Worldwide Hippies News Briefs Monday
Wash. Avalanche: 3 Skiers Dead, 4th Survived
STEVENS PASS, Wash.) — Well-equipped and familiar with the terrain, about a dozen expert skiers were making their way through a foot-and-a half of fresh snow when an avalanche hit them in an out-of-bounds area near a popular Washington ski resort.
Three men were killed Sunday when they were swept about a quarter-mile down a canyon, and a fourth skier caught up in the slide was saved by a safety device, authorities said. The large group had split into three smaller groups before the avalanche, but all the backcountry skiers were buried to some extent. Those who were able to free themselves rushed to dig out the victims and unsuccessfully performed CPR on the three, believed to be in their 30s and 40s.
“Most of the people involved in this were well-known to the ski community up here, especially to the ski patrol,” said Deputy Chris Bedker of the King County Sheriff’s search-and-rescue unit. “It was their friends who they recovered.” More…
Rio’s riotous Carnival reaches dazzling highpoint
Rio’s riotous Carnival was in full swing on Monday as top samba schools paraded sumptuous allegorical floats and hundreds of exquisitely costumed performers to thumping drum beats.
The night parades in Rio’s hallowed Sambadrome marked the high point of the pre-Lent bacchanalian Carnival festival, which is bringing this racially diverse country of 191 million people virtually to a stop.
Making its first appearance in the elite group of samba schools vying for the title of Carnival champion this year, Renascer, from the western district of Jacarepagua, led the way.
It chose as a theme to showcase the life and work of Brazilian artist Romero Britto, a Recife-born painter and sculptor viewed as an icon of world pop culture who combined influences from cubism with pop, to create a vibrant, iconic style.
Renascer illustrated the artist’s style with dazzling costumes representing colorful butterflies, flamingoes and giraffes. More…
Data collection arms race feeds privacy fears
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – This week’s revelations that Google Inc, Twitter and other popular Internet companies have been taking liberties with customer data have prompted criticism from privacy advocates and lawmakers, along with apologies from the companies.
They are the latest in a long line of missteps by large Internet companies that have faced little punishment for pushing privacy boundaries, which are already more expansive than most consumers understand.
Despite all the chatter about online privacy and the regular introductions of proposed data protection laws in Congress, Silicon Valley is in the midst of a veritable arms race of personal data collection that is intensifying.
Many innovative companies, most prominently Facebook, base virtually all of their services on the ability to personalize, which requires them to know their users well. Their business models likewise depend to an increasing degree on the ability to target a banner advertisement or other marketing pitch to an individual. Millions of times each day, the right to advertise to a specific user is auctioned off in a fraction of a second by computers talking to one another.
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