25 things you may have forgotten about the internet
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Happy belated birthday to the world wide web. To celebrate, here are 25 things you may have forgotten from your first forays online, as suggested by our readers
Via the Guardian, Alice Bell on the 1970s movement involving some of the UK’s top scientists:
“We have to face the fact that there is a crisis in science today.” So said Maurice Wilkins on 19 April 1969 as he opened the one-day inaugural meeting of the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science (BSSRS). That’s Nobel Prize winner Maurice Wilkins. Other early supporters of the Society included JD Bernal, Francis Crick, Julian Huxley and Bertrand Russell.
The hall was full to overflowing with more than 300 delegates. Two hundred signed up there and then, with membership reaching over a thousand by the following year. They started publishing a newsletter and BSSRS branches popped up across the country.
What distinguishes the BSSRS from other campaigns is that it was not simply a matter of scientists calling for more research funds or demands for their voice in public policy. Rather, they aimed to open up the politics of science to scrutiny so it might change and improve. They perceived a crisis in wider society and felt science could help, but also thought science as it was currently constructed was part of the problem, so would need to change to use its powers for good.
Londoners would meet with debates on the problems of sponsored research or scientists’ relationships with the mass media. By the 1970s, this developed into a series of pub-based seminars on science and politics entitled “Beneath the white coat”.
By the summer of 1970 the BSSRS had set up an educational trust, with offices. Their publications grew with longer essays, illustrations and reports of more and more events, and from issue 18 (Oct 1972) onwards, it developed into bi-monthly Science for People magazine.
There was a strong and ongoing commitment to the peace movement, aware of the role of military funding in scientific research. Northern Ireland and the policing of dissent in the UK was a particular focus. From early on, the BSSRS was active in critiquing use of CS gas at home, discussing what they dubbed the technologies of political control (a book of the same name was published by Penguin in 1977).
The BSSRS took a newer interest in both the environment and women’s rights. They had a strong commitment to the class component of environmental problems, with strong concern for the welfare of the workers of science. In terms of feminism, an entire edition of Science for People was edited by women’s collective, and they maintained an ongoing interest in issues surrounding the intersection of science and gender.
Whether we put the fist/flask logos on T-shirts, are inspired by their more radical approach, argue they failed because they weren’t radical enough or simply wish to consign the whole movement to history, we should remember they existed.
People vary, often dramatically, in appearance, aptitude, work habits, character, interests and ambitions. We differ in gender, race, ethnicity, age and in the circumstances into which we were born.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote, on behalf of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, that “all men are created equal,” he meant only that we share equally in the rights bestowed upon us by our Creator.
“Life, liberty and property do not exist because men have made laws,” wrote Frederic Bastiat. These “gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.”
For us to pursue our “diversity,” as God intended, the law must be the same for rich and poor, male and female, young and old, black and white, Democrat and Republican.
This idea has ancient roots. “Do not show partiality in judging; hear both small and great alike,” says Deuteronomy 1:17. So some forget equality before the law is still the newest political idea in history. In every country before ours, there was one law for the powerful, another for the hoi polloi.
It took some while, and a great deal of pain, before “all men are created equal” applied to men who were black. Decades more passed before women were accorded the same political rights as men.
Still, Abraham Lincoln spoke the truth when he said: “Nowhere in the world is presented a government of so much liberty and equality. To the humblest and poorest amongst us are held out the highest privileges and positions.”
Equality before the law is the fundamental principle that undergirds democratic government. Remove it, and there is just the arbitrary exercise of power.
Lincoln understood this. President Barack Obama doesn’t. If a law is inconvenient for him, he ignores it. The president’s scofflaw behavior culminates a century-long assault on the Constitution. It’s ironic those making it style themselves “progressives,” for theirs is a return to the ways of pharoahs and caesars.
The combination of the Supreme Court’s arrogated power of judicial review with life tenure for federal judges made it possible. The federal government can do what the Constitution forbids because, said Justice Charles Evans Hughes, “the Constitution is what the judges say it is,” and they are accountable to no one.
To restore the Constitution our Founders wrote, Mark Levin, chief of staff to Attorney General Ed Meese during Reagan’s administration, proposes 11 amendments to it in his new book, “The Liberty Amendments.”
Offering so many was a mistake. It diffuses focus. Restrictions on federal spending and requiring a photo ID to vote would make good public policy, but don’t belong in the Constitution, which establishes the framework for debating public policy. If these three were adopted, the others would be unnecessary:
• Abolish life tenure for federal judges.
• Limit terms for members of Congress.
• Permit a super-majority of state legislatures to nullify federal regulations and laws passed by Congress.
Congress won’t approve such checks on federal power, which is why Mr. Levin’s book is valuable.
Amendments to the Constitution may be proposed by Congress, or by a convention called by the states. This last has never been done, in part for fear a “runaway” convention could alter fundamentally our form of government.
This fear is spurious because, however proposed, an amendment can become part of the Constitution only after it’s been ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states.
The Founders proposed this second means of offering amendments precisely because they feared Congress might abuse its power, Mr. Levin explains in concise prose.
“Article V expressly grants state legislatures significant authority to rebalance the constitutional structure for the purpose of restoring our founding principles should the federal government shed its limitations, abandon its original purpose, and grow too powerful, as many delegates in Philadelphia and the state conventions had worried it might.”
