Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, September 01, 2015.
OND is a regular
community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing near 12:00AM Eastern Time. Being a "community" style of diary, we strive to offer a supportive atmosphere for considerate offerings (and light debate) from all who participate.
Creation and early water-bearing of the OND concept came from our very own Magnifico - proper respect is due.
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This diary is named for its "Hump Point" video: Don't Wanna Fight by Alabama Shakes
News below Aunt Flossie's hairdo . . .
Please feel free to browse and add your own links, content or thoughts in the Comments section.
Any timestamps shown are relative to each publication.
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Top News |
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What can a president do to boost renewable energy? A lot
By Ben Adler
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When Hillary Clinton was asked in July whether she would ban fossil fuel extraction on public lands, she said, “not until we’ve got the alternatives in place.”
That may sound reasonable. If we do not have sufficient renewable energy generation capacity (and enough energy efficiency), then we cannot limit our production of fossil fuels, right? But she’s missing a key element here: Limiting the supply of fossil fuels is actually the route to expanded renewable deployment, since driving up the price of fossil fuels shifts consumers towards renewables. This is the economic rationale for cap-and-trade and carbon-tax systems.
. . .
A recent report by the Center for American Progress (CAP) found that leasing federal lands for solar, wind, and geothermal projects provides a better deal for taxpayers than fossil fuel leasing, as well as greater transparency and less negative environmental impact. Clinton vaguely nodded at this in July when she released her renewable energy platform, which promised to “expand renewable energy on public lands, federal buildings, and federally-funded infrastructure.” . .
Formalize the leasing process for renewable projects. . .
Identify more solar energy zones. . .
Develop community-based renewables on federal land.
Those are all steps a president could take unilaterally. A Republican-controlled Congress won’t cooperate on most legislative initiatives to encourage renewable energy development.
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Social media overtakes entertainment as favourite online activity
By Jasper Jackson
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. . .
Social media use – including time on sites such as Reddit or Gawker Media that are built on blog platforms – accounted for nearly 17% of all time online, up from 12.2% a year ago, according to research commissioned by the Internet Advertising Bureau.
Over the same period, the amount of time spent online on entertainment such as watching TV shows or YouTube videos and listening to music has almost halved from 22.1% to 12.4%.
The shift appears to be in part driven by people spending more time on their mobiles, as on desktops entertainment accounts for 18% of time online compared to just 8% on smartphones and tablets such as the iPad.
. . .
Though the amount of time spent consuming news on the web remains tiny – just two minutes and 15 seconds a day – the shift to mobile offers some encouragement for news organisations. News accounts for 4.4% of time spent on mobiles and tablets, compared to 2.2% of time on desktops.
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Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and others join to create royalty-free video codecs for all
By Xeni Jardin
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Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, Cisco, Intel, Netflix, and Amazon today launched a new consortium, the Alliance for Open Media (Twitter). The group plans to develop a new generation of royalty-free open source digital media formats, but creating a new, open video solution is the primary goal. The new formats would be used for commercial and noncommercial content.
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Peter Bright at Ars Technica:
The issue of patent licenses and royalties continues to plague the video industry. While H.264/AVC video had relatively cheap licensing, it looks as if its successor, H.265/HEVC, is going to be considerably more expensive. Organizations that derive significant income from patent royalties and IP licensing weren't happy with the low-cost model used for H.264, and so are pushing back. This is a great threat to open source and non-commercial streaming, which has no obvious way to pay the royalties. The HEVC royalty structure would even threaten the viability of commercial streamers such as Netflix.
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Guatemalan Congress strips president's immunity
By (Al Jazeera)
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. . .
The vote clears the way for prosecutors to charge Perez, a 64-year-old retired general, with running a scheme that allowed businesses to reduce their customs duty by paying bribes to corrupt officials.
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He had survived a similar vote last month - but that was before prosecutors and investigators from a special UN anti-graft commission had accused him of personally pulling the strings of the bribery ring.
Perez has repeatedly denied the allegations and rejected calls from the increasingly virulent protest movement for his resignation.
. . .
