The Gattaca Reality - Genetically Modified...Children? (update)

This is an update to:

genetically modified...children? - 07.20.2012
http://globalistnews.blogspot.com/2014/09/genetically-modifiedchildren-07202012.html

If you have not seen this film, you really should check it out.



The World’s First Genetically Modified Babies Will Graduate High School This Year
Posted 7 hours ago by Sarah Buhr (@sarahbuhr)



Remember the sci-fi thriller GATTACA? For those who never saw the film and/or eschewed all pop culture in the late 90’s for some reason, it was a popular movie that came out in 1997 about genetically modified human beings. Now some literally genetically modified human babies born that same year are entering their senior year of high school.

more here:
http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/28/the-worlds-first-genetically-modified-babies-will-graduate-high-school-this-year/

Days of Noah, people...
Days of Noah.

genetically modified...children? - 07.20.2012

World’s First Genetically-Modified Babies Born, Or Were They?
by Rebecca Taylor | London, England | LifeNews.com | 7/2/12 12:30 PM

Many people are talking about Michael Hanlon’s piece in the Daily Mail about the first genetically modified babies being born. I want to discuss it because everything is not exactly how it seems.

Hanlon’s undated piece discusses a technique IVF doctors have used to “rejuvenate” an infertile woman’s eggs by injecting the cytoplasm of another woman’s healthy egg. Factors inside the cytoplasm help the infertile woman’s egg in fertilization. When doctors injected the cytoplasm of the healthy egg, it contained mitochondria from the donor egg. Those mitochondria have DNA from the woman who donated that egg. So the after that hybrid egg is fertilized, the resulting embryo has the DNA from 1 man, and 2 women. A genetic modification that any girl would pass onto her offspring since mitochondria are inherited from the mother only. The Daily Mail article reads:

The world’s first genetically modified humans have been created, it was revealed last night.

The disclosure that 30 healthy babies were born after a series of experiments in the United States provoked another furious debate about ethics.

So far, two of the babies have been tested and have been found to contain genes from three ‘parents’.

Fifteen of the children were born in the past three years as a result of one experimental programme at the Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Science of St Barnabas in New Jersey.

The babies were born to women who had problems conceiving. Extra genes from a female donor were inserted into their eggs before they were fertilised in an attempt to enable them to conceive.

Genetic fingerprint tests on two one-year- old children confirm that they have inherited DNA from three adults –two women and one man.

The fact that the children have inherited the extra genes and incorporated them into their ‘germline’ means that they will, in turn, be able to pass them on to their own offspring.

Altering the human germline – in effect tinkering with the very make-up of our species – is a technique shunned by the vast majority of the world’s scientists.

Geneticists fear that one day this method could be used to create new races of humans with extra, desired characteristics such as strength or high intelligence.

Writing in the journal Human Reproduction, the researchers, led by fertility pioneer Professor Jacques Cohen, say that this ‘is the first case of human germline genetic modification resulting in normal healthy children’.

A couple of readers have e-mailed this article to me so I went to the journal of Human Reproduction looking for the latest issue and found nothing from Jacques Cohen. I then found that Dr. Cohen is the Laboratory Director at ART Institute of Washington at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Apparently he left Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Science of St Barnabas and works for a U.S. military hospital. (A fact that I find very disturbing.)

I scratched my head for a minute and dug deeper and think I have found the original paper. It was from 2001, not 2012. The technique is called “cytoplasmic transfer.” I did not start blogging until 2005, so I had no idea that this genetic engineering of embryos took place. I then found an in depth report in the Washington Monthly on the issue. Sharon Brownlee explains how the technique raised concerns at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and it seems they put a stop to cytoplasmic transfer in the United States:

In the mid-1990s, embryologist Jacques Cohen pioneered a promising new technique for helping infertile women have children. His technique, known as cytoplasmic transfer, was intended to “rescue” the eggs of infertile women who had undergone repeated, unsuccessful attempts at in vitro fertilization, or IVF. It involved injecting the cytoplasm found inside the eggs of a fertile donor, into the patient’s eggs.

