Pot, gays & change

Jacob Sullum

The US Supreme Court this month agreed for the first time to take on the issue of gay marriage. No matter how it rules, polling data suggest it is only a matter of time before legal recognition of same-sex unions is the norm throughout the country.

Something similar is happening with marijuana, which became legal in Washington last week and in Colorado on Monday. With both pot and gay marriage, familiarity is breeding tolerance.

The cases before the high court deal with popular reactions against gay marriage: the Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 law that barred the federal government from recognizing state-licensed gay marriages, and Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot initiative that amended California’s Constitution to eliminate same-sex couples’ right to marry, which the state Supreme Court had recognized that year.

But something interesting happened after those measures passed: Surveys now indicate that most Americans support gay marriage.

The turnaround was remarkably fast. A 1996 Gallup poll found that 27 percent of Americans thought same-sex marriages should be “recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages”; by last year, that number had nearly doubled. Recent surveys by ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN also put support for gay marriage above 50 percent.

Striking generational differences mean these numbers will continue to rise. In a CBS News poll last month, 72 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds supported gay marriage, compared to 53 percent of 30- to 44-year-olds, 44 percent of 45- to 64-year-olds and 33 percent of respondents who were 65 or older.

The consequences could be seen in last month’s election results. For the first time ever, gay marriage was legalized by popular referendum — not in one state, but in three: Maine, Maryland and Washington. Voters in a fourth state, Minnesota, rejected an initiative that would have amended the state Constitution to prohibit gay marriage (which is already banned there by statute).

On the same day, voters in Colorado and Washington approved ballot measures aimed at legalizing the cultivation, possession and sale of marijuana for recreational use. The initiatives won by surprisingly healthy margins of about 10 points in both states, in contrast with a California legalization measure that lost by 7 points two years ago.

Nationwide support for marijuana legalization, like nationwide support for gay marriage, has increased dramatically, although not quite as swiftly, rising from 12 percent in a 1969 Gallup poll to a record 50 percent last year. While support for legalization dipped a bit during the anti-pot backlash of the Just Say No era, it began rising again in the ’90s. Public Policy Polling recently put it at 58 percent, the highest level ever recorded.

Again there are clear age-related differences, reflecting different levels of experience with marijuana. In the CBS News survey, support for legalization was 54 percent among 18- to 29-year-olds, 53 percent among 30- to 44-year-olds, 46 percent among 45- to 64-year-olds and 30 percent among those of retirement age.

Just as an individual’s attitude toward gay people depends to a large extent on how many he knows (or realizes he knows), his attitude toward pot smokers (in particular, about whether they should be treated like criminals) is apt to be influenced by his personal experience with them. Americans younger than 65, even if they’ve never smoked pot, probably know people who have, and that kind of firsthand knowledge provides an important reality check on the government’s anti-pot propaganda.

Another clear pattern in both of these areas: Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to oppose legalizing gay marriage and marijuana. Yet Republicans are also more likely to oppose federal interference with state policy choices. In light of the Defense of Marriage Act’s disregard for state marriage laws and the Obama administration’s threats to prevent Colorado and Washington from allowing marijuana sales, now is put-up-or-shut-up time for the GOP’s avowed federalists.

Twitter: @jacobsullum

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Miami in spotlight at AVCC, other entrepreneurship events

Entrepreneurs from around the world took the stage during this packed week of entrepreneurship events in Miami: Florida International University’s Americas Venture Capital Conference (known as AVCC), HackDay, Wayra’s Global DemoDay and Endeavor’s International Selection Panel.

The events, all part of the first Innovate MIA week, also put the spotlight on Miami as it continues to try to develop into a technology hub for the Americas.

“While I like art, I absolutely love what is happening today... The time has come to become a tech hub in Miami,” said Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez, who kicked off the venture capital conference on Thursday. He told the audience of 450 investors and entrepreneurs about the county’s $1 million investment in the Launch Pad Tech Accelerator in downtown Miami.

“I have no doubt that this gathering today will produce new ideas and new business ventures that will put our community on a fast track to becoming a center for innovative, tech-driven entrepreneurship,” Gimenez said.

Brad Feld, an early-stage investor and a founder of TechStars, cautioned that won’t happen overnight. Building a startup community can take five, 10, even 15 years, and those leading the effort, who should be entrepreneurs themselves, need to take the long-term view, he told the audience via video. “You can create very powerful entrepreneurial ecosystems in any city... I’ve spent some time in Miami, I think you are off to a great start.”

Throughout the two-day AVCC at the JW Brickell Marriott, as well as the Endeavor and Wayra events, entrepreneurs from around the world pitched their companies, hoping to persuade investors to part with some of their green.

