Archive for April, 2009
Your Government Not at Work: The Jane Harman Scandal
The Daily Show: The FBI investigates a corruption case involving two congresswomen, an Israeli lobby, and a popular kids’ program.
‘King Of Kong’ Hero Steve Wiebe Sets New World Record
Griffin McElroy, joystiq: Steve Wiebe, the lovable protagonist from the documentary The King of Kong, recently became too impatient to wait until E3 to crush a classic gaming high score. Twin Galaxies, the unofficial scorekeepers of global gaming records recently announced that Wiebe had set a new high score of 1,139,800 for Donkey Kong Jr., surpassing the previous record of 1,033,000 set by Ike Hall.
Meanwhile, our high score on Donkey Kong Jr. Math goes untouched, as it has remained for nearly two decades. Bring it on, teacher man.
Cincinnati Patrolled By Real-Life Superheroes: Could Anything Possbily Go Wrong?
Meredith Woerner, io9.com: Cincinnati has its own Allegiance of Heroes led by a 21-year-old masked superhero named Shadowhare. These superheroes patrol the streets carrying legal weapons in hopes of hindering evildoers. This will so not end well.
Many of these crime fighters are a part of the World Superhero Registry. And I’m assuming the Registry will have to take responsibility for putting these heroes together once their mangled carcasses are discovered floating in a river somewhere.
According to Cincinnati’s WLWT, Shadowhare has been teaming up with members Aclyptico in Pennsylvania, Wall Creeper in Colorado and Master Legend in Florida. As of right now Shadowhare has only experienced a dislocated shoulder while trying to help a woman who was being attacked.
Supreme Court Justice Souter To Retire
WASHINGTON — Supreme Court Justice David Souter plans to retire, sources told NBC News Thursday night.
Speculation about Souter’s plans began to swirl as the eight other justices were known to have hired the four law clerks who will work with them in the Supreme Court term that begins in October. Souter had been the lone holdout, hiring no one. A court spokesman said Souter had no comment.
A retirement by Souter, 69, would give President Barack Obama his first chance to nominate a justice and the next few months would bring Senate confirmation hearings.
Several government sources said that Souter had signaled his intention to retire, NBC News correspondent Pete Williams reported. It was unclear whether Souter would retire at the end of the current term or as soon as a nomination can be made. Wednesday was the last day of oral arguments in the current court term.
At 69, Souter is not the…
Rare Bob Dylan Concert Film Surfaces Online
Thanks to the miracle of internet uploading, Bob Dylan’s 1975 epic “Renaldo and Clara” is now available in all it’s 4 hour glory. The film includes electrifying performances from Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour as well as surreal scenes “scripted” by bad-boy playwright Sam Shepard. Since its infamous debut, Dylan forbids the film to be screened or released on DVD. Presented by the Sleepless Film Festival, Mr. Zimmerman’s epic is paired with its biggest influence – Marcel Carne’s “Les Enfants du Paradis” – and includes original poster art as well as reviews from Film Threat and Roger Ebert. Carne’s movie was filmed by Nazis and fugitive Jews alike in occupied France during WWII. The film is as miraculous as its incredible origins and it’s said that the movie has screened in Paris every day since it’s initial release.
Join the Sticker Nation!
In 1994, while working the swing shift at the Kinko’s in Menlo Park, California, Srini Kumar made a name for himself as one of the most popular sticker artists in the world. People everywhere have cracked up hysterically at the witty wonder of his one-man rebellion.
His first “Big Book of Subversive Stickers” was an immediate hit and has sold out after a third and final printing, making it an in-demand collector’s item. This all-new second volume of stickers once again makes these cult favorite slogans available to the general public in a collectible format.
Check out every sticker that’s in the book on Scribd and get one (or more!) on Amazon.com:
Conspiracy View of Swine Flu
Dr Leonard Horowitz makes a case for a vaccine manufacturer letting loose a genetically modified bug to get what they need to move forward and increase demand for their vaccines. His very convincing video is above. Authorities have admitted that the current flu is a new combination but they are silent about who made it and why.
Hackers Determine Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People
Erick Schonfeld, TechCrunch: The hackers of 4Chan have succeeded in completely gaming Time Magazine’s online poll for its Time 100 list of the most influential people on the planet. At the top of the list is Christopher Poole, aka Moot, the founder of the 4Chan online forum, whose members used some coding to get his name to the top of the list. Not only did they help moot win the poll, but they also arranged the next 20 names to spell out “Marblecake, also the game.” Marblecake is a lewd sexual reference, but is also supposedly the name of the chat room where one of 4Chan’s online collective actions, Project Chanology, originated.
This is just the “people’s choice” list, not the official list picked by Time’s editors, but still it makes you wonder whether the editors at Time bother to read anything on the Internet. It is pretty well-documented that the 4Chan community was trying…
Mexico’s Senate OKs Bill to Legalize Drug Possesion
Mexico’s Senate approved a bill on Tuesday decriminalizing possession of small amounts of narcotics for personal use, in order to free resources to fight violent drug cartels.
The bill, proposed by conservative President Felipe Calderon, would make it legal to carry up to 5 grams (0.18 ounces) of marijuana, 500 milligrams (0.018 ounces) of cocaine and tiny quantities of other drugs such as heroin and methamphetamines.
