gentlemanofthefuture:

thinksquad:

More and more children being arrested for trivial things…

#1 At one public school down in Texas, a 12-year-old girl named Sarah Bustamantes was recently arrested for spraying herself with perfume.

#2 A 13-year-old student at a school in Albuquerque, New Mexico was recently arrested by police for burping in class.

#3 Another student down in Albuquerque was forced to strip down to his underwear while five adults watched because he had $200 in his pocket. The student was never formally charged with doing anything wrong.

#4 A security guard at one school in California broke the arm of a 16-year-old girl because she left some crumbs on the floor after cleaning up some cake that she had spilled.

#5 One teenage couple down in Houston poured milk on each other during a squabble while they were breaking up. Instead of being sent to see the principal, they were arrested and sent to court.

#6 In early 2010, a 12-year-old girl at a school in Forest Hills, New York was arrested by police and marched out of her school in handcuffs just because she doodled on her desk. “I love my friends Abby and Faith” was what she reportedly scribbled on her desk.

#7 A 6-year-old girl down in Florida was handcuffed and sent to a mental facility after throwing temper tantrums at her elementary school.

#8 One student down in Texas was reportedly arrested by police for throwing paper airplanes in class.

#9 A 17-year-old honor student in North Carolina named Ashley Smithwick accidentally took her father’s lunch with her to school. It contained a small paring knife which he would use to slice up apples. So what happened to this standout student when the school discovered this? The school suspended her for the rest of the year and the police charged her with a misdemeanor.

#10 In Allentown, Pennsylvania a 14-year-old girl was tasered in the groin area by a school security officer even though she had put up her hands in the air to surrender.

#11 Down in Florida, an 11-year-old student was arrested, thrown in jail and charged with a third-degree felony for bringing a plastic butter knife to school.

#12 Back in 2009, an 8-year-old boy in Massachusetts was sent home from school and was forced to undergo a psychological evaluation because he drew a picture of Jesus on the cross.

#13 A police officer in San Mateo, California blasted a 7-year-old special education student in the face with pepper spray because he would not quit climbing on the furniture.

#14 In America today, even 5-year-old children are treated brutally by police. The following is from a recent article that described what happened to one very young student in Stockton, California a while back….

“Earlier this year, a Stockton student was handcuffed with zip ties on his hands and feet, forced to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation and was charged with battery on a police officer. That student was 5 years old”.

#15 At one school in Connecticut, a 17-year-old boy was thrown to the floor and tasered five times because he was yelling at a cafeteria worker.

#16 A teenager in suburban Dallas was forced to take on a part-time job after being ticketed for using foul language in one high school classroom. The original ticket was for $340, but additional fees have raised the total bill to $637.

#17 A few months ago, police were called out when a little girl kissed a little boy during a physical education class at an elementary school down in Florida.

#18 A 6-year-old boy was recently charged with sexual battery for some “inappropriate touching” during a game of tag at one elementary school in the San Francisco area.

#19 In Massachusetts, police were recently sent out to collect an overdue library book from a 5-year-old girl.

HERE ARE THE LINKS FOR THOSE WHO FEEL THIS PAGE MADE ALL THIS UP:

http://www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/latino-daily-news/details/texas-student-sarah-bustamantes-12-arrested-for-spraying-perfume/13250/

http://abcnews.go.com/m/blogEntry?id=15077292

Check out this video on YouTube:http://youtu.be/wk2b_twCCdw

http://m.guardiannews.com/world/2012/jan/09/texas-police-schools?cat=world& type=article

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/02/18/new.york.doodle.arrest/index.html?hpt=C1

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2010/feb/11/port-st-lucie-schools-confines-6-year-old-with/

http://m.guardiannews.com/world/2012/jan/09/texas-police-schools?cat=world& type=article

