John Carlos Frey investigates the deliberate cruelty of the US Border Patrol agents who work on the US-Mexican border. A humanitarian relief group called No More Deaths used hidden cameras to record smiling Border Patrol agents destroying water-caches left in areas where migrants have died of exposure. A former senior agent who left after witnessing horrific acts of torture and cruelty describes the way that Border Patrol agents delight in sadistic brutalizing of captured migrants. These accounts have been corroborated by the Red Cross and Doctors of the World.

My grandparents -- Red Army deserters -- deliberately destroyed their papers after WWII in order to become "displaced people" so that they could make their way from a camp in Azerbaijan to the DP boats in Hamburg. I don't see any difference between that sort of "illegal" migration and the sort that the US BP is currently fighting. Back then, the US, UK and Canada used very similar rhetoric about the way that migrants would take badly needed jobs, bring criminality, and fail to assimilate. But as Elie Weisel said, "there is no such thing as an illegal human being."

In his nine years working the border near Tucson, Ariz., and earning the rank of senior agent, Cruz says he frequently saw agents physically abusing detainees and denying food and water to those who were in obvious need. He also saw “individuals being crammed into cells twice beyond the posted capacity. Standing room only. I mean, you couldn’t even lie down on the floor.” This was done, he says, even when empty cells were available nearby. In 2003, he began warning his supervisors of this pattern of abuse. When his spoken complaints didn’t elicit a response, he began to write letters. “I started at the unit level,” Cruz says. “I went to the sector chief, office of inspector general — via phone calls and faxes of those memorandums. Went on to the commissioner of the Customs and Border Protection, who’s over the U.S. Border Patrol Agency. And then felt the need to move on to Congress.” Cruz left the force in 2007 without ever hearing a response.

Cruelty on the border

Click here to play episode. Apps for Kids is Boing Boing's podcast about cool smartphone apps for kids and parents. My co-host is my 9-year-old daughter, Jane Frauenfelder.

In this week's episode Jane and I talk about Flow Free, a game where you try to connect pairs of colored dots without crossing any lines you've already drawn. It's free in the iTunes store and on Android.

Don't forget to be part of our "Listener Email" segment. If you would like to have us read your favorite game or gadget recommendation on the air, or if you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, email us at appsforkids@boingboing.net. Include your age, and the city, state, and country you live in.

If you're an app developer and would like to have Jane and me try one of your apps for possible review, email a redeem code to appsforkids@boingboing.net.

Listen to past episodes of Apps for Kids here.

To get a weekly email to notify you when a new episode of Apps for Kids is up, sign up here.

Writing in Rolling Stone, Bill McKibben brings us global warming's "new math," a collection of scary stats about the record-setting shifts in the world's climate, from the hottest rainfall ever recording (109' F in Mecca) to the record-breaking increase in the number of broken records in worldwide weather. McKibben's second set of numbers are the financial numbers -- companies borrowing against fossil hydrocarbons that are still in the ground, effectively incurring an obligation to dig them up and burn them -- that explain why no one is doing anything about the first set.

June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe.

Meteorologists reported that this spring was the warmest ever recorded for our nation – in fact, it crushed the old record by so much that it represented the "largest temperature departure from average of any season on record." The same week, Saudi authorities reported that it had rained in Mecca despite a temperature of 109 degrees, the hottest downpour in the planet's history.

Not that our leaders seemed to notice. Last month the world's nations, meeting in Rio for the 20th-anniversary reprise of a massive 1992 environmental summit, accomplished nothing. Unlike George H.W. Bush, who flew in for the first conclave, Barack Obama didn't even attend. It was "a ghost of the glad, confident meeting 20 years ago," the British journalist George Monbiot wrote; no one paid it much attention, footsteps echoing through the halls "once thronged by multitudes." Since I wrote one of the first books for a general audience about global warming way back in 1989, and since I've spent the intervening decades working ineffectively to slow that warming, I can say with some confidence that we're losing the fight, badly and quickly – losing it because, most of all, we remain in denial about the peril that human civilization is in.

