Archive for June, 2009
When DuPont Almost Overthrew the Government
BusinessPundit: I love a good conspiracy. This one, involving Great Depression-era businessmen attempting to overthrow President Roosevelt in a military coup, just about beats them all:
In the summer of 1933, shortly after Roosevelt’s “First 100 Days,” America’s richest businessmen were in a panic. It was clear that Roosevelt intended to conduct a massive redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. Roosevelt had to be stopped at all costs.
The answer was a military coup. It was to be secretly financed and organized by leading officers of the Morgan and Du Pont empires. This included some of America’s richest and most famous names of the time…
The Legend of the Man-Eating Tree of Madagascar
Environmental Graffiti: The year is 1878. In their scramble to enlighten and conquer the fortunate (though often strangely ungrateful) peoples of the globe, the great colonial powers are discovering that the world is a damned strange place. Incredible and disturbing accounts filter back to London, Brussels and Berlin. They speak of faraway lands, lost cities and zoologically-unlikely critters. Many of these travellers’ tales are mere exaggerations, and most will be duly forgotten. But in the steaming, savage jungles of Madagascar, a legend is about to be born which will refuse to die…
Madagascar is at this time a still heavily-forested country that remains terra incognita to outsiders. With ninety percent of its indigenous flora found nowhere else in the world, it’s a jungle in which anything could be lurking. Machete in hand, German explorer Carl Liche leads a group of Mkodo tribesmen deep into this heart of darkness. Entering a clearing,…
Radio-Controlled Bullets Leave No Place To Hide
Kurt Kleiner, New Scientist: A RIFLE capable of firing explosive bullets that can detonate within a metre of a target could let soldiers fire on snipers hiding in trenches, behind walls or inside buildings.
The US army has developed the XM25 rifle to give its troops an alternative to calling in artillery fire or air strikes when an enemy has taken cover and can’t be targeted by direct fire. “This is the first leap-ahead technology for troops that we’ve been able to develop and deploy,” says Douglas Tamilio, the army’s project manager for new weapons for soldiers. “This gives them another tool in their kitbag.”
The rifle’s gunsight uses a laser rangefinder to calculate the exact distance to the obstruction. The soldier can then add or subtract up to 3 metres from that distance to enable the bullets to clear the barrier and explode above or beside the target.
As the 25-millimetre round…
Taking A Closer Look At The ‘Champ Video’
CryptoMundo: A two-minute cell-phone video of a “something” swimming in Lake Champlain was taken at sunrise on Sunday May 31, 2009, by Burlington resident Eric Olsen, 37. What is shown crossses the mouth of the small cove and beach area near Oakledge Park, Burlington.
Some intriguing visual insights are becoming visible with enhancements of the “Champ video.” Let’s take a look at some of these new imagery and media revelations.
For starters, the name and more details about the man who captured the footage are now known. On June 3, 2009, the Burlington, Vermont Free Press published the first media article about the incident. Staff writer Sam Hemingway, who interviewed me the day before, penned the initial results of his journalistic investigation.
Welcome to the Twitpocalypse: All Hell May Break Loose Today
MG Siegler, TechCrunch: Twitpocalypse is the name given
to a bug that’s about to be exposed.
Apparently, it’s similar to the Y2K bug in its nature, and stems from the
fact that every tweet sent out has a unique numeric identifier. This identifier is about to hit 2,147,483,647. This number is the signed integer limit and apparently when some third-party Twitter clients start hitting it, the identifiers will start turning negative, and those apps are likely to crash as a result.
This crash was supposed to happen sometime tomorrow, according to the countdown, but it looks like Twitter has just moved up the Twitpocalypse time to 21:00 GMT, which is 2 PM Pacific/5PM Eastern time today. Yes, in a couple hours.
They’re forcing the failure now so that all hands are on deck working on the issue, rather than having it go down in the middle of the night.
…
Seven Things That Don’t Make Sense About Gravity
New Scientist: It’s the force we all know about and think we understand. It keeps our feet firmly on the ground and our world circling the sun.
Yet look a little closer, and the certainties start to float away, revealing gravity as the most puzzling and least understood of the four fundamental forces of nature.