The leading candidate to replace him, Manuel Baldizon, had called for Congress to strip his immunity.
Baldizon leads right-wing party Renewed Democratic Liberty, the largest in Congress
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International |
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Canadian economy enters recession
By (BBC)
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Gross domestic product (GDP) fell by an annualised rate of 0.5% between April and June.
That follows a contraction of 0.8% in the first quarter, meaning the economy has seen two consecutive quarters of negative growth, the usual definition of recession.
. . .
The economy is expected to dominate the election debate.
The last time the country was in recession was during the financial crisis of 2008-09. As an oil exporting country, Canada has been hit by a fall in the price of the commodity.
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Nigeria to start using drones to fight oil theft
By (BBC)
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Nigeria is to deploy drones to monitor the movement of ships in an effort to curb the rampant oil theft in the country, the state oil firm says.
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Nigeria is Africa's biggest crude producer but its revenue is severely reduced by theft and attacks on oil pipelines.
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Oil generates around 70% of government revenues in Africa's biggest economy.
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Senior politicians and military officers are said to be involved in the illegal trade.
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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The Average Family Pays a Federal Income Tax Rate of 5%
By Kevin Drum
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. . . The median family in America earns about $65,000. That family, on average, pays a federal income tax rate of about 5 percent.
In other words, for the average voter this isn't about money. Even the hardest core tea partiers can't possibly be outraged at the prospect of paying 5 percent of their income to Uncle Sam. The plain truth is that middle-class tax cuts are becoming all but impossible these days: the average family no longer pays enough in taxes to even notice a small change up or down. And the trend over the past few decades has been nothing but down anyway.
And yet, taxes continue to be a potent message. Why? . . .
First, most people are bad at math. They may be paying about 5 percent of their income in federal taxes, but if you ask them, they'd probably guess it's more like 20 or 30 percent. Republicans have long complained that weekly withholding makes taxes invisible, and they have a point. But right now, that works in their favor.
Second, a lot of people are afraid that Democrats will raise their taxes. This prospect carries more punch than the prospect of a cut from Republicans.
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Welcome to the "Hump Point" of this OND.
News can be sobering and engrossing - at this point in the diary, an offering of brief escapism:
Random notes related to this video:
. . .
In a patterned orange-and-blue shawl, with triangular sparkly silver earrings and a plume of orange hair, she has an unsettling tendency to focus at a point just over my right shoulder. You can just about detect that she is partially blind in one eye, a result of the retinoblastoma treatment that scarred her as a baby. It’s the same cancer that killed her sister Jaime, who died in 1998, aged 13. Howard, now 26, was nine at the time. Her parents split up soon after and Howard was left to amuse herself in Athens, Alabama (population 20,000). She mostly stayed in her room, bored or angry. Then one day, she dragged her sister’s old guitar out the closet, and taught herself how to play.
Once she could play, Howard recruited her schoolmate Zac Cockrell and he became the bassist. Later, she started to hold jam sessions in her great-grandparents’ house, which is when Johnson and Fogg joined the group.
. . .
They released their first four-song self-titled EP in September 2011 and received a flood of requests from labels wanting to sign them. By November that year they’d been signed and their first full album, Boys & Girls, released in April 2012, became a Top 10 in six countries. Now their second album, Sound & Colour, has hit No 1 in the US as well as making Top 10 lists around the globe.
. . .
New single “Don’t Wanna Fight” is about that time. The track starts with a warbled scream from Howard, before breaking into a retro rock’n’roll groove. It’s about “when you’re working to get ahead but you can’t because every time you try, someone gonna take it from you,” she says. “Like when I used to work and I was going to school and paying my utility bills and you end up with not enough at the end of the day but you go to work anyway and there’s still not enough and lots of people live that way.”
Back to what's happening:
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Environment and Greening |
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Dutch government to appeal against carbon emissions ruling
By (Reuters via theguardian.com)
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The Dutch government will appeal against a district court ruling ordering it to cut emissions of greenhouse gases faster than currently planned, in a politically sensitive case that is being closely watched by policy-makers abroad.