When the first baby conceived through cytoplasmic transfer was born in 1997, the press instantly hailed Cohen’s technique as yet another technological miracle. But four years later, the real story has proven somewhat more complicated. Last year, Cohen and his colleagues at the Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Science of St. Barnabas, a New Jersey fertility clinic, set off alarm bells among bioethicists with the publication of a paper detailing the genetic condition of two the 17 cytoplasmic-transfer babies born through the clinic to date. The embryologists reported that they had endowed the children with extra bits of a special type of genetic material, known as mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA, which came with the cytoplasm transferred from the donor eggs to the patient’s.

Just how normal those children will turn out to be is anybody’s guess. At a recent meeting in Europe, the New Jersey researchers reported that one of the children conceived through cytoplasmic transfer has been diagnosed with “pervasive developmental disorder,” a catch-all term for symptoms that range from mild delays in speech to autism. Cohen’s group maintained that it is extremely unlikely that cytoplasmic transfer and the resulting mishmash of mtDNA is to blame.

But geneticists have only begun to trace the connections between mtDNA and a host of diseases ranging from strange metabolic ailments to diabetes and Lou Gehrig’s disease, and some experts argued that the child’s disorder may well be caused by a mismatch between the donor and mother’s mtDNA. As Jim Cummins, a molecular biologist at Murdoch University in Western Australia, put it: “To deliberately create individuals with multiple mitochondrial genotypes without knowing the consequences is really a step into the dark.”

Since 1998, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has argued that genetically manipulated embryos are a “biological product,” and therefore subject to regulation, just like medical devices and drugs. But because of a quirk in federal law, the FDA’s authority in this sphere is far from certain.

Last summer, FDA sent warning letters to six fertility centers threatening “enforcement action,” and asserting its regulatory power over “therapy involving the transfer of genetic material by means other than the union of [sperm and egg.]” Cohen’s clinic at St. Barnabas chose to stop performing cytoplasmic transfer. But at least two other recipients scoffed at the agency’s threat: Panos Zavos, an embryologist at a Kentucky fertility clinic, and Brigitte Boisselier, the scientific director of Clonaid, the clinic set up by a group known as the Raelians, who believes human beings were genetically engineered by aliens. Both have announced their intentions to clone a human being.

Both also disputed the FDA’s authority, and several bioethicists and legal scholars had to agree that the FDA could not prevent them from tinkering with human bioengineering. “It’s a stretch for the FDA,” says R. Alta Charo, a legal scholar and bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin, and former member of President Bill Clinton’s Bioethics Advisory Committee.

So the children born using cytoplasmic transfer are indeed “genetically modified” but this is not a new development as the Daily Mail report suggests. Since it is not dated, I think the article came out in 2001 but is just making the rounds of the Internet now. So while still unethical, this is not a new technology that will be taking off as the new rage in infertility treatments.

In fact, I could not find any information on who offers this technique or where. When asked, in 2009, where cytoplasmic transfer is legal, Dr. John David Gordon, the Co-Director of Dominion Fertility at The George Washington University and an expert that has been answering questions on high tech IVF for more than ten years, replied, “I honestly have no idea…”

We should still be concerned, since there are questions about the FDA’s authority to regulate the fertility industry in this regard. Which means it is even more critical that the United States join a host of other countries that have legally banned any germ-line genetic modifications and cloning in humans.

As the case of cytoplasmic transfer shows, scientists and doctors in the fertility industry will do anything that they are allowed to by law, even genetically modify embryos without real evidence that it is safe.

http://www.lifenews.com/2012/07/02/worlds-first-genetically-modified-babies-born-or-were-they/

------------------------------

July 6, 2012, 4:19 p.m. ET
The Making of Americans

By CHARLES C. MANN

In May, the Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes planted himself in the media spotlight, announcing a project to hunt for the yeti—the "abominable snowman." Not by trekking into the Himalayas, its rumored home, but by persuading people who claimed to have samples of the beast (hair, skin, blood and so on) to mail them to his laboratory for genetic analysis. If the DNA in the samples didn't match that from any known species, Bigfoot would be declared real. Genetics, Mr. Sykes argued, would settle the dispute over such "cryptic species" once and for all. "Using genetic analysis is entirely objective," he told LiveScience.com. "It can't be falsified."