Michael Brooks investigates its mysterious ways.
1. What is gravity?
2. Why does gravity only pull?
3. Why is gravity so weak?
4. Why is gravity fine-tuned?
5. Does life need gravity?
6. Can we counter gravity?
7. Will we ever have a quantum theory of gravity?
Man Takes Knife Through Airport Security But Stopped for Bottle of Water
Telegraph: Adrian Elvy, 39, was travelling from Bristol Airport to Barcelona, in Spain, for a company trip. Mr Elvy, who owns a stock delivery company, said he did not realise a six-inch knife which he uses to open boxes in his warehouse was still left in his luggage.
The stainless steel Clipper yachting knife features a serrated edge and a separate three-inch ’spike’ for loosening sailing knots. Baggage checkers stopped Mr Elvy, from Cheltenham, before he boarded his flight but only after they spotted a bottle of water in his bag and not the knife.
It was only when Mr Elvy went into his work bag again just minutes before boarding his flight to get some money out that he realised the knife was still in there. He said: “I went over to a policeman and told him that I had a knife accidently in my luggage. “The knife is all metal…
The Prehistory of Porn Prosecution: How ‘Licentious Gotham’ Gave Rise to Today’s Obscenity Laws
Nick Gillespie, REASON: When even the most computer-challenged preteen can easily Google an infinite number of very dirty pictures, it is almost quaint to ponder antebellum porn, which was heavy on suggestion and implication when it wasn’t masquerading as medical advice. One representative publication, The Secret Habits of the Female Sex (1848), came translated “from the French of Jean Dubois, M.D.” (ooh la la!) and promised readers “of all classes” clinically graphic details of what happened to young girls who became “the premature victims of a pernicious passion,” along with information about “a Medical Treatment and regimen which has never failed of success.”
There were also innovative “flash weeklies,” racy tabloids with titles such as The Libertine of New York that publicized the locations of brothels and the services offered within, sometimes under the pretense of investigative journalism. The Weekly Rake reported on a prostitute named Maria who “was decked in all the finery…
Jeff Jarvis: Product v. Process Journalism — The Myth of Perfection v. Beta Culture
BuzzMachine: An alarm went off on some desk at the New York Times business section: Oh-oh, time to slam blogs again. But the latest assault reveals as much about the Times and the culture of classical journalism as it does about bloggers. Like the millennial clash of business models in media — the content economy v. the link economy and the inability of one to understand the other — here we see a clash over journalistic culture and methods — product journalism v. process journalism.
In the Times, Damon Darlin goes after blogs for publishing rumors and unfinished stories, calling it a “truth-be-damned approach” and likening it to yellow journalism, the highest insult of the gray class. He hauls out the worst example again — just as bloggers trying to go after MSM reporters do: the Steve Jobs heart attack rumor and Times WMD reporting (or Jayson Blair or Dan Rather), respectively.
Darlin leads with TechCrunch…
Daily Show Rips Into the New York Times
Jason Jones visits the the New York Times’ offices to find out why the last of a dying breed prefers aged news to real news:
WikiCommons Pictures of the Year
The winner, Horses on Bianditz mountain:
Fire breathing takes the second place:
The third place is for Steam locomotives in the roundhouse:
GM Bailout Will Never Pay Off
Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing (via Kottke): Wondering if your government’s investment in GM will ever pay off? It won’t.
So $83,000,000,000 is what New GM would have to be worth in order for us to break even on our investment.
But $56,000,000,000 is what GM was worth at its all time peak in 2000.
And it’s only worth about $7,300,000,000 now.
Why Does The UK Love America’s Flops?
Graeme McMillan, io9.com: Ignore Terminator Salvation’s US box office and look to Britain, where it’s just had the best opening weekend of 2009 so far … replacing the previous holder of that title, X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Why is Britain more accepting of shoddy sci-fi?
The Guardian reports that Salvation made £6.94 million in its first weekend, topping Wolverine’s previous 2009 record of £6.66 million. This despite both movies receiving equally bad reviews in the UK as they did in the US, so it’s not as if they gained some extra credibility and/or quality on the trip across the Atlantic. So what’s going on?
