Archive for May, 2009
The New Nuke Porn
Ron Rosenbaum, Slate: Something interesting is happening in the realm of airport “bookstore” best-sellers. I’m not talking about the self-help “You can become a sales genius” genre, but the thrillers. I’ve long been fascinated by their appeal and the shifting signals their subjects offer about often unspoken fears in the heart of our culture.
Sure, some of their success undoubtedly derives from their surface glitter — the glaring, fool’s-gold-loaded cover lettering on a background of what looks like high-tech, super-reflective, virtually radioactive titanium. Some of it lies in their size. (I wouldn’t rule out the subliminal reassurance they offer the nervous traveler of their ability to serve as additional emergency flotation devices.)
But I love airport best-sellers because I see them as our Nostradamuses, the literary canaries in the dark coal mines of our paranoia. They sniff out and serve up fictionalized but “realistic” prophecies of coming doom of one sort or…
Fox News Warns of ‘End of Life As We Know It’ in 2012
No, we’re not trying to scare anyone … we’re a “news” organization:
What Can We Learn From The Lawsuit Against Rhonda Byrne and The Secret?
By Kathlyn and Gay Hendricks, authors, co-founders of The Hendricks Institute and Gaia Illumination University
There’s a scandal boiling over into the national media regarding lawsuits against Rhonda Byrne, the woman who brought The Secret movie and book to the world. It’s not yet known whether they will be settled before they go to trial, but whatever path the story takes, it has powerful lessons for all of us who are interested in spirituality, metaphysics and manifestation.
Here’s the quick sketch: Drew Heriot, director of The Secret movie (and according to him, co-creator of the project), is suing Rhonda Byrne and her company for $340 million dollars. He claims that Rhonda cheated him out of millions of dollars of profits that are rightfully his. You can get all the details here.
Here’s the bigger question, stated bluntly:
How did Rhonda Byrne, proponent and chief promulgator of the Law of Attraction, end up attracting such…
Unexplained Mysteries On The Moon And Mars! An Alien Connection?
Here are a few of the strangest images taken by various probes that show intriguing objects on the Moon and Mars that are as mysterious as they come. There has been much discussion on a few of these images but there have been no firm conclusions as to what these objects really are or how they could possibly have been produced by natural geological processes. Or even how the strange ‘shadows’ have been produced.
Some of these images are new as I’ve just spotted them, mostly in Dr Robinson’s album of images taken by the Lunar Orbiter. Space Imaging expert, Keith Laney, who worked for NASA/AMES for the 2003 Mars Exploration Rovers mission, has himself mentioned that these LO images are uncensored and has also found scores of other anomalies that are ‘devastating’! And this coming from an expert in the field.
Most debunkers and skeptics go to great lengths explaining these…
The Return of the Montauk Monster? Here We Go Again…
Another strange beast, similar to the famed Montauk Monster, washed up on a Long Island beach.
This latest slimy, horny nosed creature was discovered by a Southold couple the night of May 6th in Founders Landing Park according to blogger Nicky Papers.
Economic Recession Is Good For Your Health
One would assume that times of recession would take a toll not only on people’s wallets but on their health. However, a growing number of studies suggest the opposite occurs: the health of a population tends to improve when the economy declines. While the suicide rate may rise, other causes of death, such as car crashes, industrial accidents, heart attacks and infant deaths, decrease. Researchers have “tracked things like unemployment and mortality and found that they were almost a mirror image of each other,” with the death rate decreasing as unemployment rises, and increasing as the economy experiences growth.
Others go further, stating that the “alienation of modern work…[makes] life into enervating and emotionally draining toil, [with] the escape from work expressed in catatonic TV watching and overeating.” Other factors: people with less money have less to spend on alcohol and cigarettes. And, as car ridership and industrial production slow,…
Reagan Was Terrified Of An Alien Invasion
The U.K.’s Sun reports:
Former President Ronald Reagan feared aliens were planning to invade America, a new book has claimed. He is said to have believed they had been spying on Earth for decades…[and] told a pal he had seen flying saucers three times, said author Darwin Porter. He allegedly added: “I just know it. They’ve selected some desert in the West to make their landing.”