Mr. Sykes is no stranger to the public eye. A "globe-trotting genetic gumshoe" (Wired), he not only became, in 1994, the first researcher to extract DNA from ancient remains—a 5,000-year-old body found intact in an Austrian glacier—but linked it to a modern descendant living in Dorset, England. A year later, he confirmed that recently exhumed Russian bones had belonged to Czar Nicholas II and his family, murdered in the Russian Revolution.

Most notably, perhaps, he formed Oxford Ancestors, the first commercial enterprise to sell personal genetic analyses, in 2001. That same year, he published "The Seven Daughters of Eve," a best seller that argued from genetic evidence that almost all modern Europeans are descended from just seven women—"Ursula," for instance, who lived in Greece about 45,000 years ago, and "Velda," a resident of northern Spain about 17,000 years ago.

Mr. Sykes's latest foray into hereditary history, "DNA USA," is an attempt to provide "a genetic portrait of America" similar to the representation of Europe in "Seven Daughters"—a project that is all but doomed from the start because of Americans' uniquely tangled genealogy.

Most of Mr. Sykes's work is based not on regular DNA, which is found in the nucleus of a cell, but on another type, contained in small bodies called "mitochondria" that float around by the thousand in the goo between the nucleus and the outer cell membrane. Scientists like mitochondrial DNA because it is plentiful and simple—it contains about 16,000 "bases" (the subunits out of which DNA is constructed), as opposed to the three billion bases in nuclear DNA. Happily for geneticists, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is usually transmitted unaltered from mother to daughter.

more here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303703004577476694090204480.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

What happened to Gold? - 09.12.2014

Remember this guy:


CFR Board Member - Fareed Zakaria

Yeah, he told you gold was risky, then the price dropped, and it' still dropping.



UPDATE:

Gold Falls to Eight-Month Low Amid Signs of U.S. Growth
By Luzi Ann Javier  Sep 12, 2014 10:07 AM CT

Gold futures fell to the lowest in eight months as improving U.S. economic growth curbed demand for the metal as a haven asset.

Bullion has fallen 7 percent since June, heading for its first quarterly loss this year, amid signs that the U.S. recovery has regained its footing. Sales (RSTAMOM) at American retailers climbed in August at the fastest pace in four months, while consumer sentiment in September rose above the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists, reports showed today.

Investor interest that pushed prices as much as 16 percent higher this year is waning as economic expansion bolsters the case for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates, cutting the appeal of the metal as a hedge against inflation. Money mangers pared their bullish wagers on the metal for three straight weeks, while open interest in New York futures and options is near the lowest in five years.

“The hypothesis that the Fed is likely going to signal an increasingly probability of a hike is very telling,” Bart Melek, the head of commodity strategy at TD Securities in Toronto, said in a telephone interview. “Gold is not doing well.”

Bullion futures for December delivery fell 0.8 percent to $1,229.30 an ounce at 10:59 a.m. on the Comex in New York, after touching $1,228.60, the lowest for a most-active contract since Jan. 10. Prices have gained 2.3 percent in 2014.

Gold tumbled 28 percent last year, the most in three decades. The Fed reduced monthly bond purchases to $25 billion on July 30, the sixth cut of $10 billion since November. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts have forecast prices will touch $1,050 in 12 months as the U.S. economy improves.

Fed policy makers will meet Sept. 16-17. Research this week from the Fed Bank of San Francisco suggested investors may be underestimating how quickly policy makers could raise rates.

Silver futures for delivery in December fell 0.3 percent to $18.54 an ounce, after dropping to $18.455, the lowest since June 2013.

here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-12/gold-extends-drop-with-silver-as-platinum-sinks-to-7-month-low.html

Looks like those who listened to Ron Paul and bought Gold just lost even more money,



more here:

gold, predictions, and the real agenda - 2013 - 12.31.2013
http://globalistnews.blogspot.com/2014/03/gold-predictions-and-real-agenda-2013.html

Affordable Care Act "Obamacare" Update - 09.12.2014

Do you remember this?

