Archive for March, 2009
Does Fort Knox Have Any Gold Left ?
It is said to be the most impregnable vault on Earth: built out of granite, sealed behind a 22-tonne door, located on a US military base and watched over day and night by army units with tanks, heavy artillery and Apache helicopter gunships at their disposal.
For several prominent investors and at least one senior US congressman it is not the security of the facility in Kentucky that is a cause of concern: it is the matter of how much gold remains stored there — and who owns it.
Courtney Love Sued For Libel Over Online Rants
Some of Courtney Love’s online rants are now in a Los Angeles court.
A fashion designer’s libel and breach of contract lawsuit against the singer includes what she calls several “menacing and disturbing” statements posted on the Internet.
Austin, Texas-based Dawn Simorangkir (Sim-or-AHNG-ker), also known as Boudoir Queen, says Love never paid her for work done. She filed the lawsuit Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court.
The suit cites remarks from Love’s Twitter and MySpace pages, and in the feedback section of Etsy.com.
It said Love called Simorangkir a “nasty lying hosebag thief” and accused her of being a drug addict and a prostitute.
Geithner Remarks on IMF Currency Roil Foreign-Exchange Market
Bloomberg: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner sent the dollar tumbling with comments about China’s ideas for overhauling the global monetary system, only to drive it back up by affirming that it should remain the world’s reserve currency.
Geithner was asked at a Council on Foreign Relations event in New York yesterday about People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan’s call for a new international reserve currency. He said while he had not read Zhou’s proposal, he understood it as a plan “designed to increase the use of the IMF’s special drawing rights. And we’re actually quite open to that.”
The dollar slid as much as 1.3 percent against the euro within 10 minutes of news accounts of Geithner’s remarks. It recouped much of the loss about 15 minutes later, when Geithner then predicted no change in the U.S. currency’s role. The dollar was down 0.22 percent at $1.3553 per euro as of 12:13…
‘The Shining’ and Physical Cosmologies
Mstrmnd.com: This is an excerpt of a large-scale guide to the inner workings of The Shining. The written probe here is evidence of a conscious attempt to create motion-glyphs out of seemingly mundane and unrelated forms, signs and symbols of two continental systems.
In essence a primer for a new form of visual cognition, The Shining eschews all formal genre conditions of horror crafting a vastly unseeable new genre, one that has yet to be fully integrated into our culture as recognition.
Your memory is consistently being tested as well as your powers of observation, not unlike a test we would administer to an ape to see relevance and awareness. Our consciousness as thinkers that utilize the visual cortex to connect motor and sense areas requires that we evolve beyond our liminal trappings.
Forget Dark Matter … If The Universe Has a ‘Fifth’ Force
PhysOrg.com: No one knows exactly what a “fifth force” might be, but studies have shown that, if a long-range fifth force does exist, it could have surprising effects on the universe’s structure formation. A fifth force could reduce discrepancies between theory and observation in several areas of cosmology.
Now, as new research has shown, a fifth force could also be connected to dark matter. In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, physicists Jo Bovy and Glennys Farrar were surprised to discover that a fifth force in the dark sector could place constraints on dark matter that essentially exclude its direct detection through spin-independent interactions. Conversely, if future experiments do detect a spin-independent interaction of dark matter, then any fifth force in the dark sector must be so weak as to be astrophysically irrelevant.
“Our study shows that we can strongly constrain some properties of dark matter, i.e., the combination of its…
50 Beautiful Long Exposure Photos
PXLshots.com Blog: Below you’ll find an impressive collection of 50 long exposure photos!
50 Photos taken with very slow shutterspeed. Enjoy!
Britain’s Greatest UFO Mystery Revealed
Chris Hastings and Jasper Copping, Telegraph: Declassified government files have revealed how Ministry of Defence (MoD) officials launched a top-level probe into a diamond shaped aircraft seen hovering above a Scottish village.
Officials were so alarmed by the object, which was captured on camera, that they broke with established procedures and referred the sighting to ministers.