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The Netherlands, a laggard among developed countries in cutting emissions after reducing spending on alternative energy during the financial crisis, used record amounts of coal in the first five months of this year.
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Not many developed countries are on track in making deep cuts such as those as demanded by the court, which were based on scenarios by the UN panel of climate scientists in 2007 for limiting rising temperatures.
The European Union is targeting reductions of at least 20% by 2020 from 1990 levels, while the United States is aiming for about a 4% cut.
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Want your energy efficiency program to succeed? Aim it at poor people
By Heather Smith
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So, say you are a government, and you want to persuade people to conserve electricity — because using less energy is one of the easiest ways out there to fight climate change. You could institute something like a carbon tax, but that’s not going to happen in the U.S. Instead, you come up with a plan that’s a total crowd pleaser: Everyone who manages to reduce their electrical bill by 20 percent compared to the previous year will get an additional 20 percent off from the savings they just earned by consuming less. . .
This program actually happened, in California, in 2005, although it was designed to help with the state’s energy crisis, rather than to cut carbon emissions. It was called the 20/20 program, and it was popular — both with people who got discount power that summer and with scientists, because it provided a really good data set.
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Ito found that, in more temperate and affluent coastal California, the incentive program had no effect. But in the valleys inland, where the summers are like a blast furnace and where a friend of mine once spent a reporting internship being sent to interview people about how hot it was (“Really hot,” was the typical answer), people actually buckled down and used less energy. They were the ideal target for conservation incentives, even if no one was aiming at them specifically.
. . .
Ito recommends that future programs target lower-income customers directly, particularly in areas with hot summers. In areas where smart meters are installed, energy conservation could be pinpointed even harder, so that people could get incentives for going low-tech and sweating it out during peak consumption hours. Maybe energy consumption could be gamified and people could compete with their friends and neighbors.
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Science and Health |
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How Come Some People Believe in the Paranormal?
By Sander van der Linden
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. . . The human mind is a curious one. Although it is well-known that children have a lively imagination, what about adults? You might be surprised to learn that a recent national poll found that over 71% of Americans believe in “miracles”, 42% of Americans believe that “ghosts” exist, 41% think that “extrasensory perception” (e.g., telepathy) is possible and 29% believe in astrology.
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You might ask: Why kill the magic? Not everything needs to be explained by science. Yet misinformation of this kind can be harmful. For example, in a recent study, I found that merely exposing people to a 2-minute conspiracy video clip significantly decreases acceptance of science, civic engagement, and overall pro-social inclinations. I call this the “conspiracy-effect”. Although I did not measure cognitive style, non-reflective thinkers may be especially vulnerable to such misinformation. Similarly, the French research team notes that non-reflective individuals may be vulnerable to scams. Indeed, millions of dollars are made every year by people who (falsely) claim that they can read your mind or talk to deceased family members.
Is there any way to protect people from falling prey to such magical thinking? There is some evidence. Research has suggested that these type of intuitive beliefs often interact with emotional processes. Accordingly, a recent study showed that priming people to think more reflectively reduces tendencies to engage in, for example, conspiratorial thinking. It is important to note, however, that neither “intuitive” nor “reflective” thinking alone is always better, as both thinking styles often work together. For example, when overwhelmed by a large number of competing choice options, relying on an instinctive gut feeling can be useful (the “less is more” effect). The real trick is figuring out when to rely a little more on your gut feelings and when to draw a little more on your analytical powers. Although our intuition serves us well in some cases, we may all benefit from a little more reflective thinking before we decide to accept uncanny explanations about the nature of reality.
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The more the merrier for animals that synchronize their behavior
By (ScienceDaily)
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"At least in mice, and perhaps in other animals, this study shows quite dramatic synchrony amongst groups of animals that can only be explained by social interactions," said University at Buffalo psychologist Matthew Paul, lead author of the study with Premananda Indic and William Schwartz of the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
All animals have daily rhythms, sometimes called circadian rhythms, a term derived from Latin, meaning "around a day." At one time these rhythms were thought to be generated by a direct response to the daily cycle of lightness and darkness. But even without light or other external cues, most animals still have a 24-hour rhythm.
