BROADCASTS.com

b'You\\u2019ve Got Mail



Word came out this week that President Obama traded letters with Iran\\u2019s new president Hassan Rouhani. The white house confirms Obama wrote to congratulate Rouhani on his election victory in June, a belated letter, yes, but a letter nonetheless. The dispatch also touched on some other matters of interest to the two leaders, presumably Iran\\u2019s nuclear program. Which begs some introspection into just how a president sends a confidential note to another president of a country that has no diplomatic relations with his own? Did Obama send an aid down to the local CVS to pick out a Hallmark card, then sit at his desk and pen some kind words? It\\u2019s a little more complicated than that. Correspondence, possibly a physical letter had to make its way from the President\\u2019s desk, through diplomatic aides, to the Swiss Embassy, where it was then handed over to Iranian diplomats who eventually gave it to Rouhani. This in a world of instant communication via email and text. Regardless, it appears the two leaders now have a starting point to discuss Iran\\u2019s nuclear ambitions. In an interview with Anne Curry of NBC news Rouhani said "From my point of view the tone of the letter was positive and constructive," and he also said Iran will never develop nuclear weapons. Stay tuned.



Robotic Relationships



After a decade at war in foreign lands, a big focus of the US military is developing robotic technology to fight battles on the front lines and save human lives. But here\\u2019s a twist no one saw coming. Julie Carpenter did a study at the University of Washington in which she interviewed 23 Explosive Ordnance Personnel from the U.S. military who regularly use robots to intervene in dangerous situations. She found the operators develop human like bonds with the machines for which they are responsible, naming them in some circumstances, and even having funerals for them when they\\u2019re hit and put out of service on the battlefield. She worries that soldiers\' decisions on sending a robot into harm\\u2019s way might be biased by their feelings for the equipment (although the soldiers in her study said that was not the case). So could it be that the robotic role might be tempered by the tether to its human, and not be as effective a tool as the military hoped for? What if an operator is hesitant to send a robot into a tight spot? And on the other side, could operators become overly stressed and suffer post-traumatic-stress symptoms when a robot gets smashed to smithereens, shot or otherwise destroyed? Welcome to the world of unintended consequences. Important to note, this did not appear to be a highly scientific clinical study, but it raises some interesting questions about the relationship between man and machine.



You Gotta Like This Ruling




When our forefathers wrote the Bill of Rights, they could have never imagined a world where Facebook would reign supreme. A big legal battle over whether \\u201cliking\\u201d something on the social networking site is an expression of free speech appears to be settled, at least for now. Here\\u2019s the story: a former deputy in Hampton, Virginia says he was fired for clicking Like on the Facebook page of his boss\'s opponent in a race for sheriff back in 2009. The case ended up in the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals which ruled that clicking like on Facebook is the "Internet equivalent of displaying a political sign in one\'s front yard, which the Supreme Court has held is substantive speech." So now the case by Deputy Daniel R. Carter Jr. and five other former employees of the Hampton Sheriff\'s Department can proceed forward, they\\u2019re hoping to get their jobs back. But they won\\u2019t be getting any back pay because as a public official Sheriff B.J. Roberts is protected by the 11th Amendment\'s qualified-immunity provision regarding the scope of lawsuits against public officials, according to the circuit court.'