Hello again all. I hope you survived April fool's day unscathed. :). Let's get into the things that happened today which caught my attention. So down in Australia, it seems the government is thinking about banning environmental boycotts. I'm amazed that consumer protection (and knowledge about where the products being bought really come from) seem to be an afterthought by the elected representatives there.
Speaking of thoughtless government representation, from the snowden-was-right-yet-again department, it seems the U.S. government has confirmed that because of the way communications were intercepted, they pretty much executed warantless searches of Americans. Constitution be darned, huh?
In other news of people who mis-represent the facts, it seems a scammer has been convicted of pretending to be from Microsoft and convincing people to pay for software that Microsoft was giving away for free. Quick question for you, what's difference between a scammer and bloodthirstly, disease carrying flies? Well, across at nature.com it seems someone has figured out that the flies are shooed by zebra stripes. No such study for scammers though. Maybe some enterprising scientist will develop clothing that scammers will find unappealing and get them to run away from you. :).
One good thing to run away from is any tsunami that may be generated by the 8.0 magnitude earthquake offshore northern Chili. Hopefully the damage and destruction wrought by this act of nature is minimal. In some other earth shaking news, it seems the Ohio lawmakers are allowing my favorite car company, Tesla to open one more store with their direct to sell showroom. While this may be seen as a 'win', the whole concept that Tesla isn't allowed to sell unless going through dealerships is so archaic. Even worse is that this protectionism is supported by the U.S. government.
In news of things being opposed, we have two opposition stories coming out of Japan. The first is Japan stopping whaling as a result of a ruling by the International court. While whaling has never been that popular, financially or socially, this probably doesn't spell the end of whaling in Japan. They stated that they will stop whaling in the Southern ocean but I don't think anyone would be surprised if they continue whaling in the Pacific. Our second opposition story is about some Japanese opposing a statue honoring the approximately 200,000 women forced to act as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during world war 2. Ironically, the proposed statue is in Australia, so all the opposition in Japan would probably do diddly squat.
Finally, an article that is probably diddly squat itself, suggests that research points to positive results in kids whose parents limit their device and gadget screen time. While this is not necessarily false, the media loves to imply that correlation means causation. I'm more inclined to believe that good parents monitor and limit their children's excesses and limiting device and screen time is a side effect of that.
Anyhoo, that's all for now. Keep your eyeballs squishy!
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