"Photographer Peter McBride traveled along the Colorado River from its source high in the Rocky Mountains to its historic mouth at the Sea of Cortez. In this Yale Environment 360 video, he follows the natural course of the Colorado by raft, on foot, and overhead in a small plane, telling the story of a river whose water is siphoned off at every turn, leaving it high and dry 80 miles from the sea."

"Winning the Iowa caucuses would change all that instantly. Undoubtedly the movement that Paul inspired has moved far beyond the race-baiting it engaged in two decades ago. Young people from college campuses aren't lining up to hear him speak because of what appeared in those newsletter about the 1992 L.A. riots. Rand Paul tried his hardest to place Paul-style libertarianism into the context of the Tea Party. And he will likely carry on the movement without this 1990s baggage.

"But the questions remain. If Ron Paul is so libertarian that he won't even police people who use his name, if his movement is filled with incompetents and opportunists, then what kind of a president would he make? Would he even check in to see if his ideas are being implemented? Who would he appoint to Cabinet positions?"

"The proposed settlement bars Facebook from making any further deceptive privacy claims, requires that the company get consumers' approval before it changes the way it shares their data, and requires that it obtain periodic assessments of its privacy practices by independent, third-party auditors for the next 20 years."

"...for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.

"Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not"

"While canoeing on the Rifle River in Michigan, Boomer fell overboard letting forth a fuck or two. As if his day wasn't bad enough, the nearby sheriff gave him a ticket ... for violating an 1897 statute forbidding cursing within earshot of women and children. Then he was convicted.

"Amazed that this could happen in the twenty-first century, my curiosity about the legal implications of fuck was rekindled. I decided to dedicate one of my research assistants to exploring the area."

"People are capable of any sexual thing. To ban their marriage because someone doesn’t like the idea of them both being the same sex, that’s ridiculous."

"At times the air was so saturated with suspended water that an intake of breath caused him to sputter and choke. He began to worry about the very strange—but very real–possibility of drowning in the sky."

Hunton & Williams, the middleman law firm in all this (and the middleman between a major US bank and Team Themis' similar plan to take down WikiLeaks), has steadfastly refused to comment on the whole story. But it too may find itself in trouble after a professional conduct complaint (PDF) was lodged against it last week in Washington, DC"

"I wanted to see how much intel you could gather from a person just by lurking on a social networking site. I [also] wanted to see who was most susceptible to clicking. I wanted to see how fast this thing would propagate. One of the things I found was that MIT and St. Paul's [prep school] were very cliquey. If they don't remember seeing you, they are not going to click. You had less of a chance of penetrating those groups than the actual intel and security communities."

"Near downtown, fruit trees and vegetable farms would replace neighborhoods that are an eerie landscape of empty buildings and vacant lots. Suburban commuters heading into the city center might pass through what looks like the countryside to get there. Surviving neighborhoods in the birthplace of the auto industry would become pockets in expanses of green."

Facebook and Twitter empower all groups—not just the pro-Western groups that we like. To put it in a more formal framework: not all social capital created by the Internet is bound to produce "social goods"; "social bads" are inevitable as well. The political scientist Robert Putnam, who was instrumental in promoting the notion of "social capital" in popular discourse, was not blind to such possibilities. In "Bowling Alone," his most famous book, he explicitly cautioned against the "kumbaya interpretation of social capital," stating that "networks…are generally good for those inside the network, but the external effects of social capital are by no means always positive."

"It is heard to believe, yet a true story. A pregnant woman in Iowa (USA) had been jailed for "attempted feticide" because she told hospital staff that she once thought about having an abortion."

“In a study of consititutional psychopathic personalities especially the sexual deviants, it was found during a routine physical examination that the gag reflex was frequently absent. This was a more definite finding in those homosexuals who admitted fellatio. ... The positive test, i.e., the absence of the gag reflex, depends on the desensitization of this area due to conditioning, this being brought about by the repeated control of the reflex during the act of fellatio … Frequently it proved valuable in detecting the malingerer who attempted to obtain a discharge by professing homosexuality. Presented with the gag test findings the soldier would invariably change his story or admit having lied for selfish gains.”

"Since September 27, 2007, I have been documenting the graffiti left in public study areas in the Joseph Regenstein Library ("the Reg"): the study nooks tucked into the stacks, the whiteboards in the all-night study space, and the study carrels in the reading rooms."

"Mr. Cooper starts to make a point - that allowing same sex couples marriage equality would also entitle opposite sex couples to domestic partnership equality - but he can't actually say what would be wrong with this, just that nobody can prove that it *wouldn't* be harmful so maybe it would. The judge doesn't buy it. You don't have to prove that same sex marriage is harmless any more than you have to prove that freedom of speech or the press is harmless, which it sometimes isn't.

