I sort of expected an article entitled "Charles Koch's Disturbing High School Economics Project Teaches 'Sacrificing Lives for Profits'" to be a bit of clickbait, but it's real. You can read this right on the so-called Common Sense Economics website: "The charge that sways juries and offends public sensitivities...is that greedy corporations sacrifice human lives to increase their profits. Is this charge true? Of course it is. But this isn’t a criticism of corporations; rather it is a reflection of the proper functioning of a market economy." Remember that the next time some corporation says it favors more "choices" in education -- apparently teaching people to be assholes is just another "choice."
Belgian court rules that the "right to be forgotten," which allows Europeans to have unflattering references to themselves removed from the internet, also extends to newspaper archives. The "right to be forgotten" has centuries-old precedent in European law, but Americans would find all of this extremely hard to understand, and though these laws generally take into account any public interest in "remembering" the information, I can too easily imagine a citizen running for high office demanding that the media "forget" all the bad things he did, and finding a judge who'll agree with him.
Rebecca McCray, writing at TakePart, notes that the recent Supreme Court decision in Foster v. Chatman -- wherein the Court threw out a death sentence because of the prosecution's racially-motivated jury selection -- won't change very much about racism in jury selection. Of course, it's not really supposed to do that, and we all know the reason the Court acted here is that Mr. Foster's prosecutors left so much written evidence of their racism that even John Roberts couldn't ignore it (though, of course, Clarence Thomas still could). Still, you'll value the insight that judges might not want to accuse prosecutors they work with every day of racism.
Chinese plants appear to be having some success turning toilet waste into power. In China, "sludge" (as they call it) often finds its way into landfills, gets used as fertilizer (it's not clean enough for that!), or gets burned as an alternative to coal (it's not dry enough for that!). The process of harvesting methane from sludge is fascinating, but powering 400 automobiles with several hundred tons of sludge isn't as impressive as it sounds (that's, what, about a ton per car?), and methane, as you know, packs a considerably bigger climate change punch than coal. It's possible it's better than nothing, particularly in a nation with over a billion people who are kinda stepping in it all the time.
Finally, presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump spats with reporters during a press conference. Insulting Hispanics and women is just something the "liberal" media "covers," but insulting reporters? Particularly after one could say they've actually done their jobs? That's another thing entirely. Could this latest tantrum be the moment that does Donald Trump in? I wonder -- I would say, "ask Scott Walker how well he did after constantly insulting the media," but then Scott Walker also had Donald Trump sucking up all the oxygen the room, and Donald Trump doesn't suffer from that problem any more than he suffers from any of the other problems he foists on other people.
Comments