From the Godwin's Law department: Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tom Perkins equates protests against tech gentrification in San Francisco, and the more general growing pushback against decades of exploitation by the 1%, with the Nazis. Because the 1%ers are just like the Jews in Germany in 1938.

Silicon Valley Legend Compares Techie Backlash to Nazi Rampage (Valleywag)

Titled "Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?," the brief letter in the Wall Street Journal accomplishes nothing more than a series of horrible attempts at analogy:

I would call attention to the parallels of Nazi Germany to its war on its "one percent," namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the "rich."

That the WSJ would print this letter is further proof (if any was needed) that it has gone from a biased but sane news outlet, into another venue for Murdoch's brand of extreme yellow journalism, a Fox News with a bigger vocabulary.

From the "how'd we never cover *this* in history class?" department: a debate about banking in Illinois led Abe Lincoln into an interesting confrontation...

Abraham Lincoln's Duel

Lincoln refused to retract his remarks. He returned Shields's letter with the request that Shields rewrite it in a more "gentlemanly" fashion.

Instead, Shields challenged Lincoln to a duel. It would be held in Missouri, where dueling was still legal.

Since Lincoln was challenged by Shields he had the privilege of choosing the weapon of the duel. He chose cavalry broadswords "of the largest size." "I didn't want the d—-d fellow to kill me, which I think he would have done if we had selected pistols," he later explained. For his own part, he did not want to kill Shields, but "felt sure [he] could disarm him" with a blade. At six feet, four inches tall, Lincoln planned to use his height to his advantage against Shields, who stood at a mere five feet, nine inches tall.

The day of the duel, September 22, arrived and the combatants met at Bloody Island, Missouri to face death or victory. As the two men faced each other, with a plank between them that neither was allowed to cross, Lincoln swung his sword high above Shields to cut through a nearby tree branch. This act demonstrated the immensity of Lincoln’s reach and strength and was enough to show Shields that he was at a fatal disadvantage....

I had a bad feeling as soon as I heard about the "47 Ronin" movie; Jana Monji's review says that it's worse that I thought, that the producers didn't do the homework at all. (Warning: TV Tropes link. Possible serious time-suck.)

On "47 Ronin," Samurai Hair and Other Cultural Confusions | Far Flungers | Roger Ebert

The movie "47 Ronin" has a half-white character teaching the Japanese how to handle Japanese beasts and the true nature of bushidō. It fuses Japanese and Chinese culture with Western in a way that might be more digestible if this were food and not a movie.

The Variety article by Setoodeh and Foundas says that the film when it opened in Japan "needed support from the region, where the cast was well recognized. But it never gained traction there...Market research showed the key demographic of young men didn't buy enough tickets."

Why would young Japanese men buy tickets to this movie? The advertising for the movie clearly shows that the production team doesn't understand what makes a woman sexy in a kimono. (It's not the cleavage, it's the back of a woman's bare neck and the glimpse of her white foot.) The trailers depict the samurai without the hairstyle of their class. Should a tale about Japan seem more Japanese?

I've been to the gravesite of the 47 ronin in Tokyo. Even on a chilly and rainy spring day, people came to visit and make offerings. I don't fully understand it, but the myth is a cultural touchstone for Japan. I don't believe that "cultural appropriation" is a real thing, but this is a great example of Getting It Wrong.

When one religion finds they can get around the "establishment clause" on little things, they get bolder and bolder, until this is the result.

If You Want To Fit In At This Public School Just Become Christian (American Civil Liberties Union)

On a science test, their teacher had included a fill-in-the-blank question: "ISN'T IT AMAZING WHAT THE _____________ HAS MADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" When my stepson didn't know the answer ("Lord"), she belittled him in front of the entire class. When he wrote in "Lord Buddha" on another exam, she marked it wrong. As she was returning that exam to students, one student proclaimed aloud that "people are stupid if they think God is not real." In response, my stepson's teacher agreed, telling the class, "Yes! That is right! I had a student miss that on his test." The entire class broke out in laughter at my stepson.

The same teacher also told our children that the Bible is "100 percent true," that the Earth was created by God 6,000 years ago, and that evolution is "impossible" and a "stupid theory made up by stupid people who don't want to believe in God." She's also told the class that Buddhism is "stupid."

We were shocked, but we quickly learned from our children that these types of activities were not unusual. School officials were repeatedly imposing their religious beliefs on students in myriad ways....

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We assumed that the Superintendent was not aware of all the unlawful activities at Negreet and would want to know about them so she could rectify the situation, but we could not have been more wrong. She was dismissive and told us that we live in the "Bible Belt" and that this is just how things are.

More info on Lane v. Sabine Parish School Board at the ACLU's website

Way to go, anti-choice extremists, way to go. This case is a bioethical nightmare, proof of a faction within the anti-choice movement that really does view women as little more than incubators.

Attorneys: Fetus of pregnant, brain-dead wife is 'distinctly abnormal' (CNN)

Attorneys representing the family of Marlise Munoz -- a pregnant Texas woman they say is brain dead -- revealed Wednesday that the "fetus is distinctly abnormal."

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"Quite sadly, this information is not surprising due to the fact that the fetus, after being deprived of oxygen for an indeterminate length of time, is gestating within a dead and deteriorating body, as a horrified family looks on in absolute anguish, distress and sadness," attorneys Jessica Janicek and Heather King said in a statement.

