From the May 1968 edition of the teen mag FAVE, an amazing letter from Leonard Nimoy (speaking for Spock) to a mixed-race girl who was struggling with fitting in.

1968 Article "Spock: Teenage Outcast"

The article is interesting in that it was Nimoy's response to a fan letter from a mixed-race girl that was struggling with fitting in. There is real concern and thoughtfulness in his response, and it was both interesting and compassionate; as he framed his advice in the form of telling how young Spock might have dealt with the stresses of feeling excluded from the group and being bullied. He used the fan's interest in the character, and how they related to the half-human, half-Vulcan Spock, to share some down-to-earth encouragement.

It's no secret that I loathe Ron Paul. And as you might guess, I'm not thrilled with his son Rand, the fraudulent ophthalmologist who thinks that the state should enforce the "right" of business owners to kick out whatever minorities they dislike.

But as they say, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Some progressive folks, including In These Times's Zaid Jilani, support Rand's recent filibuster over drone strikes: This Progressive Stands With Rand

I’ve spent my entire political life working with the Democratic Party and the progressive movement. I’ve worked for the Democratic Party-aligned think tank, the Center for American Progress (CAP). I’ve raised money and organized campaign volunteers to elect progressive Democrats like Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin, and Alan Grayson. I’ve never voted for a Republican.

Yet when right-libertarian Republican Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) took to the floor yesterday to filibuster John Brennan's nomination as CIA director, I was joining staffers at the Koch Brothers organization FreedomWorks and writers at RedState.com by tweeting out the hashtag #StandWithRand. I did so with the full realization that this would put me at odds with much of the progressive movement and partisan Democrats.

...

During an emotional moment last year following the killing of African American teen Trayvon Martin, President Obama said, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” As a Pakistani Muslim American, if I had a brother, he would likely look like Abdulrahman al-Awlaki. As a Pakistani Muslim American, if I had a brother, he would likely look like Abdulrahman al-Awlaki. Like his father Anwar al-Awlaki, Abdhulrahman was an American citizen. Unlike his father, who preached support for terrorism, he was not known to be or accused to be engaged in anything like terrorist activity. Yet a drone strike ended his life two weeks after his father was killed. President Obama has never explained why, but Rand Paul explained last night before a worldwide audience what former administration flack Robert Gibbs told an activist about the attack.

Over the past few years I've noticed some interesting alliances forming between right-libertarians and progressives. One of the most notable examples was the Senate campaign of Kevin Zeese, who ran on a Green-Libertarian ticket. (An idea so powerful that the Maryland legislature passed a law especially to stop it.) It may be more that more and more people are entering the political space I've been in for the past twenty years or so, realizing how utterly horrid both the Republican and Democratic parties are and seeing either the Libertarians or the Greens as being significantly less bad.

(One of these days I'm going to write a libertarian progressive manifesto and make people's heads explode.)

The EU is considering changing the legal definition of absinthe. Turns out that currently, you call us the name even for a product with no thujone. (See the Erowid page for more on absinthe.)

Europe explores how to define the "green fairy" (Yahoo! News)

Thujone, whose latin name is Artemisia absinthium, is a toxin extracted from wormwood plants that some EU lawmakers worry is too harmful, especially in higher concentrations.

Under current EU regulations, absinthe does not have to contain any thujone to justify the name, but also must not exceed a maximum of 35 milligrams of thujone per kilogram.

In order to standardize the content, the European Commission has proposed that anything labeled "absinthe" must have at least 5 and maximum of 35 milligrams of thujone per kilogram.

Between Joe Biden's stupid statements about firing shotguns, and now the First Lady's inaccurate remark about "automatic weapons", the administration keeps putting its foot in its mouth. (Or perhaps "shooting itself in the foot" is a better metaphor.) Michelle Obama's reference to automatic weapons edited out by ABC (chicagotribune.com):

First lady Michelle Obama said in a "Good Morning America" interview Tuesday that an automatic weapon was used in the shooting death of Hadiya Pendleton , but that detail — which is not supported by police accounts — was edited out when the interview was aired and posted to ABC's website.

...

"She was standing out in a park with her friends in a neighborhood blocks away from where my kids ... grew up, where our house is. She had just taken a chemistry test. And she was caught in the line of fire because some kids had some automatic weapons they didn't need. I just don't want to keep disappointing our kids in this country. I want them to know that we put them first."

