According to Maureen Dowd, Google’s CEO thinks that in the transparent society of the future
“It’s fair to say that there will be no heroes,” Schmidt says. “Heroism requires understanding the person in the absolute best light. I’m not sure this is good. What was Barack Obama like in elementary school? ‘Oh, yeah, here’s a picture of him picking his nose. God, he’s no longer a hero.’ ”
via Op-Ed Columnist – Dinosaur at the Gate – NYTimes.com
I totally disagree. Heroism is not how about having others see us as flawless. Heroism is about doing the right thing, even in the face of your own flaws.
Maureen Dowd (one of my heroes) missed the lead here.
Four more months of these ads? For shame!
On Wednesday afternoon, the House of Representatives voted to delay the transition to digital broadcast television by a margin of 264 to 158. Only a simple majority was needed, which means the new official date for the nationwide switch to digital television is now June 12, nearly four months after the original date of February 17.
The delay will give more time to the estimated 6.5 million citizens completely out of it people who are still unprepared for the transition despite three-plus years of preparation by government and broadcasters.
via House Delays Digital TV Transition | Epicenter from Wired.com.
This is absurd. The law needs to be loosened to allow this sort of immediate, entirely justified retaliation. Setting a person on fire is among the very cruelest ways to kill another human being. How much due process do we need before we select that sort of murderer out? American or Afghan.
A civilian contractor pleaded guilty yesterday to voluntary manslaughter in the killing in Afghanistan of a man who set the contractor’s co-worker on fire, prosecutors said.
Don M. Ayala had been charged in federal court in Alexandria with second-degree murder in the Nov. 4 incident. According to the U.S. attorney’s office, it took place in the village of Chehel Gazi, where Ayala and co-worker Paula Loyd were on a walking patrol with an Army platoon.
According to the prosecutor’s office, Abdul Salam, an Afghan, doused Loyd with gasoline and ignited it. He fled, but Ayala and several U.S. soldiers tackled and restrained him, prosecutors said.
Minutes later, after Ayala was told of Loyd’s condition and while Salam was still restrained, Ayala shot him in the head, according to the prosecutors’ statement. Salam was killed instantly, the prosecutors said.
Loyd, 36, who was burned over 60 percent of her body, was taken to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. She died of her wounds there Jan. 7, the prosecutors said
via Afghanistan Contractor Pleads Guilty to Killing Man Who Burned Co-Worker – washingtonpost.com.
‘I’m not qualified to land plane,’ pilot tells passengers
A British passenger plane was forced to turn back minutes before landing in Paris because the pilot of 30 years’ experience was not qualified to land in fog, an airline confirmed on Thursday.
Speaking over the address system as the Flybe flight approached Charles de Gaulle airport, the pilot announced to startled passengers “I am not qualified to land the plane” and turned back to Cardiff.
A spokeswoman for the low-cost airline said the pilot was “an experienced aviator with more than 30 years commercial aviation experience flying a number of different passenger aircraft types.”
“He has relatively recently transferred his ‘type-rating’ from a Bombardier Q300 to a Bombardier Q400 and has not yet completed the requisite low-visibility training to complete a landing in conditions such as the dense fog experienced in Paris Charles de Gaulle,” she said.
“The captain therefore quite correctly turned the aircraft around and returned to Cardiff; a decision which the company stands by 100 percent.”
One passenger, 29-year-old Cassandra Grant, said she had missed a job interview in the French capital as a result.
Hero.
Justice.
Pottsville man arrested in 1985 killing of Schuylkill Haven boy – Reading Eagle Newspaper
State police at Schuylkill Haven have arrested a Pottsville man in the 1985 killing of a 13-year-old boy whose body was found in a thicket months after he left home on a bicycle.
Joseph Geiger, 43, is accused of killing David Reed of Schuylkill Haven.
Geiger was arrested today — the 23rd anniversary of Reed’s disappearance — as he left his home to go to work.
Reed’s brother, Joseph J. Reed, 46, of Fort Myers, Florida … praised Trooper Robert S. Betnar for his determination and skill in helping to solve the case.
“He told me, ‘I will make this arrest,’ and I knew he would,” Reed said. “He should be with the FBI.”
Reed also credited his late sister, Virginia L. Meadow
s of Auburn, Schuylkill County, who pushed to keep the case alive. Meadows died last year.
That’s pretty darned heroic.
‘Unacceptable’ errors led to deaths in fire aboard sub on Arctic patrol | UK news | The Guardian
…. At the time of the accident HMS Tireless had been taking part in an Anglo-American operation beneath the Arctic ice. After the fire the submarine was forced to surface through an area of thin ice. The injured sailor was airlifted by the Alaska National Guard to an airforce base in Anchorage.
When the submarine returned to its home port of Devonport in Plymouth, Cmdr Iain Breckenridge praised his crews and singled out the injured man.
“If it had not been for [his] outstanding efforts … the consequences of this incident may have been much worse,” the report said. “The small fires caused by the explosion could easily have taken hold and a major conflagration ensued, with very serious consequences, if [name withheld] had not had the stamina and presence of mind to use all available means to extinguish them.”
Rescue hinged on fake ‘international mission’ – CNN.com
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, senior military commanders and other freed hostages also spoke — Uribe called the rescue mission “an unbelievable military achievement.”
“Today the armed forces of Colombia, the army of this country, our soldiers and policemen are entering the pages of heroes of humanity,” the president said. “They have written the name of Colombia on a golden mold of the democratic world.”
This is no exaggeration. Read the detailed account of how the Army infiltrated the rebels and set up a cinematic helicopter rescue. Well done.
Hostage takers are complete bastards. If you doubt this, read some of the accounts of Ingrid Betancourt’s years in captivity.
The contrarian has to ask me, is the Colombian Army’s outstanding performance partly a justification of years of training assistance by the U.S. Army?
Technology is an invaluable tool for addressing some of these challenges. In a recent example, a team of Google engineers dedicated their 20 percent time over the last year and a half to build cutting-edge software for NCMEC that uses image and video recognition technology to help NCMEC analysts more effectively sort and review incoming reports of child exploitation.
These guys get my “hero” tag for putting their time into this project.
FOXNews.com – Man Survives Bobcat Attack by Choking Animal to Death – Local News | News Articles | National News | US News
WESLEY CHAPEL, Fla. — A 62-year-old Florida man depended on his instincts when a bobcat attacked him, and it paid off — he survived, the bobcat didn’t.
The kicker: it attacked because it had rabies.
Mass grave found | Herald Sun
A mass grave believed to contain the remains of thousands of Jews killed by the Nazis has been found in southern Ukraine.
A Jewish community representative said on Tuesday the grave was found by chance last month when workers were digging to lay gas pipelines in the village of Gvozdavka-1, near Odessa, said Roman Shvartsman, a spokesman for the regional Jewish community.
He said that the Nazis established a concentration camp near the village in November 1941 and killed about 5,000 Jews at or near the site.
“Several thousand Jews executed by the Nazis lie there,” Shvartsman told The Associated Press.
Ukraine’s Jewish population was devastated during the Holocaust. Babi Yar, a ravine outside the capital Kiev where the Nazis slaughtered some 34,000 Jews over two days in September 1941, is a powerful symbol of the tragedy.
The good news here is that the story came out at all, because Ukraine is an independent country where Jews are not oppressed. This story might never have been made public in the old Soviet Union.
What atrocities will be dug up sixty-six years from today?
Technorati Tags: Babi Yar, glasnost
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