criminal vigilante the whole fucking point is getting lost. In fact, that argument is precisely the one that the Obama administration and the GOP’s security-state architects want us waging because it distracts us from the actual issue we need
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Edward Snowden’s status has rapidly transformed from “anonymous consultant drone” to “popular hero,” hasn’t it? In an age of cheap convenience, bread and circuses, the complete cooption of government by the corporate elite and an unprecedented culture of political Newspeak, we’re used to people talking the talk. But a zombie apocalypse seems more likely than encountering someone actually walking the
Read moreLet’s review. This was an automatic, on the spot flagrant 2 and ejection. But this – a blindside cheap shot, a two-handed shove and some subsequent manhandling of the ref – earned only a flagrant 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVHPj5J-Jv4 Note that LeBron flopped like a Portuguese midfielder while Hansbrough remained upright. And this flying WWE-style flying elbow from Dwyane Wade was assessed a
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Late Saturday we posted a Scrogues Converse Roundtable looking at the IRS/Tea Party controversy. The debate got started when our colleague Dr. Sid Bonesparkle suggested that perhaps the IRS wasn’t out of line in taking a good hard look at organizations dedicated to undermining the tax system trying to organize using 501 status, which is reserved for social welfare oriented
Read moreYou’ve probably noted the controversy surrounding the Internal Revenue Service’s apparent “profiling” of groups aligned with the Tea Party. A discussion on the issue broke out here at S&R this week, with our colleague Sid Bonesparkle suggesting on our internal e-mail forum that perhaps such action, even if it only involved a couple of “rogue” agents, might not be entirely
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It’s become a little too common a story: police thugs beating the hell out of a citizen (who may or may not have done anything) citizen with camera takes pictures or video of police abuse police arrest photographer because apparently it’s illegal to record police brutality The new trend is to make photographing the police illegal, although they will also
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Ah, yes. The advantages of living in a security state. Authorities have clear video images of two separate suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings carrying black bags at each explosion site and are planning to release the images today in an appeal for the public’s help in identifying the men, according to an official briefed on the case. The official
Read moreThe speculation began before the smoke cleared: who was responsible for Monday’s terror attack at the Boston Marathon? What was their motive? Not only is it human to speculate, it’s just about impossible for us not to. We’re inherently theoretical animals, constantly seeking more informed and reliable ways of understanding and explaining (and predicting) how the world works. (Well, most of
Read moreBoulder DA: Is it wrong to give false testimony to a federal agency? Thomas Wierdsma: No, happens all the time. We reported a couple of times late last year on the outrageous case of Charles and Thomas Wierdsma. Charles is a corporate prisons executive (The GEO Group) who routinely beat his wife and Thomas, his dad (a GEO Group Sr. VP), threatened
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lullaby pit 