However, in the video clip that appears online, the mention of "automatic weapons" was edited out:

"She was standing out in a park with her friends in a neighborhood blocks away from where my kids grow — grew — up, where our house is. … And she was caught in the line of fire. ... I just don't want to keep disappointing our kids in this country. I want them to know that we put them first."

Police believe the gun in question was a revolver, because no shell casings were found at the scene. It could have been a semiautomatic handgun fired by someone who cleaned up their brass, but semiautomatic is not automatic -- automatic weapons are very strictly regulated, not generally available to ordinary civilians.

Conflating semiautomatic guns, which use some of the energy from one shot to load a round into the chamber and cock the hammer for the next shot, with automatic weapons capable of continuous or burst fire, is a rhetorical tactic used by some dishonest or ignorant gun control advocates. I'll give Mrs. Obama the benefit of the doubt and assume that she just didn't know what the heck she was talking about.

But more disappointing than her ignorance about guns (she doesn't have to know about them to be First Lady, but if she's going to comment on the the subject she needs to have a grasp of the fundamentals) is ABC apparently covering for her. The idea that this blatant factual error was "cut for time" does not pass the sniff test.

David Sirota reports on how we all, fans or not, pay for professional sports: Didn’t Watch the Super Bowl? You Still Got Charged

That term—Sports Tax—is not hyperbolic. In a week that saw Louisiana fork over $5 million to the NFL for the privilege of helping that league make big Super Bowl money, Sports Tax is the most accurate catch-all label for the four sets of levies the public is being made to shell out.

The first Sports Tax comes from the higher taxes we all pay in order to fund direct handouts....In all, Bloomberg Businessweek reports that “taxpayers have committed $18.6 billion since 1992 to subsidies for the NFL’s 32 teams, counting the expense of building stadiums, forgone real estate taxes, land and infrastructure improvements, and interest costs on public bonds.” That's almost $1 billion every year—and that's just for football, meaning the figure isn't even counting similar handouts for other leagues.

From Network World: Emoticon-based “Moby Dick” gets its day in the sun: In the US Library of Congress (Network World):

The US Library of Congress welcomed Moby Dick onto its vaunted shelves this week but it wasn't the famous Herman Melville-penned whale tale version oh no, it was the version told exclusively in emoticon - you know those little signs like J, ;). Emoji are the emoticons typically used in Japanese texting though they obviously are used world-wide to annoy or entertain everyone depending on your opinion of them.

Called "Emoji Dick," the emoticon book project was undertaken back in 2009 by data engineer Fred Benenson. According to the Library of Congress' blog, in 2009 Benenson started a campaign to fund the "Emoji Dick" project and within a month raised enough money to put it together - $3,500.

Here's the Kickstarter video for the project:

It's long been common knowledge that prisons often act to train inmates to be better criminals rather than to reform them. The thing about "common knowledge", though, is that is often turns out to be wrong, so it's important to keep researching it.

At least for now, that particular bit of common knowledge is strengthened, not over turned. NPR's "Morning Edition" reports on a study showing how crime does pay, for those who study it in prison. When Crime Pays: Prison Can Teach Some To Be Better Criminals

From the British Newspaper Archive: The First Duel Fought in Hot Air Balloons – Paris, 1808

Monsieurs Granpree and Le Pique fight for the hand of Mademoiselle Tirevit in the skies above Paris

Computer security experts have long decried the practice of "security by obscurity"; keeping the design of a system secret cannot effectively protect it from attackers, because points of compromise won't stay hidden long.

Montreal’s Dawson College has taken the failure of security by obscurity one step further with what we might call "security by expulsion":

Ahmed Al-Khabaz expelled from Dawson College after finding security flaw

Ahmed Al-Khabaz, a 20-year-old computer science student at Dawson and a member of the school’s software development club, was working on a mobile app to allow students easier access to their college account when he and a colleague discovered what he describes as “sloppy coding” in the widely used Omnivox software which would allow “anyone with a basic knowledge of computers to gain access to the personal information of any student in the system, including social insurance number, home address and phone number, class schedule, basically all the information the college has on a student.”