Today in Slate: Why Do Americans Love Book Clubs? Plus, Will Airbnb Revolutionize the Way You Travel?

Today: July 29, 2011 Crisis? What Crisis? Cheer up, America: Our nation won't default, nor is our government dysfunctional. By Bruce Ackerman READ FULL STORY | More News and Politics Get a Room! Is Airbnb a fad, or will it revolutionize the way you travel? By Annie Lowrey READ FULL STORY | More Business and Tech Red Skull Is Red, Smurfette Is Blue A beautiful color wheel showcasing the entire cartoon character spectrum. By Natalie Matthews-Ramo READ FULL STORY | More Arts How Boehner Is Using the Balanced-Budget Amendment To Save His Debt Plan Is It Really Possible To Die From "Alcohol Withdrawal"? Apple Is Destroying the Nintendo 3DS the Same Way Nintendo Destroyed PlayStation 3 Should You Go See Crazy, Stupid, Love? A Boisterous Debate. Advertisement Help! I Want To Name My Daughter Lolita. Will Everyone Think It's Creepy?   Briefing Watermelon seeds: What's the difference between the white and black ones? Patent Trolls, Drug Cartels, and Kidney Transplant Patients: This Week's Top MuckReads from ProPublica. News & Politics Muslim radicalization: Is Rep. Peter King more politically correct than he'd care to admit? How John Boehner is getting Republicans to unite behind his debt-ceiling plan. Arts Cowboys & Aliens reviewed: Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford lasso extraterrestrials. Hey, that's my grandpa! A gallery of people rediscovered by relatives generations later on Flickr (PHOTOS). Life Book clubs in America: Why do we love them so much? Aged rum: It deserves more respect. Business & Tech Debt-ceiling crisis: The U.S. won't "default" after Aug. 2. Something much weirder will happen. Netflix streaming is killing piracy. Science Telomere tests: the buzzy new DNA analyses that claim to reveal how "old" our bodies really are. Sifting through the risks and benefits of coffee.

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Moneybox: The $5 Trillion Coin

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moneybox The $5 Trillion Coin Gimmicks the government could use to resolve the debt-ceiling debacle. By Annie Lowrey Posted Friday, July 29, 2011, at 4:48 PM ET The countdown clock to the Debtpocalypse now stands at four days, give or take. Soon, the Treasury will start receiving bills it cannot pay, and the United States will fall delinquent on billions of dollars in promised payments to Social Security recipients, government contractors, and so on. Congress remains deadlocked. So, the chattering classes have started getting creative. If you cannot lift the debt ceiling, maybe you can vault over it. One option is coin seigniorage--aka, the "really-huge-coin workaround." The United States has a statutory limit on the amount of paper money in circulation, but no such limit on coins. The Treasury secretary has the authority to mint certain coins of any denomination, with no need for the value of the metal to equal the value of the coin. (It gets a bit technical.) But the idea is that Secretary Timothy Geithner could order the Mint to make a, say, $5 trillion coin. It could then use the coin to buy back and extinguish debt from the Fed, pushing the country back under the ceiling. Or it could deposit it, and the Fed could counteract the inflation by selling government debt. To continue reading, click here. Annie Lowrey reports on economics and business for Slate. Previously, she worked as a staff writer for the Washington Independent and on the editorial staffs of Foreign Policy and The New Yorker. Her e-mail is annie.lowrey@slate.com. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate How Boehner Is Using the Balanced-Budget Amendment To Save His Debt Plan Is It Really Possible To Die From "Alcohol Withdrawal"? Apple Is Destroying the Nintendo 3DS the Same Way Nintendo Destroyed PlayStation 3	Advertisement
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BREAKING NEWS: House Passes Speaker Boehner's Debt Bill

The U.S. House of Representatives passed Speaker John Boehner's debt-limit bill. The bill now moves to the Senate, where it is not expected to pass.

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BREAKING NEWS: House Passes Boehner Debt Bill

House approves Speaker Boehner's debt limit plan with no Democratic support, sending bill to Senate

