Stay true to the dreams of thy youth

• NRA goes on lockdown - Anna Palmer - POLITICO.com

  "It’s shuttered its Facebook page. It’s silent on Twitter. It’s released no public statements on its website. It isn’t responding to media inquiries. And it hasn’t launched an aggressive push on Capitol Hill to shore up support among its allies. The go-dark strategy is unusual for an elite interest group so deeply entwined in a national controversy — even for the NRA, which released condolence statements soon after past shootings, including this summer after a gunman killed 12 people in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater."

  tags: guns nra lobbying trash militarization gunrights constitution

• Rameses III 'assassinated' in a royal coup - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

  "Egypt was a nation of internal unrest and increasing economic difficulties when its "last great pharoah" was murdered, a study has concluded. Beset by consitutional crises over succession, and battling a drought brought on by an unknown cause of climate change, Rameses III was assassinated in a royal coup some 3,000 years ago. The death of the last New Kingdom ruler has remained unexplained through the swirling mists of time, but ancient tales of deceit, passion and power have now been proven true, according to an international team of mummy-studying Egypt experts."

  tags: Egypt pharoahs history monarchy

• The Most Talked About Buildings of 2012 - Design - The Atlantic Cities

  "Because they take so long to construct, buildings don’t fit neatly into a year-by-year classification system the way music and movies do, which belong to a much more rapid production cycle. Despite recent technological advances in (pre-)fabrication, architecture, for the most part, likes to take its time. We’ve done our best to find the best buildings of the last 12 to 15 months; some of the projects were completed in late 2011, while others were only just opened."

  tags: architecture construction globalization buildings infrastructure

• US shale gas sparks a chemical revolution - FT.com

  "This time, though, the change is not in the chemicals industry itself but in the oil and gas business. Advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have unlocked previously inaccessible shale reserves, creating a boom in US oil and gas production that has driven down the prices of the essential inputs for petrochemical manufacturing: the natural gas liquids used as feedstocks, particularly ethane."

  tags: shale oil gas energy petrochemicals unitedstates revolution

• Nextdoor, the social network that introduces you to your neighbors. - Slate Magazine

  "According to some recent survey results, Americans have become rather unneighborly. A mere 30 percent of us socialize with our neighbors more than once a month (down from 44 percent in the mid-1970s). And a shocking 28 percent of us know none of our neighbors by name. We may keep in touch with faraway friends on Facebook, but when it comes to hanging out in our own communities we are bowling alone. "

  tags: community technology unitedstates

• Kristol Says Hagel Is Too Skeptical About War With Iran To Be Pentagon Chief | ThinkProgress

  "Neoconservatives don’t want former Republican senator Chuck Hagel to become the next Secretary of Defense. They charge that Hagel isn’t sufficiently militaristic when it comes to Iran and its nuclear program and that the former GOP senator apparently hasn’t properly toed the right-wing line on Israel, which led one unnamed Senate Republican staffer to call Hagel an anti-Semite"

  tags: neocons israel hagel zionism Lobby

• Gun control: After Connecticut shooting, could Australia's laws provide a lesson?

  "On April 28, 1996, a gunman opened fire on tourists in a seaside resort in Port Arthur, Tasmania. By the time he was finished, he had killed 35 people and wounded 23 more. It was the worst mass murder in Australia’s history. Twelve days later, Australia’s government did something remarkable. Led by newly elected conservative Prime Minister John Howard, it announced a bipartisan deal with state and local governments to enact sweeping gun-control measures. A decade and a half hence, the results of these policy changes are clear: They worked really, really well."

  tags: guncontrol unitedstates policy obama australia violence

• N. Korea Displays Kim Jong Il a Year after Death | TIME.com

  "North Korea unveiled the embalmed body of Kim Jong Il, still in his trademark khaki jumpsuit, on the anniversary of his death Monday as mourning mixed with pride over a recent satellite launch that was a long-held goal of the late authoritarian leader."

  tags: northkorea random kimjongil korea leadership

• China’s $3.5 billion plan to flatten 700 mountains | SmartPlanet

  "The China Pacific Construction Group plans to spend $3.5 billion to flatten 700 mountains, making room for a brand new city, the Guardian reports. The firm, which is one of the biggest in the country, will blow up a mountainous area spanning 500 square miles in order to construct the metropolis in the country’s northwestern Gansu province. "

  tags: china random dumb urbanization

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