(Aside: I didn't realize that the Prop 8 people want to discriminate against gays *and* straights. It's not just important that gays can't have marriage; straights also shouldn't have civil unions.)"

"My subject line said (in full), 'meep.' The body said (in full), 'Meep.' Yesterday I received a reply email from Assistant Principal Mark Strout, which said (in full) "Your E-mail has been forwarded to the Danvers Police Department."

"On Tuesday voters in Takoma Park, Maryland, got to try out a new, transparent voting system that lets voters go online to verify that their ballots got counted in the final tally. The system also lets anyone independently audit election results to verify the votes went to the correct candidates."

"The most common response I am seeing to the Maine referendum is, "How dare they think they can vote on my civil right to marry whom I please?!" Here's the thing: you don't have a civil right to gay marriage. We want to think of civil rights as forces of nature, but they are compacts within society. And gay marriage has not been defined as a civil right by the U.S. government..."

"The walls are made of stone, intricately carved out into an art form reminiscent of the flow seen in ancient Indian art. They looked like lotus petals, almost soft, but overall just aesthetically overwhelming. It was so clean, so fresh... the cool air inside was very refreshing compared to the blistering heat outside. There was a complete working fireplace in the main area that looked like a devilish face. The domes at the top of the cave were fashioned with lights, and the bottoms were covered in a sealant that was pocked with flecks of real gold. This sealant was everywhere actually, with the gold accentuating every curve of this hidden masterpiece."

"Using data from the social network Facebook, they made a striking discovery: just by looking at a person’s online friends, they could predict whether the person was gay. They did this with a software program that looked at the gender and sexuality of a person’s friends and, using statistical analysis, made a prediction."

"The work of German filmmakers peddling a satirical movie called Short Cut to Hollywood, the elaborate hoax involved at least two faked websites, a faked Wikipedia entry and California phone numbers for “public safety” officials that were actually being answered by hoaxsters in Germany using Skype."

"The Chameleon Guitar -- so named for its ability to mimic different instruments -- is an electric guitar whose body has a separate central section that is removable. This inserted section, the soundboard, can be switched with one made of a different kind of wood, or with a different structural support system, or with one made of a different material altogether. Then, the sound generated by the electronic pickups on that board can be manipulated by a computer to produce the effect of a different size or shape of the resonating chamber."

"The criminals probably didn't realize that they were installing their ATM in a hotel that was soon going to be flooded with more than 8,000 security professionals, he added."

"Repeated emails yesterday to Apple have still been ignored at this point. We did receive a voicemail at our main office from the same Richard who called our competitor. Unfortunately it wasn’t until today that we were able to connect for our “conversation”. The word conversation really doesn’t cover it because what transpired was not informative by design and felt like theater of the absurd. It went roughly like this:"

"A Foxconn employee in China has committed suicide, after a fourth-gen Apple iPhone prototype he was entrusted with went missing. 25 year-old Sun Danyong worked in the company’s product communications department, and was responsible for shipping prototypes from Foxconn to Apple. Having reported the missing handset, Sun’s apartment was illegally searched by Foxconn employees and he was, according to unsubstantiated allegations, detained and physically abused. On Thursday July 16th, just after 3am, he jumped from the window of his apartment."

"Times executives believed that publicity would raise Mr. Rohde’s value to his captors as a bargaining chip and reduce his chance of survival. Persuading another publication or a broadcaster not to report the kidnapping usually meant just a phone call from one editor to another, said Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times. But Wikipedia, which operates under the philosophy that anyone can be an editor, and that all information should be public, is a vastly different world. "

"'The minute I saw the faces of the agents, I knew I was in trouble. The first page of the Unthinkable script mentioned 9/11, terror plots, and the fact that the (fictional) world had become a police state. The TSA agents then proceeded to interrogate me, having a hard time understanding that a comic book could be about anything other than superheroes, let alone that anyone actually wrote scripts for comics. ...I cooperated politely and tried to explain to them the irony of the situation."

"“Need a paramedic on corner of John Wesley Dobbs and Jackson st. Woman on the ground unconscious. Pls ReTweet,” Hall tweeted, eschewing the use of his cell phone as, well, a phone, to call 911 since his battery was low and he didn’t want to lose contact if it died while he was trying to save a life."