And in some cases, the entrepreneurs could win money, too. During the venture capital conference, 29 companies —including eight from South Florida such as itMD, which connects doctors, patients and imaging facilities to facilitate easy access of records — competed for more than $50,000 in cash and prizes through short “elevator’’ pitches. Each took questions from the judges, then demoed their products or services in the conference “Hot Zone,” a room adjoining the ballroom. Some companies like oLyfe, a platform to organize what people share online, are hoping to raise funds for expansion into Latin America. Others like Ideame, a trilingual crowdfunding platform, were laser focused on pan-Latin American opportunities.

Winning the grand prize of $15,000 in cash and art was Trapezoid Digital Security of Miami, which provides hardware-based security solutions for enterprise and cloud environments. Fotopigeon of Tampa, a photo-sharing and printing service targeting the military and prison niches, scored two prizes.

The conference offered opportunities to hear formal presentations on current trends — among them the surge of start-ups in Brazil; the importance of mobile apps and overheated company valuations — and informal opportunities to connect with fellow entrepreneurs.

Speakers included Gaston Legorburu of SapientNitro, Albert Santalo of CareCloud and Juan Diego Calle of .Co Internet, all South Florida entrepreneurs. Jerry Haar, executive director of FIU’s Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center, which produced the conference with a host of sponsors, said the organizers worked hard to make the conference relevant to both the local and Latin American audience, with panels on funding and recruiting for startups, for instance.

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Clemency board grants full pardon to wrongfully convicted man

TALLAHASSEE --
After a wrongful murder conviction that put him behind bars for 27 years, William Michael Dillon received formal forgiveness from the state Thursday.

Dillon, who was awarded a $1.3 million settlement by the state in March, stood before Gov. Rick Scott and the Cabinet and recounted how far his life has come since he was released from a maximum security prison four years ago, exonerated by DNA evidence.

Clemency hearings, in which elected officials grant pardons and rule on whether to restore civil rights for convicted felons, are usually somber, even tearful. But Dillon’s testimony was upbeat, drawing smiles from an audience of freed felons waiting for their own opportunity to ask for the legal system’s fullest measure of forgiveness.

In Dillon’s case, his civil rights — the ability to sit on a jury, own guns, hold public office and vote — were returned after he was exonerated. But for him, the pardon he was granted Thursday was the real vindication.

“It’s a great, great, great day to be here...” Dillon said, a silver necklace of a soaring bald eagle draped over his blue tie. “Now my life is good, I’m moving on, and I’m definitely going to make a positive impact from here on out.”

Dillon was 21 years old in 1981 when law enforcement officers approached him at a Brevard County gas station to ask him about James Dvorak, who had been beaten to death in a wooded area nearby.

Dillon worked two jobs — as a bowling alley mechanic and construction worker. And he spent his free time chasing pretty girls and trying to figure out what to do with his life. Innocent and unconcerned, he answered officers’ questions.

But the interrogation resulted in an arrest and a deeply flawed investigation that was later discredited.

Dillon’s full pardon Thursday was a foregone conclusion.

Scott apologized on behalf of the state when he signed a claims bill during an emotional March ceremony. Attorney General Pam Bondi, after Thursday’s hearing, said she was pleased to give the pardon.

“I hope he can go on with his life and be a productive citizen,” she said.

Dillon has big plans for the rest of his life, many of them colored by his desire to fix a flawed justice system.

He the focus of a documentary on the Discovery Channel’s I Didn’t Do It, which first aired Monday and is scheduled for another run Sunday.

He’s written 600 pages for a book about his life. And he performs in an all-exoneree band.

He recently joined the board of the Innocence Project of Florida, which advocates for the exoneration of wrongfully convicted inmates.

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Adorable Tots: Celebs and their Cute Kids!

Jack Osbourne & Lisa Stelly

Jack Osbourne and wife Lisa Stelly recently introduced their eight-month-old daughter Pearl to St. Nick for the very first time.

"What a doll," Lisa wrote on her blog alongside the adorable snap. "She wasn't totally stoked on him but she managed to squeeze out a smirk for the camera."

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Shuffle Board

Yahoo!’s board is getting a full Loeb-otomy.

Activist investor Dan Loeb completed his boardroom overhaul yesterday with the appointment of a fourth Yahoo! director. PayPal co-founder Max Levchin was named to the board, while two holdouts from the old guard, Brad Smith and David Kenney, will depart.

The changes come seven months after Loeb, the head of New York hedge fund ThirdPoint, settled his bitter proxy fight with the Web portal in exchange for the right to appoint his slate of directors.

The latest board shake-up adds another friendly face for CEO Marissa Mayer, who also got her position thanks to Loeb’s bare-knuckled brawling. Mayer worked at Google with Levchin, who sold his startup Slide to the search giant. He is also the chairman of Yelp.

Getty Images for TechCrunch/AOL

Yahoo!’s new boss and new mother Marissa Mayer is being joined on the board by fellow Google alum Max Levchin, a successful tech entrepreneur, as the corporate family takes on the look of

a tech leader.

