Harry Potter Author Defends Donald Trump’s Right To Free Speech
J.K. Rowling held up Donald Trump as an example of the importance of freedom of expression in her remarks Monday night at the PEN America Literary Gala, where she received the 2016 PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award.Says J.K. Rowling:Intolerance of alternative viewpoints is spreading to places that make me, a moderate and a liberal, most uncomfortable. Only last year, we saw an online petition to ban Donald Trump from entry to the U.K. It garnered half a million signatures.Just a moment.I find almost everything that Mr. Trump says objectionable. I consider him offensive and bigoted. But he has my full support to come to my country and be offensive and bigoted there. His freedom to speak protects my freedom to call him a bigot. His freedom guarantees mine. Unless we take that absolute position without caveats or apologies, we have set foot upon a road with only one destination. If my offended feelings can justify a travel ban on Donald Trump, I have no moral ground on which to argue that those offended by feminism or the fight for transgender rights or universal suffrage should not oppress campaigners for those causes. If you seek the removal of freedoms from an opponent simply on them grounds that they have offended you have crossed the line to stand alongside tyrants who imprison, torture and kill on exactly the same justification.
A World Without Uber: Government Mandated Price-Gouging In Austin Texas
From What It's Like to Live in a City Without Uber - The Drive
Austin prides itself on being a fun place for travelers to visit, but suddenly, with Uber and Lyft bailing in a political dispute, it’s not such a great party town anymore.
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Austin has gone back in time 20 years, to an era where the taxi monopoly and the Hertz cartel had a total chokehold on visitors.
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“Austin’s trying to be Oh yeah we’re so cool by rejecting ridesharing,” she says, “but it’s just showing how backwards we are. I probably should have just walked.”
Meanwhile, ten thousand drivers are out of a job—or at least a second job. The city’s huge phalanx of former ride-sharing drivers finds itself scrambling for work. The city responded by setting up a useless hotline and a “job fair” that consisted of little more than telling people how to apply for expensive chauffeur’s licenses and cab medallions. Most people can’t afford those, so instead drivers are offering their services on hastily assembled underground Facebook ride-sharing communities, marketing themselves in the same way a freelance handyman or pool-repair guy would. And desperate riders are responding.
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Other than the occasional savvy low-scale entrepreneur and sharky car-rental and cab companies, no one appears to be benefitting from this insane transit apocalypse. Though the city frightened voters with terrifying depictions of a plague of Uber-rape, it’s now come out that people with sexual assault convictions, and even drunk-driving arrests, are actually allowed to drive cabs in Austin, few questions asked. "If you have ever been convicted of theft at any point, you could never get a chauffeur's permit,” a city council member told a local news station. “That just seems like too much.”
Also, the city allows cab drivers to smoke in their cars.
The market creates. The politician destroys. The world moves on albeit...much more slowly.
Genetically Engineered Food is Safe: No Evidence that GE Crops are Unsafe to Eat, or Do Damage to the Environment
“The inescapable conclusion, after reading the report, is the G.E. crops are pretty much just crops. They are not the panacea that some proponents claim, nor the dreaded monsters that others claim.” -- Wayne Parrott a professor of crop and soil sciences at the University of Georgia.A two-year analysis of almost 900 journal articles on the past 30 years of genetically modified, or engineered (GE), crop use concludes that there is no evidence that GE crops are unsafe to eat, or do damage to the environment. The 400-page report -- Genetically Engineered Crops: Experiences and Prospects’ published by the National Academies Press on Tuesday, May 17, 2016. -- was conducted by 20 scientists, and commissioned by the US National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine.The report looks at the impacts GE crops have had since the 1980s. Its findings include:
- Generally positive economic outcomes for farmers, but no indication GE crops changed the rate of increase in yields;
- Decreased crop losses, insecticide use and greater insect biodiversity for insect-resistant Bt crops, but also instances of insects evolving resistance;
- No decrease in plant biodiversity for herbicide tolerant crops, but a major problem with herbicide-resistant weeds due to heavy glyphosate use;
- No evidence that foods from GE crops are less safe to eat than conventional food.
Looking to the future of GE crops, the report notes that new genetic technologies are blurring the line between conventional and GE crops, and that the U.S. regulatory system needs to assess crop varieties based on their individual characteristics, not the way they are produced.
Snowden Vindicated?
Court Backs Snowden, Strikes Secret Laws - Bloomberg View
In a major vindication for Edward Snowden -- and a blow for the national security policy pursued by Republicans and Democrats alike -- the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled Thursday that the National Security Agency’s metadata collection program is unlawful. This is the most serious blow to date for the legacy of the USA Patriot Act and the surveillance overreach that followed 9/11.The central question depended on the meaning of the word "relevant": Was the government's collection relevant to an investigation when it collects all the metadata for any phone call made to or from anywhere in the U.S.?The court said no. That was the right decision -- not so much because it protects privacy, as because it broke the bad precedent of secret law created by the NSA and endorsed by the secret national security court known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Sports Authority: Killed By Minimum Wages and “Showrooming”
From Why Sports Authority is throwing in the towel and closing all of its stores:
Phil Lempert, a Santa Monica-based analyst of consumer behavior and marketing trends, figures consumers haven’t seen the last of major retailers shuttering. Just last week, Sport Chalet announced the closure of all 47 of its stores in California, Nevada and Arizona. That chain is based in La Cañada Flintridge.
“With the minimum wage going up to $15 an hour and more people turning to online shopping, more stores are going to close,” Lempert said. “It’s fine to say that everyone should have a living wage. But the money has to come from somewhere.”Lempert said a growing number of retail outlets have fallen victim to “showrooming,” where customers will walk into a store, try on the shirt or jacket they like and then order it online at a significant discount.“These stores have to look at not at how they will compete with other brick-and-mortar stores, but how they will compete with Amazon,” he said. “It’s become a holistic environment where people can buy things on their mobile phones and then have the products delivered by the time they get home.”