"Affordable Care Act, why lie about it?"
http://globalistnews.blogspot.com/2014/02/affordable-car-act-why-lie-about-it.html

Well, here's an update:

1 HR AGO / THE DAILY SHOW
'The Daily Show' Unsuccessfully Attempts to Find the Bad in Obamacare
KEVIN O'KEEFFE



Obamacare has been a lightning rod for controversy since its conception, but as time has gone on, criticism is faded. Recent polls have shown that fewer and fewer Americans support repealing the health care law. What's a hater to do now that bashing on Obamacare is out of vogue?

The Daily Show correspondent Jordan Klepper tried his best on last night's show to find some silver lining of terror – but was incredibly unsuccessful. First, he tried to talk to Betsy McCaughey – the woman who coined the term "death panel" and had her own tough appearance on The Daily Show five years ago. But she wasn't having it, ripping off her mic and leaving after the first question.

He then talked to a nurse who lost her job because of Obamacare, the perfect bit of bad news. Except she was thrilled to lose her job, because her patients could now afford health care. Her free clinic was even shut down! ... Which is actually a good thing.

"No sad hugs," the nurse told Klepper as he tried to drum up drama. "We're happy."

With that experiment failed, Klepper moved on to patients who have personally used Obamacare – and ran into a dead end of satisfaction once again.

"They were giving me nothing, obviously biased by their personal positive experiences," Klepper said.

Watch the full clip of Klepper trying to turn lemonade back into lemons below.

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,Daily Show Video Archive

found here:
http://www.thewire.com/entertainment/2014/09/the-daily-show-unsuccessfully-attempts-to-find-the-bad-in-obamacare/380105/

Apple Pay, another step towards Cashless Society

Apple just debuted the the next step towards The Mark, at least their implementation of it.

I've mentioned before in the past that Apple will be the company to push technology into the Future.

===============================================

How Apple Is Invading Our Bodies



Lev Grossman @leverus  Matt Vella @mattvella  1:33 PM ET

The Silicon Valley giant has redrawn the line that separates our technology and ourselves. That may not be a good thing

With the unveiling of the Apple Watch Tuesday in Cupertino, California, Apple is attempting to put technology somewhere where it’s never been particularly welcome. Like a pushy date, the Apple Watch wants to get intimate with us in a way we’re not entirely used to or prepared for. This isn’t just a new product, this is technology attempting to colonize our bodies.

The Apple Watch is very personal—“personal” and “intimate” were words that Apple CEO Tim Cook and his colleagues used over and over again when presenting it to the public for the first time. That’s where the watch is likely to change things, because it does something computers aren’t generally supposed to: it lives on your body. It perches on your wrist, like one of Cinderella’s helpful bluebirds. It gets closer than we’re used technology getting. It gets inside your personal bubble. We’re used to technology being safely Other, but the Apple Watch wants to snuggle up and become part of your Self.

This is new, and slightly unnerving. When technologies get adopted as fast as we tend to adopt Apple’s products, there are always unintended consequences. When the iPhone came out it was praised to the skies as a design and engineering marvel, because it is one, but no one really understood what it would be like to have it in our lives. Nobody anticipated the way iPhones exert a constant gravitational tug on our attention. Do I have e-mail? What’s happening on Twitter? Could I get away with playing Tiny Wings at this meeting? When you’re carrying a smartphone, your attention is never entirely undivided.

The reality of living with an iPhone, or any smart, connected device, is that it makes reality feel just that little bit less real. One gets over-connected, to the point where the thoughts and opinions of distant anonymous strangers start to feel more urgent than those of your loved ones who are in the same room as you. One forgets how to be alone and undistracted. Ironically enough experiences don’t feel fully real till you’ve used your phone to make them virtual—tweeted them or tumbled them or Instagrammed them or YouTubed them, and the world has congratulated you for doing so. Smartphones create needs we never had before, and were probably better off without.

read more here:
http://time.com/3318655/apple-watch-2/



===============================================

WILL APPLE PAY CONVINCE YOU TO LEAVE YOUR WALLET AT HOME?


