Archive for May, 2009
Bill O’Reilly: Pro-Torture; Keith Olbermann: Still Very Much Pro-Obama…
Interesting counterargument from Keith Olbermann on Bill O’Reilly’s take on Winston Churchill’s position on torture, of course first used by to O’Reilly to criticize President Obama:
‘Supergiant’ Asteroid Shut Down Mars’s Magnetic Field
Ker Than, National Geographic: A “supergiant” asteroid several times larger than the one that likely killed the dinosaurs struck Mars with such force that it shut down the planet’s magnetic field, scientists say.
Based on the number of large craters present, scientists think very early Mars suffered 15 or so giant impacts within a span of about a hundred million years.
Now a new computer model suggests Mars’s magnetic field may have been slowly weakened by four especially large impacts and then snuffed out completely by a fifth and final blow.
That impact created the 2,000-mile-wide (3,300-kilometer-wide) Utopia crater, which dates back roughly 4.1 billion years, said study team member James Roberts of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in Maryland.
“It’s possible that the four earlier impacts set everything up, and the Utopia crater was the straw that broke camel’s back.”
Earth has a magnetic field in part because of heat transfer between the…
The Cirque du Nitwits and Their Pratfalls
People are watching the Republicans and either laughing or crying about their final demise. While it’s grotesquely enjoyable to watch, here’s to hoping they don’t really go so far off the rails they drown in the Potomac. Although, an experience that mirrors waterboarding might not be such a bad idea.
France Passes ‘Three Strikes’ Anti-Piracy Law
Ernesto, Torrentfreak: The controversial French HADOPI anti-piracy law was passed by the National Assembly today, one step closer to being signed into action. The new law introduces draconian measures to combat piracy including a “three strikes” regime for persistent offenders.
In an attempt to reduce piracy, the French have passed a new law requiring Internet service providers to cut off Internet access for repeat copyright infringers. Under the new ‘HADOPI’ legislation ISPs have to warn their customers twice that they are accused of infringing copyright. If both warnings are ignored, Internet access for that subscriber will be terminated for up to a year — and they’ll have to keep paying their ISP bill throughout this period too.
The law goes much further than disconnecting alleged file-sharers though. In addition it is now possible to take “any action” in order to put a halt to copyright infringement. For example, websites can be blocked…
Electronic Police States Defined and Ranked
CORY DOCTOROW, BoingBoing: A report from “CryptoHippie” (don’t know anything about this person/group) has created an index to surveillance states, ranked from worst to best. What’s especially notable about this report is its concise, intelligent definition of “Electronic Police States”:
The two crucial facts about the information gathered under an electronic police state are these:
1. It is criminal evidence, ready for use in a trial.
2. It is gathered universally and silently, and only later organized for use in prosecutions.
In an Electronic Police State, every surveillance camera recording, every email you send, every Internet site you surf, every post you make, every check you write, every credit card swipe, every cell phone ping… are all criminal evidence, and they are held in searchable databases, for a long, long time. Whoever holds this evidence can make you look very, very bad whenever they care enough to do so. You can be prosecuted whenever they…
Paul Krassner On ‘Why Did Jon Stewart Apologize?’
[Story note: original Stewart video clip here]. Paul Krassner: In a recent blog on HuffPost, Dennis Perrin criticized Jon Stewart for apologizing the day after he agreed with a guest that President Harry Truman was a war criminal. He wrote that “Stewart did what well-regarded mainstream entertainers do when expressing an unpopular opinion. He groveled for forgiveness …. When an American ’satirist’ apologizes for stating the truth, you can really appreciate ‘free expression’ in a corporate-owned culture.” Since Perrin stated that, “before The Daily Show, Stewart was not known in a Paul Krassner/Barry Crimmins/Whitney Brown way,” I feel especially compelled to disagree with his premise.
As a performer, I was a bundle of paradoxes. I was a hermit, yet I would go out to do shows and talk to a hundred people at once. I was a social critic, yet my spiritual path was trying not to judge others. Irreverence was…
Wisconsin Court Upholds GPS Tracking by Police
RYAN J. FOLEY | Associated Press (MADISON, WI) — Wisconsin police can attach GPS to cars to secretly track anybody’s movements without obtaining search warrants, an appeals court ruled last Thursday.