Mexico’s Congress passed a similar proposal in 2006 but the bill was vetoed by Calderon’s predecessor Vicente Fox, under pressure from the United States, which said it would increase drug abuse, but now is worried by the drug-related violence along its border.
The Invisbility Cloak Is Very Nearly A Reality
Scientists have rendered objects invisible under near-infrared light. Unlike previous such “cloaks”, the new work does not employ metals, which introduce losses of light and result in imperfect cloaking.
Because the approach can be scaled down further in size, researchers say this is a major step towards a cloak that would work for visible light.
One of the research teams describes its miniature “carpet cloak” in the journal Nature Materials.
Carroll Quigley: Our Tragedy and Their Hope
This video highlights some of the more important quotes and passages taken from the books of former CFR archivist, Georgetown professor and Bill Clinton mentor, Carroll Quigley. This includes passages from Tragedy and Hope (1966), as well as The Anglo-American Establishment (1982). The books provide a look into the inner workings of the elite bureaucracies that run the world today, from one of the conspirators themselves.
This video is an excellent start for those unfamiliar with Quigley and are just waking up to the agenda, as these are irrefutable quotes from an insider and undeniable proofs of a massive, longstanding conspiracy against the people, not only of the US, but the entire world.
‘Outrage’ Documentary: Activists Outing Gay Conservatives
Megan Slack, HuffPost: “Outrage,” a new documentary from filmmaker Kirby Dick, takes issue with the secret lives of closeted gay politicians mdash; especially conservative Republicans who outwardly oppose gay rights.
The film, which premiered last week at the Tribeca Film Festival, features tell-alls from men who say they’ve had relationships with various Republicans, including Florida Governor Charlie Crist, Bush strategist Ken Mehlman and former Senator Larry Craig.
According to Magnolia Pictures, “Outrage” is a “searing indictment of the hypocrisy of closeted politicians with appalling gay rights voting records who actively campaign against the LGBT community they covertly belong to.”
In the documentary, Dick lambastes the mainstream media for not better investigating the politicians’ “hypocrisy” and double lives. He told New York magazine that the film explores “the issues surrounding closeted politicians and their hypocrisy in voting anti-gay — and how these people have harmed millions of Americans for many years.”
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Music to Pandemic To
Swine flu: from global pandemic to the top of the easy listening charts? That’s one ambitious pathogen.
Music to pandemic to.
Swine flu a global pandemic, and now number one on the easy listening charts? Give it a listen.
Ray Kurzweil Talks Transcendent Man at Tribeca Film Fest
Last night the famous technology pioneer, best-selling author, and controversial prophet Ray Kurzweil participated in a lively discussion with Robert Krulwich (cohost of WNYC’s Radiolab) after a screening of the documentary Transcendent Man at the Tribeca Film Festival. The thought-provoking film is both a fascinating character study of Kurzweil, who is obviously a genius, and an entertaining look at the heated debate over where biotechnology and artificial intelligence is taking us.
Kurzweil predicts because of Moore’s Law, it’s only a matter of time (he says 2039) before our technology achieves Singularity, which he describes as the point when artificial intelligence will radically advance, enabling our species to “transcend biology” and, with the help of nanotechnology in our bloodstream, become a sort of Human 2.0, a mix of machine and man. He believes we will have created benevolent computerized gods who, rather then enslave us, will enable us to merge with them…
Music to Pandemic to
How can something so (allegedly) globally catastrophic sound so easy-listeningly pleasing?
Twitter Quitters Post Roadblock to Long-Term Growth
Oprah embarrassed herself on it with a stuck caps lock. That guy from Punk’d competed with “the most trusted name in news” for audience. A befuddled Jon Stewart shook his fist at it in anger. Let there be no doubt: Twitter has grown exponentially in the past few months with no small thanks to celebrity exposure. People are signing up in droves, and Twitter’s unique audience is up over 100 percent in March. But despite the hockey-stick growth chart, Twitter faces an uphill battle in making sure these flocks of new users are enticed to return to the nest.
Currently, more than 60 percent of U.S. Twitter users fail to return the following month, or in other words, Twitter’s audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month’s users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent. For most of the past 12 months, pre-Oprah, Twitter has…
British Troops End Combat Role In Iraq
A ceremony has been held in Basra to mark the official end of the six-year British military presence in Iraq.
UK combat operations ended as 20 Armoured Brigade took part in a flag-lowering ceremony with a US brigade.
In London, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said a new chapter in relations between the two countries had begun.
Biden: Stay Off Subways During Swine Flu Panic
Vice president Joe Biden said today he would tell his family members not to use subways in the U.S. and implied schools should be shuttered as the swine flu outbreak spread to 11 states and forced school closures amid confirmation of the first U.S. death.
“I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now,” Biden said when asked whether he would advise family members to use public transportation. Biden made his comments during a brief interview on NBC’s “Today” show during an interview with Matt Lauer.
“I would tell members of my family, and I have, I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now. It’s not that it’s going to Mexico, it’s you’re in a confined aircraft when one person sneezes it goes all the way through the aircraft. That’s me. I would not be, at this point, if they had another way of transportation suggesting they ride the subway. “
The vice president…
