Dick Cheney In A Bumper Car
Apropos of nothing, here’s a photo from New York Social Diary of young Dick Cheney taking a bumper car for a spin in 1976. Perhaps an omen of what was to come when this man would receive greater power.
Soldier Waterboards Daughter Over Failure To Recite The Alphabet
Sounds like some soldiers are bringing the lessons of war home with them. The Raw Story reports:
A 27-year-old Washington state soldier allegedly admitted Sunday to having held his daughter’s head in a bowl of water because she couldn’t recite the alphabet — “submerg[ing] her face three or four times until the water was lapping around her forehead and jawline.”
His girlfriend told police that the girl had been found in a closer with bruising on her back and scratch marks on her neck and throat.
Tabor was arrested after being seen in his neighborhood in a Tacoma suburb wearing a Kevlar helmet and threatening to break windows.
An Unwilling Messiah for the New Age
Fascinating story about the man who would not be messiah, in the New York Times:
Raj Patel’s desk sits in a dusty, cement-floored nook in his garage, just beyond a parked gray Prius, near the washer and dryer. They are humble surroundings for a god.
Followers of Share International, a New Age religious sect, claim Raj Patel is the messiah Maitreya. He denies the claim, but he cannot persuade them.
“It is absurd to be put in this position, when I’m just some bloke,” Mr. Patel said.
A native of London now living on Potrero Hill in San Francisco, Mr. Patel suddenly finds himself an unlikely object of worship, proclaimed the messiah Maitreya by followers of the New Age religious sect Share International.
He was raised as a Hindu and had never heard of the group.…
‘Doctor Who’ Auction By The BBC: Buy Your Very Own Dalek
The BBC needs money and apparently they are desperate enough to try selling old ‘Doctor Who’ props. For fans of the classic sci-fi show, be sure to listen to the new disinformation® podcast where Henry Lincoln talks about how he became the show’s writer. Here’s the story about this month’s auction at London auction house Bonhams, from the Guardian:
Monsters and villains which have sent generations of Doctor Who fans fleeing for the safety of the back of the sofa will go under the hammer this month.
Costumes worn by Kylie Minogue and David Tennant and Billie Piper are also included in the sale at Bonhams.
Daleks and several Cybermen have avoided extermination to make it into the sale room.
Among the highlights are Minogue’s waitress costume worn when she played Astrid Perth in the…
The Green Police: Fact or Fiction?
I’ll confess that I didn’t completely respect Mark Dice’s appeal to boycott the Superbowl and during the few minutes I tuned in this commercial aired. It’s supposed to be humorous, but are the “Green Police” really so far from being a reality?
Sweetened Soda Drinks Increase Risk Of Pancreatic Cancer
Many of us know that consumption of sugar (or more likely corn syrup) -laden carbonated drinks is a major cause of the obesity epidemic (see the disinformation® documentary Killer At Large for more on that), but now it seems that they can lead to pancreatic cancer too. From Minnesota Public Radio News:
Minneapolis — A University of Minnesota study shows that consuming a lot of soft drinks appears to increase a person’s risk of pancreatic cancer.
The findings are based on the dietary habits of more than 60,000 Chinese people who were observed for 14 years.
The study found a nearly two-fold increase in the risk of pancreatic cancer among people who consumed at least two carbonated, sugar-sweetened beverages per week compared to those who did not consume soft drinks.
U of M Researcher Mark…
Out There Radio: It’s a Strange World
For those of you who are fans of the Disinformation Podcasts, make sure to check out Raymond, Joe, and Austin’s original series, Out There Radio.
We’ve built a brand new website with mobile integration for this 50 episode series about the occult, conspiracy theories, and other bizarre undercurrents of the human psyche.
While you are there, make sure to take a look at Raymond’s Ultimate Conspiracy Video List.
The list contains nearly 100 full length films, many of which are sources for episodes of Out There Radio.
Scientists Solve Mystery Of How Old Cells Become New
From Cordis News:
Researchers have discovered how old and damaged mother cells are able to produce healthy new daughter cells, a process which has been a mystery to scientists until now. The ground-breaking research was partly funded by the EU and is published in the journal Cell.
The team’s results revealed how yeast cells use a conveyor belt mechanism to offload damaged proteins into the mother cells before dividing into new cells, a process known as mitosis.
