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http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-enduring-lessons-of-star-trek

Randall and Vicki Weaver and their children wanted nothing more than to be left to live an isolated life in peace in their cabin enclave on a northern Idaho mountain top called Ruby Ridge. Untrusting of the federal government and of the belief society had taken an insurmountable turn for the worse, the Weavers — as many residents in the remote and breathtaking area — taught their children to be self-sufficient and defend themselves with firearms from unwanted intrusions onto the family’s property. But the Weaver’s seemingly idyllic life came to an appallingly violent end over several hours from August...

When back in June 2015 Donald Trump announced he was running for president, he said during his speech, “I will find the General Patton or I will find General MacArthur. I will find the right guy. I will find the guy that’s going to take that military and make it really work.” Since then, Trump has frequently mentioned Douglas MacArthur in his speeches. It is worth discussing his importance in American history, especially as we are approaching the 66th anniversary of Battle of Inchon. While MacArthur’s greatest achievement was the creation of modern Japan, the Inchon landing on September 15,...

A commemoration ceremony for the 50th anniversary of the battle of Long Tan in Vietnam has been cancelled. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed Vietnamese authorities had cancelled Thursday's Veterans Day at the Long Tan cross site. The department said it understood private access to the site was still permitted and the advice of exercising normal safety precautions in Vietnam was still current. Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop said in a statement the Vietnamese government had advised it would not permit the ceremony to go ahead. An official party including the Australian and New Zealand ambassadors will still...

A legendary battle of western history: Today is the anniversary of the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. Thermopylae is a pass in east central Greece between the cliffs of Mount Oeta and the Malic Gulf, and in ancient times, it was a principal entrance into southern Greece from the north. It was there that the Greeks confronted the third Persian expedition of the Persian Wars - an army of as many as a half-million men under Xerxes. When they found that their position had been turned, however, the Greeks retreated precipitously - all except for a 300-strong Spartan contingent...

Today marks the 25 anniversary of Sir Tim Berners-Lee launching the first website CREDIT: AP On this day 25 years ago the world's first website went live to the public. The site, created by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, was a basic text page with hyperlinked words that connected to other pages.Berners-Lee used the public launch to outline his plan for the service, which would come to dominate life in the twenty-first century."The WWW project merges the techniques of information retrieval and hypertext to make an easy but powerful global information system," said Berners-Lee on the world's first public website. "The project...

In remembrance ... today marks the 5th anniversary of the shoot down of Extortion 17. On August 6, 2011, the U.S. Navy SEALs and the Special Ops community suffered a huge loss when their CH-47 Chinook was shot down in Afghanistan. The 30 American deaths represent the greatest loss of U.S. military lives in a single incident in the decade-long war in Afghanistan that began in 2001. The Fallen: •SGT Alexander J. Bennett •SPC Spencer Duncan •CWO Bryan J. Nichols •CWO David R. Carter •SSG Patrick D. Hamburger •TSgt John W. Brown •SSgt Andrew W. Harvell •TSgt Daniel L. Zerbe...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Folks, today we are starting our 29th year. This is our 28th anniversary being behind the Golden EIB Microphone, and there's one thing... We're gonna play some sound bites here from the past. The theme that Cookie set up... She did this on her own, by the way. I offered no direction. I never do on these anniversary shows. She thought it would be interesting to go back and look at the number of different ways I have been characterized and portrayed in various places, by various people over -- not all but some of these --...

Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa is reported missing in Detroit, Michigan. He was last seen alive in a parking lot outside the Machus Red Fox restaurant the previous afternoon. To this day, Hoffa’s fate remains a mystery, although many believe that he was murdered by organized crime figures. By the time of his disappearance, Hoffa had a long and murky career in union politics. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he became the main focus of government investigations into corruption. In 1962, Hoffa faced misdemeanor charges in Tennessee. He managed to get a mistrial but was convicted two years...

Seventy-five years ago, the world blew up in just six months. World War II ostensibly started two years earlier, when Germany invaded Poland. In truth, after the rapid German defeat of Poland in September 1939, the conflict was mostly confined to Western Europe for nearly the next two years. By summer of 1940, only Britain had survived Hitler's European victories. The dormant European war only went global on June 22, 1941, when Germany suddenly surprise-attacked the Soviet Union, its former partner. America and Asia were still not directly involved in the 1941 expansion of the war until the Japanese attacked...

