Archive for May, 2009
Space Zen: Will Humans’ Brains Change During Travel in Outer Space?
Daily Galaxy: In February, 1971, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell experienced the little understood phenomenon sometimes called the “Overview Effect”. He describes being completely engulfed by a profound sense of universal connectedness. Without warning, he says, a feeling of bliss, timelessness, and connectedness began to overwhelm him.
He describes becoming instantly and profoundly aware that each of his constituent atoms were connected to the fragile planet he saw in the window and to every other atom in the Universe. He described experiencing an intense awareness that Earth, with its humans, other animal species, and systems were all one synergistic whole. He says the feeling that rushed over him was a sense of interconnected euphoria. He was not the first—nor the last—to experience this strange “cosmic connection”.
Rusty Schweikart experienced it on March 6th 1969 during a spacewalk outside his Apollo 9 vehicle: “When you go around the Earth in an hour and…
Re-educating Osama Bin Laden’s Disciples
60 Minutes: President Obama has ordered the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay closed and his new administration is close to figuring out what to do with the 240 inmates still held there. Some, like Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self proclaimed mastermind of 9/11, will undoubtedly be put on trial for their lives.
But more than half the so-called detainees will probably never go before a jury because the U.S. government does not have a case that will stand up in court. So what happens when a prisoner is set free from Guantanamo?
As correspondent David Martin reports for 60 Minutes, more than 500 prisoners were released during the Bush administration and one of the largest contingents was from Saudi Arabia.
Video Game Girls Burlesque
Every gamer’s wet dream came true at Bordello on May 9 as Devil’s Playground presented Video Game Girls burlesque. The dancers arrived armed and outfitted for an arcade battle, and included Super Mario Bros. Princess Peach, Metroid’s Samus Aran, Street Fighter’s Chun-Li, The Legend of Zelda’s Link and Princess Zelda, and BloodRayne’s Rayne. See how they ranked by costume, skills used and execution.
Some GIs Forced To Steal Water In Iraq
CBS: Stories of short supplies for American forces in Iraq, such as inadequate body armor or unshielded Hummers, have been around since the war began. CBS affiliate KHOU-TV in Houston has discovered that some soldiers were forced to ration water, perhaps as little as 2–3 liters per day, because there was never enough.
It is less than the one gallon minimum a day that an Army manual says is necessary just to survive in a desert environment. In fact, an Army training document on preventing heat casualties states that water losses in the desert can reach 15 liters (about four gallons) a day per soldier.
Army Staff Sgt. Dustin Robey told KHOU correspondent Jeremy Rogalski that soldiers would throw up or pass out from dehydration. Chronic dehydration can lead to such problems as kidney stones, urinary infection, rectal afflictions and skin problems, and can have long-term health problems, including kidney injury.
Robey said…
Gnosticism and ‘Lost’: The Issac Complex
Edward Wilson guest posts at Hatch 23 concerning the “non-freudian father issue” he’s dubbed “The Issac Complex” — “this father issue centers around the father’s betrayal and abandoning of the child.”
Wilson notes: “Given the Gnostic themes of the show it behooves me to point out that the ultimate example of the bad dad theme would be the Gnostic Demiurge or the bad creator god.”
Is Wolfram Alpha Really Better Than Google?
Last week, as physicist Stephen Wolfram was demonstrating his new Web-based “computation engine” — Wolfram Alpha — to the public, Google announced a data-centric service of its own. Alpha accesses databases that are maintained by Wolfram Research, or licensed from others, and deploys formulas and algorithms to compute answers for searchers.
Using some prelaunch log-in credentials provided by the Wolfram team, I decided to run my own Wolfram Alpha versus Google test. I used a handful of search terms that could produce data-centric answers and tried variations in a few cases to see what might happen.
This was an effort to get beyond the characterizations and produce some real data. I also wanted to explore the claims made during my visit to Wolfram Research last week: that Alpha can add unique value in computing answers based on your search queries.