"An elevated park in the sky built on top of the skeleton of an old rail system? It may have sounded impossible only five years ago, but today, the eagerly awaited High Line elevated urban park officially opens for thousands of New Yorkers looking to escape the hubbub of the city below! "

"At his urging, the Kleberg County commissioners on Monday unanimously designated 'heaven-o' as the county's official greeting. The reason: 'hello' contains the word 'hell.'"

"Here’s an excellent example of pwnage: when the white supremacist group VNN Vanguard Nazi/KKK tried to host a hate rally in Knoxville, Tennessee, they were foiled by … clowns!"

"Touching and physical contact is very dangerous territory," said Noreen Hajinlian, principal of George G. White School, a junior high school in Hillsdale, N.J., which banned hugging. "It wasn't a greeting. It was happening all day."

"This is something that I just feel was meant for me. I mean: I am a queen. It suits my personality, too because deep down inside, I am of course very effeminate."

"Put bluntly, right-leaning talk's audience is dying off. A recent profile of Limbaugh by Vanity Fair claimed that the average age of his listeners is 67 and rising. Fox's average viewer is said to be in their seventh decade. In a changing world, against a President catapulted to power with a staggering majority of the youth, they may (in the long term) turn out to be onto a losing bet."

"By taking LongPen instead of an airplane to this event, Conrad Black will save 1,764 lbs. of CO2 emissions," stated a LongPen poster. In reality, as a LongPen press release delicately put it, "legal complications" made it impossible for Black to appear in person."

""Late Sunday, three CIA agents brought me home. One drove my car; the other two carried me inside and laid me down on the couch. I was loopy from the drugs. They handed Jane the car keys and left without saying a word." The only conclusion she could draw was that her husband had gone out and gotten drunk. "Boy, was she mad," says Collins with a chuckle."

"No, it’s increasingly clear that socialism’s newfound popularity comes from the Mitch McConnells, John Boehners, Rush Limbaughs, Sean Hannitys, and Glenn Becks of the world, whose repeated invocations of the term have pushed a previously DOA political movement to new heights of popularity."

"When you arrive on Peleliu, it doesn’t take long to start spotting the remains of the war."

"The tweenbot, a cardboard-bodied, cheerful little bugger, is equipped with a flag stating its intended destination. Since it can only move forward, it depends on the kindness of strangers to guide it and remove obstacles."

"When Helmsley died in 2007 it was widely reported that she wanted her $8bn fortune spent only on canines. She was dubbed the "Queen of Mean" during a trial in 1989 for tax evasion. Manhattan probate court judge Troy Webber ruled that Helmsley's legal documents allowed the trustees to 'apply trust funds for such charitable purposes and in such amounts as they may, in their sole discretion, determine'"

"Plutonium-239 found inside a broken, rusty safe has been shown to be of historic significance: dating from December 1944 it is the very first weapons-grade plutonium refined at the site, or anywhere in the world. "

"We understand that the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, a civil rights icon and a dear friend of LGBT Americans, will close the inauguration ceremony. But would any inaugural committee say to Jewish Americans, "We're opening with an anti-Semite but closing the program with a rabbi, so don't worry"? "

"In a number of cases, the negative effect of the Civil Union Act on the physical and mental health of same-sex couples and their children is striking, largely because a number of employers and hospitals do not recognise the rights and benefits of marriage for civil union couples."

"They had printed T-shirts, mainly in bright yellow, and one would have been forgiven for thinking that Senator Obama was conducting a presidential campaign in Kenya."

"Kyle dodged and wheeled, and heard a cry: his brother, just behind him, had been struck. Next, someone clobbered Kyle, who drew a knife, but didn’t have a chance to use it. “I felt a pistol put to my head,” he said. Grazed by a bullet, he fell. When he rose, he drew his own pistol, hidden in his pocket. He spied his brother lying in the street. Someone else fired a shot, hitting Kyle in the arm. A man carrying a musket rushed at him. Another threw a brick, knocking him off his feet. George Kyle picked himself up and ran. He never did cast his vote."

Did watching the 2nd and 3rd debates give you a feeling of déjà vu? This montage of synced-up footage from all three presidential debates confirms our deep-seated belief that every debate was exactly the same.""

Vice Presidential Debate coverage rockrolled

"A self-congratulatory apparatus having a simulated human hand carried on a pivoting arm suspended form shoulder supported member. The hand is manually swingable into and out of contact with the user's back to give an amusing or an important pat-on-the-back."

"'It should be of no pride to American society to say they defend something like this,' President Ahmadinejad said."

"Screenshots of emails purportedly lifted from this account - which carries the address "gov.palin@yahoo.com" - were then passed to Wikileaks, and Wikileaks shared the stash with world+dog."