. . .
Paul says one possible rule is that social synchronization requires larger numbers of animals, and the likelihood of synchronization increases as the size of the group increases.
. . .
"This experiment suggests that living in groups can affect our rhythms, but we still need to know more." said Paul "In order to remove external cues we did this experiment in constant darkness, an environment that mice prefer."
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Completely paralyzed man voluntarily moves his legs, scientists report
By (ScienceDaily)
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A 39-year-old man who had had been completely paralyzed for four years was able to voluntarily control his leg muscles and take thousands of steps in a "robotic exoskeleton" device during five days of training -- and for two weeks afterward -- a team of UCLA scientists reports this week.
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The new approach combines a battery-powered wearable bionic suit that enables people to move their legs in a step-like fashion, with a noninvasive procedure that the same researchers had previously used to enable five men who had been completely paralyzed to move their legs in a rhythmic motion. That earlier achievement is believed to be the first time people who are completely paralyzed have been able to relearn voluntary leg movements without surgery. (The researchers do not describe the achievement as "walking" because no one who is completely paralyzed has independently walked in the absence of the robotic device and electrical stimulation of the spinal cord.)
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The data showed that Pollock was actively flexing his left knee and raising his left leg and that during and after the electrical stimulation, he was able to voluntarily assist the robot during stepping; it wasn't just the robotic device doing the work.
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Are Arguments about GMO Safety Really About Something Else?
By Gregory E. Kaebnick
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The scientific consensus that food containing genetically modified organisms is safe seems ever stronger, yet the social controversy about GMOs seems only to grow as well. “Unhealthy Fixation,” a long article published this summer in Slate and reporting on what author Will Saletan says was close to a year’s worth of research, argues very strongly that GMOs are generally safe for human consumption and that GMOs designed to be insect resistant are good for the environment because they reduce the use of insecticides. (GMOs designed to be herbicide tolerant lead to increased use of herbicides, however, raising environmental and public health concerns.) The essay reminded me of a series of essays by Nathanael Johnson, published in 2013 and 2014 in Grist, that found — to Johnson’s own surprise — that GMOs are safe and that their environmental impact is probably mixed.
Saletan also claims that many of the opponents of GMOs are basically uninterested in whether the research on GMOs shows them to be safe; instead of basing their position on the research, they use and misuse the research in whatever ways they can to advance their position. The tagline for Saletan’s article: “The war against genetically modified organisms is full of fearmongering, errors, and fraud.” Greenpeace comes out particularly badly in Saletan’s reportage. Time and time again, Saletan finds, it ignored research that suggested GMOs are safe and misleadingly deployed other research to argue that they’re dangerous.
. . .
In fact, while some kinds of GMOs — those modified to tolerate herbicides — tend to lead to industrialized farming practices, others — those modified to resist insect pests or to produce higher levels of nutrients — do not lend themselves to industrialization any more than conventional crops do. Nor are they unique in being the product of human design, since many plants are the result of extensive breeding. They are distinctive only with respect to the science and technology involved in producing them. (I happily eat GMOs, but in my garden, I stick to heirlooms grown without pesticides. However, I will award a small prize, equivalent to the price of a seed package, to the scientist who develops a delicata squash that is impervious to the squash stem borer.)
. . .
I still want the data to be the data and the objections to be articulated separately and as clearly and straightforwardly as possible — even if that means one is trying to articulate something that is almost inherently not clear or straightforward. But the possibility that the objections might have these other sources also means that a take-down of their arguments about safety is less clear and straightforward. It seems likely to me that the people at Greenpeace are not simply duplicitous, and that there should be some way of taking on board and weighing the more complicated concerns that might underlie the claims about safety. Another of the founding ideas for cost-benefit analysis is that it can provide a more reliable way of representing the public’s true interests: the point of providing an objective analysis is precisely that it cannot be skewed by powerful players. The trick, in a way, is to figure out how to bring together these two founding ideas together — to aim for objectivity while aiming to reflect the public’s true interests.
