& Swords, Clubs, Cups, Coins

SOME DAY I’LL SHOW THEM! [sob] SOME DAY THEY’LL BE SORRY—SORRY THAT THEY LAUGHED AT ME.” / Fortunately for our hero, “some day” turned up a few minutes later when Peter was bitten by a spider that had inadvertently absorbed an unusually high dose of radiation during a science demonstration. in the real world, Peter would have succumbed to radiation poisoning and died in confused agony with no hair and no teeth several weeks later, but this was the Marvel universe establishing its own rules of engagement. In the Marvel U, radiation was a kind of pixie dust: sprinkle it on a scientist, and voilà! A superhero was born.

We hadn’t reached a conclusion when the bell rang, but we’d touched on a wide range of important issues in an open-ended Socratic discussion that seemed well suited to the public philosophy envisioned in the 2008 law. By giving students the basic semantic and logical tools they need to clarify their intuitions and to analyze arguments for and against their views, philosophy could help to extend and refine the debate that naturally arises in a pluralistic society from conflicting interests, values, and worldviews. And it could also help citizens make wise use of the power they have in a democracy, as Ribeiro’s town hall exercise shows.

We’ve got to start taxing corporations. Right now, the average American is being asked to subsidize the corporations, pay a lot of tax, and not get any government services. What creates wealth is the commons. What creates wealth is the infrastructure in America. What creates wealth is our educational system. These corporations, that take full advantage of it, don’t want to help pay for it. And that has to be corrected. But until we get our hands around the problem of campaign contributions, and until the public understands what’s going on, that’s going to be very difficult. And the rhetoric in this campaign, this business of saying the problem is that we’ve got to cut, we have to balance the budget, and not discussing this revenue issue, is nothing short of insane.

NYPD Screened Anti-Muslim Video Far More than Disclosed

Newly released documents show the New York City Police Department screened an anti-Muslim video to officers-in-training far more frequently than it’s previously disclosed. The NYPD drew criticism one year ago following the disclosure officers were shown the 72-minute “The Third Jihad” video in the NYPD’s required counterterrorism training courses. “The Third Jihad” is said to depict gruesome imagery coupled with the argument that Muslim leaders and organizations in the United States are part of a plot of global jihad. The NYPD has claimed the video was only shown “a couple of times” to a handful of officers. But according to the New York Times, police records show the video was in fact played “on a continuous loop” for nearly 1,500 officers and possibly more for up to one year.

Facebook is trying to move users to its own messaging service, something that goes beyond e-mail and instant messages. E-mail alone is too slow, and archaic, according to Molly Graham, who works with Facebook’s mobile group. “Look at that line that we use every day called CC. What does CC even stand for? It stands for carbon copy, which is insane,” she said in November at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Santa Clara. “What does that even mean in today’s world’ “When we were doing research for our messaging product, we actually looked at what subject lines people used. And like 80 percent of subject lines are “hey,” “hi,” or left blank. The subject line is outdated. The truth is, e-mail is outdated.