Check It Out

Links to cool places or things.

There are 1,530 posts filed in Check It Out (this is page 83 of 153).

US and UK spy agencies defeat privacy and security on the internet

Shocking, or long suspected?

The files show that the National Security Agency and its UK counterpart GCHQ have broadly compromised the guarantees that internet companies have given consumers to reassure them that their communications, online banking and medical records would be indecipherable to criminals or governments.

The agencies, the documents reveal, have adopted a battery of methods in their systematic and ongoing assault on what they see as one of the biggest threats to their ability to access huge swathes of internet traffic – “the use of ubiquitous encryption across the internet”.

via US and UK spy agencies defeat privacy and security on the internet | World news | The Guardian.

U.S. allows states to legalize recreational marijuana within limits

This is great news. I’ve said it before but I hope North Carolina’s leaders will become enlightened and the guns will disappear from Raleigh’s streets. Yeah, that’s asking a lot but this is a huge step in the right direction.

The Justice Department said it would refocus marijuana enforcement nationwide by bringing criminal charges only in eight defined areas – such as distribution to minors – and giving breathing room to users, growers and related businesses that have feared prosecution.

The decisions end nearly a year of deliberation inside President Barack Obama’s administration about how to react to the growing movement for relaxed U.S. marijuana laws.

Advocates for legalization welcomed the announcement as a major step toward ending what they called “marijuana prohibition.”

via U.S. allows states to legalize recreational marijuana within limits | Reuters.

The NSA: “The Abyss From Which There Is No Return”

Interesting commentary.

So if we already knew that the government was spying on us, what’s the big deal? And more to the point, as I often hear many Americans ask, if you’re not doing anything wrong, why should you care?

The big deal is simply this: once you allow the government to start breaking the law, no matter how seemingly justifiable the reason, you relinquish the contract between you and the government which establishes that the government works for and obeys you, the citizen—the employer—the master. And once the government starts operating outside the law, answerable to no one but itself, there’s no way to rein it back in, short of revolution.

via The NSA: "The Abyss From Which There Is No Return".

Human Evolutionary Change 100 Times Higher in Past 5,000 Years

Fascinating.

“We are more different genetically from people living 5,000 years ago than they were different from Neanderthals,” according to John Hawks -University of Wisconsin anthropologist. “Five thousand years is such a small sliver of time – it’s 100 to 200 generations ago. That’s how long it’s been since some of these genes originated, and today they are in 30 or 40 percent of people because they’ve had such an advantage. It’s like ‘invasion of the body snatchers.’What’s really amazing about humans,” Hawks continued, “that is not true with most other species, is that for a long time we were just a little ape species in one corner of Africa, and weren’t genetically sampling anything like the potential we have now.”

via Human Evolutionary Change 100 Times Higher in Past 5,000 Years Today's Most Popular.

North Carolina’s plank roads

I was researching the new railroad that is leasing the tracks near my home and stumbled upon information on North Carolina’s first road improvement project, the plank road. It is what it sounds like, a road paved with wooden planks ranging from 8 to 30 feet wide. Plank roads were an affordable alternative to building railroads, if not as long lasting.

Below is a good summary of plank roads from RootsWeb. I’ll also reformat the text from the North Carolina Historical Commission’s 1939 story on plank roads and post it.

The Greenville and Raleigh Plank Road

Many people have noticed the historical marker for the Greenville and Raleigh Plank Road on Dickinson Avenue and wondered what it was all about. With the increased commerce and agricultural interests in North Carolina in the 1840’s, transportation became a problem. The use of plank roads in northern states had proved successful and they began to be introduced in North Carolina as the answer to its transportation difficulties.
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Email service used by Snowden shuts itself down, warns against using US-based companies | Glenn Greenwald

I didn’t know about Lavabit until they pulled their own plug yesterday, but I deeply respect its owners’ refusal to play along to the NSA’s excessive and unconstitutional spying.

A Texas-based encrypted email service recently revealed to be used by Edward Snowden – Lavabit – announced yesterday it was shutting itself down in order to avoid complying with what it perceives as unjust secret US court orders to provide government access to its users’ content. “After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations,” the company’s founder, Ladar Levinson, wrote in a statement to users posted on the front page of its website. He said the US directive forced on his company “a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit.” He chose the latter.

via Email service used by Snowden shuts itself down, warns against using US-based companies | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | theguardian.com.

The NSA Leaks Put Our ‘Methods’ At Risk, But Bragging About Monitoring Al Qaeda Emails Doesn’t? | Techdirt

Techdirt points out the obvious: how can the entire legislative branch be crowing about detecting an imminent terrorist threat through intercepted emails and not be divulging sources and methods? Snowden pointed out that the NSA is spying on millions of innocent Americans but government leaders can tell Al Qaeda and the world that we’re reading their emails and it’s somehow okay?

Anyone else get the idea that the American public is being played for fools here?

The intercepted conversations last week between Ayman al-Zawahri, who succeeded Osama bin Laden as the head of the global terrorist group, and Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the head of the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, revealed one of the most serious plots against American and other Western interests since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, American intelligence officials and lawmakers have said.

So… revealing that we collect data on everyone somehow turns Snowden into a traitor, while having officials in the government tell the NY Times that we directly intercepted emails between Al Qaeda’s top leaders is somehow perfectly fine? How does that work?

via The NSA Leaks Put Our 'Methods' At Risk, But Bragging About Monitoring Al Qaeda Emails Doesn't? | Techdirt.

Nathan Woessner, rescued from sand dune, now in good condition

I remember reading the news that this 6-year-old boy had survived after being buried in a sand dune for hours. His condition was just upgraded to “good” and he could make a full recovery.

There are still things that science cannot fully explain. It’s a miracle this boy is alive.

The boy rescued last week after being buried for hours in an Indiana sand dune has had his condition upgraded to good as his health continues to improve, hospital officials said today.

Thursday, word came that Nathan Woessner was sitting up, watching cartoons and talking. He was taken off a ventilator and had begun to breathe on his own.

via Nathan Woessner, rescued from sand dune, now in good condition – chicagotribune.com.

Science museum scavenger hunt champions!

Scavenger hunt champions!

Scavenger hunt champions!


Thursday evening the family and I signed up for the first ever scavenger hunt in the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. The Natural Science museum has been our favorite family museum ever since we had kids. We know it very, very well, so when the opportunity came up to participate in a scavenger hunt we were ready!

A couple dozen families showed up for the hunt, each one given a small booklet with the clues in it. The teams had one hour to complete the hunt, with the organizer saying he would be surprised if anyone did complete the hunt.

But the Turners, competing as the “Absolute Zeros,” did complete the hunt, getting most (if not all) of the answers correct (we were not allowed to keep our booklet so that the answers might be used again in a future hunt). At the end, we were awarded a prize for one of the most creative team names (we wanted the coolest name we could think of) and the grand prize for being scavenger hunt champions! That included museum water bottles, free tickets to the Dinosaurs in Motion exhibit, tote bags, and a sweet backpack donated by Great Outdoor Provision Company (which retails for $100).

Regardless of whether we won or lost, though, we had a blast exploring our favorite museum in Raleigh. We hope to participate again in the future!