"Chuck, stand up, let the people see you," Biden shouted to [paraplegic] State Senator Chuck Graham, before realizing, to his horror, that Graham uses a wheelchair."

"A heart-warming tale of same-sex love and parenting among New York penguins has topped the list of books most complained about in American libraries for the second year running."

"unprecedented in raising more than $96,000 from nearly 6,000 people, many of whom do not live in Kansas. ... "There's no way I want to compete with that," says his opponent Republican State Rep. Arlen Siegfried.

"Rep Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) just pretended to be a Democrat. ... He then said, "I am a Democrat, and here is my energy plan" and he held up a picture of an old VW Bug with a sail attached to it. He paraded around the House floor with the sign while the crowd cheered."

"Unfortunately, high-speed communications and bold initiative do not always go hand in hand. With such an abundance of information available simultaneously at all levels, micromanagement can creep unnoticed into the chain of command and pull it apart."

"The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, se

"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at le

"Of the remaining 32 [of 37] states, 27 were completely, correctly predicted, or a success rate of 84.375%! That's certainly not bad, especially considering that no political knowledge was used for the predictions; they could be done completely by machine

"Average SAT (with margin of error) for the 100 most popular books on facebook."

"Viacom has put online the entire eight year archive of its top rating comedy series, Daily Show with Jon Stewart, in a move which will be closely watched by all the major networks, advertisers, telcos and the burgeoning new media video industry."

"In a recent office action, the USPTO has rejected the claims of the Amazon.com one-click patent following the re-examination request that I filed on 16 February 2006."

"...But the decay and death of old laws can be just as important, even when they're unobserved. The story of our obscenity laws highlights where, exactly, American laws go to die."

"Second, winning the Nobel Prize does not automatically qualify you to be commander in chief. I think George Bush has proved definitively that to be president, you don’t need to care about science, literature or peace."

"Other species, including monkeys, deer and elephants, have also been shown to use people as cover from predators. Wildlife Conservation Society biologist and study author, Dr Joel Berger, said moose mothers were "using human infrastructure as a shield"."

"Women own 28 percent of all non-farm businesses in the US, while minorities own 18 percent of such businesses. When it comes to TV and radio, though, Free Press found that these percentages plummet."

"Now we are creating a new fog of mythologies -- about a "dictator" who isn't one, about "appeasement" that is completely inapplicable, about nuclear weapons that don't exist, about a country that is "evil" -- that make it seem like we must do something."

"In a ruling released earlier today, a federal judge held that two sections of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act amended under the Patriot Act are unconstitutional."

After placing the bait, snipers observed the area around it, Captain Didier said in his statement. “If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item ... we would engage the individual, as I saw this as a sign that they would

"Lead researcher Dr Georg Northoff added: "Our results may thus be seen as the first step towards establishing a neurobiology of paedophilia which ultimately may contribute to the development of new and effective means of therapies for this debilitating d

"So, to conclude, just chill out a bit about the conspiracy, it’s kinda silly. Plus, again, what would be the point? It’s not a big deal to authorize a nuke mission. After 9/11 the entire Barksdale arsenal was loaded and on the flightline ready to fly

"After Meyer caused the disturbance, two officers who'd been standing to the side of the room moved closer to him, Antar said. At that point, Antar told me, Meyer began taunting the officers. "He turned to the cops and said, 'What, are you going to Taser

"Maybe he'll learn in the future that Freedom of speech doesn't mean you can just take over someone else's venue. UF lacks freedom of speech? Hardly, the video poster lacks understanding of the law. Next time kiddo, argue with the Judge not the cops!"

"The 21-year-old student can be heard screaming for help as the stun gun is administered."

"Field then continued, “If mothers ruled the world, there would be no –” But the Fox Emmycast cut off her sound and pointed the camera away from the stage, silencing the rest of her sentence: “god-damned wars in the first place.”"

"Two students at Central Kings Rural High School fought back against bullying recently, unleashing a sea of pink after a new student was harassed and threatened when he showed up wearing a pink shirt."

"Their goal is to invent a system whereby a facial image can be matched to your gait, your height, your weight and other elements, so a computer will be able to identify instantly who you are."

"On July 19, we became the first members of the media to set foot in the Google compound in The Dalles."

"The authorities are so concerned that a special regional 'cheese task force' has been set up to tackle the problem."

"America's 160th richest person, a billionaire who made his money from the 1990s hi-tech boom, has been accused of planning to build a "secret and convenient lair" underneath his California mansion dedicated to drug-taking and sex with prostitutes."

Free video clips from Comedy Central including The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.