Now that the U.S. has admitted to performing deadly syphilis experiments on unknowing Guatemalans, a debate in Guatemala has erupted about why and who in the Guatemalan government might have approved them in the first place. According to this news item from Guatemala’s El Periodico, some Guatemalans suspect that the ‘gringos’ are planning to pin blame for the crime on former Guatemala President...

Before this most recent spate of media attention to anti-gay bullying, Dan Savage set up a YouTube channel aimed at young lgbt people. The It Gets Better project invites anyone with a YouTube account who wants to share their experiences in order to give hope to teens facing discrimination and bullying. Dan and his husband shared their own experiences in the first video… Yesterday Savage posted a video...

“The Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.” – George Washington What’s happened to good citizenship lately? Andrew Shirvell, a paid state official during off hours, calls a gay student body president a racist elitist liar who is...

It was revealed on Friday that United States scientists traveled to Guatemala in the 1940s and injected ‘prostitutes, soldiers, prisoners and the mentally ill’, without their consent, with syphilis and gonorrhea. Not surprisingly, the people of that nation are outraged and U.S. officials at the very highest levels are expressing apologies. This morning’s editorial in Guatemala’s Siglo...

Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Endgaget’ts review of the $99 box concludes: [N]one of the other options we’ve tested have felt as simple, solid, and easy to use as the new Apple TV. Putting content concerns aside (which admittedly is difficult to do), the Apple TV has a lot going for it. The video and audio quality of the Apple TV is to be lauded, the company is making a lot of high quality titles available right off the bat,...

The Rub Off Effect by Peter Funt Theories abound about why, with so many tech tools at their disposal and so much time spent connected and tuned in, Americans seem to be losing touch with significant news and current events. We’re losing the Rub Off Effect. Just as ink used to rub off on the hands of newspaper readers – before the advent of soy-based printing materials – the news itself tended to rub...

There has been a lot of conversation the last few days about Stuxnet trojan.  The question that always comes up is why is MS Windows the operating system of PLCs ( programmable logic controllers or industrial controllers).  As someone who has been a manufacturing engineer for the last 40+ years I may be able to answer that question. I was an engineer in a large manufacturing facility in the late 70′s. ...

As the Canadian government’s attempt to scrap the long gun registry goes down to defeat, it is already plotting its next move. Having erected billboards in the ridings of MP’s who previously voted against the registry, it is now revving up its election rhetoric, claiming that the death of the registry is an example of what would happen if Canada was governed by “a separatist coalition.” In...

The thrust of Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales’ comments at a business conference in Kuala Lumpur was that Wikileaks may have good intentions but it is a reckless enterprise that could “get people killed.” And it’s not a wiki: Wales also expressed irritation over the website’s use of the term “Wiki” in its name, which refers to a site that allows different users to...

Facebook, Skype and Blackberry are just a few of the internet sources that could face new requirements, and expenses, if they are forced to assist federal authorities in carrying out wiretaps. A proposal to be presented to congress by the Obama administration early next year would require all internet providers doing business in the United States to add wiretap capability to their systems. James Dempsey of...

Wary of the Technology Aware by Tom Purcell My new cell phone calls people on its own. I know this because people I don’t know call me back, asking why I phoned. I tell them I didn’t phone them — my phone did. Which makes them sore. Unlike the first cell phone I had — it was big and heavy and all I could use it for was to phone other people, which I never did because it cost $400 a minute...

The 4 min version of Steven Johnson’s new book… Johnson says of the video: I have to admit when the good folks at Riverhead mentioned that they were working on an animated video promoting Where Good Ideas Come From, I wasn’t fully convinced it was going to be worth the effort. But the absolutely brilliant video they produced with Cognitive Media in the UK shows how wrong I was. It’s...

The End of TV by Martha Randolph Carr There’s a cultural shift taking place that may mean the end to another icon, the television set, that we thought was here to stay. First, it was the newspapers that lost a large part of their circulation as more and more people got their news from their laptops and phones Now, the television industry, which in this case means the cable industry is seeing the same trend...

So says Bloomberg Business Week in this week’s cover story. Facebook is changing the way advertising is done: The company has developed a potentially powerful kind of advertising that’s more personal—more “social,” in Facebook’s parlance—than anything that’s come before. Ads on the site sit on the far right of the page and are such a visual afterthought that most users...

Blockbuster is expected to shutter at least 1,000 of its 3,000 stores in a “Pre-Arranged” Chapter 11 Proceeding. The plan to turn the company around, led by billionaire investor Carl C. Icahn, is to move to on-demand movies delivered through cable services and the Internet. The single advantage the company hopes to cash in on is that it can deliver some movie titles on the day they are released....

Following up on last night’s post… Saxby’s office says it was the source of yesterday’s hateful slur. AJC: But in a statement, Chambliss’ office said it has not discovered exactly who was behind the slur, and has turned the matter over to the Senate sergeant at arms. The office employs 42 people. “The [sergeant at arms] has worked side by side with our personnel to determine...

Apple Sued for the Sale of Video Programming on iTunes (Jack Purcher / Patently Apple) http://j.mp/bMbZK7 http://techme.me/A5Fo 20 minutes ago via Techmeme That’s the tweet from TechMeme that alerted me to the “news.” The lawsuit appears to be concerning the sale and enabling of downloaded video content like movies and HDTV programming on iTunes to all of Apple’s hardware including...

The hateful comment was left today by “Jimmy” on a Joe.My.God post about the DADT cloture vote. Joe gave his geek readers the commenter’s IP address and told them to get busy! The geeks complied quickly. The AJC’s Jim Galloway takes it from there: U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss confirmed Tuesday that he investigating whether one of his staffers left a threatening slur on an Internet discussion...

EOM

It’s interesting that Mexicans, who Americans that oppose NAFTA think are the big beneficiaries of the treaty, are just as vigorously opposed to it as they are. A few days ago, Mexico celebrated its 200th anniversary. But according to this editorial from Mexico’s La Jornada, the event was not the unadulterated celebration it should have been. The culprit?: From La Jornada, the editorial says...

The movie, that is, not the mesh of personal ties facilitated by a website on the Internet… Next week’s NYMagazine cover story serves up 6,000 words on The Social Network, the movie about Mark Zuckerberg and the founding of Facebook. For the piece Mark Harris spoke with its director David Fincher, writer Aaron Sorkin, star Jesse Eisenberg (he plays Zuck), and Justin Timberlake (he plays Napster...

Nick Kristof celebrates its ability to get more kids in school in Zimbabwe: When I asked Abel what he dreamed of, he said “a bicycle” — so that he could cut the six hours he spent walking to and from school and, thus, take better care of the younger orphans. Last week, Abel got his wish. A Chicago-based aid organization, World Bicycle Relief, distributed 200 bicycles to students in Abel’s area who need...

For many years the U.S. Oligarchy has ensured that the American electorate is perpetually faced with a meaningless choice between only two political parties (i.e. Tweedledum & Tweedledee), Independents have deluded themselves into thinking they actually make a difference in our quasi-defunct representational democracy. Third parties have been roundly ignored by the electorate except for a few Presidential...

With these two sentences, Missouri’s state lawmakers have appointed themselves to the position of guardians of the mind of God: