August | 2016 | Praxis

Lying About the Lord: Many People Exaggerate How Often They Attend Religious Services

Atheism and non-belief are growing rapidly in America, however, it is still considered one of the most religious countries in the world. Yet, saying you’re religious and being religious are two separate things and a recent study by Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) suggests that many Americans greatly exaggerate how often they attend religious services. PRRI conducted two surveys, structured to be as identical as possible, using similarly sized, nationally representative samplings. 2,002 participants were asked the same questions, one group, via the phone, and another…

DOJ Examination Finds Baltimore Police Routinely Violated Citizens’ Rights

Baltimore police routinely violated the constitutional rights of residents by conducting unlawful stops and using excessive force, according to the findings of a long-anticipated Justice Department probe to be released Wednesday. The practices overwhelmingly affected the city’s black residents in low-income neighborhoods, according to the 163-page report. In often scathing language, the report identified systemic problems and cited detailed examples. The investigators found that “supervisors have issued explicitly discriminatory orders, such as directing a shift to arrest ‘all the black hoodies’ in a neighborhood.” They…

Judge: Glenn Beck Must Reveal Alleged Sources in Libel Suit

A looming First Amendment showdown drew closer Tuesday as a federal judge ordered conservative media host Glenn Beck to identify at least two confidential sources in connection with a defamation lawsuit stemming from Beck’s reporting on the Boston Marathon bombing. The suit was filed by Saudi Arabian student Abdulrahman Alharbi, who was injured at the scene of the deadly bombings. Beck continued to link the Saudi national to the attacks even after U.S. officials said publicly he’d been cleared. U.S. District Court Judge Patti Saris…

Facebook Tries to Block Ad Blockers

Digital ads pop up online so frequently and ubiquitously that many people are using software to block them. But if you try to stop ads from showing up on Facebook’s desktop website, you will now be out of luck: The social network has found a way to block the ad blockers. On Tuesday, Facebook flipped a switch on its desktop website that essentially renders all ad blockers — the programs that prevent websites from displaying ads on the page when a user visits the site…

NSA Monitoring Users of Privacy Software Funded by U.S. Government

Use of common Web privacy tools or even mere curiosity about them could get you added to a National Security Agency watch list, according to a new report. The NSA surveillance program called X-Keyscore, first revealed last summer in documents leaked by Edward Snowden, has been found to contain selection rules that potentially add to an NSA watch list anybody who has not only used, but visited online privacy-protection tools such as the Tor Network for anonymous Web browsing and the Linux-based Tails operating system….

Evan McMullin’s Presidential Run Could Potentially Blow Up the Republican Party

Ever since this morning, political obsessives have been scrambling to find out any bit of information they can on Evan McMullin, a little-known former CIA officer who has decided to run for president on a platform vaguely similar to the one that Mitt Romney ran on in 2012. With no name recognition and no executive experience, there is no chance that McMullin could win. But that isn’t the point of the exercise. The McMullin candidacy, which is being pushed by the remnant of the NeverTrump…

Winning Reelection Won’t Solve Paul Ryan’s Problems

The most important election of the year, apart from the one occurring on November 8, takes place today. That’s when Speaker of the House Paul Ryan goes up against the vice president of a water filtration company, Paul Nehlen, in the first serious primary challenge that Ryan has faced in the 18 years since he was elected to Congress. The odds for Nehlen are long. Of nearly 5,000 primaries held between 1992 and 2012, only 31 challengers toppled the incumbent. Nehlen also seems a little…

Hipsters Are Unintentionally Killing Farmers Markets

People go to farmers markets for many reasons. The festive yet wholesome atmosphere makes us feel good about our communities. We might bump into that person we’ve been meaning to call, and perhaps buy a bar of soap. A burrito, perhaps, and a fresh-squeezed lemonade. And sometimes, we even want to buy some produce. A bag of salad mix, perhaps, and hope it doesn’t wilt before we skateboard home. But produce shopping is becoming an increasingly rare act […] “For some growers, farmers markets just…

Quantum Computing Applied to Encryption Is a Giant Leap Forward

This perennial quest for a perfectly secure message spurred Seth Lloyd, a professor of quantum information at MIT, to put forth a theory of quantum enigma machines in 2013. This device, which derives its name from a Nazi-era cipher machine called Enigma, would use the quantum states of individual photons to encode and encrypt messages by altering properties of the photon wave, such as amplitude or wavelength. Unlike quantum key distribution, which uses principles of quantum mechanics to encrypt messages which are then sent over…

Are Think Tanks Whitewashing Their Donors’ Messages?

At think tanks like Brookings, the majority of reports and events, with titles like “Five Evils: Multidimensional Poverty and Race in America” or “India at the Global High Table,” have no obvious link to corporate donors. Still, the benefits afforded to corporations looking to cloak themselves with the authority of think tanks are strikingly evident, according to a review of documents from more than a dozen institutions. The likely conclusions of some think tank reports, documents show, are discussed with donors — or even potential…

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