Chicago - A message from the station manager

The [Wednesday] Papers

By Steve Rhodes

Who knew that when Barack Obama promised the most transparent administration ever he was talking about our transparency and not his?
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Related: Federal Appeals Court Rules the Government Can Track Your Cell Phone Without a Warrant.
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See also: Global Coalition State Principles to Protect Human Rights from Surveillance.


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And: “The Obama administration on Wednesday released formerly classified documents outlining a once-secret program of the National Security Agency that is collecting records of all domestic phone calls in the United States,” the New York Times reports.
You can thank Edward Snowden for that – even as Obama is trying to imprison him.
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Plus: Why is there suddenly no need to classify these documents after all? PR.
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Finally: Has The U.S. Government Lied About Its Snooping? Let’s Go To The Videotape.
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P.S.: Durbin calls out Obama.


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Bradley Manning > Barack Obama
If You Blinked You Missed The MSM’s Coverage Of The Bradley Manning Verdict.
And the whole historic saga, really.
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Song of the Moment: Almost Gone (The Ballad of Bradley Manning).
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Social Immobility
“Researchers at Georgetown University have found that at the most competitive colleges, only 14 percent of students come from the lower 50 percent of families by income,” the New York Times reports.
“That figure has not increased over more than two decades, an indication that a generation of pledges to diversify has not amounted to much.”
American Graffiti
“When Star Wars creator George Lucas and Chicago businesswoman Mellody Hobson chose Promontory Point for their late-June wedding celebration, the Chicago Park District set aside its rule book and paved the way, literally, for the power couple’s star-studded bash,” the Tribune reports.
“Records from the event and other celebrations at the popular lakefront venue reveal that the filmmaker and his well-connected bride were allowed to skirt a number of policies that the Park District refused to bend for ordinary renters.”
Rules are for the little people.
Boarding School
“Getting people on and off an airplane quickly is so complicated that even an astrophysicist couldn’t figure it out,” the Washington Post reports.
“The astrophysicist, Jason Steffen of the University of Illinois, normally contemplates things such as axion-like particles. But after waiting in one boarding line too many, he turned to the mysteries of airline seating.

“I thought there had to be a better way,” he says.

He thought wrong.
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Jason Steffen.
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His paper: Experimental Test Of Airplane Boarding Methods.
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In the Economist two years ago.
Be Sure To Visit The Gift Shop, Though
“Chicago’s Field Museum made headlines on four continents this year after researchers discovered a 600-year-old Chinese coin in late December on the Kenyan island of Manda, revealing there was trade between China and East Africa before European explorers mapped that part of the world,” the Tribune reports.
But the anthropologist who co-led that expedition will soon be working at American University in Washington, D.C. Five other tenured scientists, some with decades of experience and others with promising careers ahead, are also preparing to leave the Field staff this year, for a total of six of the museum’s 27 tenured curators.
“The exodus follows six months of cost-cutting at the Field. The museum has slashed millions from its research budget; merged its anthropology, zoology, geology and botany departments; and sparked fears that it is going – in the words of a curator at Harvard’s zoology museum – ‘from being a major research institution to being a local museum where people go to see things.'”
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Will there be Mold-A-Rama dinosaurs?
Oh Sheila
Are you as totally psyched about Sheila Simon’s campaign for state comptroller as I am?! It’s gonna rule!


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Googly Glasses
So you’re saying the Cubs still have a chance?
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The Beachwood Tip Line: Be Bradley Manning.

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Posted on July 31, 2013