‘This ensures that the daughter cell is born without age-related damage,’ said lead researcher Professor Thomas Nyström from the department of cell and molecular biology at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Professor Nyström’s research team has published many previous studies of cell ageing, but the new research is the key piece of the…
Thousands Of Dinosaur Footprints Uncovered In China
From PhysOrg.com:
A mound strewn with dinosaur bones is seen October 2009 in Zhucheng, in northeast China’s Shandong province. Paleontologists in China have uncovered more than 3,000 dinosaur footprints, state media reported, in an area said to be the world’s largest grouping of fossilised bones belonging to the ancient animals.
Archaeologists in China have uncovered more than 3,000 dinosaur footprints, state media reported, in an area said to be the world’s largest grouping of fossilised bones belonging to the ancient animals.
The footprints, believed to be more than 100 million years old, were discovered after a three-month excavation at a gully in Zhucheng in the eastern province of Shandong, the Xinhua news agency reported.
The prints range from 10 to 80 centimetres (four to 32 inches) in length, and belonged to at least six…
Controlled Opposition: Hard Questions About Alex Jones
[The views in this essay are those of the author alone. Publication here does not constitute endorsement by disinformation®: Full Disclosure: disinformation® has distributed two of Mr. Jones' films.]
Nick P. at Black Sun Gazette:
Special thanks to Bulldogger for showing me the way to the rabbit hole.
Many readers of Black Sun Gazette are doubtless familiar with Alex Jones, the Austin, TX-based radio show host and film maker. I have long struggled with what to make of Alex Jones. On the one hand, he provides people with difficult to find information about the frightening truth of the American government’s lurch toward police state and global empire. On the other, he is a frothing at the mouth crypto-fascist who seems to do little more than lead people down blind alleys and arguably does more…
The Science (Fiction) Of Embodied Cognition
John Pavlus writes on io9.com:
Science fiction has long played with the idea of projecting unified personalities/minds/”souls” into different bodies. The premise is baked into the plots of stories like Avatar and Caprica. But how would it work in the real world?
That’s what the science of “embodied cognition” is all about. The basic idea in this new(ish) research area (which overlaps with cognitive psychology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, robotics, and others) is this: Your mind is defined by your physical form. Not just in terms of “the mind is what the brain does”-we all are pretty down with that already. This takes it further to encompass the whole enchilada: your mind-your “I”-is a function of a cephalized, bipedal, plantigrade, bilaterally symmetrical body between 1.5 and 2 meters tall with two arms terminating in five-fingered…
When 70 Percent Support Marijuana Legalization, Starbucks Got The Message
Steve Elliott writes on New Junkie Post:
A remarkable scenario played out in the American media recently, and beyond the import of the story itself is the quantum shift in public perception that it illustrates.
A pro-cannabis group based in Colorado called for a nationwide boycott of coffee giant Starbucks after activists spotted a Starbucks logo on the website of a virulently extremist anti-drug organization. After intense negative publicity ensued, Starbucks actually felt moved to issue a denial.
Once Mason Tvert of Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recation (SAFER) called for the boycott, it took only a couple days until Starbucks denied funding the Colorado Drug Investigators Association (CDIA). Starbucks further said they officially took no position on the marijuana issue, one way or the other.
That doesn’t sound so remarkable until you realize that the…
4chan Being Blocked Again, This Time It’s Verizon
Ken Eakins writes via Sittingnow.co.uk:
DO WANT … on Verizon!
4chan site owner m00t has posted to the 4chan blog, and Twitter, that Verizon wireless, are blocking both in and outbound web-traffic to 4chan.
Unlike a recent scare involving AT&T last year, m00t believes that this time it’s for realsies, from the 4chan blog:
Over the past 72 hours, we’ve been receiving reports from Verizon Wireless customers having difficulty accessing the image boards. After investigating, we found that Verizon is dropping traffic to/from boards.4chan.org, only on port 80 (HTTP). No other subdomain/IP/port is affected, which leads us to believe this block is intentional. A call was placed to their support staff last night, and we were told that the ticket would not be looked at until Monday at the earliest, and: “You’ll need the…
Sarah Palin Reading Off Her ‘Handprompter’ at Tea Party Convention
Stefan Sirucek writes on Huffington Post:
Ahh sweet Earl Grey Revolution! Sarah Palin knew that speech like the back of her hand. The Q&A answers, however, were on the front of her hand.
