Monday, January 19, 2015
Police seize bot that bought drugs on the Deep Web
An automated bot called the Random Darknet Shopper was programmed to buy goods from a Deep Web marketplace as part of an art exhibit in Switzerland.
Swiss police seized the art exhibit on Jan. 12 at the conclusion of its three-month run. The exhibit was programmed by two London-based Swiss artists, Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoj Smoljo, who claimed to be exploring the societal implications of robots breaking the law and the ethical implications of Deep Web marketplaces.
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The bot was given $100 in bitcoins per week to spend at Agora, a Deep Web marketplace that’s similar to the Silk Road. The bot was able to buy items like counterfeit jeans, ecstasy pills, Nike sneakers, cigarettes and the entire “Lord of the Rings” series of novels.
The artists’ lawyers advised them that Swiss law would protect the exhibit because “art in the public interest is allowed to be free.” The artists said on Jan. 15 that the seizure of the exhibit was “an unjustified intervention into freedom of art.” The artists themselves have not been arrested.
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Rand Paul announces campaign manager for likely 2016 campaign
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Tuesday announced the hiring of a campaign manager for his likely 2016 presidential bid, part of an aggressive effort to build a national political team as the race for the White House heats up.
The hiring of strategist Chip Englander, who recently guided a gubernatorial candidate to victory in Illinois, marks a clear step forward for the Kentucky Republican as he prepares to transform his cadre of loyalists into a full-scale campaign.
Doug Stafford, Paul’s longtime confidant, will remain as his chief political adviser. In an interview Tuesday, Stafford said he will rely on Englander “for the day-to-day execution” of Paul’s operation.
The move underscores Paul’s unorthodox approach to presidential politics and his expected candidacy, with plans to put an emphasis on outreach to the poor and younger voters while also courting conservative activists in early-primary states.
In an interview Tuesday, Englander argued that Paul’s unconventional positions would lay the foundation for a potent Republican coalition. Paul has articulated mostly non-interventionist views on foreign policy, while taking hardline stances against tax hikes and President Obama’s health-care law domestically.
“America has intractable problems and it’s going to take a transformational leader to fix them,” Englander said. “Senator Paul is going to be the bold, transformational figure in this race.”
Rand Paul Calls Mitt Romney ‘Yesterday’s News’
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Tuesday dismissed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as “yesterday’s news.”
The likely 2016 rival previously endorsed Romney for president in 2012. But another run for the White House, which Romney described to former aides and supporters as likely, was one too many for the Kentucky Republican.
“If (Romney) runs to the right of Jeb Bush, he’ll still be to the left of the rest of the party, so it may be a difficult spot to occupy,” Paul told Fox News Radio. “Look, I like Governor Romney, I like him personally, I think he is a good person, I think he was a great businessman. But you know that’s yesterday’s news.”
“He’s tried twice - I don’t really think that there is a third time out there,” Paul added. “I think he did a lot of things right, but in the end you got to have a bigger constituency, you got to get new people, you got to attract new people to win and I think it’s time that probably the party is going to be looking for something fresh and new.”
Friday, January 9, 2015
Rand Paul knocks out Marco Rubio like Ali over Foreman
Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, has delivered a knock out punch against Sen. Marco Rubio to normalization of relations with Cuba to benefit the United States. The punch was as decisive as Muhammad Ali’s knock out of George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle 40 years ago. Mr. Rubio’s presidential ambitions are over.
The Florida senator’s implacable hatred of Fidel Castro and Cuba’s Communist regime has driven him to anti-democratic tirades and to a policy of Cuban ostracism that sneers at Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. His child-like immaturity and conflicting loyalties between Cuba and the United States disqualify him for the White House.
Mr. Rubio is the son of Cuban immigrants who fled under the dictatorship of Fulgencia Batista. He has apparently forgotten that as a U.S. citizen and senator, his sole allegiance is to the U.S. Constitution and to the general welfare of the people of the United States. If there is a conflict between Mr. Rubio’s sympathies for the Cuban people and the best interests of the United States, he is required to abandon the former in favor of the latter.
Nonconformity and Freethinking Now Considered Mental Illnesses
Is nonconformity and freethinking a mental illness? According to the newest addition of the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), it certainly is. The manual identifies a new mental illness called “oppositional defiant disorder” or ODD. Defined as an “ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile and defiant behavior,” symptoms include questioning authority, negativity, defiance, argumentativeness, and being easily annoyed.
The DSM-IV is the manual used by psychiatrists to diagnose mental illnesses and, with each new edition, there are scores of new mental illnesses. Are we becoming sicker? Is it getting harder to be mentally healthy? Authors of the DSM-IV say that it’s because they’re better able to identify these illnesses today. Critics charge that it’s because they have too much time on their hands.
New mental illnesses identified by the DSM-IV include arrogance, narcissism, above-average creativity, cynicism, and antisocial behavior. In the past, these were called “personality traits,” but now they’re diseases. And there are treatments available.
All of this is a symptom of our over-diagnosing and overmedicating culture. In the last 50 years, the DSM-IV has gone from 130 to 357 mental illnesses. A majority of these illnesses afflict children. Although the manual is an important diagnostic tool for the psychiatric industry, it has also been responsible for social changes. The rise in ADD, bipolar disorder, and depression in children has been largely because of the manual’s identifying certain behaviors as symptoms. A Washington Post article observed that, if Mozart were born today, he would be diagnosed with ADD and “medicated into barren normality.”