Feeding America + Iran protests and Uub

Blog topic status: Dry.

Maybe I should consider an essay or editorial for later today. But until then, it’s Magnanimous Monday.

Today’s Magnanimous Monday has a corporate sponsor: Microsoft.

In an effort to get Internet Explorer usage up, Microsoft is taking a page from the Bill Gates handbook of restoring your reputation and donating “8 meals” to food banks for every download of Internet Explorer 8 made between now and August 8, 2008. Here’s the fine print:

Only complete downloads of Windows^® Internet Explorer^® 8 through browserforthebetter.com from June 8, 2009 through August 8, 2009 qualify for the charitable donation to Feeding America^®. Microsoft^® is donating $1.15 per download to Feeding America^® up to a maximum of $1,000,000. Meals are used for illustrative purposes only. Meal conversion is effective until June 30th, 2010.

Feeding America’s mission is to feed America’s hungry through a nationwide network of member food banks and engage our country in the fight to end hunger. For more information, please contact Feeding America at 35 E. Wacker, Suite 2000, Chicago, IL 60601 or visit www.feedingamerica.org

…Okay, so the fine print actually makes Microsoft look like a bunch of douchegas. They cut it off at $1 million? Really? Listen, if you don’t like Internet Explorer, you can donate at least $1.15 or a can of beans to Feeding America and do as much good without downloading their shitty, shitty browser. But if you’re going to get IE8 anyway, you might as well get the suits behind the PCs to shell out a buck-fifteen.

Of course, the real reason IE8 is going to lose to Firefox 3.1, is that you can't make furry fanart with the IE logo.

More on Feeding America, the true focus on today’s Magnanimous Monday.

Feeding America is the nation’s leading domestic hunger-relief charity.  Our mission is to feed America’s hungry through a nationwide network of member food banks and engage our country in the fight to end hunger.

Each year, the Feeding America network provides food assistance to more than 25 million low-income people facing hunger in the United States, including more than 9 million children and nearly 3 million seniors.

Our network of more than 200 food banks serves all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.The Feeding America network secures and distributes more than 2 billion pounds of donated food and grocery products annually.

The Feeding America network supports approximately 63,000 local charitable agencies that distribute food directly to Americans in need. Those agencies operate more than 70,000 programs including food pantries, soup kitchens, emergency shelters, after-school programs, Kids Cafes and BackPack Programs.

Learn more about your local Feeding America network member food bank.

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News Follow-Up

The Ayatollah Khamenei has ordered the Guardian Council to look into charges of election fraud. Whether or not this will lead to a fair tally of the votes or a new election remains to be say. But, I must say that I am impressed by the reformists in Iran..they are really putting the screws to the establishment. Pictures of protests from Boston.com:

On Monday, June 15, 2009, Iranian opposition demonstrators protest in support of defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, in Tehran. Opposition supporters defied a ban to stage a mass rally in Tehran in protest at President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's landslide election win, as Iran faced a growing international backlash over the validity of the election and the subsequent crackdown on opposition protests. (BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images)

A backer of Mir Hossein Mousavi helps evacuate an injured riot-police officer during riots in Tehran on June 13, 2009. (OLIVIER LABAN-MATTEI/AFP/Getty Images)

A supporter of defeated presidential candidate Mousavi is beaten by government security men as fellow supporters come to his aid during riots in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, June 14, 2009. (AP Photo)

Protest is a good thing, but the violence is unsettling. I hope the movement becomes more diplomatic and less people get hurt as a result of the push for change. Though I acknowledge that sometimes you’ve got to take to the streets. Best of luck, Iran.

Oh, and speaking of protests…

Protests in the United States are considered “low-level terrorism.”

Quoted from Josh Richman and Lisa Vorderbrueggen’s blog:

Antiterrorism training materials used by the Department of Defense teach that public protests should be regarded as “low-level terrorism,” according to a letter of complaint sent to the department by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.

Web-based instruction — the department asks the following: “Which of the following is an example of low-level terrorist activity?” To answer correctly, the examinee must select “protests.” The ACLU wants that changed immediately, and it wants corrective information sent to all Department of Defense employees who received the training.The ACLU letter notes that this is particularly disturbing in light of the long-term pattern of government treating lawful dissent as terrorism. In the Bay Area, my colleagues and I reported exactly this in 2003, as the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center fed local police agencies information on protests, with catastrophic results. Two years after that, it was the California National Guard.

I guess I’m surprised not only that the government hasn’t yet learned its lesson about equating the exercise of our cherished constitutional rights with terrorism, but also that it’s so incredibly obvious in doing so.

So how long before we have to be rioting?

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She blinded me with Science…

Scientists have finally added the 112th element to the periodic table, a decade after its synthesis. The element is called Ununbium and is currently causing someone to rewrite the lyric to the periodic table song.

Wait, a second…Uub?

Some chemist out there is a Dragonball fan...

In other news, further research that breastfeeding your kid is good for it.

Breastfed babies seem more likely to do well at high school and to go on to attend college than infants raised on a bottle, according to a new U.S. study.Professors Joseph Sabia from the American University and Daniel Rees from the University of Colorado Denver based their research on 126 children from 59 families, comparing siblings who were breastfed as infants to others who were not.

By comparing siblings, the study was able to account for the influence of a variety of difficult-to-measure factors such as maternal intelligence and the quality of the home environment.

The study, published in the Journal of Human Capital, found that an additional month of breastfeeding was associated with an increase in high school grade point averages of 0.019 points and an increase in the probability of college attendance of 0.014.

Additional specious research also shows that that babies who don’t get breastfed have an increased risk of turning out like this:

That’s all the news I have for today. I guess today was productive for the blog after all.

Quote of the Day

“It may well be that our means are fairly limited and our possibilities restricted when it comes to applying pressure on our government. But is this a reason to do nothing? Despair is nor an answer. Neither is resignation. Resignation only leads to indifference, which is not merely a sin but a punishment” – Elie Wiesel