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The times are a changing!

Two weeks after President Barack Obama announced his support of gay marriage, the NAACP has followed suit, and announced that their board of directors voted to endorse the civil right yesterday!

NAACP President & CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous said in a statement:

“Civil marriage is a civil right and a matter of civil law. The NAACP’s support for marriage equality is deeply rooted in the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and equal protection of all people."

And Chairman of the Board of Directors Roslyn M. Brock continued:

“The mission of the NAACP has always been to ensure the political, social and economic equality of all people. We have and will oppose efforts to codify discrimination into law.”

Incredible!

And in response to the announcement, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Rea Carey said:

"We are proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with the NAACP working together on the many issues that affect all of our lives. Whether it be fair access to education and jobs, an end to voter suppression and racial profiling, the right to love and be who we are free of discrimination — these issues affect all of us, our families and our country. Today the NAACP did what it does so well — inspires and affirms our common humanity."

Beautifully said!

Yet another proud moment for this country! More and more progressevery day!

EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL!

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Wallace Falls is a beautiful attraction, but that doesn't make it any less perilous. A 13-year-old boy found himself trapped when he fell down one waterfall and narrowly avoided falling down another — a much more serious 270-foot drop.

At around 5 p.m. last night, the boy was wading in the river above Wallace Falls when he slipped and got carried down a 10-foot waterfall. He almost kept going, a drop that would have been a lot more difficult to survive, but he managed to scramble onto a one-foot wide rock.

He stayed there for eight and a half hours.

Rescuers had a difficult time getting the boy down, due to his precarious position.

Rescuers first tried to reach him by helicopter, but a rock overhang prevented them from getting a clear shot at reaching him. The first rescuer lowered down and tried to swing to the boy, but the friction from the rock ledge cut the rope, and the rescuer plunged into the river.

He finally got off the rock at 1:30 a.m., and was forced to camp with rescuers until 6 a.m. when they were flown out via helicopter.

The boy was wet and hypothermic when he was found, but he quickly changed into dry clothes. After being rescued, he was not in need of medical attention.

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Did April seem feel unusually balmy to you this year? It probably had to do with the fact that it was the third warmest April ever recorded. Come to think of it, March was pretty warm, as well — the warmest ever documented, to be exact. In fact, NOAA is reporting that, as of April, Americans have officially lived through the hottest 12 month period on record:

Several warm periods across the contiguous U.S. during April brought the national average temperature to 55°F, 3.6°F above average, marking the third warmest April on record. These temperatures, when added with the first quarter and previous 11 months, calculate to the warmest year-to-date and 12-month periods since recordkeeping began in 1895.

The 12-month period of May 2011-April 2012 has a nationally-averaged temperature 2.8°F above the 1901-2000 long-term average, while the January-April 2012 months were 45.4°F, 5.4°F above the long-term average.

To quote James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institue for Space Studies,"Global warming isn't a prediction. It is happening." What we do with this information, however, remains to be seen.

Read more about America's record-setting temperatures in NOAA's State of the Climate Report.

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To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the iconic Wolfenstein 3D video game, id Software has created a free browser version of the game that includes three episodes and 30 levels. The game is also being offered in Apple’s App Store for free for a limited time on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, and it includes all six original episodes and 60 levels. Wolfenstein 3D is one of, if not the earliest first-person shooter and has inspired thousands of games that have been released since it debuted. Users play as captured U.S. spy BJ Blazkowicz and attempt to escape a World War II prison, called Castle Wolfenstein, and defeat the Nazi regime. Wolfenstein 3D can be played by following one of the links below.

Read [Browser Version] Read [App Store]

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It’s official: Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition has has broken all previous Xbox LIVE Arcade digital sales records, selling more than any other title in the first 24 hours on Xbox LIVE Arcade. I just looked at the leaderboards and there are over 400,000 people playing…so that will give you an idea at how well it is doing.

Congrats to 4J Studios, Mojang  and Microsoft Studios for all the great work.

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Apple is indeed preparing a smaller version of its wildly popular iPad tablet and it will launch this coming October for between $200 and $250, a new report claims. Numerous earlier reports have suggested that an iPad with a 7.85-inch display will launch in the third or fourth quarter this year, and now Apple watcher iMore has reinforced these rumors. The site, which has reported accurate information about unannounced Apple products in the past, says the scaled down tablet will look exactly like the current 9.7-inch iPad but smaller. It will also feature a display resolution of 2,048 x 1,536 pixels, identical to the panel on Apple’s new iPad. If iMore’s report is accurate, the move will likely be a crushing blow to vendors like Samsung and HTC, which continue to struggle in the tablet market. A $200 or $250 “iPad mini,” as it has been called, would also likely pose a huge problem for bothAmazon and Barnes & Noble, each of which offers a low-cost tablet in addition to their eReader products.

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Land Rover likes to brag that its vehicles are best suited for off-road excursions. And to ensure the company's customers in the United Arab Emirates survived a long drive into the desert, it created this handy survival guide that can even be eaten when food is scarce.

It might only provide the same amount of nutrition as your standard cheeseburger, but if you find yourself trapped in the desert with nothing to eat, we imagine it wouldn't take much convincing for you to down the guide's edible paper and inks. But you might want to take a few minutes and read through it thoroughly first, since it's actually chock full of useful survival tips for finding food, water, shelter, and possibly even a way back to the nearest Land Rover dealership.

 

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