As freethinking Americans, we all have our own thoughts and opinions about homosexuals and homosexuality; about same-sex marriages and same-sex unions; about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and about so many other related issues. As Americans, we are fortunate that we can express our opinions freely on these issues in healthy, sometimes argumentative and emotional debates, as we often see on TMV. Sometimes...

Van Gujjars are India’s legendary & colorful nomads, mostly Muslims, tending to their buffaloes in the green pasture land in the Himalayas or its foothills. Their entry into forests, their abode for centuries, is now being increasingly blocked in the name of environmental protection. The New York Times brings this poignant story alive in a beautiful photo-essay Showcase: Traveling With the Van Gujjar...

Sergey Brin has an OpEd in the NYTimes today on Google Books, A Library to Last Forever: There has been some debate about the settlement, and many groups have offered their opinions, both for and against. I would like to take this opportunity to dispel some myths about the agreement and to share why I am proud of this undertaking. This agreement aims to make millions of out-of-print but in-copyright books available...

US president Barack Obama’s predicament (on hearing about Nobel Peace Prize) seems similar to that of a dashing man who comes face-to-face with a fawning socialite in public who gushes: “Darling I love you from the bottom of my heart.” The media is having a field day revelling in this hot/sexy topic that has landed in their lap. This element of surprise (after the award’s announcement)...

Peeved about Obama’s Peace Prize? Need to vent about Russert’s veneration? Then you should visit VentNation: You can choose to do so in a variety of categories, either anonymously or using your own name, and you can even rate other users’ vents by using a slider placed next to each entry. Once you’ve published your rant, you can push it out to a range of other social networks with just a couple...

Cory Doctorow’s headline, Olympic Committee claims that photographing exterior of venues violates copyrights: I hope that the IOC is aware that it’s about to show up in one of the most media-savvy towns in the world, and that trying to stop private citizens from posting “unauthorized” photos will be nothing short of a fool’s errand. This sort of hostility towards Olympic fans is...

Guest post by Rafael Noboa Rivera Rafael Noboa Rivera is a writer and combat veteran. He served in Iraq from April 2003 to March 2004. This post originally appeared at The Hill’s Congress Blog. “You never have 100% certainty. If you wait till you have that, you’ll fail.” The evidence is unmistakable. We have hard choices before us. As the impact of irreversible climate change and the...

From one of the weblogs at The New York Times: Showcase: In Microscopic Realm, Science Reveals Art One of the photos is from my area of work, a pattern formed by shrinkage of photoresist, used in making integrated circuits. There were many beautiful patterns I saw in microscopes during my time doing research and development. There are times I miss those hours of looking through microscope objectives or staring...

Like when you might possibly be deciding whether to drop one or more 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs on Iranian nuclear facilities:

Many men in service and their sons were exposed to poisoned water at Camp LeJeune between 1960s and 1980s, and more than 20 of the men now have male breast cancer. Many of those sick, are denied VA benefits. Completed their mission, but what is owed to them in honor… is withheld. “Among the chemicals later identified in the drinking water were trichloroethylene, a degreaser; benzene; and the dry...

SearchEngineLand, Mashable & TechCrunch note Google’s celebration of today’s 57th anniversary of the first patent (No. 2,612,994) on the barcode. Meanwhile Stan Schroeder wonders, does anyone even go to Google.com anymore? I’m not asking whether you’re using Google; I’m asking whether you actually open the Google homepage, and search from there. Because I don’t. Until...

Mashable: The TED 5000 from Energy Inc. is a real-time electricity usage monitor that you can purchase and install yourself, with packages starting around $200. It can run the free Google PowerMeter tool, allowing you to check on your personal home energy data from any device that can access the web. The TED 5000 is Google’s first official device partner for PowerMeter, but the company indicates they plan...

On my way back from a trip abroad, I generally try to pick up the best honey for my close relations. During the past decade I have been hearing that the supply of honey may become scarce with the bees vanishing at an alarming rate. It’s a question that has baffled the worlds of agriculture and science – what is it that has caused the mysterious deaths of honey bees all over the world in the last five...

