The most striking thing about North America’s fear of food is how markedly ideas about food’s healthfulness have changed over the years. Chemical preservatives went from being triumphs of modern science to poisons. Whole milk has swung back and forth like a pendulum. Yogurt experienced boom, bust and revival. Margarine went from “heart-healthy” to artery-clogging. And now we are told that salt, historically regarded as absolutely essential to human existence, is swinging the grim reaper’s scythe.

Governmental Secrecy: Shield for Tyranny, Incompetence, and Corruption

An essential pillar of democracy is openness. There is no way that people can meaningfully participate in government, even if only by voting for representatives, if they do not have access to accurate information related to government operations. This was well understood by the founders of the US and embedded in the Bill of Rights. Conversely, a salient characteristic of undemocratic systems of all types, such as Czarist Russia, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany is a high degree of governmental secrecy.

List of countries by military expenditures

The problems plaguing America's intellectual property system.

In late 2011, I lost a traffic court case against a dishonest and corrupt female officer. If I had a dash video system installed, I would have easily won this case and scored a victory against police corruption. I have chosen the freedomcam and plan to install it soon...

First it was music, now it's porn. Attorneys for the adult film industry are taking a page from the music industry and filing mass lawsuits to stop porn piracy. They say the illegal file sharing is cutting deeply into profits, and those who play without paying must be stopped. Problem is, Innocent people are getting swept up in the internet dragnet.

Twitter said in its first transparency report that the number of government requests for user information or to block content is rising in 2012. "We've received more government requests in the first half of 2012, as outlined in this initial dataset, than in the entirety of 2011," Twitter's legal policy manager Jeremy Kessel said in a blog post on Monday. The overwhelming number of requests came from the United States, accounting for 679 of the 849 requests for user information. In 75 per cent of the US cases, Twitter gave some or all information.

drug-sniffing dogs used by troopers are intentionally trained to operate as so-called "trick ponies", or dogs that provide officers false alerts.

18-year-old was watching Food Network when door came down, stun grenade went off

Why Smoking Pot Makes Me a Better Mom
Anybody who thinks that weed makes parents ignore their children has clearly never been high around one.
July 1, 2012 |

The following story first appeared on Jezebel.

I wanted to get my husband to watch our daughter so I could get stoned and pound out this essay about being a mom who smokes pot. But when I stepped