Global Warming's Terrifying New Math (via 3 Quarks Daily)

(Image: Climate change rally on Parliament Hill, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from peterblanchard's photostream)

When blogger Melissa moved to Canada in 2008, she identified as a conservative, Republican evangelical Christian. Part of that identity included a deep mistrust of Canada's universal healthcare system. Before the move, she was terrified that she was going to place that would limit her medical choices, tell her what to do with her body, and push abortions (paid for with her money) on any woman who was unsure of what to do about an unwanted pregnancy. She was afraid of losing her freedom. She was afraid of losing her religious liberty.

But that's not what she found in Canada.

Instead, Melissa slowly came to realize that the Canadian system was actually more family friendly than the American one. In Canada, there is significantly less demand for abortion. In Canada, she says, it's easier to be a stay at home parent, and it's easier to ensure the health of your children. She also found that abortion wasn't pushed (merely offered as one of many options) and that Catholic hospitals weren't forced to offer abortions if they didn't want to. Meanwhile, Canada does a better job than we do at balancing their national budget and has far, far, far less national debt.

I started to wonder why I had been so opposed to government mandated Universal Health care. Here in Canada ... People actually went in for routine check-ups and caught many of their illnesses early, before they were too advanced to treat. People were free to quit a job they hated, or even start their own business without fear of losing their medical coverage. In fact, the only real complaint I heard about the Universal Health Care from the Canadians themselves, was that sometimes there could be a wait time before a particular medical service could be provided. But even that didn’t seem to be that bad to me, in the States most people had to wait for medical care, or even be denied based on their coverage. ... The only people guaranteed immediate and full service in the USA, were those with the best (and most expensive) health coverage or wads of cash they could blow. In Canada, the wait times were usually short, and applied to everyone regardless of wealth ... Personally, I never experienced excessive wait times

This story is hitting particularly close to home for me, right now, as I have started to receive bills in the mail for medical costs incurred by my recent miscarriage. The anesthesia for my abortion, alone, ran more than $1500. I have high-deductible insurance (which brought the cost down to about $650) and a health savings account (which allowed me to cover the rest). I'm not in trouble. But I am very, very aware of how lucky and privileged I am in this.

If it weren't for the fact that I'm married to an engineer, I wouldn't have health insurance now. In fact, I probably wouldn't be writing for BoingBoing, because I would never have been able to take the risk of freelancing and leaving any job (no matter how poorly paid or odious) that offered me health insurance. And if I had had the misfortune to have a miscarriage at 7 weeks without the health coverage I have now, I would have incurred medical bills that could have put me in debt for years. Either that, or I would have had to make choices about my miscarriage that would have made the experience significantly worse on my physical health and mental well-being.

I've been successful in my career. But that's not enough. Whatever I've done as a "self-made" lady, I don't deserve to be able to make the right health choices for myself without fear of bankruptcy. Or, rather, I don't deserve it anymore than everyone deserves it. Healthcare without fear shouldn't be something you have to earn by being exceptional. Nothing I've done personally, makes me more special and deserving of being able to take care of my body. And that's the problem with the US health system. It takes basic necessities and treats them as privileges.

Read the rest of Melissa's post on healthcare in Canada

The Guardian's Laura Page profiles Phil Inkley, a British man who believes that he is sensitive to electromagnetic radiation, and claims that he experiences convulsions and blackouts when exposed to WiFi and mobile phone signals. He lives in a caravan in the woods, with an Ethernet cable running to a distant mobile Internet dongle that connects his laptop to the rest of the world. He says that the research disproving electromagnetic sensitivity was sponsored by the mobile industry, and compares it to Big Tobacco-sponsored research "disproving" the link between smoking and cancer. Inkley says he used to earn his living fixing computers and that he isn't a technophobe.

