Today's Internets.

Women Get to Fight, as Leon Panetta Changes Combat Rules - The Daily Beast: "With unanimous support from the Joint Chiefs, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will announce at a press conference Thursday at the Pentagon that he is ordering the ban lifted against women serving in combat positions."

Liberia mulls Taylor's pension | Africa | DW.DE | 22.01.2013: "In a war crimes court in the Hague, former Liberian president Charles Taylor is appealing his 50-year jail term. He also wants the Liberian government to grant him his ex-president's pension."

Google stands up for Gmail users, requires cops to get a warrant | Ars Technica: "Google said that 22 percent of those requests were made under probable cause driven search warrants delivered via the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). Authorities have also been known to request information using ECPA suboenas, which are much easier to obtain. It is unclear how many of the subpoenas or warrants that Google complied with—the company has only said it complied in part or in full to 88 percent of total requests from American authorities. "In order to compel us to produce content in Gmail we require an ECPA search warrant," said Chris Gaither, Google spokesperson. "If they come for registration information, that's one thing, but if they ask for content of email that's another thing.""

Think you can multitask? Congratulations, you're probably living a lie.: "Do you fancy yourself a multitasker? Guess again, hotshot. New research suggests you're living a lie. As it turns out, many people who think they can multitask effectively really, really can't. According to University of Utah psychologists David Strayer and David Sanbonmatsu, people who identify as strong multitaskers tend to be impulsive, sensation-seeking and overconfident in their ability to juggle multiple tasks simultaneously. In fact, note the researchers in the latest issue of PLOS, the people who multitask the most are often the least capable of doing so effectively."

Let elderly people 'hurry up and die', says Japanese minister | World news | guardian.co.uk: "Taro Aso says he would refuse end-of-life care and would 'feel bad' knowing treatment was paid for by government"

Christina Hoff Sommers: Wage Gap Myth Exposed -- By Feminists: "If you believe women suffer systemic wage discrimination, read the new American Association of University Women (AAUW) study Graduating to a Pay Gap. Bypass the verbal sleights of hand and take a hard look at the numbers. Women are close to achieving the goal of equal pay for equal work. They may be there already.

How many times have you heard that, for the same work, women receive 77 cents for every dollar a man earns? This alleged unfairness is the basis for the annual Equal Pay Day observed each year about mid-April to symbolize how far into the current year women have to work to catch up with men's earnings from the previous year. If the AAUW is right, Equal Pay Day will now have to be moved to early January.

The AAUW has now joined ranks with serious economists who find that when you control for relevant differences between men and women (occupations, college majors, length of time in workplace) the wage gap narrows to the point of vanishing...

One of the best studies on the wage gap was released in 2009 by the U.S. Department of Labor. It examined more than 50 peer-reviewed papers and concluded that the 23-cent wage gap "may be almost entirely the result of individual choices being made by both male and female workers." In the past, women's groups have ignored or explained away such findings."

The Innocence Penalty: "After serving 15 years in prison for the crime of sexually assaulting his two children, a Utah judge has declared Kevin George Peterson factually innocent...  Alleging "sexual contact short of rape" of course meant the prosecution could convict Peterson without any real physical evidence. It was his word against his kids'. And what kid would lie about a thing like that? More than you'd think. But here's an aspect of wrongful convictions that's often overlooked: Peterson served the full 15 years of a one- to 15-year prison term for child molestation because he refused to admit guilt to the state Board of Pardons. Call it the innocence penalty. Innocent people are of course much less likely to admit to the crimes for which they're accused --before and after conviction. (Although it still happens.) That "lack of remorse" often moves prosecutors to throw the book at them, judges to give them longer sentences, and paroles boards to keep them behind bars for as long as possible."

Old school music throwback...

"There ain't no answer.

There ain't gonna be any answer. 

There never has been an answer.

That's the answer."
Gertrude Stein