Archive for April, 2009
Killer At Large: Couple Crushed by McDonald’s Arches
A couple were crushed by a giant set of golden arches outside a McDonald’s. Russell and Carolyn Janke were injured when the iconic symbol toppled on their car.
The couple were knocked unconscious and suffered multiple injuries as they sat in the car park outside McDonald’s on the Navajo Nation reservation in Window Rock, in the US.
Navajo acting police chief Steven Nelson said: “It was a freak accident.” He said the wind was gusting up to 60mph winds at the time. The couple’s daughter-in-law, Ann Janke, told US media that Mrs Janke has a fractured spinal column and a fractured sternum, while Mr Janke, a retired engineer, was hit in the head and had to have more than 70 stitches.
Obama: Bush Officials’ Prosecutions Possible
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is leaving the door to open to possible prosecution of Bush administration officials who devised harsh terrorism-era interrogation tactics.
He also said Tuesday that he worries about the impact of high-intensity hearings on how detainees were treated under former President George W. Bush. But Obama did say, nevertheless, he could support a Hill investigation if it were conducted in a bipartisan way.
Obama has said he doesn’t support charging CIA agents and interrogators who took part in waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics, acting on advice from superiors that such practices were legal. But he also said that it is up to the attorney general whether to prosecute Bush administration lawyers who wrote the memos approving these tactics.
Video Games Shown To Be Addictive To Children
Nearly one in 10 children and teens who play video games show behavioral signs that may indicate addiction, a new study reports.
The study found 8.5% of those who played had at least six of 11 addictive symptoms, including skipping chores and homework for video games, poor test or homework performance and playing games to escape problems. The research, which is published in the May issue of the journal Psychological Science, is based on a 2007 Harris poll of 1,179 U.S. youngsters, the first nationally representative poll on the subject.
Exhibiting six of 11 symptoms can lead to a diagnosis of addiction, such as pathological gambling. Iowa State University researcher Douglas Gentile adopted the addiction criteria for gambling because there is no current medical diagnosis of video-game addiction.
IMF Readies For Leading Role In New World Order
Inside a cavernous assembly hall in downtown Washington, dignitaries gather twice a year for routine meetings of the International Monetary Fund. Before long, though, the room could take center stage in the IMF’s transformation into a veritable United Nations for the global economy.
Surrounded by blond wood paneling and a digital screen the size of a cinema’s, central bankers and finance ministers would meet to convene a financial security council of sorts. Serving almost as ambassadors to the IMF, they would debate ways to put out the world’s economic fires and stifle reckless policies before they ignite new ones.
Bowing to a new economic world order, the IMF would grant fresh powers to the likes of China, India and Brazil. It would have vastly expanded authority to act as a global banker to governments rich and poor. And with more flexibility to effectively print its own money, it would have the ability…
Even Jack Bauer Can’t Stop ‘The Goldman Conspiracy’
Two mind-numbing fast-paced dramas. Two parallel worlds. One real, one fiction, both deadly. Jack Bauer, mythic hero of “24.” Dying from a deadly bio-pathogen leaked from weapons developed by Starkwood, a rogue mercenary army attacking the presidency, hell-bent on taking over America.
The other drama in play: “Hank the Hammer” Paulson, iconic Wall Street hero, a Trojan Horse placed inside Washington by Goldman Sachs as Treasury Secretary in control of America’s $15 trillion economy. Goldman, a modern dynasty with vast financial powers much like those once used by the de’ Medici, Rothschilds and Morgans to control nations.
Both dramas play high-stakes games with financial WMDs that have lethal consequences. Jack compresses thrills, kills and chills into 24 hours. Hank, Goldman and their army of Wall Street mercenaries move with equally blinding speed, heart-pounding action.
Drama? You bet. Six short months ago Hank led an assault on Congress.
…
Inquiry Into ‘Plot’ To Sell Slumdog Star
Indian police have begun an investigation into claims that the father of a star of the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire tried to sell her for £200,000.
Rafiq Qureshi yesterday issued a strong denial of allegations in the News of the World that he agreed a deal to allow nine-year-old Rubina Ali to be adopted in return for the six-figure fee agreed with undercover reporters posing as representatives of a wealthy family in Dubai.
Witnesses to a Massacre: Other Participants In The Columbine Shooting
Russ Kick writes in Everything You Know Is Wrong: The mass shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado still stands as the most infamous school shooting in US history. It remains seared into the public psyche as the archetypal school shooting.
Despite the controversies it triggered (provoking arguments about guns, Marilyn Manson, bullying, and parental responsibility, among many other topics) and the subsequent incidents and near-incidents it inspired, many unanswered questions swirl around the events of April 20, 1999.
Read and/or download this article on Scribd.
Wow, How Did Goldman Sachs Turn a $1.5 Billion Profit? Must Have Been a Lot of Hard Work…
The Daily Show: With Goldman Sachs’ surprise profits, you’d think the treasury secretary that designed the bailout used to be the CEO:
Sam Donaldson: I Want To Ask Castro, Before He Dies, If He Killed Kennedy
HuffPo Video link: Asked to reflect upon the coming end of Fidel Castro’s time and regime in Cuba, longtime ABC newsman Sam Donaldson had one last request: to be beside Castro’s bedside to ask if he was responsible for John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
“You mentioned the assassination,” Donaldson, appearing on ABC’s This Week on Sunday said in reference to early conversation about the shooting of JFK. “In his dying breath I’d like to be at [Castro's] bedside and say, did you do it? Meaning November 22, 1963.”
A few co-panelists expressed playful shock with Donaldson’s conspiratorial yarn. “Oh, my goodness,” said Peggy Noonan, sifting her fingers through her hair. “Come on, Sam,” added Cokie Roberts.