I remain convinced that electromagnetic sensitivity is vanishingly unlikely, and that the research disproving it looks good. But I feel for this guy, whose symptoms are real, and who has not found anyone who can help him with them, and has been driven to a pretty awful life as a result.

Phil's GP simply informed him that there was no convincing evidence that electromagnetic radiation has any detrimental health effects. He then contacted the Health Protection Agency, leaving several messages, but no one ever got back to him - until he received a voicemail telling him not to call again.

In 2005 the HPA reported that considering only whether electromagnetic radiation was a causative factor was not meeting the needs of sufferers, although continued research in this area was essential. Whatever the cause, EHS symptoms are real and they can be severe and extremely disabling. Sufferers are not getting the support they need.

Phil describes his condition as "living in a nuclear war". He asks: "Can you imagine what it's like when your environment becomes so aggressive to your health?" His voice trembles and he looks desperate.

Phil could certainly do with moral support and financial help to stop him slipping further towards the edge of society. But what he really wants is for people to believe he is right about the causes of EHS. He'd like more independent studies to be undertaken and seriously considered.

Here's a good summary of the research refuting electromagnetic sensitivity.

The man living alone in the woods to escape Wi-Fi and mobile phones

(Image: Cellular Mast Disguised as a Tree, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from barbourians's photostream)

[Video Link] Since 2009, 27-year-old comedian Aman Ali and photographer Bassam Tariq have spent the Islamic holy month of Ramadan (which begins today) visiting a different American mosque each night. Together, they documented these journeys on their blog, "30 Mosques in 30 Days." This year, they invite others to join them in documenting Muslim-American culture—see the video above. And more in the New York Times.

Here's a CBC As It Happens story from last month on Jodi Jaecks, a woman in Seattle who had a double mastectomy and successfully fought the city for the right to swim topless in the local pool. She swims as part of her post-surgical therapy, and finds wearing women's suits cumbersome. She was given "singular permission" to swim wearing only a bottom, but has vowed to continue the fight until the policy is changed throughout.

For breast cancer survivor,Jodi Jaecks, the fight isn't over. Last week, she won the right to go topless in Seattle area public pools. That's a year after undergoing a double mastectomy. Now, she wants to make sure the same rules apply to other women who have survived breast cancer.

Double Mastectomy Swimmer

In the interest of not having every thread on every subject turn into a hissfest about whether Obama or Romney is a bigger doody-head, Boing Boing's election year rules are back on. These rules will remain in force for the rest of 2012.

• Please do not refer to candidates or parties unless they are mentioned in the post or clearly relevant to the subject. Example: In a post about radioactive scorpions who eat puppies, "They must be Republicans" is not a valid comment.

• In political discussions, please limit citations to credible news sources, credible statistic sites, etc. Links to candidate propaganda should only be used to demonstrate that candidate's stated position. Links to partisan websites will be treated as astroturf.

• Copy-pasted opinions and talking points will be treated as astroturf.

• Please do not stump for your candidate by shouting slogans. Content or GTFO.

• Please observe all the other niceties such as not repeating yourself and remaining civil.

Retinal neuroscientist and photographer Bryan Jones sends in this gorgeous shot of an archaeopteryx fossil displayed in the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, Germany.

"As a biologist, seeing this fossil represents something of a pilgrimage," says Bryan, "[Visiting this museum is] a journey that all biologists would benefit from making."

Snip from his blog post:

This particular sample was found in the Solnhofen limestone formation in Bavaria and is the basis for the link between the dinosaurs and the feathered birds. Archaeopteryx itself is a feathered theropod, but is though of as the oldest documented bird dating back approximately 150 million years ago.

The fossil was found in 1874 by Jakob Niemeyer who traded it to Johann Dorr for a cow. Johann then sold the fossil to Ernst Haberlein for 2,000 German Marks. This sale was then turned around to the founder of Siemens, Werner von Siemens for 20,000 German Marks for the University of Berlin which has provided this specimen to scientists around the world as the best preserved specimen found with elegant feathers and an exquisitely preserved skull.