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/12/29/nc-high-school-senior-suspended-charged-possesion-small-knife-lunchbox/#

http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/2009/june09/zero-tolerance-states.html

http://m.tauntongazette.com/wkdTGazette/pm_/contentdetail.htm?contentguid

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Mateo-pays-family-of-boy-pepper-sprayed-by-cop-2384518.php

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/cops-called-for-school-kiss-657831

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/01/27/hercules-family-battles-playground-sex-assault-claim-against-6-year-old/

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/01/02/charlton-library-sends-police-to-collect-overdue-books-from-5-year-old/

Welcome to the police state!

vicemag:

DON’T INSULT THE IRON SHEIK, BUBBA

If you know anything about professional wrestling, you know who the Iron Sheik is. The legendary heel started his WWF career back in the early 80s, when he was part of an anti-American tag team with Nikolai Volkoff. Hulk Hogan beat the Sheik to earn his first title, and the Iranian-born star—his real name is Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri—was a major character during pro wrestling’s golden era. In “real” life, Hossein was a talented Greco-Roman wrestler who served in the Iranian Army and worked as a bodyguard to the Shah before emigrating to the US in the late 60s and achieving the American Dream many times over.

Today, nearly 40 years after the Sheik adopted his trademark shaved head and mustache and stepped into the ring, he’s more famous than ever before, thanks to frequent appearances on The Howard Stern Show and his Twitter account, a hilarious, profane, stream-of-consciousness rant about everything from celebrities to the Sheik’s former rivals to days of the week.

CONTINUE

we-are-star-stuff:

What Would Happen If You Shot a Gun In Space?

Fires can’t burn in the oxygen-free vacuum of space, but guns can shoot. Modern ammunition contains its own oxidizer, a chemical that will trigger the explosion of gunpowder, and thus the firing of a bullet, wherever you are in the universe. No atmospheric oxygen required.

The only difference between pulling the trigger on Earth and in space is the shape of the resulting smoke trail. In space, “it would be an expanding sphere of smoke from the tip of the barrel” said Peter Schultz, an astronomer at Brown University who researches impact craters.

The possibility of gunfire in space allows for all kinds of absurd scenarios.

Shooting stars

Imagine you’re floating freely in the vacuum between galaxies - just you, your gun and a single bullet. You have two options. You either can spend all of eternity trying to figure out how you got there, or you can shoot the damn cosmos.

If you do the latter, Newton’s third law dictates that the force exerted on the bullet will impart an equal and opposite force on the gun, and, because you’re holding the gun, you. With very few intergalactic atoms against which to brace yourself, you’ll start moving backward (not that you’d have any way of knowing). If the bullet leaves the gun barrel at 1,000 meters per second, you - because you’re much more massive than it is - will head the other way at only a few centimeters per second.

Once shot, the bullet will keep going, quite literally, forever. ”The bullet will never stop, because the universe is expanding faster than the bullet can catch up with any serious amount of mass to slow it down”, said Matija Cuk, an astronomer with joint appointments at Harvard University and the SETI Institute. If the universe weren’t expanding, then the one or two atoms per cubic centimeter encountered by the bullet in the near-vacuum of space would bring it to a standstill after 10 million light-years.

Getting down to details, the universe expands at a rate of 73 kilometers per second per megaparsec (about 3 million light-years, or the average distance between galaxies). By Cuk’s calculations, this means matter that is 40,000 to 50,000 light-years away from the bullet would move away from it at about the same speed at which it is travelling, and would thus be forever out of reach. In the entire future of the universe, the bullet will catch up only to atoms that are less than 40,000 or so light-years from the chamber of your gun.

Speaking of you, you’ll be bobbing through space forever, too.

Shooting giants from the hip

Guns do actually get carried to space, though not quite to the void between galaxies. For decades, the standard survival pack for Russian cosmonauts has included a gun. Until recently, it wasn’t just any gun, but “a deluxe all-in-one weapon with three barrels and a folding stock that doubles as a shovel and contains a swing-out machete” according to space historian James Oberg. The space guns are issued in case the cosmonauts need one back on Earth, so that they can protect themselves if emergency landing of their Soyuz spacecraft has left them deserted in a treacherous region. But still, cosmonauts in theory could shoot their guns before they landed.