MSNBC Anchors Erupt Over Miss California Press Conference: ‘Can I Vomit Right Now?’
MSNBC anchors David Shuster, Contessa Brewer, and Tamron Hall erupted in what the network characterized as a “feisty” discussion over Miss California Carrie Prejean Tuesday morning.
Shortly after pageant owner Donald Trump announced that Prejean would keep her crown despite the recent topless photos of her that have circulated around the internet, Shuster went off on the beauty queen.
“Can I vomit right now?” he asked. “Doesn’t this represent everything that is wrong with the superficial nature of these pageants?”
Jesse Ventura: Coleman A ‘Hypocrite,’ I Would Waterboard Cheney
Former Minnesota Governor and one-time professional wrestler Jesse Ventura went public on Larry King Live yesterday with some harsh criticisms of the Bush administration, as well as Senator Norm Coleman.
In Japan Billboards Read You
Beginning next fall, train stations and malls in Japan will have new billboards that display differing ads based on who is looking. The camera-equipped billboards will take pictures of people walking by them, determine characteristics such as age and gender, and then display tailor-made content. Imagine the possibilities: fat people seeing a stream of weight-loss or KFC ads everywhere they turn in public, or the elderly being subjected to a barrage of billboards pressuring them to buy life-insurance plans or move into the nursing home up the road.
The devices will be unveiled in Southern Japan’s Fukuoka and then possibly expanded to Tokyo and Osaka. The company behind the creepy idea is Yahoo, which dominates the internet company landscape in Japan, even trumping Google in search engine popularity.
Visiting Children Tasered At Florida Jails
Not one, or two, but three state prisons in Florida have acknowledged unrelated incidents in which guards zapped visiting children with stun guns on “Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day” at the end of April. A lawyer for a child tasered at Franklin Correctional Institution in Florida’s Panhandle said that more than six kids were stunned at that institution. So as to “give them an idea of what their parents do,” the kids received 50,000-volt shocks, comparable to “a hard punch in the stomach with the added trauma of electricity running through your body,” knocking victims to the ground and subsequently causing disorientation and leaving pairs of burn marks. One girl was hospitalized for trauma and abrasions.
The incidents have resulted in ten employee suspensions and one firing; apparently several of the children’s parents had given permission for their kids to be stunned for the purpose of demonstration.…
Billie Joe Armstrong On the Fire and Freedom Behind “21st Century Breakdown”
Great new Rolling Stone interview, but for mega-fans don’t forget the Disinformation book Green Day: American Idiots & The New Punk Explosion
The scrappy punks who became superstars 15 years ago with Dookie are now America’s most ambitious rock band. For our new cover, David Fricke visits Green Day at home in Oakland to get the story behind their epic new punk opera 21st Century Breakdown. In the first of three exclusive Q&As with each bandmember, Fricke speaks with singer-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong about the group’s darkest days and leaving it all onstage.
Last night, I saw you perform all of your new record and an entire second set of hits. How have you changed as a performer from the band’s early days — when the sets were shorter and the songs more simple?
It’s developed over time. When Tré first got in the band, we thought we were pretty tight. But we…
Secret Report Shows How The Nazis Planned A Fourth Reich … In The EU
The paper is aged and fragile, the typewritten letters slowly fading. But US Military Intelligence report EW-Pa 128 is as chilling now as the day it was written in November 1944.
The document, also known as the Red House Report, is a detailed account of a secret meeting at the Maison Rouge Hotel in Strasbourg on August 10, 1944. There, Nazi officials ordered an elite group of German industrialists to plan for Germany’s post-war recovery, prepare for the Nazis’ return to power and work for a ’strong German empire’. In other words: the Fourth Reich.
Heinrich Himmler with Max Faust, engineer with I. G. Farben
The three-page, closely typed report, marked ‘Secret’, copied to British officials and sent by air pouch to Cordell Hull, the US Secretary of State, detailed how the industrialists were to work with the Nazi Party to rebuild Germany’s economy by sending money through Switzerland.