“Max is someone I’ve admired throughout my career for his phenomenal sense for great products and keen focus on user experiences,” Mayer said in a statement.

The changes are another break from the past dysfunction that had plagued Yahoo! as it churned its way through executives.

Former CEO Scott Thompson, who was hired after the ouster of Carol Bartz, was pushed out earlier this year after Loeb uncovered a discrepancy in his resumé.

The embarrassment was Loeb’s victory. He won a seat on the board, along with two seats for directors of his choosing. He had been looking for a fourth director to implement his plan of returning Yahoo! to its Internet roots.

“This breaks the cycle,” said Colin Gillis, an analyst with BGC Partners. “Yahoo!’s problems were top-down from the board.”

Much of the old board is gone, including co-founder Jerry Yang and ex-chairman Roy Bostock, who both left this year.

Loeb has made a fortune on Yahoo! since September 2011, when he first bought a 5.15 percent stake for about $825 million. That stake has grown to 6.5 percent and is worth almost $1.2 billion.

“It’s a hard road still, but Yahoo! was trading as a distressed asset and now it has bumped up off those levels,” Gillis said. “The direction is the right way.”

Investor confidence is on the rise, in part due to Mayer’s leadership and Loeb’s show of support. He continues to buy shares, and last month added 3 million, pushing his stake to more than 75 million shares.

Meanwhile, Mayer is making her own moves, installing Henrique De Castro as operating chief. He is focused on running Yahoo!’s advertising business.

Mayer has been concentrating on software, including a recent e-mail redesign and a new Flickr, the company’s answer to Facebook’s popular photo-sharing service Instagram.

But the biggest changes are yet to come with an overhaul of the Yahoo! homepage, which is expected to bring a whole new look to the most popular Web portal.

Ryan Jacob of the Jacob Internet Fund said that Yahoo! ’s stock moves, including the selling of part of its 40 percent stake in China’s Alibaba, have made it one of his fund’s top holdings.

“It’s taken a long time, but we are finally seeing some of the value being appreciated,” Jacob said. “We’ve had to be very patient with this one.”

gsloane@nypost.com

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Wynwood co-working center funded by Knight Foundation, angel investors

The LAB Miami announced Thursday it will open a 10,000-square-foot co-working center in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and local angel investors are investing $650,000.

As Miami’s startup community continues to grow, The LAB Miami said its “work-learn campus” will offer an in-house mentor network that will include investors and serial entrepreneurs, said Wifredo Fernandez, co-founder of The LAB Miami with Danny Lafuente and Elisa Rodriguez-Vila.

The LAB Miami, now in a 720-square-foot space in the same neighborhood, turned a Goldman building at 400 NW 26th Street into an artsy, modern space that can support 300 members, including tech startups, programmers, designers, investors, nonprofits, artists and academics.

In addition to offering space to work, the new co-working space plans to offer courses and workshops in business and technology — including a startup school and code school — as well as art, design and education, Fernandez said. It will be a welcoming space for traveling Latin Americans, too. “We want this to be a community center for entrepreneurs,” said Fernandez, explaining that the mix of activities and workshops will be structured by the needs of the LAB’s members.

While the Knight Foundation’s Miami office has sponsored many entrepreneurship events in the past four months, this is the foundation’s largest investment announced so far in its efforts to help accelerate entrepreneurship in Miami, said the Knight Foundation’s Miami program director, Matt Haggman. The Knight Foundation’s Miami office, which made accelerating entrepreneurship one of its key areas of focus this year, is investing $250,000 with the rest of the funding coming from a group of investors lead by Marco Giberti, Faquiry Diaz-Cala, Boris Hirmas Said and Daniel Echavarria.

“This is an important part of our strategy,” said Haggman. “Entrepreneurs need places to gather, connect and learn.”

The LAB Miami has already hosted several events, including HackDay and Wayra DemoDay earlier this week, and the co-working space plans to open for membership in January.

Co-working space will start at $200 a month to use the communal tables, and private offices that will accommodate up to six are also available. The LAB will also offer “Connect” memberships for $40 a month, which allows members who do not need co-working space to participate in events. In addition, there will be phone booths, classrooms, flexible meeting spaces, a lounge area, a kitchen, a “pop-up shop” for local fashion, art or technology products, a shower for those who bike to work and an outside garden with native landscaping.

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‘Jewish Spirituality’ lecture series to start Dec. 16

Temple Israel of Greater Miami will kick off its Jewish Spirituality Series on Sunday with Rabbi Arthur Green, who was named one of the "top 50 rabbis in America for 2012," by Newsweek Magazine.

Green will speak on the topic, "Spirituality for a New Era."