The Texas Standard spoke to nearly 100 survivors of the UT Tower shooting. Next week, you can hear their stories. Dallas. Baton Rouge. Nice. Orlando. It seems like we can’t go more than a few days without a violent event somewhere in the world. While it’s true these attacks are happening for very different and very complicated reasons – they keep happening. It’s almost hard to remember a time when they didn’t. But when a shooter took aim at the University of Texas of Austin campus from the top of the UT tower on August 1, 1966, no one had...

Fifty years ago a stranger with a pockmarked face and a "Born To Raise Hell" tattoo on his left arm barged into a Chicago townhouse where a group of student nurses were living and proceeded to lead them "like lambs to the slaughter." The intruder's name was Richard Speck and for five hours he systematically tortured and murdered eight women, raping at least one of them. *** The crime horrified Chicago and the rest of the country because it was so unfathomable — a massacre for no apparent reason by a remorseless stranger against a group of young women he...

Microsoft has released build 14383 of Windows 10 Anniversary, for both PC and mobile, in preparation for its public launch on August 2nd 2016. Most "Insider" builds feature a watermark on the desktop, showing the version and build number, but that has gone in this build. "This is because we’re beginning to check in final code," said engineer Donar Sarkar in the announcement blog post, though we are promised more builds before release day. There are a bunch of fixes in this build but they are minor, as you would expect at this point in the release cycle. "We fixed...

Late in the afternoon of July 2, 1863, on a boulder-strewn hillside in southern Pennsylvania, Union Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain dashed headlong into history, leading his 20th Maine Regiment in perhaps the most famous counterattack of the Civil War.

I simply could resist putting this in Breaking News. Sorry. Here's to another 15!

This summer, one year after the initial launch of Windows 10, Microsoft will release its first major update: the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. It will be delivered in the usual way -- via Windows Update -- and will install automatically on its own. However, if you're curious (or apprehensive) about the upcoming update, you don't have to wait until the final release date to check it out. Microsoft has been releasing public preview builds, each one a little bit closer to the final version. Anyone can get and install those builds by first becoming part of Microsoft's Windows Insider Program,...

Marriage isn't easy as most of us know. It's work and commitment. I offer a personal toast to the founder of Free Republic and thank him for his years of dedication to our republic and for providing a meeting place to smile, rant, grow and share We are all different and all have various expectations. All contribute differently. Some with research. Some with quick creative minds. Some create clever graphics. Some offer save spiritual wisdom. Thats for starters. There are spelling and grammar horses - one of which I am not. There are lurkers and prolific posters. There are memories...

Stop your average American on the street and ask them “what happened on June 6?” Surprisingly—a few might recall that on a dreary morning while the low-tide lapped lazily on the rocky coast of Normandy, France, brave men in battle armor no thicker than a khaki shirt grimly headed toward Hitler’s Atlantic wall. There is nothing special to mark the 72nd anniversary of the D-Day invasion during World War II. Nothing special—other than the men themselves. That 18-year-old struggling up the steep bluffs of Omaha Beach while tracer rounds flashed overhead would be 90 years old now, eyes flickering still...

At the Vineland (N.J.) Veterans Memorial Home, assistant business manager William H. Palmer Jr. has a special bond with the 175 or so World War II veterans who live there. His father, Ensign William H. Palmer, was part of a secret mission during the D-Day invasion that delivered messages from the command ship Ancon to the shore during days of radio silence. … Just like Butch Maisel, a Baltimore history teacher whose father landed on D-Day, Palmer is determined to carry forth the legacy. “I went to find out what my father did on D-Day,” he said, and the research...

~ D-DAY, June 6, 1944 ~ NORMANDY INVASION May 1944 had been chosen at the conference in Washington in May 1943 as the time for the invasion. Difficulties in assembling landing craft forced a postponement until June, but June 5 was fixed as the unalterable date by Eisenhower on May 17. As the day approached and troops began to embark for the crossing, bad weather set in, threatening dangerous landing conditions. After tense debate, Eisenhower and his subordinates decided on a 24-hour delay, requiring the recall of some ships already at sea. Eventually, on the morning of June 5,...