Which States Ban Atheists from Holding Public Office? - Friendly Atheist -
North Carolina, Article 6, Section 8:
The following persons shall be disqualified for office:
First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.
Arkansas, Article 19, Section 1:
Atheists disqualified from holding office or testifying as witness.
No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any Court.
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Mississippi, Article 14, Section 265:
No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office in this state.
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Maryland, Article 37:
That no religious test ought ever to be required as a qualification for any office of profit or trust in this State, other than a declaration of belief in the existence of God; nor shall the Legislature prescribe any other oath of office than the oath prescribed by this Constitution.
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South Carolina, Article 17, Section 4:
No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office under this Constitution.
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Tennessee, Article 9, Section 2 (PDF):
No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this state.
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Texas, Article 1, Section 4:
No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.
USA Today Announces Commercial Terms of Use for Its API -
I missed this - big news IMHO - a large publisher opening up their full content vai their API.
In my mind its just the Guardian and USA Today who are doing this.
Research notes: Journalism students vs. tech-focused students -
Here in my first semester on the faculty at the Harvard of the Plains, I get to work with students in both the College of Journalism and Mass Communications and the Raikes School for Computer Science and Management. With both groups of students, I’m working through problems that can be…
Report: Arts Funding Serves White, Wealthy -
FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: ”Billions of dollars in arts funding is serving a mostly wealthy, white audience that is shrinking while only a small chunk of money goes to emerging art groups that serve poorer communities that are more ethnically diverse, according to a report being released Monday.
The report from the Washington-based National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a watchdog group, shows foundation giving has fallen out of balance with the nation’s increasingly diverse demographics. The report was provided to The Associated Press before its release.
The Washington Post Social Reader app unnerves me. The act of “Reading” is now itself an action. You don’t click any “read this” button. It may be benign to some but there are potential pitfalls on the privacy front.
What if your friends saw a steady stream of articles that you were reading?
Study: Sexual potency after prostate cancer can depend on age, weight, treatment type
Quiz gives facts about skin cancer
What do you think they might want to ask you about?
That is just a hastily put together example, but I think it illustrates my point.
We are what we read, and sometimes we need to explore topics and subjects that need to stay in the private realm. There are plenty of good and bad reasons why you would extensively read up on articles regarding to health, diseases, diabetes, marriage, death, suicide, taxes, depression… the list goes on.
Would you want those articles bunched together in your public feed?
The Washington Post has an Editor’s Note. Its says many things including:
“All you have to do is read, just as you normally do. No “recommending,” “liking” or “sharing” — just read and we’ll do the rest of the work. The app gets better the more friends you have using it.”
Thats a very nice spin on it.
Earlier this year when I was still at the Times we talked to Facebook about a news app. Facebook had a whole set of new features in the pipeline (presumably just launched) and this passive reading action was one of them and they were pushing hard for us to use it. It came up in conference calls and on-site meetings. I believe Facebook is very eager to catch-up or even displace Twitter as a go-to place for news, and this is how they think they can do that.
To their credit the newsroom shelved the idea. The consensus was that this was intrusive and potentially an invasion of privacy. I think after that was repeatedly communicated that Facebook lost interest in doing anything at all.
I think its one thing to broadcast your taste in music, but what you’re reading raises the stakes a bit. For now, all I have is this isolated case but everything has a beginning.
Public Service Announcement: Don’t forget the applications tab of your twitter account. A lot of people have been laughing at the clueless social media expert who fired a ghostwriter and forgot to change his password. But changing a password is not enough, since once a remote client (e.g., Twitter for iPhone) has been authorized against your account, it uses its OAuth credentials and not your password to authenticate. Changing your password will not affect those applications (indeed OAuth was designed so apps could access the account without storing passwords), and the only way to revoke access is to go into the applications tab of your account settings and hit “revoke access.” Try looking at yours and you’ll be struck by a few things immediately:
- How many services you’ve forgotten that you granted read and write access to your account a long time ago (and which might be a way to access your account if they are hacked).
- OAuth is keyed to an application, but in this ghostwriter-gone-rogue case you’d really want to revoke the access of a person. How do you figure out which application they use?
- Most users have little to no idea that this tab even exists.
In conclusion, rotate your passwords in this sort of situation, but don’t forget the applications as well.
“In 1980, while standing near Reagan while he was doing a television interview in New Hampshire, Jack Germond, once a titan of the political press, leaned over and said to me - “I know he will never be president but I’m not sure what state is going to stop him.” It was a valuable lesson for a young political reporter about the worth of conventional wisdom.” — Brian Crowley, Crowley Political Report
Schizopolis: A Random Tumblr API Suggestion -
This is an idea for the Tumblr API that occurred to me last night. Despite it likely being a solution to a problem only I am interested in, I figure people might be interested enough in the proposal to share it. I would love to use Tumblr as a general-purpose liveblogging backend.
If you look…
I don’t have the same connection to Sept. 11th that my colleagues and friends in New York do. Even though I was in Washington on that September day, I personally never felt in danger, although I probably should have. All I know ten years later is that what my colleagues have done captures so well the sorrow, anger, confusion and rebirth that this anniversary evokes, and I cannot say how proud I am to be associated with them in even the smallest way.
The couple who attended St. Luke’s Shelter annual Labor Day picnic on Monday were pretty much like any of the others who have come over the years: they were only too glad to help out with setup and cleanup, and the husband manned the grill for much of the time, too.
The Shelter has always attracted families as supporters. One person may start volunteering by bringing meals, and then that one invites a spouse, and it just goes from there. On Monday, a father and son were there.
But in one utterly jarring respect the couple who showed up on Monday differed from every other couple I’ve seen arrive at the picnic. After all of the cleanup was finished, the husband went downstairs to his bed at the Shelter. His wife walked to the bus stop to catch a ride to her shelter, about 10 minutes away.
I was so taken aback that I ran after the woman and found her at the bus stop, and offered her a ride on my way home. She was incredibly positive, although frustrated, by the circumstances she and her husband found themselves in. They both had lost their jobs and then their apartment. They were middle-aged and did not have any dependent children. They were not addicts or in treatment. Yet they could not stay together anywhere in the city. There were no programs for homeless couples without children.
She hungered for work, telling me how much she had enjoyed her last temporary assignment. With a steady job, they could get an apartment in a month or two, she said. She found it very hard to adjust to living with other women after decades of living with her husband: “He’s my best friend, you know?”
She thanked me profusely for the ride, and for listening. I told her not to give up hope, that better days were coming. I can’t imagine having to go through what she and her husband are going through right now. I certainly can’t imagine doing it with their dignity and grace.