The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency warned its employees and contractors last week to stop using their government computers to surf the Internet for pornographic sites, according to the agency’s executive director.
In a one-page memo, Executive Director John James Jr. wrote that in recent months government employees and contractors were detected “engaging in inappropriate use of the MDA network.”
“Specifically, there have been instances of employees and contractors accessing websites, or transmitting messages, containing pornographic or sexually explicit images,” James wrote in the July 27 memo obtained by Bloomberg News.
“These actions are not only unprofessional, they reflect time taken away from designated duties, are in clear violation of federal and DoD and regulations, consume network resources and can compromise the security of the network though the introduction of malware or malicious code,” he wrote.
Haven’t Pentagon officials ever heard of Websense? More importantly, if this is all that’s going on behind closed doors at the Missile Defense Agency, does Russia really need to be worried about our expansion of the project?
neightkelly asks: What seems rather suspect? That twitter silenced him or that he leaked the email?
» SFB says: That Twitter silenced him. That sets a very bad precedent for the company and suggests it was for reasons other than those specifically stated. — Ernie @ SFB
When I asked about aspects of his interactions with Rosen, Lehrer provided a sketchy timeframe and contradictory specifics—he first told me that he had personally exchanged emails with Rosen, then attributed this supposed email exchange to his literary agent—then further claimed that Dylan’s management had approved the chapter after being sent a copy of Imagine. He added that Dylan’s management didn’t want their cooperation sourced in the book. But when I contacted Dylan’s management, they told me that they were unfamiliar with Lehrer, had never read his book, there was no bobdylan.com headquarters, and, to the best of their recollection, no one there had screened outtakes from No Direction Home for Lehrer. Confronted with this, Lehrer admitted that he had invented it.
Holy. Shit. (via popsins)
Jonah Lehrer has since resigned from the New Yorker and his publisher is halting shipments of print copies of Imagine. (via capitalnewyork)
In other words, a slow news day in the world of journalism scandal. This is actually round two for Lehrer. As it is, Dylan says so much interesting stuff already — why do you have to make it up, anyway? (Update: Joe Hanson has pasted a version of the article on Google Docs, because the site is down.)
The Independent’s Guy Adams, a prominent critic of NBC’s Olympic coverage, just got suspended from Twitter … for tweeting out an NBC official’s relatively-public e-mail address ahead of the opening ceremonies. *wince* That seems kind of … suspect, don’t you think, especially considering the network’s standing relationship with Twitter? Read the tweets here.
![thecallus:
theatlantic:
This Is the Obama-Aurora Billboard Everyone’s Talking About
[Image: The Hollywood Reporter]
Sanctioned v. unsanctioned violence.
“That’s a technique of trying to make a point, and maybe it was poorly done.” — Maurice Clements, the guy behind this billboard.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7z9bvVfcY1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
This Is the Obama-Aurora Billboard Everyone’s Talking About
[Image: The Hollywood Reporter]
Sanctioned v. unsanctioned violence.
“That’s a technique of trying to make a point, and maybe it was poorly done.” — Maurice Clements, the guy behind this billboard.
I made a bad judgment call with my material last night & regret making a joke at such a sensitive time. My heart goes out to all of the families & friends of the victims.Comedian Dane Cook • Apologizing for making a poorly-timed joke regarding the Aurora shooting, in which he suggested that the shooter was doing the victims a favor by getting them out of a terrible movie. In other words, a joke you can’t really defend at all. (If you want to subject yourself to it, The Daily Caller has video.) Bad form, bro.
I didn’t have anything on me and and no-one asked me for anything. I did what I asked and just carried on walking.11-year-old Liam Corcoran-Fort • Discussing the security process he went through when he boarded a flight from Manchester to Rome — despite the fact he didn’t have any sort of identification or a boarding pass and was really just trying to use the bathroom. ”I just wanted to go to the toilet. I wasn’t trying to go anywhere I wasn’t allowed,” Corcoran-Fort, who has learning difficulties, said. ”But it was easier than my homework, even easier than computer games.” For what it’s worth, he did go through a metal detector and body scanner, the airport says.