Eddy Cue, Apple Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services, discusses the new Apple Pay product. // Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP

Apple announced its mobile payment service — called Apple Pay — Tuesday, effectively sending shivers down the metaphorical spines of competitors like Coin, Google Wallet, and Softcard.

But what is Apple Pay? Apple's Eddy Cue pretty much covered it during the (painfully) slow intro video: Instead of wasting your precious time rummaging around for your credit card, why not use your phone — which probably never leaves your hand — to digitally pay with a single tap instead?

Apple Pay, though, isn't the first service to command your credit cards. Here's how it stacks up against other wallet eradicators.

Apple Pay

What It Does: By using NFC (near-field communication) technology, the service will store credit cards (Visa, Mastercard, and American Express) and encrypt each transaction made at participating stores using receivers for devices with Apple Pay.

Why It's Cool: It eliminates the wallet and will certainly speed up the process — even if the process doesn't take that long in the first place. Either way, it takes away the middleman at a slew of stores already, including Subway, Disney, Walgreens, Macy's, Sephora, and more.

Why It's Not So Cool: Three major questions remain: A) Do we really need it? B) When your phone runs out of battery, will you end up needing your physical cards anyway? and C) Do we want to put all our credit card information into one device, given privacy concerns running rampant already over services like the iCloud? Tim Cook says it's all the more reason you'll need Apple Pay: "We're totally reliant on the exposed numbers, and the outdated and vulnerable magnetic interface — which by the way is five decades old — and the security codes which all of us know aren't secure," he said on stage, showing off the Touch ID confirmation feature required to carry out a transaction.

the alternatives and more, here:
http://www.nextgov.com/mobile/2014/09/will-apple-pay-convince-you-leave-your-wallet-home/93671/

===============================================

Cashless Society Update:

5 reasons Apple is poised to finally usher in a cashless society
BY TRICIA DURYEE on September 8, 2014 at 4:54 pm



A endless list of companies — from wireless carriers and handset makers to tech giants as big as Google — have tried to muscle their way into the mobile payments market, by releasing clunky ways to get consumers to pay for their groceries or a movie ticket with a swipe of their phone.

Now the speculation is that Apple is gearing up to take a shot at building a better mobile wallet. Expectations are high for the Cupertino, Calf.-based company. The prevailing thought is that Apple’s mobile wallet will be the first to take off thanks to the company’s ability to develop elegant and easy-to-use services that appeal to a wide audience.

So, if the rumors are true, and Apple does roll out a mobile payments platform tomorrow, we’ve come up with five reasons why Apple will be one of the major factors in changing the way we pay.

1. Apple has been laying the groundwork for years
2. Apple controls both the hardware and the software, so it can make the right technology choices.
3. Apple is already a payments kingpin
4. Mobile payments are on Apple CEO Tim Cook’s radar
5. Apple will succeed because everyone wants it to

the details here:
http://www.geekwire.com/2014/five-signs-apple-will-successful-ushering-cashless-society/

===============================================

Are We Becoming A Cashless Society?
August 21, 2014 6:55 AM


(Photo illustration by Ed Fischer)

By Hadas Kuznits
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Could America be turning into a cashless society?

Folks tell KYW Newsradio when it comes to their purchases, they’re using less green and more plastic:

“I mostly spend credit.”

“I don’t carry cash at all, I always sue my debit card.”

“I don’t carry cash on me.”
So why the switch from cash to credit?

“I don’t know, I guess probably because it’s easier to carry around.”

“Well, maybe you can get robbed.”

“Like change, you don’t have to jingle it in your pockets and your purse isn’t as heavy.”

This woman says while she’s not a fan of a cashless society, she accepts that many want to pay using credit:

“That hurts us as business owners every time because we get charged for every transaction but it’s the way of the world and if we don’t use it then we don’t make that money.”