Former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev has claimed the US and USSR made a pact to help each other against an alien invasion. He added: “President Reagan said to me, ‘If the US were attacked by someone from outer space, would you help?’”
J.P. Morgan’s Weapons Of Mass Destruction
“We know everything about Saddam Hussein’s arsenal,” George W. Bush is supposed to have said — probably apocryphally — about Iraq’s weaponry, shortly before the American and British invasion in March 2003. “After all, we supplied them.”
There may be certain similarities with the gradual uncovering of the real reasons behind the financial and economic crisis. The banks that have best coped with the toxic asset challenges are those who actually invented these instruments.
By passing on these seemingly innocuous, apparently risk-hedging investment vehicles to other financial institutions, the banks in the vanguard of securitized instruments drove on the spread of the disease.
As a by-product, they turn out to have improved their own competitiveness by putting a spanner in the works of larger and smaller rivals. At the same time, the banks at the forefront of structured product innovation, through their intimate knowledge of the nature of the viruses they were handling,…
iPhones In Iraq – The US Army’s New Weapon
In Basra’s Hayaniyah district, a notorious stronghold of Shia militias, a US army sergeant leading a patrol faced two suspects in the street. Amid rising tension he produced a gadget from his pocket and after a few minutes of its use the matter was amicably resolved. The Iraqis and the Americans went their separate ways.
The equipment being used – described by the US Army as ideal for 21st-century warfare – was an Apple iPod Touch. In a matter of minutes the soldier had established through words and images that the two men were not considered to be serious threats and detaining them was unnecessary.
iPhones In Iraq – The US Army’s New Weapon
In Basra’s Hayaniyah district, a notorious stronghold of Shia militias, a US army sergeant leading a patrol faced two suspects in the street. Amid rising tension he produced a gadget from his pocket and after a few minutes of its use the matter was amicably resolved. The Iraqis and the Americans went their separate ways.
The equipment being used – described by the US Army as ideal for 21st-century warfare – was an Apple iPod Touch. In a matter of minutes the soldier had established through words and images that the two men were not considered to be serious threats and detaining them was unnecessary.
Sampling Absinthe’s Dubious Charms
For Robert Jordan, in Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” absinthe is a bite of Proustian cake. All his memories of Paris “came back to him when he tasted that opaque, bitter, tongue-numbing, brain-warming, stomach-warming, idea-changing liquid alchemy.” Not wanting to share any of his last bottle of the stuff, Jordan is glad that a gypsy he offers a cup to finds it repulsive: “It smells of anis but it is bitter as gall,” says the gypsy. “It is better to be sick than have that medicine.”
For the better part of a century, that medicine wasn’t even on the market in most countries. Absinthe — flavored with, among other things, wormwood — gained a reputation as a toxic hallucinogen. In 1915 it was banned in France, the country that had embraced it all too enthusiastically, and soon absinthe was illegal in most Western countries. In the past decade, those…
Five Things You May Have Missed While Watching ‘Star Trek’
This weekend, “Star Trek” rebooted itself and rocked the worlds of you and a few million of your closest friends. But did you really see the whole movie? Below are five fun “Trek” facts that reveal even more minutiae about J.J. Abrams’ soaring enterprise.
1. Slush-O: The Drink of the Future?
As Abrams’ loyal fans know, the “Star Trek” director loves to link his worlds together via in-jokes and shared references — and even though “Trek” takes place many years away from “Lost,” “Alias” and “Cloverfield,” he doesn’t disappoint. “There are inside jokes that banter about our company [Bad Robot Productions], movies that we have been a part of, and other things,” Abrams said, telling his fans to keep a sharp eye out for things like Uhura ordering a Slush-O, the mysterious drink that helped fuel the “Cloverfield” story line. “The USS Calvin is based on my grandfather’s name — which was…
Dick Cheney Bashes Obama Again, Saying He Endangers The U.S.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday continued his verbal attack against President Obama, saying that the country is more vulnerable to a potential terrorist attack since the Obama administration took power.