An interesting niche, and an interesting bit of culture that's evolved around this product.

Sony's SRF-39FP Radio: The iPod of Prison (The New Yorker)

The SRF-39FP is the gold standard among prison radios in part because it runs on a single AA battery, and offers forty hours of listening time—longer than an iPod Classic. Digital models can require twice as many batteries, like the Sony SRF-M35FP, which runs on two AAAs. Federal inmates are particularly attuned to battery life because they are allowed to spend just three hundred and twenty dollars each month on commissary goods; more cash spent on batteries means less for snacks, stationery, clothing, and toiletries.

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...Radios like the one that was loaned to Demmitt are usually left behind by inmates who have reëntered the free world. Some prisoners believe that it is bad luck for radios to leave prison with their owners, while others believe that taking them simply violates the “convict code”...

So 99% chance that this is completely mundane, a piece fell off the rover or something...but as Issac Asimov once noted, "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka” but 'That’s funny...'" This could, maybe, possibly, be such a moment. Keep watching the skies.

Nasa says Mars mystery rock that ‘appeared’ from nowhere is ‘like nothing we’ve seen before’ (The Independent)

A mysterious rock which appeared in front of the Opportunity rover is "like nothing we've ever seen before", according to Mars exploration scientists at Nasa.

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Astronomers noticed the new rock had "appeared" without any explanation on an outcrop which had been empty just days earlier. The rover has been stuck photographing the same region of Mars for more than a month due to bad weather, with scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California monitoring the images it sends.

The latest from the cops-gone-wild department: literal ball-busting.

Philadelphia Teen Alleges Severe Abuse During Police Pat-Down (The Root)

Darrin Manning and his high school basketball teammates were dressed for the cold when they hopped off the subway on Jan. 7, wearing hats, gloves and scarves given to them by a teacher, the Raw Story reports.

But the 16-year-old student at Mathematics, Civics & Sciences Charter School in Philadelphia found himself in a quandary when one of his classmates may have smarted off to an officer who was staring them down, according to the article, which cites the Philadelphia Inquirer. Things became complicated when the boys ran as the officer began approaching, sparking a chain of events that left Manning with a ruptured testicle and misdemeanor charges. He says he did nothing wrong.

The boy's mother is quoted as saying, "I blame myself. I taught my son to respect cops, not to fear them. Maybe if he was afraid, he would have run like the other boys and he would have been OK." Yep, there's your problem. While there are good people with badges, as institutions our police forces are corrupt and brutal and should always be viewed with suspicion and caution. "Police privilege" makes any interaction with cops dangerous.

So the state of Ohio basically slowly strangled a man to death via a drug overdose yesterday.

The only unusual thing about it, really, is that they did it slowly, slowly enough for some who think that the state should have the power of life-and-death over its citizens to find the process (not the end result, mind, but the process) disturbing.

Those who think that murder by the state is not murder, that state violence can prevent individual violence, find themselves in a sort of double bind. The state must do its killing cleanly. Otherwise those who favor the ritual of human sacrifice as a means to placate the gods of justice and protect us from violent crime, find themselves confronted with uncomfortable questions about if and how execution really differs from criminal murder.

We've come a long way from the days of public crucifixions and impalements and beheadings. Visible violence is déclassé -- just look at headlines about beheadings and stonings in other nations. The method of execution must be perceived to be humane, neat and tidy, civilized and bloodless.

But it's difficult to quickly and bloodlessly kill a human being who does not wish to die. Probably the quickest and most pain-free method would be to use high explosives to render them into a fine pink mist, destroy the brain before any sensory data could even be processed. But this would make it hard to view the process as non-violent.

The medicalization of execution, via lethal injection, seemed to offer promise. Many of us have been under general anesthesia, and the idea of "it's like that but you don't wake up" seems humane enough...until a case like McGuire's shows us the truth.

Ohio executions face criticism after unusual death (Yahoo News)

McGuire's lawyers had attempted last week to block his execution, arguing that the untried method could lead to a medical phenomenon known as "air hunger" and could cause him to suffer "agony and terror" while struggling to catch his breath.

A few minutes before McGuire was put to death, Ohio prison director Gary Mohr said he believed the state's planning would produce "a humane, dignified execution" consistent with the law.

McGuire, 53, made loud snorting noises during one of the longest executions since Ohio resumed capital punishment in 1999. Nearly 25 minutes passed between the time the lethal drugs began flowing and McGuire was pronounced dead at 10:53 a.m.

So long as the U.S. not only continues to maintain its huge nuclear arsenal, but turns a blind eye to Israeli nukes, it has no moral authority to demand other nations dismantle theirs.

The truth about Israel's secret nuclear arsenal (the Guardian)

The exotic tale of the bomb hidden in the desert is a true story, though. It's just one that applies to another country. In an extraordinary feat of subterfuge, Israel managed to assemble an entire underground nuclear arsenal – now estimated at 80 warheads, on a par with India and Pakistan – and even tested a bomb nearly half a century ago, with a minimum of international outcry or even much public awareness of what it was doing.

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Meanwhile, western governments have played along with the policy of "opacity" by avoiding all mention of the issue. In 2009, when a veteran Washington reporter, Helen Thomas, asked Barack Obama in the first month of his presidency if he knew of any country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons, he dodged the trapdoor by saying only that he did not wish to "speculate".