“Wait a moment,” Donaldson responded. “I think it is still open.”
Retirement Dreams Disappear With 401(k)s
60 Minutes: The effects of the current economic crisis have touched everyone. Even if you still have a good job and a paid up mortgage, chances are your monthly 401(k) statement will remind you that you’ve lost a good chunk of your savings.
Trillions of dollars have evaporated from those accounts that have become the prime source of retirement funds for a majority of American workers, affecting their psyche and their future. If you are still young enough, there’s time to rebuild and recover, but if you are in your 50s, 60s or beyond the consequences can be dire, and its drawing attention to the shortcomings of a retirement system that has jeopardized the financial security of tens of millions of people.
Retirement Dreams Disappear With 401(k)s
60 Minutes: The effects of the current economic crisis have touched everyone. Even if you still have a good job and a paid up mortgage, chances are your monthly 401(k) statement will remind you that you’ve lost a good chunk of your savings.
Trillions of dollars have evaporated from those accounts that have become the prime source of retirement funds for a majority of American workers, affecting their psyche and their future. If you are still young enough, there’s time to rebuild and recover, but if you are in your 50s, 60s or beyond the consequences can be dire, and its drawing attention to the shortcomings of a retirement system that has jeopardized the financial security of tens of millions of people.
How NATO Has Prepared For Cyberwar
Graeme McMillan, io9.com: By now, the world knows that the future of warfare isn’t necessarily physical, but how prepared are world leaders for virtual war and cyber terrorism really? You should ask the inhabitants of K5.
The Guardian recently profiled the world behind K5, which they describe as “where [NATO's] top computer experts — high-ranking researchers, academics and security specialists — work in teams to analyze potential cyberthreats, and predict exactly how [to] fight virtual wars in the future,” and discovered that the outlook is bleak, especially according to Estonian scientist Rain Ottis:
“Obviously nuclear weapons do a lot more damage than a cyber-weapon would do in a physical sense — but a single cyber-weapon could have global consequences … Cyber-attacks are very efficient. You don’t have to fly to the country you’re attacking, you don’t need a cell somewhere. All you need is a connection. What happens if your country gets…
John Taylor Gatto on State-Controlled Consciousness
Here’s an interview with Everything You Know Is Wrong contributor John Taylor Gatto, an American school teacher of nearly 30 years and author of several books on education. Gatto is an activist critical of compulsory schooling and the hegemonic nature of discourse on education and the education professions.
Supreme Court Upholds Texas Jury’s Use Of The Bible In Death Sentencing
Associated Press reports:
The Supreme Court has turned away a challenge from a death row inmate in Texas who claimed his constitutional rights were violated by jurors who consulted a Bible during deliberations. Jurors reviewed a biblical passage relating that a murderer who used an iron object to kill “shall surely be put to death” [while] deciding whether to impose a death sentence on Khristian Oliver [for a murder].
The court previously has said that jurors should base their verdicts only on evidence presented in the courtroom. But state and federal courts upheld Oliver’s sentence, despite testimony that some jurors [used the Bible as a guide to sentencing].
Typeface Inspired by Comic Books Has Become a Font of Ill Will
Mr. Connare has looked on, alternately amused and mortified, as Comic Sans has spread from a software project at Microsoft Corp. 15 years ago to grade-school fliers and holiday newsletters, Disney ads and Beanie Baby tags, business emails, street signs, Bibles, porn sites, gravestones and hospital posters about bowel cancer.
The font, a casual script designed to look like comic-book lettering, is the bane of graphic designers, other aesthetes and Internet geeks. It is a punch line: “Comic Sans walks into a bar, bartender says, ‘We don’t serve your type.’” On social-messaging site Twitter, complaints about the font pop up every minute or two. An online comic strip shows a gang kicking and swearing at Mr. Connare.
The jolly typeface has spawned the Ban Comic Sans movement, nearly a decade old but stronger now…
Dan Brown’s ‘Da Vinci Code’ Follow-Up ‘The Lost Symbol’ Finally Set For Publication
Yesterday Random House popped the bubbly to celebrate the official announcement of Dan Brown’s hotly anticipated new novel, The Lost Symbol. Brown (center) is pictured here with his wife and members of Random House’s editorial and sales teams.
Random House’s Doubleday imprint is setting a five million-copy first printing for the book, which will be released in the U.S. and Canada September 15.
Ever since Da Vinci Code became a worldwide bestseller in 2003 there has been much speculation about when Brown would deliver his next book. After a number of false reports, Ron Howard, director of the Da Vinci Code movie, said earlier this year that Brown’s next book would come out sometime in 2009. In a statement, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group chairman Sonny Mehta said Symbol “is one of the most anticipated publications in recent history, and it is well worth the wait.”
The story takes place over a 12-hour period in the life…
‘Superscope’ Opens New Possibilities For Astronomers
The first stage of the switch-on of one of the world’s most powerful stargazing systems has got under way. Seven radio telescopes around the UK have been linked with optical fibres, allowing scientists to probe deeper into the Universe than ever before.
The new data-link upgrade has replaced the older microwave technology that once connected the telescopes. Tim O’Brien, from the e-Merlin project, said: “It will be a revolution in terms of what we can do with our astronomy.” Astronomers at Jodrell Bank say that the e-Merlin array will be fully operational later this year.
The Worst Homemade Star Wars Costumes
This blog chronicles exactly what its title is: poorly made and/or disturbing Star Wars costumes. And, boy, are there a lot of amazing ones to cull from the internet.
Scary Robot Ant
Who or what will be ruling the earth 100 years from now? Most likely, an army of horrifying robot ants like this one. So far, its main task is pouring beverages for its owner though. I can’t believe that someone could build this and then be able to get to sleep while it’s in their house with them.
