{"id":150,"date":"2006-11-26T21:21:53","date_gmt":"2006-11-27T02:21:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/2006\/11\/26\/sunday-reading\/"},"modified":"2006-11-26T21:30:28","modified_gmt":"2006-11-27T02:30:28","slug":"sunday-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/2006\/11\/26\/sunday-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Meet the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2006\/11\/24\/AR2006112400788.html\">real<\/a> weapon of mass destruction:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nThe AK-47 has become the world&#8217;s most prolific and effective combat weapon, a device so cheap and simple that it can be bought in many countries for less than the cost of a live chicken. Depicted on the flag and currency of several countries, waved by guerrillas and rebels everywhere, the AK is responsible for about a quarter-million deaths every year.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I have no idea as to what can be done about it.  It is very much a genie that was let out of a bottle.<\/p>\n<p>~<\/p>\n<p>So, the National Science Teachers Association <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2006\/11\/24\/AR2006112400789.html\">isn&#8217;t interested<\/a> in 50,000 free copies of An Inconvenient Truth.  Well, I thought that a shame, but did give some credibility to their response, which said that &#8220;In their e-mail rejection, they expressed concern that other &#8220;special interests&#8221; might ask to distribute materials, too; they said they didn&#8217;t want to offer &#8220;political&#8221; endorsement of the film&#8221;.  Ah, okay.  And then I read further:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But there was one more curious argument in the e-mail: Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, would place &#8220;unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters.&#8221; One of those supporters, it turns out, is the Exxon Mobil Corp.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the same Exxon Mobil that for more than a decade has done everything possible to muddle public understanding of global warming and stifle any serious effort to solve it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Fantastic job, guys.<\/p>\n<p>~<\/p>\n<p>Looking for good holiday gifts?  Check out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.makezine.com\/blog\/archive\/2006\/11\/the_open_source_1.html\">Make<\/a>.  I&#8217;m a subscriber, and a huge fan.  <\/p>\n<p>~<\/p>\n<p>And in the &#8220;Hmm, there must be more&#8221; news, the UK seems to be <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/entertainment\/6186436.stm\">declining<\/a> to extend its 50 year copyright term to 95 years.  It&#8217;s a shocking bit of good sense.  We&#8217;ll see whether that remains in place.  The real test will come in 2012, when the first Beatles recordings bump up against the 50 year term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Meet the real weapon of mass destruction: The AK-47 has become the world&#8217;s most prolific and effective combat weapon, a device so cheap and simple that it can be bought in many countries for less than the cost of a live chicken. Depicted on the flag and currency of several countries, waved by guerrillas and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-policy","category-society","category-uk"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}