A highly respected scholar, teacher and expert in the field of contemporary Jewish spirituality, Green is rector of Hebrew College Rabbinical School and professor emeritus at Brandeis University. He also is the author of several books, including Radical Judaism: Rethinking god and Tradition. His most recent book is titled Hasidic Spirituality for a New Era.

The event will start at 9:30 a.m. with a light breakfast followed at 10 a.m. by the program, at which time Green will engage participants in an open conversation about the future and how each person can play a more active role shaping it.

The series will continue on Jan 22, when Nathan Katz, who arranged for the Dalai Lama to come to Miami three times, will speak on "Contemporary Global Spirituality."

According to a press release from the temple, more and more Americans describe themselves as "spiritual but not religious." In his lecture, Katz will focus on the question, "What is spirituality, and can it truly be separated from religion?"

The author of 15 books, including Who Are the Jews of India, a National Jewish Book Award finalist, and his recent memoir, Spiritual Journey Home, Katz is a Florida International University research professor in the School of International and Public Affairs, the Bhagwan Mahavir professor of Jain Studies, academic director of the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU, and director of the Program in the Study of Spirituality, which is a co-sponsor of the series.

Rabbi Rami Shapiro, an award-wining author, poet, educator and the founding rabbi of Temple Beth Or in Miami, will close out the series on March 1, with the topic, "Amazing Chesed."

According to the press release, many Jews do not believe that grace is a central concept in Judaism, and an essential element in living "Jewishly." Shapiro disagrees and will draw from many facets of Jewish wisdom to answer that question in the affirmative.

Shapiro is recognized as one of the most creative figures in contemporary American Judaism and his prayers are included in worship services across the denominational spectrum of American congregations.

Admission to the series is free and open the public, and will be held in the Wolfson Auditorium at Temple Israel, 137 NE 19th St.

For more information call the temple at 305-573-5900 or email info@templeisrael.net.

New dean

Warm congratulations to the Very Rev. Douglas Wm. McCaleb, who recently was elected the new dean of the Episcopal North Dade Deanery.

McCaleb, the spiritual leader at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral at 464 NE 16th St., was elected at the 43rd Annual Diocesan Convention.

The Diocese of Southeast Florida is composed of six deaneries, divided geographically for both administrative purposes and for representation on the diocese’s Executive Board. McCaleb is the executive head of the deanery, which is responsible for the planning and financial aspects of the deanery, as well as being responsible for the study of the needs and opportunities of the church and to evaluate diocesan programs. In his position of leadership, McCaleb will also delegate the necessary authority and responsibility to carry out such work.

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New Flickr iPhone app to compete with Instagram and Twitter with 16 filters

Hot on the heels of its email redesign, Yahoo (YHOO) announced on Wednesday that it has completely redesigned the Flickr iPhone app. The new app borrows heavily from Instagram and focuses on what makes Flickr special: photos and communities. Yahoo’s new Flickr app also includes 16 filters with their own fancy names to go head-on with Instagram and Twitter’s recently updated app that added eight filters. Users can now access the Flickr app with numerous accounts including Facebook (FB) and Google (GOOG) and photos can be shared to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or via email. The new Flickr app is available for free on iPhone but to our disappointment, there isn’t an iPad-optimized version.

Ellis Hamburger from The Verge penned an interesting editorial on how Twitter misses the mark by simply adding filters to its app without having the close community that makes Instagram so addictive. Led by CEO Marissa Mayer, Yahoo seems aware that mobile apps thrive on the communities that sprout up. The new Flickr app’s emphasis on how the images are displayed and shared in visually appealing and digestible thumbnails suggests Yahoo finally understands mobile.

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Barbara Walters Names Most Fascinating Person of 2012

Who topped the list this year?

Tonight, Barbara Walters crowned General David Petraeus as her Most Fascinating person of 2012.

"David Petraeus was not chosen this year for his war record or his exemplary service to his country," said Walters. "This is about military honor, colliding with sex and lies in the digital age."

The former head of the CIA stepped down in November after an extramarital affair was discovered with his biographer Paula Broadwell.
Petraeus, 60, was also given the number one spot in 2010. 

VIDEO: One Direction on What They Look for in a Girl 

Additionally, the legendary journalist sat down with Argo actor/director Ben Affleck, British-Irish boy band One Direction, Olympic gymnast Gabrielle Douglas, Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, 50 Shades of Grey author E.L. James, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
Prince Harry and Honey Boo Boo were also featured on the list but not interviewed.

This is Walters' 20th season highlighting some of the year's biggest names in entertainment, sports and popular culture.

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Schmidt: Apple lags

Google’s Android is extending its lead over Apple in the mobile-software market at a rate that compares with Microsoft’s expansion in desktop software in the 1990s, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said. Android snared 72 percent of the market in the third quarter, while Apple had 14 percent, according to research by Gartner.

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