It’s not as if the UK is so science fiction-starved that they’ll go see anything; yes, Doctor Who is having a half-year off, but British audiences have just finished new seasons of Ashes To Ashes and Primeval and have Torchwood returning in little over a month. Perhaps, then, the subject matter of the movies…
Soldiers Sue Halliburton Over Toxins From Corpse Bonfire Pits
Army Times reports:
SAN ANTONIO — Soldiers are among six Texans suing Houston-based KBR and Halliburton over burn pits at U.S. camps in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The suit filed in a San Antonio federal court alleges the military contractors burned everything from trucks and tires to human corpses in the large war-zone pits. Plantiffs say the burning waste released toxins that harmed at least 10,000 people.
KBR spokeswoman Heather Browne told the San Antonio Express-News the assertion that the company knowingly harmed troops is “unfounded.” Halliburton, formerly the parent company of KBR, says it had no involvement in the allegations.
Swindlers And Con Men WIll Steal Ten Percent Of Stimulus Dollars
Swindlers, con men and thieves could siphon off as much as $1 out of every $10 spent as billions of dollars in stimulus money begin flowing into all corners of the economy in coming months.
Companies will face increased pressure to try to stem the tide, and need to be prepared to safeguard data as well as the cash, according to David Williams, the chief executive of Deloitte Financial Advisory Services.
Williams said this week that the money flowing from the current stimulus package is particularly vulnerable to fraud because almost all movement of money is now done electronically.
World Attention For Jointing-Smoking Speech-Giving Student
Local news reports on 17-year-old Ian Barry of Gig Harbor, Washington, who has become a minor celebrity after he smoked marijuana while giving a speech to his high school advocating drug legalization. In a video posted to YouTube, Barry lights up a joint and smokes it while at the podium in a school assembly. He was arrested and suspended immediately afterward.
Barry has published a transcript of his speech, an extensive history of the prohibition of marijuana, online and says that he had talked to teachers about the consequences of the joint-smoking in advance, and so knew what would happen; “Whether you agree with me or not that marijuana should be legal, I hope you see and respect that I stood on principle and stood up for something I believe in.”
Olbermann Slanders Truthers, Patriots, & Dr. Ron Paul
Both Keith and his guest not only slander patriots and truthers alike they also show a stunning lack of basic education about our country’s history. They both would have you believe that the income tax and the federal reserve were around as long as the Constitution. What idiots and liars.
Holocaust Museum Gunman James Von Brunn Tried to Arrest The Fed
Alex Koppelman, Slate: James von Brunn, the man who allegedly opened fire at the U.S. Holocaust Museum on Wednesday, killing a guard, has acted on his beliefs before. In 1981, he tried to place members of the Federal Reserve Board under citizen’s arrest, but the attempt ended in his own arrest and imprisonment.
In 1983, a D.C. Superior Court jury convicted Von Brunn of attempting kidnapping while armed, second-degree burglary, assault with a dangerous weapon, carrying a pistol without a license and possession of a prohibited weapon. A Washington Post article on the conviction describes the incident, saying, “Von Brunn entered the board’s headquarters at 21st Street and Constitution Avenue NW with a bag slung over his shoulder. He was captured by a guard after running to the second floor, where the board was meeting. He was detained outside the board room and was carrying a revolver, a hunting knife and…
GE Sucks Up Government Money and Invests in Secret Stuff That We’re Not Allowed to Know About
Posted by Cory Doctorow on BoingBoing:
Jason sez, “GE bought a patent for a device called a Stamet Pump that was developed with significant taxpayer money by DOE and then refused to share the device with other firms or the public at large. DOE argued unsuccessfully that the patent should be part of the public domain.
This device has tremendous potential in aiding gasification of certain types of coal, something that would pave the way for carbon sequestration from coal-fired power plants. DOE argued with GE execs that they should either release the technology to the public domain or license it to multiple other firms in the interest of the public, since it was funded with public money.
Also intriguing in this story is that the state of Wyoming has partnered with GE to build a $100 million gasification test center using this technology — Wyoming is chipping in half of the money…
