interesting things
The Huffington Post rather embarrassingly fell for a fake Twitter account and wrote a story yesterday about one of its tweets.
This is but the latest in the long running saga of hoax tweets being taken for real by… Read more
via Poynter. » Regret the Error http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/regret-the-error/173923/huffpost-cnn-mediaite-fall-for-fake-twitter-account-of-nc-governor/
Bully documentary director, Lee Hirsch, has called for the Republican presidential candidate to take a genuine stand after stories emerge of the latter’s behaviour in high school
The director of high-profile US documentary Bully has called on Mitt Romney to take a stand against bullying following revelations that the Republican presidential candidate made life a misery for a fellow pupil as a teenager.
Lee Hirsch, whose film examines the deaths of US schoolchildren Tyler Long and Ty Smalley, who killed themselves after being bullied, said Romney’s failure to issue a genuine apology for his actions were a missed opportunity that he hoped the former Massachusetts governor would reflect on. “This could be a true presidential moment for Mitt Romney,” he told the Hollywood Reporter. “My hope is that he would recognise that we are past framing bullying as horseplay or pranking around. We need our leaders to call it as it is. Part of that conversation is moving away from ‘kids will be kids.'”
Hirsch added: “This is an opportunity for Romney to really lead on this issue. His apology fell short of that. That’s not to say he won’t feel different after some soul searching. I would hope anyone standing for president would take the opportunity to set a clear example on this issue. We’re looking to do away with language that minimises bullying.”
After being confronted with evidence via a Washington Post article that he led a gang which held down a student and cut his hair while a teenager at the private Cranbrook school in Michigan in 1965, Romney at first sought to deny any knowledge of the incident, before later passing it off as a “prank”. He told Fox News Radio: “They talk about the fact that I played a lot of pranks in high school and they describe some that, well, you just say to yourself back in high school well I did some dumb things and if anybody was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologise but overall high school years were a long time ago.”
Hirsch’s film, which follows students from schools in Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, Iowa and Oklahoma during the 2009-10 school year, was at the centre of a row between distributor the Weinstein Company and US censor the Motion Picture Association of America earlier this year after the latter initially handed it a prohibitive R rating due to instances of swearing. The organisation later backed down and issued a PG13 certificate after Harvey Weinstein threatened to release the documentary unrated in protest.
Hirsch estimates it has now been seen by 85,000 students and the film has even been parodied on South Park. “The school buses are pulling up to theatres around the country,” said the film-maker, who was himself bullied as a teenager. “The film has been screened at the White House. I’m assuming president Obama has seen it.”
via Culture | guardian.co.uk http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/may/15/mitt-romney-bully-filmmaker
“I feel that I no longer wish to support your presidential campaign and ask that you please return the maximum contribution that I gave to you last year,†Bill White wrote to GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney in a letter requesting the return of a $2,500 donation.
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Read more articles at Queerty or GayCities
Grover, we’re worried. This photo we’ve obtained of you — bleary, boozy, disheveled. It doesn’t look good. Want to tell us what’s going on here?
“Acting!†declared Grover Norquist, doing his best
Jon Lovitz-as-master-thespian imitation.
via Style: Culture, Arts, Ideas & More – The Washington Post http://www.pheedcontent.com/click.phdo
What goes bump in the night? In many U.S. households: people. About 3.6 percent of US adults — or upward of 8.4 million — are prone to sleepwalking, new research shows. The work also showed an association between nocturnal wanderings and certain psychiatric disorders, such as depression and anxiety. A large number of people reported sleepwalking in childhood or adolescence making the lifetime prevalence of sleepwalking 29.2 percent.
via ScienceDaily: Latest Science News http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120514161614.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29
PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — From across the city, they are summoned to pay reverence….
via AP Top Headlines At 7:32 a.m. EDT http://hosted.ap.org/specials/bluepage.html
The nerds finally beat the jocks. The historic Gold’s Gym location in Venice Beach, “mecca of bodybuilding” where former governator and movie star Arnold Schwarzenneger once trained, will soon be occupied by Google. This gym site opened in the late 1960s (and, to be honest, it was pretty shabby in recent years—I was a member for some time). Ahnold is shown in the vintage stock reel here, along with other beefy Gold’s Gym dudes of the seventies.
Facebook is planning to increase the price for its hotly awaited initial public offering to a range of $34 to $38 a share because of rampant investor demand, a person with knowledge of the matter told DealBook.
via NYT > Most Recent Headlines http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/14/facebook-expected-to-price-at-34-to-38/
You spoke too soon, Rand Paul. It sounds like the President’s views on marriage just got even gayer.
Somewhat buried in CNN’s story on Barack Obama’s fundraiser in New York is this little tidbit about his administration’s plans for marriage equality—
He also outlined goals he hopes to accomplish under a second term, including the repeal of the Defense Of Marriage Act, which the administration has already stopped defending.
This is the first time Obama has said that he wil actively work to repeal the law.
At the fundraiser, hosted by openly gay pop star Ricky Martin, Obama called same-sex marriage the “right thing to do.” He also said that contrary to what many rightwing pundits have alleged, marriage equality will help families.
I want everyone treated fairly in this country. We have never gone wrong when we’ve extended rights and responsibilities to everybody. That doesn’t weaken families, that strengthens families.
The President also touched on his freshly out same-sex marriage stance on The View. The segment, which he taped today, will air on ABC tomorrow.
According to some White House officials, Obama had intended to speak out in favor of marriage equality on the talk show, but he was spurred forward by Joe Biden’s early endorsement.
[Image via AP]
via Gawker http://gawker.com/5910277/obama-announces-plans-to-repeal-defense-of-marriage-act
Timothy B. Lee uses San Francisco as a case study. With freer housing policies, he claims the Bay Area would have 11 million rather than 7 million residents:
Among those extra 4 million people would likely have been hundreds of thousands of additional engineers starting new firms or expanding the Google and Facebook workforces. In short, the reason there’s too much money chasing too few businesses isn’t that the country is running out of people with good technology ideas. It’s just that bad housing policies mean that there’s nowhere for additional people to live.
via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/05/is-a-lack-of-housing-preventing-innovation.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+andrewsullivan%2FrApM+%28The+Daily+Dish%29