Many people seem to agree, they’ve especially noticed the younger generation using less and less cash over the years:

“Yes, eventually I see it — I think my children everything is going to be debit cards and they’re gonna be like, ‘mom, can you put money on my card?’ Not, ‘mommy can I have money?’ (laughs) they’re gonna say, mommy can you put it on my debit card — they’re not even gonna call you anymore!  They’re gonna text you!”

here:
http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2014/08/21/are-we-becoming-a-cashless-society/

===============================================

Survey Shows Shift Towards Cashless Society Driven By Millennials
September 1, 2014 3:54 PM


Credit cards. (DAMIEN MEYER/AFP/Getty Images)

Jeff Bell

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS)— When it comes to making small purchases, Americans prefer cash over plastic, but according to a new survey that’s likely to change.

“We are moving towards becoming a more cashless society,” said Creditcards.com Senior Industry Analyst Matt Schulz “Two-thirds of American card holders still use cash for purchases under $5.”

Age plays an important factor in what we prefer. For those who are over 50, they tend to use cash more than plastic.

“77-percent of people aged 50 or older use cash, but that number drops to only 52 percent for those who are younger than 50,” Schulz said.

18 to 29 year-olds actually prefer plastic for purchases of less than $5.

Schulz said technology has something to do with these age-based preferences. “The younger generation is a little more used to buying things online, using plastic,” he said.

Americans also have strong preferences when it comes to using debit versus credit. He said generally people prefer debit to credit at about a 2 to 1 ratio. For millennials that ratio grows to about a 3 to 1 ratio.

cashless society - 05.09.2014
http://globalistnews.blogspot.com/2014/05/cashless-society-05092014.html

================================================

Is this 'The Mark"?

No

It's just another step in conditioning the masses to accepting the cashless society which will eventually lead to The Mark of the Beast.

People are going to be trained to tap their wrist watch near another device for scanning, to make payments for everyday things.

Think about that for a moment.

cashless society - 05.09.2014
http://globalistnews.blogspot.com/2014/05/cashless-society-05092014.html

cashless society update - 07.07.2014
http://globalistnews.blogspot.com/2014/07/cashless-society-update-07072014.html

cashless society update - 05.20.2013
http://globalistnews.blogspot.com/2014/05/cashless-society-update-05202013.html

Cashless Society Update - 06.21.2014
http://globalistnews.blogspot.com/2014/06/cashless-society-update-06212014.html

================================================

UPDATE:

2:03 pm ET
Feb 6, 2014
By  TOM GARA
October 2015: The End of the Swipe-and-Sign Credit Card



(We have corrected this article to reflect the fact that customers will still be able to sign for credit card payments after October 2015.)

It’s a payment ritual as familiar as handing over a $20 bill, and it’s soon to go extinct: prepare to say farewell to the swipe-and-sign of a credit card transaction.

Beginning later next year, you will stop swiping the credit card. Instead, you will insert your card into a slot, just like people do in much of the rest of the world, where the machine will read a microchip, not a magnetic stripe. You’ll still be signing for the time being, but the new system also enables the use of PIN numbers, if card issuers decide to add them to their cards.

The U.S. is the last major market to still use the old-fashioned swipe-and-sign system, and it’s a big reason why almost half the world’s credit card fraud happens in America, despite the country being home to about a quarter of all credit card transactions.

The recent large-scale theft of credit card data from retailers including Target and Neiman Marcus brought the issue more mainstream attention, leading to a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this week. Executives told the senators that once the country transitions to the new system — which includes credit cards embedded with a microchip containing security data — these kind of hacking attacks will be much more difficult to pull off.

The shift is coming though: both MasterCard MA -0.53% and Visa V +0.35% have roadmaps for the changeover, and both have set October, 2015 as an important deadline in the switch. But why has it taken this long, and how will the changeover work for card users and businesses?

We spoke with MasterCard’s Carolyn Balfany, the company’s expert on all things related to the new payment system, known as EMV, that will lead to the end of the swipe-and-sign and the beginning of the chip-and-PIN. Here’s what she had to say.

more here:
http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2014/02/06/october-2015-the-end-of-the-swipe-and-sign-credit-card/

and here:

Why Apple Pay could succeed where others have had underwhelming results
Not because Apple is a huge and influential company, but because the timing is right.
by Megan Geuss - Sept 14 2014, 1:00pm CDT


"Apple Pay beta"

A couple of months ago I was visiting New York City and had to catch an early flight out of LaGuardia. At 4:30am I hailed a taxi on Houston Street and the driver and I sped to the airport over dark, empty streets.

