In a visit to the United States in 1842, Charles Dickens was appalled by our prisons, where a man never left his cell (except to the exercise courtyard) for the duration of his sentence, never got word of his family or news of the outside world. An alternative type of prison was the Silent, which permitted to mix with one another while working during the day…but forbade them to communicate. Fortunately, today’s prisons offer interaction, exercise, education, libraries, family visiting, correspondence and nowadays even a controlled email. But, Ohio’s prisons fail to offer release to prisoners who have 20, 30, 40 years in, because of a cruel parole board. Prisoners continually come to their hearings with a raft of programs they have taken, stellar behavior records (“18 years ticket­free”), volunteer hours, family support, a job waiting. They would seem models of rehabilitation and ideal candidates for parole, but the parole board invariably rules that, “due to the serious nature of the crime” – which will never change, although the person can and usually does – the inmate needs to serve another three or five years.

Peter Baum is looking forward to becoming a weekend warrior for the Ohio Machine, a Major League Lacrosse team which plays out of Delaware. Like many of his teammates, the Colgate University graduate lives out of town but will join his fellow cogs in the Machine every weekend for games. “Yeah it’ll be pretty different,” says Baum, the 2012 Tewaaraton Trophy winner for the Raiders and the top pick in the 2013 MLL Collegiate Draft for the Ohio Machine. “It’ll be different to build a sense of chemistry when you are only playing together once or twice a week. “At the same time, the guys who are playing in this league are playing at such a high level. They understand how to play a sport, not just from the physical standpoint but from the mental side. It makes things easier to jell once we get playing.” President and General Manager John Algie will count on Baum and a host of new talent to help the Machine improve on their second consecutive 2­12 finish in their two­year history.

OKCupid members arriving at the site via a Firefox browser today are being asked to make a choice and stand up against anti-gay bigotry. At the center of the controversy is Firefox's new CEO, Brendan Eich, who donated money in support of California Prop 8 back in 2008. Visitors to the site browsing with Firefox received a special message from OKCupid stating, “Hello there, Mozilla Firefox user. Pardon this interruption of your OkCupid experience. Mozilla’s new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples. We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid.” Visitors were then offered redirect tabs to download alternatives to the Mozilla Firefox web browser. The move is a bold piece of activism in a tech industry becoming more willing to flex its political muscle.

Space weapons lurking beneath the Ohio countryside sounds like a sci-fi nightmare only the Pentagon can conjure up, but an on-going environmental impact study may find the Buckeye state a great place for shooting down Russian or Chinese satellites as they orbit the planet. World War III would have erupted if the US were shooting down Russian or Chinese satellites, but the recent events in the Ukraine certainly make the future as murky as ever. But when it comes to space warfare, this “mad” future is now, and licking their chops is the Pentagon and their super-rich defense contractors who are eyeing Camp Ravenna in northeast Ohio for a “Ground-based Mid-Course Missile Defense” site, better known in missile defense parlance as a “GMD” site. Like nuclear missiles, GMD “interceptors” are stored and launched from underground silos.