He was not only arrested, he was also charged with two felonies and a misdemeanor. A prior drug charge on his record meant he was potentially looking at decades in prison. Seven witnesses backed up the police account that Dendinger had assaulted Cassard.
But Dendinger had asked his wife and nephew to record him serving the papers. It was a last minute decision, but one that may have saved him his freedom.
From what can be seen on the clips, Dendinger never touches Cassard, who calmly takes the envelope and walks back into the courthouse, handing [prosecutor Leigh Anne] Wall the envelope.
No one could see the color blue until modern times →
If you see something yet can't see it, does it exist? Did colors come into existence over time? Not technically, but our ability to notice them may have...
Meditation booms as people seek a way to slow down →
Given the increasing workaholism in the U.S., I am not surprised.
Meditation, primarily a 2,500-year-old form called mindfulness meditation that emphasizes paying attention to the present moment, has gone viral.
The unrelenting siege on our attention can take a good share of the credit; stress has bombarded people from executives on 24/7 schedules to kids who feel the pressure to succeed even before puberty. Meditation has been lauded as a way to reduce stress, ease physical ailments like headaches and increase compassion and productivity.
Take some time for reflection, every day.
Big-Data Project on 1918 Flu Reflects Key Role of Humanists →
Neat project. An example of the kinds of social scientific research that's possible these days.
...Now a team of humanists and computer scientists has combined early-20th-century primary sources and 21st-century big-data analysis to better understand how America responded to the viral threat in 1918...
The team began with several questions: How did reporting on the Spanish flu spread in 1918? And how big a role did one influential person play in shaping how the outbreak was handled?
The School Closure Playbook – How Billionaires Exploit Poor Children in Chicago →
The piece uses Chicago to explore the broader neoliberal campaign against public schools, focusing on how education “reformers” manufactured a budget crisis through a combination of creative accounting, secretive tax schemes (specifically TIF), and media cooperation. It also looks at some of the organizing that developed to regain local control of schools (and possibly just forced Rahm into a run-off election!).
What is stunning is the degree of out and out grifting that has taken place in Chicago, with millions diverted from public schools to create a false image of a budgetary crisis. And some of the money wound up in dubious-looking pockets, like a Hyatt Hotels franchise.
Vertical farm can make 44,000 pounds of tomatoes on the side of a parking lot →
This kind of project highlights the ways we may eventually reintegrate humanity with nature.
The Wyoming town of Jackson gets long and bitter winters. One mile above sea level in a landlocked state, months of heavy snow leave the town unable to grow much of its own produce, forcing it to import fresh fruit and vegetables from other states or other countries. But the creators of a new initiative called Vertical Harvest — a multi-story greenhouse built on the side of a parking lot — hope that one of the world's few vertical farms can help feed the town with tomatoes, herbs, and microgreens.
Everything you need to know about today's net neutrality victory in seven minutes →
This morning the FCC voted 3-2 along party lines to approve new rules that enshrine the concept of net neutrality. Blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization were all explicitly banned, and the FCC extended its authority to cover the world of peering and interconnection, something companies like Netflix had been asking for...
Everyone Wants You To Have Security, But Not from Them →
...The reason the Internet is a worldwide mass-market phenomenon is that all the technological details are hidden from view. Someone else is taking care of it. We want strong security, but we also want companies to have access to our computers, smart devices, and data. We want someone else to manage our computers and smart phones, organize our e-mail and photos, and help us move data between our various devices.
Those "someones" will necessarily be able to violate our privacy, either by deliberately peeking at our data or by having such lax security that they're vulnerable to national intelligence agencies, cybercriminals, or both. Last week, we learned that the NSA broke into the Dutch company Gemalto andstole the encryption keys for billions yes, billions of cell phones worldwide. That was possible because we consumers don't want to do the work of securely generating those keys and setting up our own security when we get our phones; we want it done automatically by the phone manufacturers. We want our data to be secure, but we want someone to be able to recover it all when we forget our password.
We'll never solve these security problems as long as we're our own worst enemy. That's why I believe that any long-term security solution will not only be technological, but political as well...