Today – October 2 – is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s (or Mahatma Gandhi’s) birth anniversary . Gandhi once said that if we are not careful then seven “deadly sins” will destroy us. They are: a) “Wealth Without Work”; b) “Pleasure Without Conscience”; c) “Knowledge Without Character; d) Commerce (Business) Without Morality (Ethics); e) Science...

There is an article in The Boston Globe about an MIT project dubbed Project Gaydar. The pair weren’t interested in the embarrassing photos or overripe profiles that attract so much consternation from parents and potential employers. Instead, they wondered whether the basic currency of interactions on a social network – the simple act of “friending” someone online – might reveal something a...

Physicists have produced element 114, which was thought might be relatively stable among the super-heavy elements, but it turns out that it was not. On to 120… — Cross-posted between Random Fate and The Moderate Voice. —

Guest post by John Malone John Malone, a VP/Senior Analyst with John S. Herold, an energy investment research firm in Connecticut, is a Truman National Security Project fellow. ********** Given the threats we as a nation have faced since 9/11, it’s reasonable to think in terms of how climate change will affect societies that are already under stress – how countries could quickly degenerate from fragile...

As this article from the Romanian newspaper Romania Liberia shows once again – the divide between East and West Europe over President Obama’s decision to cancel the Bush-era missile shield couldn’t be starker. What West Europe regards as a reasoned and rational decision to bring Moscow more into the fold, Eastern Europe regards as naive if not betrayal. For Romania Liberia, Cristian Campeanu...

My last post took note of American arms sellers camping in New Delhi (see here). This post is about the increasing number of expats/professionals (including Americans) who are making India their home, and feel more than welcome here. Dave Prager and Jenny Steeves (photo above), who arrived in New Delhi from Brooklyn in 2007, say: “Unlike most countries in the world, Indians love Americans.” Their...

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, on a visit to Northrop Grumman’s Newport News shipyard yesterday, effectively said “Don’t worry over the quality of our submarines.” After visiting the submarine building facility at Newport News—one of only two shipyards in the nation to build nuclear-powered submarines— Mabus said during a brief news conference: “I’m absolutely comfortable with the quality...

Yesterday I linked, in passing, to the Espresso Book Machine (video). The University of Missouri installed one last week. This week they’re reporting it raises copyright issues: The machine, which is not yet open to the public, is capable of printing any PDF file provided by the customer. This enables customers to print anything they desire, regardless of whether it is copyrighted. But there are parameters...

One of the stories behind the story of the demise of the F-22 Raptor fighter is the “developing story” of the increasingly important role unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are playing in today’s and certainly in tomorrow’s Air Force. In my story behind the story of the F-22 demise, I quoted Fred Kaplan’s comments that, during the most intense period of the Cold War, “much higher...

In last night’s hilarious piece on taser abuses, Stephen Colbert looks at the cases of a 76-year-old man driving a tractor in a Wyoming town parade who was tased five times for arguing over where the parade route ended (the officers were fired); a soccer mom tased in front of her kids for driving 50 in a 45 mph zone; and the “revolutionary new multi-shot” Taser X3 (”turn up your speakers,”...

The rejection adds to the litany of complaints against Apple’s incredibly successful third-party market for its popular smartphone: Apple rejected a free iPhone application that advocated a single-payer health system, calling the application “politically charged,” according to the app’s developer. Red Daly, a 22 year-old computer science grad student at Stanford, submitted his iSinglePayer...

Tina Brown wants to speed up the publishing cycle of books: The Daily Beast is forming a new imprint, Beast Books, that will focus on publishing timely titles by Daily Beast writers — first as e-books, and then as paperbacks on a much shorter schedule than traditional books. On a typical publishing schedule, a writer may take a year or more to deliver a manuscript, after which the publisher takes another nine...