In India, Poverty Inspires Technology Workers to Altruism – New York Times
what a great insight into the thought process of a corporation. Out of context, it is perhaps even more illuminative:
At the same time, Microsoft was plagued by widespread software piracy, which limited its revenue in India. Among other things, the company looked at low-income consumers as a vast and unexploited commercial opportunity, so it encouraged its engineers’ philanthropic urges.
Wikimedia Foundation – Watch Jimmy’s video…
This video is cool, and highlights two nations that need it, and which I hope to travel to. Please try to overlook the several creepy moments of Jimmy’s eyes and hands…
An enlightening article on the evangelical movement in AMerica and its recent fallout.
Gotta love the closing graph:
But liberals, he said, should not start gloating. “Some might compare the religious right to a snake,” he said. “We may be in our hole right now, but we can come out and bite you at any time.”
I hope citing the source doesn’t count as gloating…!
New to Being Dry, the South Struggles to Adapt – New York Times
The cultural plight they will reap from their careless development is apt and forthcoming.
Inside the New Delhi Beggars’ Jail – washingtonpost.com
The last paragraph on the first page really evinced an emotional response from me…
Supreme Court Faces an Array of Divisive Cases – New York Times
Voting Rights
Challengers to Indiana’s two-year-old voter identification law, which requires current government-issued photo ID, call it the “most onerous” such law in the country. Voters lacking the proper identification have 10 days to obtain it in order for their provisional ballots to be counted.
A federal appeals court upheld the law, finding that it would prevent fraud while not keeping many people from the polls. The plaintiffs maintain that the poor and elderly would face a disproportionate burden. The underlying question is how the justices will evaluate the competing interests of preventing fraud and protecting access. The cases are Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, No. 07-21, and Indiana Democratic Party v. Rokita, No. 07-25.
I was most surprised by the “Voting Rights” paragraph. I am surprised because this case should seemingly come after any cases about electronic voting machines, specifically with regard to corporations such as Diebold. It hardly makes any sense to mandate government-issued photo-IDs if a machine can otherwise verify identity. Of course, this could be my ardent liberal bias, trying to trounce rules that would allow me to defraud an election – our side is the one known for doing that, after-all.
All of the cases suggest what I feared when writing for the libertal rag on campus years ago – we’ve allowed a group of conservative activist judges to sit on the bench and hear only cases that will forward an agenda unbecoming of our great nation’s history.
Democratic Lawmaker Pushing Immunity Is Newly Flush With Telco Cash on Threat Level
replete with graphs and everything…
Not All Are Pleased at Plan to Offer Birth Control at Maine Middle School
Statistics suggest that regardless of what kind of education is offered, a roughly equal percentage of kids will have had sex by the time they graduate from high school. Students in higher-income communities, however, are more likely to have the financial wherewithal to afford contraception. This means that the more of it that can be given out in schools, especially to young women looking to protect themselves, the better. The only downside I see in this is that the discussion of STDs may not be handled with enough depth for girls to know that BOTH must be used – a notion that I fear might be lost on girls that get on the pill and then with a guy who doesn’t have a condom in the heat of the moment.