Oops, accidentally modded this comment down instead of up. Is there a way to undo a mod besides posting?

Clapper was a great start -- not in response to the leaks, but certainly a good example of an official lie followed by convincing evidence to the contrary.

Then there was Obama on June 17: "What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a U.S. person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls, and the NSA cannot target your emails and have not." (http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/06/17/pres-obama-if-you-are-a-us-citizen-the-nsa-cannot-listen-to-your-telephone-calls-and-the-nsa-cannot-target-your-emails/)

This was countered by leaked FISA secret court documents on June 20: "...orders which allow the NSA to make use of information "inadvertently" collected from domestic US communications without a warrant" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/20/fisa-court-nsa-without-warrant)

And on June 25, the NSA deleted the FISA fact sheet after being called out by Wyden and Udall. That is, the fact sheet lied, Wyden and and Udall said so, and the NSA pulled it, more or less confirming that it contained lies. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/25/nsa-fisa-fact-sheet_n_3499026.html)

The leaks seem to be coming out in a clever order, starting with the most credible. An obvious benefit of this is that each lends credence to the next. Perhaps less obviously, each time the government passes up an opportunity to come clean, it makes the lies more obvious. We might have already known (or guessed) all this stuff, but now we have government officials on record lying about the extent of surveillance, over and over, just before backtracking to defend it.

Found it archived here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20130625004125/http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/press_releases/section_702_protections.pdf

https://startpage.com/ is an anonymizing front-end for Google search, based in the Netherlands.
Details here: https://startpage.com/eng/prism-program-exposed.html

https://www.ixquick.com/ is an independent search engine, apparently by the same company in the Netherlands.

I started using startpage.com yesterday. So far so good, although I'm not used to seeing ads in my search results.

Protestors.

For example, if people were really upset about the government spying on them, they might use social media to organize.

Except in Antarctica, where 100% of the screens are 1600x900.

I randomly typed goo.gl/flab and got a surprise. NSFW, unless men with erect penises are work-safe.

There are certainly people who prefer to multitask, and I guess I'd tend to agree with TFS that each individual task suffers to some degree.

However, to avoid writing off multitasking altogether, it's worth considering situations where multitasking is *required* rather than merely preferred. My partner regularly makes dinner, keeps the three kids from drowning in the pool, and has a conversation on the phone. Yeah, some stuff gets burned, but the kids rarely die, so I'd say she's doing a pretty good job.

Wouldn't "Goonix" be a better name?

I learned that

> smoking (387) causes cancer.

I was also surprised to learn that

> girls and women (11) cause most cases of cervical cancer

This is a great resource if you need to cite a reference for a Wikipedia article.