On the way, I found a Samsung Note 3 in my bag that Review Editor Ron Amadeo had sent me a few weeks before. The thing had a Near-Field Communications (NFC) chip in it, and I had set up my Google Wallet account on it earlier. I also noticed that the taxi I was in had a tap-to-pay terminal displayed in the backseat. I am a consummate morning person, and a rush of new-day adrenaline told me that it was time to make my first Google Wallet purchase in three years—my last one occurring in 2011 when I reviewed the service at its debut for PCWorld.

As we pulled up to the curb, the driver continued to ignore me as I got out my phone. I touched the Note 3 to the terminal. The phone vibrated, but nothing happened. At this point, the driver turned around. I gave an embarrassed laugh and he said a few polite words but he had no idea how to help me. “Nobody ever uses their phone to pay,” he said. I tried again. Nothing. But the driver was curious now, and maybe because it was so early in the morning and he had nothing else going on, he got out of the taxi and came around to my side.

“Maybe you should select Debit from the screen first,” he suggested. I selected debit and re-tried the phone. Nothing. But there appeared a screen that asked me to select a tip amount. I chose 20 percent and held the phone back up to the NFC reader. It vibrated and finally on the phone’s screen I got a notice of success. Success!

more here:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/09/why-apple-pay-could-succeed-where-others-have-had-underwhelming-results/

Michael Sam - A Gay Agenda in a Christian State?

found here:
https://www.facebook.com/EqualityTexas/photos/a.10151811767674523.1073741826.70323084522/10152872644589523/?type=1

Check out the venomous reaction, from people who probably pray to God every Sunday.

================================================

We Apologize in Advance for This Particular Item
Twitter's Worst Reactions to Michael Sam Signing with the Dallas Cowboys
By Gavin Cleaver Wed., Sep. 3 2014 at 7:00 AM 51 Comments

Football-wise, it seems obvious by now that the Cowboys defense is destined to be so incredibly bad, they could use all the help they can get. By this point, you and I are viable candidates for the Cowboys defense, let alone Michael Sam, a man who, physical pending, will arrive on the Cowboys' practice squad with more preseason sacks and tackles than any defensive lineman already in Valley Ranch.

Still, if there's one place people with "outspoken" opinions love to gather, it's surely Twitter (or possibly the Morning News' comment section), and so, after the longest browse of Twitter we could stomach, we present you to some really tragic attempts at humor, along with some general confusion at the idea someone might be gay like Sam is. It should be said that these were scattered among a lot of balanced opinions, but still.

the venom, here:
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2014/09/twitters_worst_reactions_to_dallas_michael_sam_news.php

================================================

A huge shift in Texas just happened, and the constitution made it possible
http://globalistnews.blogspot.com/2014/02/a-huge-shift-in-texas-just-happened-and.html

Secession vs Gay Rights - Which "Way" are the States going?
http://globalistnews.blogspot.com/2014/05/secession-vs-gay-rights-which-way-are.html


================================================


For those hoping that maybe Rand Paul-type would save us or something nonsensical  like that...

Libertarianism = Do What Thou Wilt




Think about it.

Emotional Response in the Left/Right Paradigm - 05.18.2013

The President's Umbrella Scandal Folded Before It Could Take Off
By Connor Simpson | The Atlantic Wire – Sat, May 18, 2013



more here:
http://news.yahoo.com/presidents-umbrella-scandal-folded-could-off-184038527.html

=================================================

In response, ignorant people on the right created the following meme:







================================================

The left responds, in kind (as they always do when the right does something retarded)



Presidents Look Like Doofuses in Rain
Elspeth Reeve



more photos here:
http://www.thewire.com/politics/2013/05/presidents-rain-photos/65310/

================================================

You can search for yourself on google to find more:




















You know you're right about that...









=================================================

This umbrella 'scandal' is for suckers, it means nothing, they all work for the same Satanic team.