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By Adam Dachis What You Need to Know About the Internet Snooping Bill (and How You Can Protect Yourself) On Thursday, the US House of Representatives approved an internet snooping bill that requires internet service providers (ISPs) to keep records of customer activity for a year so police can review them as needed. Here's what this bill means for you and what you can do about it. What Is This Internet Snooping Bill, Exactly, and Why Is It Bad? The lovingly titled Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 (PCFIPA of 2011) requires ISPs to retain customer names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and dynamic IP addresses. It's a record of your personal information plus the web sites you visit. It's like handing over a year's worth of browser history plus the contents of your wallet to the police. The thing is, you're not really handing it over so much as your ISP is—without your consent. You might be wondering what this has to do with child pornography and protecting children, as the bill claims to exist for those reasons. The idea is that child pornographers will be easier to catch if these records are available, and that, in turn, will protect children. According to the Denver Post, child pornography cases have been on the rise and there have been over 10,000 arrests since 1996. While the police should be prosecuting child pornographers and consumers, the problem isn't so out of control that these extreme measures are necessary. Internet World Stats reports that there are currently 272.1 million Americans connected to the internet. The 10,000 known child pornography consumers make up a tiny fraction of a percent of Americans online. Even if the number of child pornography consumers were as much as 1,000,000, it still wouldn't make up a single percent. That's not to say that we wouldn't want to prosecute them and get them to stop, or that even 10,000 is a small number when it comes to a crime like this, but making a year's worth of records doesn't solve the problem. Consider the browser history of a single person over the course of a year, and then multiply that by 272,100,000. Then try to find 10,000 people in that data that have, at some point during that year, downloaded at least a single piece of child pornography. Finding a needle in a haystack is hard, but it gets to be pretty close to impossible when that haystack is the size of a country. There are too many people not downloading child porn to easily locate an offender and too few policemen to thoroughly look through the information. Like we've seen when the RIAA prosecuted music downloaders with little success, you get nowhere going after the consumers. Instead, you have to go after the providers. It's why police are much more interested in drug dealers than the people who buy from them. You need to cut off the source. But this bill isn't targeting the source at all. Furthermore, there are already provisions in place (like the Protect Our Children Act of 2008) that give the police a means of collecting information on a potential child pornography consumer. Essentially, this bill does nothing more than make the browsing histories of approximately 272.1 million Americans readily available to the police. And that information comes with credit card numbers, addresses, and more. It not only encroaches upon personal privacy but is a complete waste of resources. How You Can Block Snooping ISPs and Protect Your Privacy It could be worse. One nice feature of the PCFIPA of 2011 bill is that it doesn't include cellular data, so if you've thought about switching to 4G wireless data at home you'll soon have another reason. That's not an option for many people, however, but that doesn't mean you're out of luck. Your best bet is to find yourself a good VPN provider and hook it up to a good VPN tool to encrypt and route all your internet traffic through a third-party that isn't your ISP. Virtual Private Networks creates secure, encrypted connections between your computer and a server on the internet, then routes all your internet activity through that server. Your ISP would only really be logging the IP address of your VPN server, which doesn't give them much of your private info. Tor is one of the easiest ways to browse anonymously online (even if it isn't perfect). If you're a Chrome user, you can even create a simple Tor toggle button to use it only when you really need it. By anonymizing your browsing, your ISPs won't have a record of what you've been doing. They'll know you were online, but the details won't be available to them or the police. Of course, there's no assurance that any anonymous browsing tool will provide full protection but it's definitely better than nothing at all. If setting up Tor seems a little daunting, Vidalia can help simplify the process. You'll also want to read our guide on protecting your privacy when downloading for more suggestions. Got any suggestions of your own? Share your privacy-protecting strategies in the comments. You can follow Adam Dachis, the author of this post, on Twitter, Google+, and Facebook.  Twitter's the best way to contact him, too. Share this:

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The Onion Daily Dispatch - July 29, 2011

Fri Jul 29, 2011 www.theonion.com

Amy Winehouse’s Grammys Returned By London Pawn Shop Out Of Respect For Deceased 07.29.11 News in Brief » All Flights Grounded After FAA Officials Suddenly Realize That Man Was Not Meant To Fly American Voices » Congressman Resigns Over “Unwanted” Sexual Incident “It’s a good thing he’s staying for a little while. A sexual predator is exactly the kind of sane, reasoned voice we need right now.” opinion » Mom And Dad, I'm Gay And Also Stronger Than Both Of You, So Don't Try Any Shit by Adam Cuneo Mom, Dad, there's something we have to talk about. I've been wanting to tell you this for some time, and I want you to know that while I'm fully aware this might be difficult for you to hear, remember, I am still your son, and I love you very much: Mom, D... Radio News » Taco Bell Employee Somehow Dressed Down By Manager

featured section: » Horoscope » Aries Mar 21 - Apr 19 One of the worst moments of a person's life is when they finally realize that they're mortal and are going to die, especially when it's a person like you who only sees the cement truck at the last second. Most Popular » Al-Qaeda Claims U.S. Mass Transportation Infrastructure Must Drastically Improve Before Any Terrorist Attacks Emergency Team Of 8th-Grade Civics Teachers Dispatched To Washington Bachmann Says Unexplained Blackouts From Which She Wakes Up Covered In Blood Won't Affect Ability To Lead All Flights Grounded After FAA Officials Suddenly Realize That Man Was Not Meant To Fly Mom And Dad, I'm Gay And Also Stronger Than Both Of You, So Don't Try Any Shit Cruel Summer

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