An Article V convention may be the only way to stop those who — stealthily and dishonestly — are fundamentally altering our form of government.
“An oppressive federal government, an oppressive Congress, is not going to rein itself in,” Mr. Levin said.
“The Framers anticipated this day might arrive, for they knew that republics deteriorate at first from within.
They provided a lawful and civil way to repair what has transpired.”
It’s up to us to take advantage of their foresight. Mark Levin makes a compelling case for why we should.
Finally. Four years after Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan walked into the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood, Texas, and perpetrated the bloodiest massacre ever on an American military base, the self-confessed jihadist’s court martial proceedings began this week. Have you forgotten?
Americans obsessed over the O.J. Simpson, Casey Anthony and Jodi Arias trials. Gun-control lobbyists turned Newtown, Aurora and Tucson into national awareness-raising, fundraising and legislation-promoting campaigns. But where are the celebrity lobbyists and high-profile advocates for the victims of bloodthirsty Muslim vigilante Nidal Hasan?
The White House, which downplayed the terrorist mass murder as “workplace violence,” exacerbated national apathy for his evil acts. Our soldiers deserve better. Here are three facts you’ve probably forgotten — or never knew — about the Fort Hood terror spree.
–Fourteen victims fell on Nov. 5, 2009, not 13. Thirteen of our U.S. military personnel died in cold blood at the deployment center. But the death toll was actually 14. Pvt. Francheska Velez, 21, was pregnant when Hasan shot her during the first round of gunfire. At a military Article 32 hearing in 2010 (analogous to a civilian grand jury hearing), a survivor of the Fort Hood shootings testified that Velez cried out, “My baby! My baby!”
In his opening statement on Tuesday, Hasan (acting as his own lawyer) apologized to his fellow jihadists for not destroying more innocent life.
–The victims were all unarmed. Soldiers inside the deployment center were and are forbidden from carrying weapons — either issued weapons or personal arms — on base. When Hasan commenced his shooting spree by shouting, “Allahu Akbar,” several brave men and women in uniform used chairs, tables and their own bodies to try to stop him. But it wasn’t until a courageous, armed civilian police officer, Sgt. Kimberley Munley, arrived on the scene with her 9mm Beretta that Hasan’s rampage was interrupted.
In a gunfight outside the deployment center, Munley wounded Hasan — who was able to return fire and shot her in the hand, thigh and knee. While she lay on the ground, Hasan kicked away her weapon. Another armed civilian police officer, Mark Todd, was able to fire at Hasan five times and brought him down.
Gun-control zealots led by the Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence exploited Fort Hood to argue for even tighter gun restrictions. But it was a 1993 Clinton administration gun-control directive banning most military personnel from carrying their arms for personal protection that facilitated Hasan’s massacre except under very limited circumstances. Despite the death of 13 soldiers and the wounding of more than 30 at Fort Hood by a jihadist who warned his superiors that Muslim soldiers posed a specific threat, gun-free military base policies remain in place.
–Hasan’s military colleagues were more concerned with being accused of discrimination than with ridding our military of this known, deranged Islamic radical. In 2007, two years before he carried out his homicidal plan, Hasan laid out his murderous means, motives and Koranic inspiration for all to see.
His PowerPoint slide presentation to fellow Army doctors was titled: “The Koranic World View As It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military.” Hasan warned: “It’s getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims.” And: “We love death more then (sic) you love life!” As first reported by Pamela Geller, Hasan carried an official calling card with the designation “SoA (SWT)” — for “Soldier of Allah” and “Subhanahu Wa Ta’ala” (Islamic for “Glory to Him, the Exalted”).
Hasan told his superiors he was not alone among Muslim soldiers who believed they “should not serve in any capacity that renders them at risk to hurting/killing believers unjustly.”
He reminded the Army of the fatal 2003 fragging attack on American soldiers in Kuwait by Sgt. Hasan Akbar (who was sentenced to death but remains alive while his case drags on in appeal) and the desertion case of Lebanon-born Muslim Marine Wassef Ali Hassoun.
A Joint Terrorism Task Force had been monitoring Hasan’s communications with jihad spiritual leader Anwar al-Awlaki all along. But the military was not notified. Even without that information, military officers expressed concerns privately that Hasan might leak classified information to terror groups if he were deployed and that he was capable of committing a fragging.
Yet, they were prepared to deploy him anyway and did nothing to remove him from his job. One email from an Army investigator before the Fort Hood massacre fretted: “Had we launched an investigation of Hasan we’d have been crucified.”
Instead, 13 soldiers and one unborn child were slaughtered and paid with their lives for our country’s reckless political correctness and bureaucratic fecklessness.
HIROSHIMA, Japan — Sixty-eight years ago today, the radioactive heat of the world’s first atomic bomb attack seared Jongkeun Lee’s skin and incinerated his hair. He was 17 years old when this city was destroyed around him.
“First, it was a yellow light like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Lee said. “Then, everything was black, dark.”
Almost naked, Lee walked home alone through the inferno. All he saw in the darkness were dead and dying people. Maimed and desiccated, those still alive all pleaded for water, he said. Many died before his eyes.
At home Lee surveyed the odorous pus oozing from his burned back, neck and face. Flies laid eggs in the dead skin.
“I would say to my mother ‘please, just kill me.’” Lee said. “She was crying when she was pulling the maggots from my back. I can still feel her tears dropping on my skin.”
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