UFO

Linky Link Links, or "My Week on the Internet" - December 14 - 21, 2014

New UFO Hotspot: Medellin, Columbia (Video) - via Huffington Post
(colleagues of mine, the Floating Lab Collective, coincidentally traveled to Medellin within the past few years to do work there. Now, all makes sense.)

An Open Letter to Oprah, Whose 'Life You Want Tour' Asked Me to Work for Free - via Digital Music News

America's Police on Trial: The United States Needs to Overhaul its Law-Enforcement System - via The Economist

How one white mother talked to her two black children about racism in America - via The Washington Post

Q-Tip Schools Iggy Azalea on Hip Hop History And We're All Better For It - via Jezebel

Of course it's frustrating that one of the greatest lyricists has to take the time to teach a rapper about the genre of music she and some producers decided fit her best (like a piece of clothing she can take off), that this conversation had to happen in the first place.

What Happened When Marissa Mayer Tried to be Steve Jobs - via The New York Times
(There was an article I also read - which I now cannot remember where and when - that argued perhaps it's not entirely fair to push Mayer off a supposed "glass cliff" when she fails to clean up a mess that men had made and that subsequent men can't clean up any better. It was an position stated much more elegantly and eloquently than how I just attempted, if I can recollect the piece, I'll link to it.)

The Unidentified Queen of Torture - via The New Yorker

A former intelligence officer who worked directly with her is quoted by NBC, on background, as saying that she bears so much responsibility for so many intelligence failures that “she should be put on trial and put in jail for what she has done.”

Instead, however, she has been promoted to the rank of a general in the military, most recently working as the head of the C.I.A.’s global-jihad unit. In that perch, she oversees the targeting of terror suspects around the world. (She was also, in part, the model for the lead character in “Zero Dark Thirty.”)

U.S. Not Fully Prepared for Nuclear Terrorist Attack or Large Scale Natural Disaster, GAO says - via The Huffington Post

Dystopian Fiction's Popularity is a Warning Sign for the Future - via Wired (in full dialog with Naomi Klein and her latest book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate)

“I think what these films tell us is that we’re taking a future of environmental catastrophe for granted . . . and that’s the hardest part of my work, actually convincing people that we’re capable of something other than this brutal response to disaster."
Keep on fighting the good fight, Ms. Klein.

Court Rules Orangutan Held In Argentina Zoo Is 'Non-Human Person' And Can Be Freed - via The Huffington Post/Reuters

Orangutan is a word from the Malay and Indonesian languages that means "forest man."

Defense Bill Passes, Giving Sacred Native American Site to Mining Company - via The Huffington Post
(In coordination with the Naomi Klein piece I referenced above, I would like to say - HELLO HAVE YOU PEOPLE NOT SEEN POLTERGEIST?!)

Santa's real workshop: the town in China that makes the world's Christmas decorations - via The Guardian
#youreameanonemrgrinch

U.S. Weighs Response to Sony Cyberattack, with North Korea Confrontation Possible - via The New York Times

You don't protect my freedom: Our childish insistence on calling soldiers heros deadens real democracy - and the subsequent - My week in the right wing lie machine; When Fox News, Twitchy and Montel Williams declared war on me - both via Salon.com

The overwhelming majority of readers who reacted with rage to my article showed no evidence of actually reading it.

Best Physics Videos of 2014 - via Scientific American

A Lost Purple Pigment, Where Quantum Physics and the Terracotta Warriors Collide - via Hyperallergic