They would set up a…
Cheerios Might Be A Drug!
The F.D.A. has issued a warning letter to the makers of cheerios, accusing the cereal’s maker of “serious violations” of its rules on the marketing of drugs.
The ads say in six weeks, “Cheerios could help lower your cholesterol four percent”. In making that claim, the F.D.A. says Cheerios becomes a drug, which can’t be marketed for its benefits without approval.
Kremlin: Battles Over Energy May Lead To Wars
MOSCOW – A Kremlin policy paper says international relations will be shaped by battles over energy resources, which may trigger military conflicts on Russia’s borders.
The National Security Strategy also said that Russia will seek an equal “partnership” with the United States, but named U.S. missile defense plans in Europe among top threats to the national security.
The document, which has been signed by President Dmitry Medvedev, listed top challenges to national security and outlined government priorities through 2020.
Roll Your Own Droid!
Want to build a robot this summer? “Robot-loving Japanese are tinkering with screwdrivers and motors instead of heading to the beach,” and this article identifies the stores and sites serving robot hobbyists.
Several sites are actually selling leftover industrial robots, but there’s a variety of smaller-size robot vendors, from Tokyo’s Vstone Robot Center to Carl’s Electronics in Oakland (which sells sound-activated “Hydradzoids” and solar-powered robots that crawl).
Hasbro even sells their own functioning R2-D2 droid with real sonar navigation and a “voice recognition response module.”
The 10 Most Revealing Psychological Experiments
brainz.org: Psychology is the study of the human mind and mental processes in relation to human behaviors — human nature. Due to its subject matter, psychology is not considered a ‘hard’ science, even though psychologists do experiment and publish their findings in respected journals. Some of the experiments psychologists have conducted over the years reveal things about the way we humans think and behave that we might not want to embrace, but which can at least help keep us humble. That’s something.
1. ‘Lord of the Flies’: Social Identity Theory
The Robbers Cave Experiment is a classic social psychology experiment conducted with two groups of 11-year old boys at a state park in Oklahoma, and demonstrates just how easily an exclusive group identity is adopted and how quickly the group can degenerate into prejudice and antagonism toward outsiders.
Researcher Muzafer Sherif actually conducted a series of 3 experiments. In the first, the groups…
Hulu: Will Its Success Be Its Downfall?
Frank Rose, WIRED: Hulu, the online TV service launched two years ago by Fox and NBC, has enjoyed incredible success with viewers — too much, it may turn out.
Two weeks ago, comScore’s report that Hulu had pulled into the top three streaming video sites was quickly followed by news that Disney — the corporate parent of ABC and ESPN — was taking a stake in the venture. But in the long run, those two milestones could be overshadowed by a seemingly much smaller bit of news: the decision in January to pull most episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia from the site.
Instead of carrying every episode of Sunny, a way off-center Danny DeVito comedy that languished on FX until Hulu users made it one of the site’s most popular programs, Hulu limited its offering to the five most recent shows. User reaction to the move was swift and predictable. “Well,…
InfoWarrior Channel Banned After Alex Jones Channel!
YouTube accelerated its aggressive purge against free speech today after the video networking website suspended the InfoWarrior Channel, which was the replacement for the previously censored Alex Jones Channel.
Just as before, no credible reason has been provided for the suspension of channel. The original Alex Jones Channel was suspended because YouTube claimed that showing a computer print out of a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette news article on camera constituted “copyright violation,” despite the fact that the Post-Gazette denied ever making a copyright complaint.
The real reason for the censorship is of course You Tube’s move towards becoming nothing more than a corporate shell for big studio production companies. The company is hemorrhaging money because its current format is not a sustainable business model. However, despite doing what any normal company would do in such a situation and accepting advertising, YouTube has decided to just hand over the direction of its whole content to corporate interests.…
