Happy Birthday, Nellie Bly!

Today is Nellie Bly's 151^st birthday! 

In 1880, the Pittsburgh Dispatch published an article titled "What Girls Are Good For.” In dismissive terms, the column’s author wrote that women shouldn't be allowed to work because their place was at home.

Days later, a pseudonymous rebuttal appeared in the paper. The response, by a 16-year-old girl whose real name was Elizabeth Jane Cochran, argued how important it was for women to be independent and self-reliant. Within a decade, the author of that response would become known worldwide as Nellie Bly: a hard-hitting young journalist who went undercover at a lunatic asylum and traveled around the world in a record-breaking 72 days.  

Throughout her life and career, Nellie Bly spoke up for the underprivileged, the helpless and minorities, and defied society’s expectations for women. We love her adventurous spirit, and we share her belief that women can do anything and be anything they want... [Source]

Yes, of course she gets her own Google Doodle! She's awesome!

Links!

• Libraries, Books, Writers, & Suchlike
• Long lines for freedom "Today, close to 400 librarians and library supporters from every state in the nation will line up to enter every Congressional office building.  Each individual advocate in those queues will be effectively standing in for more than 10,000 of the well over 4,000,000 people who use public, academic, and school libraries in America every day."
• Tell Congress to Support Real Privacy and Surveillance Law Reform 
• Parents want 'Of Mice and Men,' 'Kite Runner' removed from high schools 
• May 5, 1816: The Examiner publishes John Keats’ first poem 
• Nellie Bly shares her birthday with philosophers Kierkegaard and Marx! 
• Net & Tech
• What You Should Know About "Anonymous" Aggregate Data About You "Today more than ever, we appreciate that raw data has great financial value. The owners of websites, social media tools, and cell phone applications make billions of dollars annually on 'targeted,' or 'behavioral,' advertising. They attempt to ensure us that although they collect, share, and use data about us in countless ways, our privacy is safe, because they only use 'anonymous' aggregate data. But it turns out that it may not even be possible for aggregate data to be anonymous, no matter hard one tries to make it so."
• Researchers Make Semiconductors Just Three Atoms Thick 
• Facebook is testing a new feature that tricks you into sharing links 
• Health & Science
• New Blood Test Could Predict Ovarian Cancer Risk 
• California snowpack survey canceled: 'Drought is severe' "State water officials had planned to make the trek back to the Sierra Nevada to conduct their snowpack measurement Friday. But Thursday they announced they wouldn't bother. For the second consecutive month, there won't be any snow to measure."
• Many people use drugs – but here’s why most don’t become addicts Very interesting...
• Lost Lake shrinking down a hole Very cool...
• Officials Confirm Cancer In Smallmouth Bass In Pa. River 
• This Is The True Size Of Africa 
• Italian Astronaut 'Boldly' Brews Espresso On Space Station 
• U.S. House bill would slash NASA earth science 
• Education
• Higher Ed Lobby Quietly Joins For-Profit Schools to Roll Back Tighter Rules
• How Student Loans Could Cripple the U.S. Economy  
• Did you finish school before 2002? John Oliver explains how tests got a lot worse since then. 
• The Civics Teacher Who Turned His Arrest Into A Classroom Lesson 
• International
• Magnitude-7.4 earthquake hits off the coast of Papua New Guinea 
• Authority Issues
• Fox News Reporter Says He Saw Black Man Shot While Running From Police Now worries, though: Fox Issues Startling On-Air Retraction: 'Nobody Has Been Shot' 
• Baltimore prosecutor: If you don’t hold bad cops accountable it does a disservice to good cops She ain't wrong.
• Police at Station with #FreddieGray's Limp Body: "We gave him a run for his money" 
• A Novel Idea "Here is where we introduce David Brooks to the novel idea that even people who are not on the path to upward mobility deserve to not be killed by the police....It doesn't matter if Freddie Gray was an altar boy who spent his spare time saving endangered owls or the second coming of the Boston Strangler. There is no excuse for him dying in police custody."
• The Police State at Work: Media Arrest by Baltimore PD 
• DEA agents jailed a student for 5 days without food, water — and just got a slap on the wrist 
• Other (Serious Stuff)
• More on the War on the Poor: Missouri Senate Overrides Veto Of Welfare Restrictions Bill 
• Where Poor Kids Grow Up Makes A Huge Difference Related: The Curse of Segregation "Some cities and neighborhoods are stuck in vicious cycles of poverty while others have a proven track record of turning poorer children into economic success stories."
• The Beatings Will Continue "Given the choice between a tough-minded, expensive failure and a compassionate, cheap, effective policies, all too often our politicians seem to choose the former.  This is baffling. Why wouldn't you choose the plan that works? Why would you instead choose the one that creates poverty, spreads disease, kills people? If we can spend $1 helping someone else instead of spending $10 dealing with the social and economic consequences of lives you helped ruin, why would we choose to spend the $10 in that?"
• ‘Duck Dynasty’ Keeps Tax Break as Bobby Jindal Cuts Louisiana Colleges "Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, a potential Republican presidential candidate, is trying to close a $1.6 billion budget hole without touching as much as $415,000 per episode in tax breaks that may be due to 'Duck Dynasty.'...The state approves enough incentives each year to make up at least $200 million in proposed cuts that led Louisiana State University to say that it may plan for insolvency."
• Giving Away Louisiana: Fracking tax incentives 
• Where Is The Outrage Over Corporate Welfare? "The largest, wealthiest, most powerful organizations in the world are on the public dole. Where is the outrage? Back when I was young, people went into a frenzy at the thought of some unemployed person using food stamps to buy liquor or cigarettes. Ronald Reagan famously campaigned against welfare queens. The right has always been obsessed with moochers. But Boeing receives $13 billion in government handouts and everyone yawns..."
• L.A. sues Wells Fargo, alleging 'unlawful and fraudulent conduct' 
• Other (Awesome Stuff)
• GiveNOLA Day helps New Orleans nonprofits raise money, awareness 
• Happy Cinco de Mayo!