Undernews: August 5, 2013

DEA uses illegal mass database

Other agencies mad they can't get hold of NSA's illegal data

Drilling company bans children from ever speaking about fracking

Tina Brown available for another colorful failure

40% of US workers paid less than a full time minimum wage employee in 1968

Ocean species moving towards poles faster than those land based

Red Sox owner pays more for second baseman than for Boston Globe

Congress members denied access to basic NSA information

Word
@RBReich - Companies will act legally only when risk of detection times amount of fine is larger than profit from illegality.

Infrequently asked questions
If you want to complain about anonymous sources in journalism, is it okay to quote "leading experts" in order to bolster your case?

Why does the media always refer to people defending our civil liberties and the Constitution as "activists" or "advocates?" Wouldn't "citizens" do just as well?

Quotes
The truly simple way of presenting Christianity is to do it. -- Soren Kierkegaard

Pocket paradigms
The first rule of media survival is use it; don't let it use you. We must ignore the role the media has prescribed for us -- audience, consumer, addict -- and treat it much as the trout treats a stream, a medium in which to swim and not to drown. The trick is to stop the media from happening to you and to treat it literally as a medium -- an environment, a carrier. Then you can cease being a consumer or a victim and become a hunter and a gatherer, foraging for signs that are good and messages that are important and data you can use. Then the zapper and the mouse become tools and weapons and not addictions. Then you turn the TV off not because it is evil but because you have gotten whatever it has to offer and now must look somewhere else. - Sam Smith

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Quotes
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. - Gandhi

Pocket paradigms
Reporters became the first group in human history to dramatically improve their socio-economic status simply by writing about themselves, self-casting themselves among the very elite from whom they had once been expected to protect their audience. - Sam Smith

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