EPIC: “The Ninth Circuit found that the companies may have violated Facebook’s privacy policies when they disclosed user information for advertising purposes. Separately, the court ruled that there was no violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act because the data disclosed (including Facebook IDs and HTTP referers) is not “contents” of a communication. Congress is set to consider several ECPA reforms,… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: May 2014
The Last Man at Nuremberg
Via the Atlantic, by Emma Green: The Last Man at Nuremberg The life of 95-year-old Benjamin Ferencz, the only living prosecutor from the war-crime trials that followed the Holocaust “Benjamin Ferencz was 27 when the Einsatzgruppen trial began in 1947. There were 22 defendants, all men, all members of the German SS. “One of the counsel has characterized this… Continue Reading
The Increasing Happiness of Parents
The Increasing Happiness of Parents, Chris M. Herbst and John Ifcher, Working Paper No. 2014-05-SCU-ECON. Economics Department, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University. 2014. “Previous research suggests that parents may be less happy than non-parents. We critically assess the extant literature and reexamine the relationship between parental status and happiness using the General Social Survey (N = 42,298)… Continue Reading
New GAO Reports – Military Training, Economic Development
MILITARY TRAINING: DOD Met Annual Reporting Requirements for Its 2014 Sustainable Ranges Report, GAO-14-517: Published: May 9, 2014. Publicly Released: May 9, 2014. ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: Overview of GAO’s Past Work on the National Flood Insurance Program, GAO-14-297R: Published: Apr 9, 2014. Publicly Released: May 9, 2014. Continue Reading
U.S. Postal Service Records Second Quarter Loss of $1.9 Billion
News release: ” The U.S. Postal Service ended the second quarter of its 2014 fiscal year (Jan. 1, 2014 – March 31, 2014) with a net loss of $1.9 billion. This marks the 20th of the last 22 quarters it has sustained a loss…The Postal Service also is working to increase its package delivery business by… Continue Reading
Suicide in the Military: Army-NIH Funded Study Points to Risk and Protective Factors
“The largest study of mental health risk and resilience ever conducted among U.S. military personnel today released its first findings related to suicide attempts and deaths in a series of three JAMA Psychiatryarticles. Findings from The Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers (Army STARRS ) include: the rise in suicide deaths from 2004 to… Continue Reading
Changing Climate Is Affecting Agriculture in the U.S. – USDA
“Climate change presents real threats to U.S. agricultural production, forest resources, and rural economies. These threats have significant implications not just for farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners, but for all Americans. Land managers across the country are already feeling the pressures of a changing climate and its effects on weather. As these risks continue and… Continue Reading
Strategic thinking strengthens intellectual capacity
Science Daily: “Strategy-based cognitive training has the potential to enhance cognitive performance and spill over to real-life benefit according to a data-driven perspective article. The research-based perspective highlights cognitive, neural and real-life changes measured in randomized clinical trials that compared a gist-reasoning strategy-training program to memory training in populations ranging from teenagers to healthy older… Continue Reading
Director of National Intelligence Requires Pre-Publication Review of all Info
Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News [snipped] : “All employees of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence are required to obtain authorization before disclosing any intelligence-related information to the public. “All ODNI personnel are required to submit all official and non-official information intended for public release for review,” says ODNI Instruction 80.04 on “Pre-publication Review of Information to… Continue Reading
UN Mission on South Sudan Public Human Rights Reports
News release: “The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) has today released a public report on the gross violations of human rights and serious violations of international humanitarian law that have occurred since the conflict in the world’s newest nation began on 15 December 2013. The report, entitled “Conflict in South Sudan: A Human Rights Report”, follows… Continue Reading
Reducing Poverty Through Climate Action
A Strategy for Global Development Leaders | Molly Elgin-Cossart, Cathleen Kelly, and Abigail Jones | May 8, 2014 “Climate change is already affecting every continent across the globe, and people living in developing countries will fare far worse than most in a warmer world, warns a March report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC.… Continue Reading
Learning By Thinking: How Reflection Improves Performance
Giada Di Stefano, Francesca Gino, Gary Pisano, and Bradley Staats: “Knowledge plays an important role in the productivity and prosperity of economies, organizations, and individuals. Even so, research on learning has primarily focused on the role of doing (experience) in fostering progress over time. To compare the effectiveness of different sources of learning, the authors take… Continue Reading
