Read this.

President Obama mandated Thursday that nearly all hospitals extend visitation rights to the partners of gay men and lesbians and respect patients’ choices about who may make critical health-care decisions for them, perhaps the most significant step so far in his efforts to expand the rights of gay Americans.

Obama orders same-sex hospital visits.

Finally.  And yes, this is part of the Change I fucking well wanted.

]]> http://www.tasteslikeangry.com/?feed=rss2&p=494 2 http://www.tasteslikeangry.com/?p=492 http://www.tasteslikeangry.com/?p=492#comments Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:56:46 +0000 Reuser http://www.tasteslikeangry.com/?p=492 And The Answer To One Of Cryptography’s Mysteries Is . . . 42 – Physics – io9.

Generating truly random numbers is notoriously difficult. But now, using a quantum system, researchers have managed to create 42 genuinely random numbers. Their discovery is a major breakthrough for cryptography, and could one day enable truly private communication online.

Fuck you.

Crime Prediction Software Is Here and It’s a Very Bad Idea .

Really? “Reliable projections”? “Action in real time”? “Preventing criminal activities”? I don’t know about how reliable your system is, IBM, but have you ever heard of the 5th, the 6th, and the 14th Amendments to the United States Constitution? What about article 11 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? No? Let’s make this easy then: Didn’t you watch that scientology nutcase in Minority Report?

Right on!  A good blog, to boot.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “Clinging to nuclear weapons in excess of our security needs does not make the United States safer. … And the nuclear status quo is neither desirable nor sustainable.”

via Will Obama End the Nuclear Era? – Page 1 – The Daily Beast.

Yet despite this, and other treaties, such as the recent one with Russia that overwhelmingly favored the US in terms of post-treaty capability, Obama is still getting drug across the coals by Conservative and Tea Bagger and the like.  And even more insane, things like this: Obama’s disregard for media reaches new heights at nuclear summit

Disregard, or just trying to let a lot of people get the photos they need, and then get out.  You know, because there is work to be done.

“If the Department of Defense can’t figure out a way to defend the United States on a budget of more than a half a trillion dollars a year, then our problems are much bigger than anything that can be cured by buying a few more ships and planes…” -Defense Secretary Robert Gates

Required reading for Americans.

Spot on.

Awesome panel about mythbusters, arming robots, etc.   Worth the hour if you are interested in the show.

“Dear Conservative Americans,

The years have not been kind to you. I grew up in a profoundly Republican home, so I can remember when you wore a very different face than the one we see now.  You’ve lost me and you’ve lost most of America.  Because I believe having responsible choices is important to democracy, I’d like to give you some advice and an invitation.

First, the invitation:  Come back to us.”

from An open letter to conservatives | AmericanDad’s Blog.

Damn straight, Robyn.

Can we end the American corn monoculture, as propped up by Federal subsidies now?

.

“What fifty generations of silver foxes being domesticated and bred against aggressive traits has revealed to us about the long history of the domestic dog and why there is such a huge variety in traits in the various dog breeds.”

I love you, crazy Russian scientist woman!

Or should be.  Americans are increasingly treating their politics as a zero-sum game, like sports teams.

Truly, we live in strange times.”

via EVE ISK for Haiti..

Somebody announces that he’s built a large quantum computer. RSA is dead. DSA is dead. Elliptic curves, hyperelliptic curves, class groups, whatever, dead, dead, dead. So users are going to run around screaming and say ‘Oh my God, what do we do?’

via Introduction.

Awesome.

Rabiei’s invention isn’t the first metal foam, but she says it’s the strongest. The main weakness of existing metal foams is the varying sizes of their cells — tiny pockets of space inside the material. Instead, Rabiei used cells of standard sizes and combined them with a metallic matrix to support the cell walls.

via Foamy Invention Could Save Energy and Lives | LiveScience.