"The cheating scandal is the latest in a series of Air Force nuclear stumbles documented in recent months by The Associated Press, including deliberate violations of safety rules, failures of inspections, breakdowns in training, and evidence that the men and women who operate the missiles from underground command posts are suffering burnout. In October the general who commands the nuclear missile force was fired for engaging in embarrassing behavior, including drunkenness, while leading a U.S. delegation to a nuclear exercise in Russia." Well, nothing scary about that.

Cheating alleged in US nuclear missile force (Yahoo News)

WASHINGTON (AP) — In what may be the biggest such scandal in Air Force history, 34 officers entrusted with land-based nuclear missiles have been pulled off the job for alleged involvement in a cheating ring that officials say was uncovered during a drug probe.

(Prompted by my friend Jason Mankey's Facebook share of David Frum's piece over at The Daily Beast; you can read that for the other side.)

The fatal shooting of Chad Oulson by Curtis Reeves, a 71-year-old former Tampa police captain, over a dispute about texting in a theater certainly illustrates something disturbing about American culture...but perhaps not what advocates of firearms prohibition think.

To be sure, texting and throwing popcorn should not result in someone's death.

And it is true that foolish people sometimes bring guns into situations that would not be dangerous if the fool had not introduced a firearm into the equation.

And it's true that the opt-cited statistic of 2.5 million defensive gun uses per year may be way off -- it is highly controversial.

On the other hand, for example, a woman who carries a gun in her purse for protection because she is frightened of an abusive ex-paramour, should not face jail time for exercising her right to self-defense (which necessarily includes the right to take reasonable precautions against rationally apprehended danger). Because it's also true that guns are used by innocent people to protect themselves or others in legitimately dangerous situations.

How often? The error bars are huge, because many cases are never reported to the authorities. (Why open yourself for possible prosecution from an overzealous or hoplophobic prosecutor?) The lowest figure I've seen in the literature is 64,000 defensive gun uses a year. That's likely an under-count given the methodology: "I'm calling on behalf of the federal government, and I'd like to ask you some questions about crime. Have you ever pointed a gun at someone?" I exaggerate somewhat, but surveys conducted on behalf of governments about behavior with legal implications are going to see an under-report of that behavior.

The next lowest estimate is over 100,000, based on a similar method of questioning.

NORML's page (at the link below) lets you easily contact your MD state reps. Do it. Do it now.

Maryland: Marijuana Legalization Bill to be Introduced

Lawmakers in Maryland intend to introduce legislation to legalize the possession, cultivation, and retail sale of cannabis to adults. The proposed legislation removes all criminal and civil penalties for the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana...

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Please take a moment of your time to enter your zip code below and easily contact your elected officials in support of this important legislation.

An interesting hypothesis. It's clear that the mainstream of the Republican Party is insane, disconnected from reality on science and economics. Are we therefore more vulnerable to stories about "moderates" so that we don't have to admit that one of our two major parties is completely off that rails? (This is not to say that the Democrats are in any way on track.)

How the media created Chris Christie

I think the mainstream media and its dominant pundits are unable to take in exactly how far to the right the Republican Party has swung in the last decade, and so they need to invent “moderates” to keep from writing over and over about the party’s departure from political sanity. And when their moderates either show themselves as extremists, as Christie has repeatedly, or else as severely flawed politicians, as Christie has lately, those pundits either ignore it or rush to rescue them over and over.

For the record: I have never taken, much less send to anyone, a "dick pic". And, guys? Sending a lady an unsolicited picture of your man parts is not interesting to them. But this is interesting.

What I've Learned From My Side Job Critiquing Dick Pics (The Hairpin)

... I don’t want to send anyone’s ego out of the stratosphere by saying that, but it’s not really an exaggeration: after I received that photo, invigorated and shot through with dopamine, I tweeted about how rare and encouraging it was to receive a decent dick pic. That sparked an online conversation about how to improve the dismal state of dick pics—I would classify them as generally dull, artless and unsolicited—and that lead to my rise as the Internet’s most beloved dick pic critic.

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All in all, Critique My Dick Pic is proving to be an extremely positive and humbling project. It’s fun and light, but it’s also confirmed to me just how fragile men are; how crumblingly insecure and self-conscious so many of them are about their bodies. That’s very human and understandable, and it’s a terrain with which most women are familiar, but men in particular are exhorted to grin and bear their body issues rather than talk about them.

At least the cops didn't follow up on it, but the idea that a company would call them in the first place in such a situation is ludicrous enough.

Teen Reported to Police After Finding Security Hole in Website | Threat Level | Wired.com (Threat Level)

Rogers says he contacted the site after Christmas to report the vulnerability but never got a response. After waiting two weeks, he contacted the newspaper to report the problem. When The Age called the Transportation Department for comment, it reported Rogers to the police.

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The practice of punishing security researchers instead of thanking them for uncovering vulnerabilities is a tradition that has persisted for decades, despite extensive education about the important role such researchers play in securing systems.

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Update 1.9.14: Rogers confirmed to WIRED that the vulnerability he found was a SQL-injection vulnerability. He says the police have not contacted him and that he only learned he’d been reported to the police from the journalist who wrote the story for The Age.

This is a tragic story that does not end well. If you have any humanity in you, it will make you sad and angry. You should read it.

Unlike the Regan-era myth of "welfare queens" that still persists today, the vast majority of welfare recipients, including most of those who violate the rules, are desperate people just trying to survive. But the irrational belief that capitalism works, the religious faith in the free market, leads inevitably to a belief that if you're not succeeding you must be sinning. And so the same politicians who perpetuate the military-industrial complex, who order the bombing of other nations, who sell their principles to the highest bidder, talk about the "moral hazard" of helping the poor eat.

The hand that feeds you | Al Jazeera America

Money-wise, things weren’t so lucky. David says he was paying nearly $800 a month in child support for three kids from his first marriage while earning just under $40,000 a year at the plastics plant. Candice had three children of her own, but custody of only the youngest two — an 18-month-old girl and a 4-month-old boy; her 7-year-old son lived with his dad in town. Candice, 25, was 10 years younger than David, but suffered from a number of health issues....She and her two children moved into David’s mobile home on the outskirts of town. Two months later, she was pregnant.

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...The Oklahoma Department of Human Services (OKDHS) determined David’s income was too high for the family to receive benefits. The income threshold for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, is about $35,000 a year for a family of five, and does not factor in custody payments. One caseworker suggested to Candice that she get a divorce.

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...To make ends meet, many SNAP recipients have to supplement monthly benefits — about $133 per person — with ad hoc work or by housing a partner or relative, and hide the additional income from authorities. “Everybody has to do something that makes them a criminal,” says Kaaryn Gustafson, a law professor at the University of Connecticut and author of Cheating Welfare: Public Assistance and the Criminalization of Poverty.

The usual short-term thinking.

Doctors say cutting food stamps could backfire (Yahoo News)

"If you're interested in saving health care costs, the dumbest thing you can do is cut nutrition," said Dr. Deborah Frank of Boston Medical Center, who founded the Children's HealthWatch pediatric research institute.

"People don't make the hunger-health connection."

A study published this week helps illustrate that link. Food banks report longer lines at the end of the month as families exhaust their grocery budgets, and California researchers found that more poor people with a dangerous diabetes complication are hospitalized then, too.