However, the District 4 Court of Appeals said it was “more than a little troubled” by that conclusion and asked Wisconsin lawmakers to regulate GPS use to protect against abuse by police and private individuals. As the law currently stands, the court said police can mount GPS on cars to track people without violating their constitutional rights — even if the drivers aren’t suspects.
Officers do not need to get warrants beforehand because GPS tracking does not involve a search or a seizure, Judge Paul Lundsten wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel based in Madison. That means “police are seemingly free to secretly track anyone’s public movements with a GPS device,” he wrote.
One privacy advocate said the decision opened the door…
Russia Stockpiles Diamonds, Awaiting the Return of Demand
This story proves the point made by Janine Roberts in her Disinformation book Glitter & Greed: The Secret World of the Diamond Cartel, that diamonds are not rare and prices are artificially jacked up by DeBeers and now Alrosa.
The global recession sapped demand for all kinds of commodities — like steel and grain — yet small burlap bags are still arriving by the planeload at Russia’s state-owned diamond company.
Each day, the contents of the bags spill into the stainless steel hoppers of the receiving room. The diamonds are washed and sorted by size, clarity, shape and quality; then, rather than being sent to be sold around the world, they are wrapped in paper and whisked away to a vault — about three million carats worth of gems every month.
“Each one of them is so unusual,” said Irina V. Tkachuk, one of the few hundred people, mostly women, employed to sort…
The Future is Almost Here: Jetpacks!
This is a remarkable breakthrough for lazy people of the future:
Bilderberg Session Set To Start In Vouliagmeni, Greece
I hear the Bilderberg group is meeting this week. What is it?
The Bilderberg group consists of about 140 wealthy and powerful people who meet annually to discuss key global issues. Named after the Bilderberg hotel in Oosterbeek, the Netherlands, where it held its first meeting in 1954, the group is highly secretive, doesn’t let journalists attend unless they agree beforehand not to report on the proceedings, and won’t even say who is a member.
It’s known that attendees include politicians, royalty, wealthy industrialists and back-room power brokers. Conspiracy theorists say the group essentially controls the world and makes key decisions on international policy…
This year’s session is set to start this Thursday in Vouliagmeni, Greece, just south of Athens. The global financial crisis will undoubtedly be on the agenda.
Neo-Nazis Attack Concentration Camp Survivors, Scream ‘Heil Hitler!’
Survivors of a Nazi death camp were shot at and abused as they gathered to remember their liberation.
Masked neo-Nazi thugs screamed ‘Heil Hitler!’ and ‘This way for the gas!’ at ten elderly Italian men and women, who returned to the site of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.
The gang also fired air guns at a group of 15 French survivors, many dressed in the striped pyjama-style uniforms they wore as inmates. One suffered a head wound while another was injured by a shot in the neck. The four thugs managed to escape.
Jewish leaders in Austria were appalled by the weekend scenes that marred events marking the 64th anniversary of the camp’s liberation by American troops.
IBM Supercomputer vs Jeopardy. Is it real Artificial Intelligence yet?
IBM is building a new supercomputer to win on Jeopardy. But an AI expert asks whether this is the beginning of real artificial intelligence?
After computing breakthroughs on Go, calculus, and even the game “20 Questions,” Ben Goertzel asks whether human intelligence is demonstrably required for any single problem. (He argues the Turing Test could be unfair, since “why should an AI be required to fake humanity?”) Even retrieving the answers to Jeopardy’s trivia question could be accomplished with simple “brute force” and a giant database.
But Goerzel argues that ultimately the research could lead humankind past an even more important benchmark: finally developing a search engine that’s better than Google.
IBM Supercomputer vs Jeopardy – is it real Artificial Intelligence yet?
IBM is building a new supercomputer to win on Jeopardy. But an AI expert asks whether this is the beginning of real artificial intelligence?
