Congrats to the >chinese for their lunar landing! They join only us and the former Soviet Union in accomplishing a soft-landing on the moon. May humans continue to explore space in peaceful cooperation.

I and other people of color (aka non white identifying) struggle with this daily. There is still a perception of a level of measure being applied to normative culture as it being set by white Americans. Even if hiphop and other powerful native cultures to the Americas like the various Latino cultures are increasingly influential. The images we see, that are advertised or the social norms we adopt are heavily influenced by the anglo-american. This largely has to do with who controls most of the wealth in this country, but also there is a psychology of all american people to normalize to this level of whiteness in order to avoid persecution or oppression by being outside of the larger society because of political, sexual, religious or vocational choices. "White America is desperately searching for its soul because it has for so long benefited from a belief that it is apart from the rest of us, blank of experience..."

Wind Energy Vs Eagle Kills We need a balanced approach between development of wind farms and protection of eagles. And by balanced we mean the number of “acceptable” kills must be independently monitored. Federal officials announced on Dec 6, 2013 that some wind power companies will be allowed to kill and injure bald and golden eagles for up to 30 years without penalty. The regulations include restrictions where the permits will be reevaluated every five years and could be suspended if companies are not meeting requirements. However the government is relying almost exclusively on self-reporting by for-profit companies. Are they serious? If this is the best Obama can do what can we expect when a conservative is in office?

I think it may be time to surf the internet in privacy mode. "Today, an FBI agent can open an intrusive investigation with no reason to suspect criminal activity, and any resulting information can be kept for 20-30 years, even if it has no relationship to the investigation. Similarly, the FBI keeps so-called "suspicious activity reports" that are determined to have no relevance to terrorism – but may reflect Americans' constitutionally protected speech or other activities – for 30 years in a widely-accessible database."

Lower East Siders, revolt! It's unconscionable that the chair of Community Board 3 has censored a community group (the LES Dwellers) for the horrible crime of Engaging Other Governmental Agencies. CB3 is losing relevance, and this act only reduces their credibility as well. What's most astounding is to imagine how CB3 must envision itself. They ultimately serve at the privilege of the community, not the other way around! We deserve better than this! We demand that Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and District 1 Council Member Margaret Chin reel them in!

Shutdown plurality voting! - Government shuts down, due to - Ideological fundamentalism in Congress, due to - Ideological fundamentalists voted into Congress by the American people, due to - Dysfunctional, big money, two-party political system generating few election options, due to - Widespread use of simplistic, poorly-representative, winner-takes-all, Plurality Voting system based on single-mark ballots, due to - It being used when the country was founded and now being ingrained in our culture, due to - Single-mark ballots being easy to tabulate by hand. Yes, in 2013, after landing rovers on Mars, sequencing the human genome, and creating a machine than can beat humans on Jeopardy!, Americans still use a simplistic system based on single-mark ballots and plurality voting because historically they were easier to count by hand! Fortunately the Constitution (and local and state law) can be changed. ;) That means it's actually on us. Do we want to move to more evolved, robust systems, such as Preferential Voting (ranked voting) or Proportional Representation (wherever possible), to create a more representative, satisfactory, efficient government? Or do we want to keep our 'merican gladiator system that produces ideological meatheads who'd rather fight on camera than solve problems? More info: - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote NGO worth checking out: http://www.fairvote.org/

We believe >iranians want to peacefully coexist with us, despite the rhetoric and actions of their government in recent history. We only want the same, so we are cautiously optimistic about the recent developments. However, until we understand what has brought about this change, we will remain guarded and skeptical.

We support those who use their time and talents for the public good. Code for America is an excellent example as they use technology to make governments more responsive. As an example, San Mateo County in California has one of the lowest rates of food-stamp participation in the country, due to a difficult application process. Changes in the process would require 18 agencies to overhaul their data-processing software. The participants want to create a program that would ask simple questions to applicants and use the answers to populate the complicated government form.

New or a rehash of the same old ? I'm hoping for something fresh and it just launched today. I will give it a week of steady watching, but some suspect it to be a more polished version of CNN... Al Jazeera English had an bias - but it's always nice to see an outside America or more critical perspective. This show will be funded by money from outside the US, but made by those who reside in the US. I hope a beneficial combination for those who are able to subscribe to this channel. They started off on a bad foot though, banning content basically from the other Al Jazeera networks around the world... america.aljazeera.com

Apparently local law enforcement agencies use privileged data to trigger investigations. They then conspire to cover this up by fabricating a fake basis for the investigation. It's frustrating to think that the people that actually carry out these procedures daily believe they are doing it for the greater good. Their conception of liberty is so misguided and far from historical perspective, they don't realize they're destroying exactly what makes this country great. But capitalism has made convenience the dominant pillar of our culture. Corporations take care of our dreams, religions take care of our fears, and politicians take care of the dissent.

If we are >americans-for-liberty do we trust companies that we send a lot of personal and real time information to - through paid or free services through contract - or is it because the government is storing this information in secret that our reaction is so averse? Has our relationships with private interest and government interest completely changed ? Which gives us more liberty ? https://medium.com/surveillance-state/a3f8a9988... "The state uses ever more advanced surveillance technology to watch us, and our own ever-greater use of personal technology makes it possible. On the other hand, technology has fundamentally destroyed the state’s ability to control our access to information, and exposed its bureaucracy to unprecedented scrutiny. This may be the death of privacy, but perhaps it’s also the death of secrecy and impunity. In that respect, fortunately, Orwell was wrong. Thanks to technology, Big Brother may be watching us, but we’re watching him too."

We the >new-yorkers believe it's time the NYPD started enforcing the law in the Lower East Side no man's land known as "Hell Square"! And, no, closing the streets does not count! The NYPD presents the street closures as a necessary evil, but it creates a lose-lose situation for LES residents. It does not reduce noise--drunken, aggressive shouting at all hours is no better than honking cars or garbage trucks--but it does provide a safe, *inviting* space for transitory bar patrons to lose all sense of responsibility, awareness, and respect for residents. Closing the streets and setting up a weekly petting zoo for NYPD horses is worse than security theater--it's security mockery. There have to be better solutions. Why not leave the streets open but scale up foot patrols, to issue citations *left and right* to unruly members of the public, non-compliant bars, and road violators? You know, to actually enforce the law rather than turning their backs on the neighborhood!