Or so it appeared. During the Q&A following her speech at the Tea Party Convention, Ms. Palin appeared to read from her hand in answering.
The following image was caught by some sharp-eyed Twitter users, notably @jryanlaw
UPDATE: Closer inspection of a photo of Sarah Palin, during a speech in which she mocked President Obama for his use of a teleprompter, reveals several notes written on her left hand. The words “Energy”, “Tax” and “Lift American Spirits” are clearly visible. There’s also what appears to read as “Budget cuts” with the word Budget crossed out.
Brains, Brawn and Spectacle – Superbowl Boycott
Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe:
Though we definitely can act it, most Americans aren’t stupid, even football proves that. It takes a decent amount of brainpower to remember statistics, history, game strategy and betting strategy. Unfortunately, it’s so much misappropriated focus. We’ll spend countless hours, dollars and energy on this one game, then we’ll spend the same on March Madness, the World Series, the Stanley Cup and varried playoffs. In between, we’ll throw an equal amount of time and talent into Hallmark holidays and celebrity awards shows.
The Curious Case of the Evolving Apostrophe
Technology Review’s physics arXiv blog:
Last year, grammatical tragedy struck in the heart of England when Birmingham City Council decreed that apostrophes were to be forever banished from public addresses. To the horror of purists and pedants alike, place names such as St Paul’s Square were banned and unceremoniously replaced with an apostrophe-free version: St Pauls Square.
The council’s reasoning was that nobody understands apostrophes and their misuse was so common in public signs that they were a hindrance to effective navigation. Anecdotes abounded of ambulance drivers puzzling over how to enter St James’s Street into a GPS navigation system while victims of heart attacks, strokes and hit ‘n’ run drivers passed from this world into the (presumably apostrophe-free) next.
Why the confusion? Part of the reason is that apostrophes are not particularly…
A ‘Nobel Torsion Message’ Over Norway?
Richard C. Hoagland writes on Enterprise Mission:
The scientific evidence behind this growing set of suspicions — that the Spiral somehow caused the Russian missile to fail — lies in the extraordinary geometric structure that Enterprise has discovered within the too-perfect, too-concentric “shell-like rings” … making up the Spiral — A key part of this “impossible” geometry consisted of four, exactly 90-degree darkened “reticle-like” divisions of the Spiral … precisely separating it into four radiating quadrants ….
Geometric behavior simply inconceivable for any “randomly rotating … fuel-spewing third-stage rocket ….” This “too-too-regular-geometry …” can only be explained by the presence of —
Some kind of energy-induced, standing-wave-pattern in the Spiral …. Creating — Narrow, uniform-width concentric striations … ordered in an underlying medium (the leaking third-stage fuel?) by an external “forcing 3-D energy pattern” —
Then, it hit me: “Chladni Figures!”
Saudi Child Bride Drops Fight to Divorce 80-Year-Old
Via AFP via Google News:
RIYADH — A 12-year-old Saudi girl unexpectedly gave up her petition for divorce from an 80-year-old man her father forced her to marry in exchange for a dowry, Saudi media reported Tuesday.
Despite support from human rights lawyers and child welfare advocates, the girl and her mother, who originally sought the divorce, withdrew the case Monday in a court in Buraidah, in Al-Qasim province, newspapers said.
The girl told the court that her marriage to the man was done with her agreement, according to Okaz newspaper. “I agree to the marriage. I have no objection. This is in filial respect to my father and obedience to his wish,” she said.
Saleh al-Dabibi, a lawyer supplied by a charity group to help the girl, said her mother did not inform…
Complete Control
From Nick P. at Black Sun Gazette:
We’re going on two years of the global economic crisis that has rocked our society to its foundations. All the conventional wisdom of the post-war era about the eradication of social inequality and class conflict under the auspices of continual capitalist development has been exposed as a propagandist deception.
Any illusions that people had in the ability of capitalism to solve the world’s problems has rapidly evaporated. Even as conditions worsen, the contradictions of our system are laid bare.