They also overrode rules prohibiting investigations into UFO sightings not considered an immediate threat to national security, and spent more than a year trying to crack the still unexplained mystery.
The disclosure about the incident is contained in more than 1,000 pages of official documentation, detailing hundreds of UFO sightings between 1987 and 1993, which has been made available publicly at the National Archives in Kew for the first time today.
Their release comes at a time of increased reports of UFO activity in Britain.
Figures obtained by The Sunday Telegraph show that sightings for the first two months…
Austin Police Shut Down Fake Twitter Page
Patrick George, Austin AMERICAN-STATESMAN:
After complaints from the City of Austin and the Texas attorney general’s office, the social networking site Twitter has shut down a fake account that pretended to issue Austin Police Department bulletins with official-sounding messages that included “warming up my radar gun for SXSWi.”
The “AustinPD” page had about 450 followers. It was created in 2008 and used the official City of Austin seal. The page now states that the account “has been suspended due to strange activity.”
Twitter did not immediately return calls and e-mails for comment Monday, but according to its Web site, impersonation violates its terms of agreement.
City and state officials issued a statement Monday saying they had contacted the San Francisco-based company and asked it to suspend the account, citing a Texas law that prohibits individuals from impersonating public servants. The attorney general’s office, which investigates those who use the Internet to impersonate police officers,…
Can the Human Lifespan Reach 1,000 Years? Some Experts Say ‘Yes’
The Daily Galaxy: Cambridge University geneticist Aubrey de Grey has famously stated, “The first person to live to be 1,000 years old is certainly alive today … whether they realize it or not, barring accidents and suicide, most people now 40 years or younger can expect to live for centuries.”
Perhaps de Gray is way too optimistic, but plenty of others have joined the search for a virtual fountain of youth. In fact, a growing number of scientists, doctors, geneticists and nanotech experts — many with impeccable academic credentials — are insisting that there is no hard reason why ageing can’t be dramatically slowed or prevented altogether. Not only is it theoretically possible, they argue, but a scientifically achievable goal that can and should be reached in time to benefit those alive today.
“I am working on immortality,” says Michael Rose, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of California, Irvine,…
The Woman Who Could Nail Bush
Scott Horton, Daily Beast: Forget nanny issues and unpaid taxes. The GOP is threatening an ugly fight over an Obama Justice Department appointee who wants to disclose more Bush-era torture memos.
Until recently, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, often considered the “brains” of the department, has been known mostly to legal experts. But for the past eight years, it was the epicenter of allegations of political manipulation and, worse, the source of infamous memoranda on torture. In tapping Eric Holder as attorney general, President Obama has promised to restore standards of professionalism to the department. For Republicans, this is tantamount to a declaration of partisan war.
On March 19, the nomination of Indiana University law professor Dawn Johnsen to head the OLC was endorsed by the Judiciary Committee with every Republican voting against her and Sen. Arlen Spector (R-PA) abstaining. The nomination was to have been brought to the Senate…
Celebrities and Politicians Hire Ghost Writers for Twitter
You can’t even write a long sentence on Twitter, so much for authenticity! NOAM COHEN, NY Times:
The rapper 50 Cent is among the legion of stars who have recently embraced Twitter to reach fans who crave near-continuous access to their lives and thoughts. On March 1, he shared this insight with the more than 200,000 people who follow him: “My ambition leads me through a tunnel that never ends.”
Those were 50 Cent’s words, but it was not exactly him tweeting. Rather, it was Chris Romero, known as Broadway, the director of the rapper’s Web empire, who typed in those words after reading them in an interview.
“He doesn’t actually use Twitter,” Mr. Romero said of 50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis Jackson III, “but the energy of it is all him.”
In its short history, Twitter — a microblogging tool that uses 140 characters in bursts of text — has become an…
Senators Gone Wild: ‘You’re Good’ … ‘Your Wife Said The Same Thing’
Ryan Grim, HuffPost: Marking up budget legislation can be a brutal affair, often beginning early and lasting long into the night. But buried within the hours of debate in the Senate on Thursday is an exchange you’d be more likely to hear in a locker room than a congressional hearing.
Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D–N.D.) was on the receiving end of this one, after telling Sen. Charles Grassley (R–Iowa), “Oh, you are good.”
“Well, your wife said the same thing,” Grassley responded.
Chinese ‘Find’ Lost Radioactive Ball
BBC News: Chinese officials say that potentially deadly radioactive material lost in north-western Shaanxi province may have been found at a steel mill.
Officials told the BBC that they had detected what may be the missing Caesium-137, adding that it may have been melted down. The Caesium-137, encased in lead, was lost this week when workers at a cement plant demolished an old factory.
The material was part of a measuring instrument and is extremely dangerous. Caesium-137 is a radioactive isotope, formed mainly through nuclear fission. The smallest amount can cause infertility, cancer and even death.
Eight trucks worth of scrap gathered at the disused factory in Tongchuan city were sold to a local steel mill, according to official news agency Xinhua. Local environmental officials told the BBC they were mounting a clean-up operation at the mill in Fuping county.
The BBC’s Quentin Sommerville in Beijing says China has an appalling record on industrial…
Brazil’s Leader Blames White People for Economic Crisis
Jonathan Wheatley, Financial Times: Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Thursday blamed the global economic crisis on “white people with blue eyes” and said it was wrong that black and indigenous people should pay for white people’s mistakes.
Speaking in Brasília at a joint press conference with Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, Mr Lula da Silva told reporters: “This crisis was caused by the irrational behaviour of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything and now demonstrate that they know nothing.”
He added: “I do not know any black or indigenous bankers so I can only say [it is wrong] that this part of mankind which is victimised more than any other should pay for the crisis.”
Mr Brown appeared to distance himself from Mr Lula da Silva’s remarks. “I’m not going to attribute blame to any individuals,” he said.
Mr Brown was visiting Brazil…
Even Mercedes Is into Steampunk
Good Magazine: Mercedes has lost its mind. And I think I likey.
According to a press release, the F-CELL Roadster (shown beside the 1886 Benz Patent Motor Car) is “fitted with a 1.2 kW hybrid drive—one that allows the F-CELL to reach a top speed of 15 mph and achieve an operating range of 217 miles.” It also “draws its inspiration from a diverse variety of automotive eras.” Clearly.
It looks sharper than a golf cart — that much is certain — and it seems like a bizarrely awesome way to get around town … if you’re an eccentric billionaire who’s mad into hi-tech anachronism. Check out some of the pics below and let us know if you’d give one a spin. No word yet on price.
Full press release and cool pictures found here.
Man Dies Trying to Save Girlfriend as She Jumps from 7th floor
A Chinese man was killed last night after trying to catch his suicidal girlfriend as she jumped from the seventh floor of their Quanzhou apartment building in south-eastern China.
The Age of Reverse Darwinism Is Upon Us
Each morning I read my newspaper and get validation that truth is stranger than fiction. But lately, I’ve seen cracks in that previously sacrosanct notion. It seems that truth is now so weird it doesn’t even make good fiction.
Teen Assassin’s Eye Tattoos
Gabriel Cardona is a teenager from Texas who worked as an hitman for a Mexican drug cartel, getting paid sums as large as $50,000 to kill people. He worships Santa Muerte (the Grim Reaper-like saint of death), disposed of victims’ bodies by making them into a stew, and, creepiest of all, had eyes tattooed onto his eyelids. So he’s always watching.
The Ten Unhappiest Cities In America
A ranking of our nation’s most woeful major cities, determined by factors such as weather and rates of crime, unemployment, depression, suicide, and divorce. The top five is rounded out by Cleveland, Detroit, New Orleans, St. Louis, with the number one spot held by…Portland(!) The “drizzly city” suffers from constant wet, grey weather and has the highest rate of depression in the country. Also interesting: Las Vegas has the highest suicide rate in the United States.