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Technology |
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Google's Logo Killed Serifs Because Serifs Had It Coming
By Alissa Walker
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Google debuted a serif-free logo today—the first real change to its logo since 1999. And although it’s much prettier than the 16-year-old wordmark, the company claimed it was more about functionality than looks: The Google logo has become more and more problematic throughout its existence, and it had everything to do with those serifs.
First, a quick primer on serifs: The text you’re reading right here, has serifs, the tiny decorative lines attached to the edges of many of the letters. They help your eyes with readability when you’ve got a lot of text. But serifs are not as useful on text that needs to be shown at many different sizes, like, um, logos. . .
This helps us make the design pixel perfect everywhere it’s used, and it allows us to optimize these assets for size and latency, including building a special variant of our full-color logo that is only 305 bytes, compared to our existing logo at ~14,000 bytes. The old logo, with its intricate serifs and larger file size, required that we serve a text-based approximation of the logo for low bandwidth connections. The new logo’s reduced file size avoids this workaround and the consistency has tremendous impact when you consider our goal of making Google more accessible and useful to users around the world, including the next billion.
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But Vinh doesn’t think serifs will ever be completely gone. “Serifs are sort of like men’s neckties. Movies have long predicted their demise because in the future everything would be about efficiency,” says Vinh. “But they never go away, because they remind us that we’re human.”
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Vice News fixer 'charged over encryption software'
By (Al Jazeera)
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Two UK journalists, Jake Hanrahan and Philip Pendlebury, along with their Turkey-based Iraqi fixer and a driver, were arrested on Thursday in Diyarbakir while filming clashes between security forces and youth members of the outlawed and armed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
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The Turkish official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Al Jazeera: "The main issue seems to be that the fixer uses a complex encryption system on his personal computer that a lot of ISIL militants also utilise for strategic communications."
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"These people have obviously been in contact with YDG-H members (the youth wing of the PKK) because of their jobs, because they are covering stories. This might not have been welcomed by the security forces."
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In response to the charges, Kevin Sutcliffe, Vice head of news programming for Europe, said on Monday that the judge "has levelled baseless and alarmingly false charges of 'working on behalf of a terrorist organisation' against three VICE News reporters, in an attempt to intimidate and censor their coverage.
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Cultural |
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Life in the comfort zone: From pipes to smartphones
By Peter Day
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A north London pub I cycle past on the way to work almost every day has an Elizabethan-era panelled upper room from the 16th Century, where (it is said) the great explorer Sir Walter Raleigh used to smoke pipes of the tobacco he brought back from his travels in the New World.
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Enter the age of mass production in the beginning of the 20th Century. Machine-made cigarettes made the comfort of tobacco cheaper and more accessible than ever. Smoking, always a bonding activity, became even more so as people took breaks to exchange smokes.
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Like the social cigarette, the phone links its obsessed user with others - not close at hand now, but the online community everywhere. The new nervous tic, the need to be connected at all the hours of the day.
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After all, beer sales in South Africa are said to have dropped when cheap mobile phones swept the country 15 years or so ago. Instead of going out to drown their sorrows, migrant workers phoned home to the village they had left behind in moving to the townships.
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It's an entrancing story, this long line of human psychological and social development. Trace it back, if you like, to the Sumerian farmer sucking on a blade of wheat at the very beginnings of agriculture and civilisation 5,000 years ago. Then the pipe, the hat, the cigarette, bottled water morphing into the smartphone - and then what?
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Indian Kumbh Mela festival bans selfies due to stampede fears
By (BBC)
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A "no selfie zone" will be implemented at a major Hindu festival in India due to fears they could cause stampedes.
The ban is being imposed at the Kumbh Mela, a pilgrimage that has attracted nearly three million people since July.
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Organisers say they conducted a study that showed people took too long taking selfies. This slows down the flow of people, leading to pushing and panic.
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"Since 13 July, our volunteers on the field have been collecting data which showed that people stop to take selfies. They also climb to dangerous spots to take selfies," Kumbhathon CEO Sandip Shinde told the Indian Express.
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Meteor Blades is known to offer an enlightening Evening Open Diary - you might consider checking that out tonight if you haven't already. |