The Realistic Post

Monday, July 14, 2014

This guy is taking "Daddy's little princess" a bit too literally.

Jeremiah Heaton, a father of three from from Abingdon, Virginia, has claimed a patch of land between Egypt and Sudan as his "kingdom" so that his 7-year-old daughter, Emily, can be a real princess, the Associated Press reports.

Several months ago, Heaton was playing with Emily and she asked him if she would ever be a real princess. He informed her she would.

"At the time I had no idea how I would honor her wish but I knew that I had to find a way," Heaton wrote in a Facebook post.

He started researching how he could accomplish this, and his investigation led him to Bir Tawil, an 800 square-mile area that, due to land disputes, is not claimed by either Egypt or Sudan. According to the AP, the mountainous region is one of the last unclaimed pieces of land on earth.

Heaton trekked through the desert in June and planted the "Heaton kingdom" flag -- designed by his kids -- in the soil of Bir Tawil. When he got home, he requested that everyone address his 7-year-old daughter as "Princess Emily." He and his wife, Kelly, also got her a princess crown.

“It’s cool,” Princess Emily told the Bristol Herald-Courier.

Shelia Carapico, political science and international studies professor at the University of Richmond, told the Bristol Herald-Courier that likely both Egypt and Sudan will have to recognize Heaton's stake as legitimate before he has any legal claim over the land.

Heaton says he is pursuing "formal recognition" from African countries and is "confident" his claim will be taken seriously. Egyptian and Sudanese embassy representatives did not return requests for comment from the Washington Post.

Princess Emily told the Bristol Herald-Courier that she is concerned about children in the region having enough food.

Her father says he plans to use his newfound sovereignty to set up an "agricultural hub" for the area and says his "nation" will have "a clear purpose of helping other people."

It's unclear whether Heaton's other two children, Caleb and Justin, will be adopting the titles of "Prince."

And why is Bir Tawil unclaimed in the first place? According to Atlas Obscura, an 1899 treaty says Bir Tawil is the property of Sudan and, in return, awards Egypt a piece of land called Hala'ib, which is much larger and more resource-rich than Bir Tawil.

A 1902 treaty, however, gives Halai'b to Sudan and Bir Tawil to Egypt. Because both countries want Halai'b, they each recognize only the treaty that awards Halai'b to themselves. To this day, neither will claim Bir Tawil because doing so would mean they recognize the other country's claim to Hala'ib.

original post

Kansas goes a little gun crazy with its Second Amendment Protection Act

The concept would be laughable if there weren't so many people taking it seriously.

The idea is that states have the right under the 10th Amendment to unilaterally reject federal laws on issues not expressly reserved for the federal government in the Constitution. It's an old idea — it had a lot of currency among segregationists during the Civil Rights era — and has been debunked by the Supreme Court.

Kansas argues that guns that don't cross state borders fall outside the federal government's authority to regulate interstate commerce under the Constitution.

Nevertheless, the Kansas Legislature last year turned that empty-headed theory into law, adopting what it called the Second Amendment Protection Act (as if the National Rifle Assn. and the Supreme Court weren't already doing that). The law exempts guns made in Kansas — and that remain in the state — from all federal gun control laws, and makes it a felony for a federal official to enforce them. That includes laws requiring serial numbers and background checks as well as laws barring the sale of handguns to minors and the sale of firearms to violent domestic abusers.

Some two dozen other states have similar laws or are contemplating their own versions. Kansas argues that guns that don't cross state borders fall outside the federal government's authority to regulate interstate commerce under the Constitution. Courts have already rejected that argument.

On Wednesday, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence asked a federal judge to strike down Kansas' law; barring an unimaginable upending of decades of precedent, the challenge will prevail. (U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. has threatened to challenge the law as well, though he has not done so yet.) The legal argument is dead. So why are so many state

legislators wasting public time and money on these efforts?

So that politicians can strut before their constituents and claim they stood up to the federal government over gun rights — rights, by the way, that the backers of these laws believe are enshrined in the very Constitution they seek to subvert. The campaign manager for Sam Brownback, the onetime presidential contender and current Kansas governor, has already sent out a reelection fundraising letter built around the cynically manipulative claim that the Brady Center is suing Brownback for "defending the Constitution."

There is no defensible foundation for these laws, which are destined for the dustbin. Still, states push, wasting time and taxpayer money. Kansas' attorney general has estimated it will cost the state $625,000 to defend it.

Legislators who take up these doomed measures violate their oaths of office, which include a pledge to uphold the U.S. Constitution. It's troubling that cynical politicians play such silly and expensive games. And that voters credit such bankrupt arguments.

These 6 common password mistakes by employees are bad for business:

6 Mistakes Employees Are Making with Passwords

There’s nothing like a data breach to get a company’s name in the news these days, though likely not the press a brand would prefer. The upward trend in consumer database breaches requires everyone to revisit bad password practices, and get better ones in place, especially in the workplace where businesses stand to lose not only money but also critical assets and consumer trust. Corporate systems are only as secure as their weakest passwords.

Here are 6 mistakes we see employees making with company passwords. If you and your team are avoiding these mistakes, you’re already leagues ahead in protecting your company’s sensitive information.

1. Not systematically recording passwords.

While the proliferation of tools and services has been an immense boon for productivity in the workplace, it’s a nightmare when it comes to tracking logins. Without a system to track accounts and who has access to what, employees will inevitably be interrupting others’ workdays to try to track down that information or call the IT service desk to have passwords reset. Once they start to track passwords, employees are often surprised to discover just how many accounts they actually have. Without a system, neither employees nor the company even know who has access to what or what they should have access to, let alone quantify how many accounts are in use.