Mr. Cheney said that administration’s dismantling of many of the policies and protections instituted by President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks — including the planned closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba and halting controversial prisoner interrogation techniques — have made the country more vulnerable to future attacks.
Randomness Only a Mother Could Love
The best in weird news, odd people, and funny events from across the globe. Proving once again that the Darwin principle lives in all of us.
G20 Police ‘Used Undercover Men To Incite Crowds’
An MP who was involved in last month’s G20 protests in London is to call for an investigation into whether the police used agents provocateurs to incite the crowds.
Liberal Democrat Tom Brake says he saw what he believed to be two plain-clothes police officers go through a police cordon after presenting their ID cards.
Brake, who along with hundreds of others was corralled behind police lines near Bank tube station in the City of London on the day of the protests, says he was informed by people in the crowd that the men had been seen to throw bottles at the police and had encouraged others to do the same shortly before they passed through the cordon.
G20 police ‘used undercover men to incite crowds’
n MP who was involved in last month’s G20 protests in London is to call for an investigation into whether the police used agents provocateurs to incite the crowds.
Liberal Democrat Tom Brake says he saw what he believed to be two plain-clothes police officers go through a police cordon after presenting their ID cards.
Brake, who along with hundreds of others was corralled behind police lines near Bank tube station in the City of London on the day of the protests, says he was informed by people in the crowd that the men had been seen to throw bottles at the police and had encouraged others to do the same shortly before they passed through the cordon.
G20 police ‘used undercover men to incite crowds’
An MP who was involved in last month’s G20 protests in London is to call for an investigation into whether the police used agents provocateurs to incite the crowds.
Liberal Democrat Tom Brake says he saw what he believed to be two plain-clothes police officers go through a police cordon after presenting their ID cards.
Brake, who along with hundreds of others was corralled behind police lines near Bank tube station in the City of London on the day of the protests, says he was informed by people in the crowd that the men had been seen to throw bottles at the police and had encouraged others to do the same shortly before they passed through the cordon.
There’s No Klingon Word for Hello
There’s something missing from J.J. Abrams’ reboot of the moribund Star Trek franchise, and that something is Klingon.
I mean Klingon the language. If that sounds like a minor omission, consider this: The very first lines of the first Star Trek movie in 1979 were in Klingon: wIy cha’! HaSta! cha yIghuS! And those few words—which were subtitled as “Tactical … Visual … Tactical, stand by on torpedoes!”—have since blossomed into, if not a full-fledged language, one at least fledged enough to have a dictionary, a translation of Hamlet, and a small but dedicated community of (nonfictional) speakers, who’ll feel miffed by Abrams’ oversight.
Big Media, R.I.P.
Media conglomerates were supposed to takeover the world. So why are they dying?
Johnnie L. Roberts | Newsweek: Mourning the death of one of its own is perhaps the entertainment industry’s most time-honored traditions. In one cherished tribal ritual, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter — those old-school bibles of trade news and gossip — reap a financial windfall as movie studios, TV networks and top showbiz suits rush to place full-page memorials to the departed. There were no such memorials last week, however, as one of entertainment industry’s most influential organizing principles was laid quietly to rest. After an agonizing and prolonged decline, the long-suffering Vertically Integrated Media Conglomerate (1989–2009) passed away.
It’s an idea that was born when Time Inc. merged with Warner Communications Corp. in 1989, to form Time Warner. It endured as the industry’s prevailing business model for nearly a generation, spawning such clones and mongrel breeds as Viacom, News…