Best way to derail an Olympic soccer match: Accidentally use the South Korean flag for a game featuring the North Korean team. Oops. The North Korean women’s team protested the scene, one hour wasted. Suddenly, the match is a diplomatic failure, even though the North Koreans won. (AP photo)
On the left: A Facebook discussion on the Chick-Fil-A page which went horribly off the rails. On the right: A stock photo of a “pretty redhead teenager isolated on white.” What do these two images have in common?
It’s not technically a breach of security. The boy posed no threat to the aircraft. He went through a security process.Manchester airport spokesperson Russell Craig • Discussing an 11-year-old boy’s trip from England to Italy, where the boy took a Jet2.com plane from Manchester to Rome despite not having a boarding pass or passport. His trip may not have technically been a breach of security, but a ton of people got suspended from their jobs over it. Oops.
In her last days, my mother occasionally became confused....
”The reporter...
I can’t add much to what’s already been (and will be) ...
One of the perks of being an early employee...
Over the last 90 days, the Digg...
#FMMDI (at 30 Rockefeller Plaza)
Last weekend, 21 people received second and third-degree burns (we covered the biology of burns last week) at a motivational event put on by Tony Robbins. No, Mr. Robbins did not blow-torch their feet for daring to make eye contact. They took part in a “mind over matter” firewalking demonstration.
Now, burning your feet while walking over glowing hot coals sounds to me like “exactly what you would expect to happen.” Or, as my niece puts it: “That’s a bad decision, not an accident.” But there are some interesting physics behind successful firewalking.
Jennifer Ouellette has a fantastically detailed post all about it at SciAm:
“… when one walks on fire is that on each step the foot absorbs relatively little heat from the embers that are cooled, because they are poor conductors, that do not have much internal energy to transmit as heat, and further that the layer of cooled charcoal between the foot and the rest of the hot embers insulates them from the coals.”
Check out her post for more interesting research done into firewalking, and for goodness sake, don’t try this at home. But if you do, videotape it.
We’ll throw it up on YouTube tonight, Joe, scars and all.
Let’s get something out of the way, first. Fred Willard is funny — he may in fact be the funniest man alive, depending on the circle of people you’re asking. His subversively square sense of humor is a real gift. (Evidence here, here and here.) It’s a proven fact that he’s funny as heck, and you know what, one stupid incident isn’t going to change that. But on the other hand, this is pretty high on the “stupid incident” scale. Willard’s arrest for a lewd act at an adult theater in Hollywood is going to be very difficult for someone of his age to overcome — it’s already cost him a gig on the PBS show “Market Warriors.” Willard may want to hope that the public is more willing to forgive now than it was in 1991, when a similar Paul Reubens incident effectively blacklisted the Pee-Wee Herman originator for nearly a decade. Anyway, the obvious question: What were you thinking, Fred?
We have met the enemy, and he is (the) U.S.Auckland, N.Z. District Judge David Harvey • Speaking at a conference on copyright earlier this month. The fact that Harvey said this is somewhat problematic, as he’s the judge overseeing the MegaUpload case. Hence, he’s decided to step down from the case, with the court’s chief judge, Jan-Marie Doogue, saying that Harvey’s statements “could reflect on his impartiality and that the appropriate response is for him to step down from the case.” Pretty much.
A Navy medical examiner found out the hard way the level of respect required when transporting organs of deceased service members.
Dr. Mark E. Shelly was tasked with transporting the brain of a service member from a naval hospital in Camp Lejeune, N.C., to Portsmouth Naval Medical Center in December. But before the brain reached its destination, Shelly took it to his home in Virginia Beach.
He removed it from the specimen jar, held it and allowed his children to handle the brain while his wife took photographs, according to Virginia Board of Medicine records. The next day, Shelly took the brain to the medical center for a neuropathological examination to complete an autopsy.
Note that this was a service member; could you imagine what’d happen in the case of a civilian?
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