2. Storing passwords where they’re easily accessed.

Once employees do start using a system, be it a paper document, a digital document, a password manager - they have to be able to control who has access to it. Sticky notes posted on monitors or under keyboards, WiFi passwords scribbled across whiteboards that are then televised for the world to see, notebooks left out on desks - all are a potential invitation for someone to tamper with that information. Even browser password managers don’t prompt you to login by default, leaving any stored passwords exposed and usable. All passwords and accounts should be recorded in one safe place that can be controlled and locked down.

3. Sharing passwords too liberally.

In the spirit of cooperation and collaboration employees may not think twice about sharing a login, whether it be an account managed by the team or just “temporarily” so that a team member can look into something. But once shared, that password is in the wild. Should a disgruntled employee go rogue, or leave the company and still have access to those accounts, there’s a potential for damage to be done either to the brand or to customer data.

4. Not separating work passwords from personal ones.

Password reuse continues to be a problem, as employees struggle to keep track of dozens of passwords and create a system that makes them easier to remember. But by using the same password on a personal account as they do on a work account, an “insignificant breach” like that of an online retail account could lead to a very significant breach of a work account. By using a unique password for all sites, whether work or personal, employees would be able to eliminate this risk.

5. Logging in to corporate accounts on unsecured networks or devices.

Did you know that some 70% of employees access corporate data from a personal smartphone or tablet? Work and personal is more integrated than ever, and as the number of devices used in the workplace and at home proliferates, employees want to access to their services, where they want to, when they need to. There’s less distinction now between “company-only” and “personal-only”. Given that reality, employees may be exposing corporate accounts to risk by utilizing poor password hygiene across their accounts and devices.

6. Meeting the bare minimum password requirements.

It’s well known that password length and password complexity (the combination of several different character types into random sequences) are the most important factors in creating “uncrackable” passwords. Because most password requirements are onerous and employees are primarily concerned with just remembering them, they will default to the absolute bare minimum of the requirements in order to make it easiest on themselves. We don’t fault the employees - without tools to help employees create better, stronger passwords, and then remember those passwords for them, they’ll be stuck in the same old pattern.

What’s a company to do?

Half the battle in correcting these behaviors is providing tools and systems that not only encourage the behavior you want to see, but also make it easy on employees. Only by deploying company-wide password management that empowers the employee to take action will they be able to stop making the mistakes above.

Interested in learning more about a solution for your team? Check out LastPass Enterprise:https://LastPass.com/Enterprise

original post here

Just Days After TARGET Starts Its ‘No Gun’ Policy, THIS Happens…

Within three days of a new policy asking customers not to bring their guns to Target stores, reports have surfaced of armed attacks on customers at those stores.

Three Target shoppers at three different stores in Georgia alone have been robbed by armed thugs since the discount retailer announced on July 2, in a letter from its CEO, that customers should leave their guns at home when they visit Target.

This news follows an unfortunate but rather obvious pattern of establishments whose businesses or customers have been targeted after putting anti-gun policies in place — and comes on the same day that a major study revealed that concealed-carry permits dramatically decrease violent crime.

In May, I reported on a North Carolina restaurant which posted a prominent “No Guns Allowed” sign and was promptly robbed by armed gunmen the very next week. And 3 Jack-in-the-Box locations suffered robberies and a shooting within 2 weeks of their new corporate policy “requesting” no guns on site, similar to the Target policy.

Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder said it was not a ban on guns, just a “request” that the Minneapolis-based retailer hoped its customers would honor.

Whether or not that was their intent, as with Jack-in-the-Box, the outcome was the same, scary result. As WND reported that in just 3 days after Target’s new “no gun” policy:

A man was robbed at gunpoint in the parking lot of a Target in Gainesville, Georgia….

On July 5, a woman in the Edgewood area of Atlanta had just parked her Mercedes Benz in a Target parking garage and exited her vehicle when she was approached by a black man who punched her in the head, knocking her to the ground. He took her purse and car keys, then warned her to “stay on the ground or I will f—ing kill you,” according to police reports. He then put her car in reverse and would have run her over if she hadn’t rolled out of the way, she told police. She said she obeyed his commands, according to Decaturish.com.

The Gainesville Police Department arrested three men on charges of robbing a man of his cash at gunpoint in the parking lot of the Target on Shallowford Road in the city about 50 miles northeast of Atlanta.

It’s unclear if thieves are catching on and targeting businesses that discourage law abiding gun owners to carry firearms, but it would not be surprising given the amount of media coverage these corporate decisions are getting.

One would hope that Target, and other American businesses pressured by the Mike Blomberg-funded pressure group Moms Demand Action, would realize that there is only one group of people who never honor their no-guns policies: the criminals.

Meanwhile, yesterday a major study showed that a dramatic spike in the number of Americans with permits to carry concealed weapons coincides with an equally stark drop in violent crime.

When will these corporations ever learn?

view original post

We Can't Tell If This Dog Is Lazy, Or A Genius

This silly dog has a special technique for traversing the oh-so-tiring beast that is the staircase.

In the video above, witness the hilarity of a dog who goes to great lengths to avoid exerting itself. Because, after all, why stand up on all-fours and go through the exhausting routine of walking down each and every stair, when you can just slither and slide down them like the limp-limbed and lazy pup that you are?

Or maybe this is the most energy-efficient way to get downstairs? If it isn't, well, then it certainly is one of the most creative!