• Recreational cannabis soon to see widespread legalization? Let’s hope Time magazine isn’t as wrong on this as it often is on so many other things.
• “We the People” is rapidly losing its appeal around the world. No surprise. (Tip o’ hat to MtK.)
• Can’t you just picture Obama in a Joe Arpaio jail? Chortle. (And thanks, JS.)
• Poetic justice.
• Obama vs the Catholic church. And vice versa.
• If you had any doubt that copyright overreach had sunk to absurd lows, you can become a true believer now.
• Another state legislature takes on the NDAA. (How much would you like to bet that these guys wouldn’t have done it had the NDAA been signed by their president?)
• Shouting lampposts and shouting cameras. Only in the world’s foremost nanny state …
• “How Once Great Empires End.” Aside from the fact that “great empire” is an oxymoron, Charles Hugh Smith says this very well.
• But once again, enough of the bad news. Here’s your Awwwwww moment for the day — and this time it doesn’t involve dogs! Seems a couple of months ago, the Toronto, Ontario, zoo found itself with a newborn polar bear that couldn’t be kept with its mother. So it’s being hand-raised by humans. Just watch that baby eat! And he’s even cuter when he tries to crawl.

(As so often lately, another tip o’ hat to MJR.)

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• If you’re going to the big game today I’m sure this’ll make you feel wonderful, no matter who wins or loses: hot dog vendors with the skills and proclivities of the TSA.
• Of course, if you turn out to be one of the “suspicious” attendees, you won’t feel good at all if they use one of these on you. (And here’s a video.)
• But it could be worse, you know.
• All of which got me to wondering how the fedgov would handle somebody like Lawnchair Larry today.
• Or for that matter, any of us.
• So if you’re going to do something “illegal,” best to do it by proxy. Or Lego. :-)

I fear that in the last couple of days of not posting (deadlining, sorry), I may have lost track of all the hat tips due for links. So hoping I’m not leaving anybody out, thank you’s to P, F, H, and M.)

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• Good for people who’ve suffered brain injuries that affect speech. Bad in the long run for privacy.
• National Geographic is usually pretty good. But it appears their new series, which starts next week, sets out only to portray us all as loons. So much for progress. (Tip o’ hat to H.)
• Here’s a perfect example of the long arm of the U.S. government.
• Might not agree with this guy 100%. But bless his noble heart. (Nice backgrounder on him, too.) I’ll soon be reading his book.
• And here’s another doctor with courage — though it may be too little, too late for millions of children: “Ritalin Gone Wrong.”
• Thugette. Every time I see stuff like this, I recall how, just five or six years ago, we were constantly assured that Tasers would be solely used in encounters that would otherwise call for deadly force. The term “compliance tool” was never uttered. Now it appears they’re merely “educational devices.”
• Of course the lie about inflation is even bigger than this says.
  
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• The strange birth of New York’s gun laws.
• Oooh, now this is cynical. And fraught with … well, just fraught. (Tip o’ hat to JB.)
• Darn. They’re ruining it for me! (Tip o’ hat to MJR.)
• At least Twitter is is trying to mitigate its consent to censorship.
• “Why Conservatives Should Be Libertarians.”
• The Barefoot Bandit will probably serve just under five years. Federal and state sentences to be concurrent. Seems a reasonable mercy — and with luck a chance for that bright but screwed-up boy to get his head together. (HT to PT.)
• A troop of gorillas visits a human camp. (First couple of minutes are boring; stay with it.)
• The halo effect. And its impact in politics. (HT Beth and Dave Gross.)
• A free privacy tool for you Windows users. And another. Both look useful and — better yet! — easy to use. (Courtesy of JB.)

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• Drones over NYC.
• If you thought SOPA was bad …
• Rutherford institute tells the Census Bureau to back the heck off.
• Ominous? Interesting? Ominously interesting.
• Ditto this: Punching holes in firewalls.
• How long would it take to break your password?
• You remember the good old random name generator, don’t you?
• This may be the best test I’ve seen of Internet invisibility. When I visited with JavaScript turned off (standard practice with unknown sites), it told me I was “very visible” in these days when most sites require JavaScript. But it didn’t tell me anything else. When I temporarily enabled JavaScript, it told me more than I thought it would, given all the precautions I take.

Tips of hats to SC, MJR, H

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… not to destroy the One Ring, but to join up with Sauron. How exactly does this qualify as “non-evil”? On the contrary, outside of government, this is about as evil as it gets on the Internet. Universal tracking across all Google sites and products with no opt-out?

D., who sent the link, added that he googled “f**k you Google” and got 41 million hits. :-)

For safe, private searching, StartingPage.com and DuckDuckGo.com are your friends.

If you must use Google for anything (I still find Google’s YouTube and image searches very useful), go to your browser’s cookie management window and delete cookies as soon as you’ve finished your site visit. (On Firefox, it’s Edit –> Preferences –> Privacy.)

And use the BetterPrivacy add-on to remove flash cookies.

I don’t know the procedures for other browsers (other than Opera, whose cookie-management leaves a lot to be desired). Maybe IE users, Safari users, etc. can add that info to the comment section.

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• The newspaper that said, “Up yours” to the Internet.
• A bit of good news from the Supremes — though (typically) it may not mean much in practice.
• This Saturday is Data Privacy Day. Though since it was declared such by Congress, it may not mean much in practice, either.
• Good one, MamaLiberty. Did those guys in the SUV really have curly earpieces, too? LOL.
• Two lessons from the Megaupload seizure. Big lessons. May God (if any) keep and preserve Glenn Greenwald.
• Simon Black echoes the sentiments.
• “Another reason to homeschool,” sez D, who sent this link. What kind of screwed-up society deliberately hides kids’ records from parents while giving access to darned near everybody else?
• “Don’t be evil.” It’s not just an empty slogan any more. It’s a bookmarklet to bypass Google shenanigans.
• In the land of the free (but certainly not the home of the brave).

Source. And just think — we’ve gotten so much freer since Russmo created this oldie-but-goodie!

(Thanks to the feeder of needy Panda bears.)

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• Cowboys, superheroes, and freedom.
• Intelligent dogs party down.
• Are the NDAA and the upcoming Enemy Expatriation Act two pieces of the same puzzle?
• Writers: You may want to may want to avoid self-publishing via Apple iBooks Author.
• The evolution of the U.S. dollar. (Tip o’ hat to D.)
• Yet another reason to be glad you don’t live in New York.
• You’ve heard about the long arm of the Feds reaching to New Zealand to shut down one of the biggest sites on the Web without due process — showing that the MPAA, the RIAA, and the fedgov hardly need SOPA. You heard about the first swift response (you go, Anonymous). But here’s the bigger story, longer term: “Hollywood Must Die.” As a movie fan, I hate to say it. But we’ll all be better off if Paul Graham succeeds.
• Good time to review your digital rights vs the police. (Here’s the one page version (.pdf).)

(Several tips o’ hat to MJR)

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