Michael Geist sez,

The implications of last week's Supreme Court of Canada copyright decisions seem readily apparent to just about everybody - other than Access Copyright. There have been numerous posts analyzing the decisions, all of which recognize the expansion of fair dealing. Yet in a release posted hours after losing at Canada's highest court, the copyright collective implausibly claimed that the decision "will have a limited impact on the importance of the Access Copyright licence to the education community" and that it "leaves copyright licensing in the education sector alive and well." To support the claim, Executive Director Maureen Cavan argued that the specific case only covered about seven percent of the copying done in K-12 schools.

The strategy of claiming that little has changed may have worked with some institutions after the 2004 CCH copyright decision, but it is very unlikely to do so this time.

It is true that the specific case involved a small percentage of overall K-12 school copying, but the court's fair dealing analysis applies to all copying, not just the copies at issue. In this specific case, the court ruled the Copyright Board's analysis of the fair dealing six factor test was unreasonable, an unmistakable signal to reverse its ruling. More broadly, the decision eviscerates the current Access Copyright business model that is heavily reliant on educational revenues. The decision does not create a free-for-all - schools will continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year on books, database licences, and transactional licences - but the need for an additional Access Copyright licence for schools at all levels is now unquestionably in doubt.

Just how badly did Access Copyright fare at the Supreme Court?

Why the Supreme Court's Copyright Decisions Eviscerate Access Copyright's Business Model (Thanks, Michael!)

Tony Papa of the Drug Policy Alliance says:

Millions of people have died of AIDS because of bad drug policy – and millions more lives hang in the balance.

The International AIDS Conference will be held in the U. S. for the first time in 22 years this July 22-27, in Washington DC. Activists, public health professionals, and distinguished world leaders are mobilizing in Washington with a clear message: the criminalization of people who use drugs – and especially backward government policies that restrict syringe access – are driving the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Throughout the world, research has consistently shown that drug criminalization forces people who use drugs away from public health services and into hidden environments where HIV risks become significantly elevated. Mass incarceration of nonviolent drug offenders also plays a major role in spreading the pandemic, as inhumane conditions and lack of HIV prevention or treatment measures in prison lead to HIV outbreaks and AIDS cases behind bars – and among families and communities once those imprisoned are released.

Yet in countries where addiction is treated as a health issue, the fight against HIV/AIDS is being won. New HIV infections in countries such as Australia, Germany and Switzerland have been virtually eliminated among people who use drugs, just as mother-to-child HIV transmission has been eliminated in countries that make medicines for pregnant women accessible.

In the United States, however, the federal government has resisted evidence-based HIV prevention strategies – costing us hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of dollars. Congress re-instated a longstanding ban last December that prohibits using federal funds for syringe access programs – a move that will cost thousands of more lives in years to come.

Want to know more about the drug war and AIDS? Check out the infographic and take action by urging Congress to end the syringe access funding ban.

Thank you to Bart & Co. for assembling this Flickr gallery of 89 scans of old and and often eldritch clip art.

The Bart And Co. Clip Art Collection (Via The Comics Reporter)

Jason Horn, creator of the Ninjasaur webcomic, is looking to Kickstart the funds to print an illustrated kids' novella about time travel:

Kathryn the Crononaut is a all-ages novella (short novel) that seeks to introduce kids to advanced scientific theories in a fun, entertaining manner. Kathryn O’Riley is a smart, idealistic sixth-grader who decides to use her science fair project to declare that she will dedicate her life to someday creating time travel. She announces to the world that her future self will arrive the day of the fair to demonstrate the scientific breakthrough she will eventually make. Can one science fair change the world, especially if “Future Kathryn” doesn’t show up?

With the help of her parents, her best friend Holly, and her grumpy old science teacher, Kathryn learns that inspiring her classmates could have just as much of an impact as actually creating time travel.

Kathryn the Crononaut (Thanks, Jason!)