After computing breakthroughs on Go, calculus, and even the game “20 Questions,” Ben Goertzel asks whether human intelligence is demonstrably required for any single problem. (He argues the Turing Test could be unfair, since “why should an AI be required to fake humanity?”) Ultimately even retrieving the answers to Jeopardy’s trivia question could be accomplished with simple “brute force” and a giant database.
But Goerzel argues that ultimately the research could lead humankind past an even more important benchmark: finally developing a search engine that’s better than Google.
Sean Hannity’s Liberty Tree
On The Colbert Report, Sean Hannity takes us to the Liberty Tree instead of going miles out of the way to the Making Sense Bush.
Anyone have a bad case of freedom fungus?
IFC Media Project: Alex Jones Has a Posse!
The most downloaded film is internet history was made by this guy.
Syndicated radio host and Internet entrepreneur Alex Jones speaks his mind on:
1) Mainstream Media = Tool of the Establishment
2) The New World Order’s goal is a tyrannical world government
3) The banking system collapsing and a New World Order bank is taking over
So fair-minded, well-informed disinfo.com readers: Is he right…?
The IFC Media Project: Exposing the Truth in News
IFC’s groundbreaking documentary series The IFC Media Project returns for a second season. Host Gideon Yago continues his hard-hitting examination of how the news gets made and how it impacts our daily lives.
Featuring interviews with newsmakers and documentary coverage of events unfolding now, the IFC Media Project delivers a refreshingly hard-hitting and unapologetic perspective on what’s wrong with the news today, delving into important news stories that were inaccurately reported on from leading news outlets, and more.
New World Order: What Do You Believe?
New World Order is a film about people who believe in conspiracy theories and why they believe in them, not about the theories themselves. This film does not try to prove or disprove conspiracy theories. At its core, New World Order is a film about the power of ideas, and the power of ideas to change one’s life and define one’s actions.
Premieres On IFC Tuesday, May 26th @ 6:45 PM From the award winning filmmakers of Darkon comes New World Order, a feature length documentary about conspiracy theorists directed by Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel.
The film is a behind the scenes look at the underground movement of people who want to expose “global elitists,” whom they claim are covertly masterminding a series of destructive events to cause a mass breakdown of the world’s economy and society.
Once the world has fallen into chaos, these same “elitists” will offer a plan to rebuild the…
How to Map the Multiverse
Anil Ananthaswamy, New Scientist: BRIAN GREENE spent a good part of the last decade extolling the virtues of string theory. He dreamed that one day it would provide physicists with a theory of everything that would describe our universe — ours and ours alone. His bestselling book The Elegant Universe eloquently captured the quest for this ultimate theory.
“But the fly in the ointment was that string theory allowed for, in principle, many universes,” says Greene, who is a theoretical physicist at Columbia University in New York. In other words, string theory seems equally capable of describing universes very different from ours. Greene hoped that something in the theory would eventually rule out most of the possibilities and single out one of these universes as the real one: ours.
So far, it hasn’t — though not for any lack of trying. As a result, string theorists are beginning to accept that their ambitions…
‘Da Vinci Code’ Sequel Criticized by Catholics
Philip Sherwell, Telegraph: They have accused director Ron Howard, who will attend the movie’s world premiere in Rome, of distorting history for dramatic effect.
The storyline for Angels & Demons, which stars Tom Hanks and Ewan McGregor, centres on a plot by the Illuminati, a secret society of intellectuals, who are intent on gaining revenge for a brutal massacre of their predecessors by the Church centuries ago. Although the society once existed, there is no historical evidence that its members were butchered by Catholics.
The Rt Rev Malcolm McMahon, the Bishop of Nottingham, warned that the film could stir up anti-Catholic sentiment.
“This is so outlandish, it’s total rubbish,” said Bishop McMahon, who is one of the Church’s most senior bishops. “It’s mischievous to stir up this kind of anti-Catholic sentiment. It’s a gratuitous knocking of the Church and I can’t see any reason for it.”
Howard, the director of Angels & Demons — expected…