So what if, during a spacewalk, a cosmonaut opened fire on Jupiter?

He or she should feel free to shoot from the hip. According to Robert Flack, a physicist at University College London, the enormous gravitational field of Jupiter is likely to suck in a bullet even if it is badly aimed. “Jupiter is so huge, it will capture the bullet and then it will follow a curved path down into the planet” Flack said.

And as it does, it will pick up some serious steam. According to Schultz, if the bullet is shot straight toward Jupiter, the planet’s gravity will accelerate the ammo to the eye-popping speed of almost 60 kilometers per second by the time it crosses the gas giant’s threshold.

Watch your back

Shooting someone in the back is a cowardly act. In space, theoretically, you could shoot yourself in the back.

You could do it, for example, while in orbit around a planet. Because objects orbiting planets are actually in a constant state of free fall, you have to get the setup just right. You’d have to shoot horizontally at just the right altitude for the bullet to circle the planet and fall back to where it started (you). And you’d also have to consider how much you’ll get kicked backwards (and consequently, how much your altitude will change) when you fire. The aim has to be perfect.

Such a scenario isn’t as absurd as it sounds. In fact scientists at one point were considering setting up such a self-hit in space in order to investigate the effects of high-speed impacts.

However, considering all the math involved, Cuk suggests it might be easier to commit space suicide by standing on a mountain on the moon. “‘Shooting yourself in the back’ works in principle if you shoot a bullet at horizon from the top of a lunar mountain, at 1600 meters per second or so” he said. He thinks it just might work as long as you adjust your aim to account for lumps and irregularities in the shape of the moon, which would affect the altitude of the bullet as it travels.

Hovi’s home!

asap-art:

By Ebzy Whaleboat.

wired:

Two weeks ago, Jack Dongarra flew to Changsha, China for a meeting with researchers at the National University of Defense Technology, home to the country’s top supercomputing program. He expected an update on their plans for a new mega-machine, but they had a little surprise for him: The system was already up and running.

It’s called Tianhe-2, and with more than 3 million processor cores, it’s the world’s most powerful supercomputer.

[MORE: China Could Supplant U.S. as the Supercomputing Superpower]

bluesey:

Getting ready. Thighs are looking thicker… my hips told me and my hips don’t lie anymore as that section is getting bigger too ;p lol. #hipsdontlie #wethair #flathair #curlyhair #3glasses #cinemamaybe

Yes…

ecowatchorg:

Feds, State File Lawsuit Against ExxonMobil over Tar Sands Oil Spill in Mayflower, AR

Today the U.S. and the state of Arkansas filed a joint enforcement action against ExxonMobil Pipeline Company and Mobil Pipe Line Company (ExxonMobil) in federal district court in Little Rock, AR. The complaint addresses ExxonMobil’s unlawful discharge of heavy crude oil from a 20-inch-diameter interstate pipeline —the Pegasus Pipeline—that ruptured in Mayflower, AR, on March 29.

http://ecowatch.com/2013/feds-state-file-lawsuit-against-exxonmobil-over-tar-sands-oil-spill-in-mayflower-ar/

heythereuniverse:

Absolutely I think we can :)

Here’s the issue with Mars:

• Temperature: Martian day averages to approximately 186K (-87 ˚C), and Martian night is approximately 268K (-5˚C), both of which is below the freezing point of water, and thus all water on Mars exists in solid form. It would be difficult to find anything to drink—need energy to melt the ice. Also, there would be no lakes/rivers/oceans to drive the water cycle. No water for plants and animals. Worst of all, no coffee!!
• Atmosphere: Mars has a very tenuous atmosphere. It would be difficult to breathe because of the difference in pressure (again, we are used to approx. 1atm. Mars has about 6 x 10-3 atm).  Also, it’s mainly composed of CO2, although too thin to provide a substantial greenhouse effect, it’s still at a high enough percentage for carbon dioxide poisoning for humans. 
• Weather: Tidal heating can lead to a dynamic cycle of CO2 sublimation/condensation. This can lead to high wind speeds, which would not be good for structural engineering, or aerospace engineering. Also, prevalent dust storms can lead to issues with…dust getting everywhere…visibility…etc. Dust storms can also change the albedo, though that might not affect human habitability as it would have by directly affecting the surface inhabitants. 
• Nitrogen: There’s missing nitrogen in the Martian atmosphere. The nitrogen gas is an important component of the Earth atmosphere. While this might not be a huge deal, the nitrogen cycle itself is crucial to Earth life forms. Plants and bacteria are in an extremely intimate relationship via nitrogen cycling (ammonia to nitrates back to ammonia, etc). This would make it difficult for plant life to exist on Mars. If there’s nitrogen fixing bacteria around, theoretically, it can recycle the nitrates that we *think* is locked up in Martian regolith, and provide nutrients to plant/animals. Nitrogen is a crucial element for life (DNA, protein, etc). 
• Radiation: Because of its tenuous atmosphere, and negligible (or non-existent?) magnetic field, Mars does not have a steady protection from the Sun’s radiation. So the surface is constantly bombarded with UV, cosmic rays, crazy electromagnetic waves etc. Humans wouldn’t be able to withstand this high amount of a radiation—we don’t have the biological capacity to reverse such damage (some bacteria might). 
• Geology: Mars has a super thick lithosphere, no tectonic plates, and has many inactive (big) volcanoes. This inactive geology would make habitability difficult because there would be no movements of plates, thus no water, thus no ocean (it’s too cold anyway), thus no water cycle. Also because it’s so small, Mars may have already lost most/all of its heat. Regardless of how much energy we can pump into the system to make it warm/habitable, it’s going to become a frozen world one day, completely unable to warm up enough using solely internal heat. But this would take a very very long time, so it might not be a huge issue with temporary terraformation. 

Here is how to solve it:

• Temperature & Atmosphere: If we pump up the heat a *little* bit (no, actually, a lot—but a little bit on a thermodynamic scale), we might be able to unlock the subsurface water that is buried underneath Martian regolith as ice. Something like this can be solved by increasing the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, to drive up the effective temperature. Pumping CO2 would require possibly jump starting a volcano (how on Earth can that even be done??—not a pun). A more plausible idea is to build power plants all over the planet (as have suggested by Chris McKay from NASA). Or simply by seeding the planet with respiring life that uses inorganic molecules to utilize energy and produce CO2. Early microbial life forms do this (before the evolution of cyanobacteria/photosynthesis). Those microbes were methanogens, sulfur-loving, and can probably also metabolize nitrates. 
• Weather: Dust storms can be mitigated by living in closed quarters. 
• Radiation: The problem with UV radiation (and lack of magnetic field) can probably be solved by producing artificial magnetic field. This kind of engineering can only applied to small area, not globally. Again, it’s almost impossible to jump start the solid core again, therefore such an issue can only be tackled on a small scale. 
• Geology: Mars would have a similar problem as Venus. While there might be enough water on the surface, there’s no convection in the mantle to drive tectonic plates. So while its geology might be change momentarily (lasting maybe about a billion years), it would be difficult to keep it stable as the planet loses more and more heat.  
• Ethics!!: If there is no Martian life, yes, we should terraform it (although we could never be sure—ack, science!). If there is Martian life, we must do everything we can to preserve it—not necessarily protect it, but at the very least observe/study it without directly affecting it like we have done so for many other endangered species on Earth. 

This is copied verbatim from one of my homeworks from my astronomy class last semester, The Science and Fiction of Planetary Systems

The actual problem with terrafoming Mars is MONEY. Who will pay for what, and which nation should get what piece of land— It’s all politics that I’m not willing to discuss. 

But we will get there. I absolutely believe it. We will get there.