Archive for July, 2009
A Drug That Could Give You Perfect Visual Memory
Annalee Newitz, io9.com: Imagine if you could look at something once and remember it forever. You would never have to ask for directions again. Now a group of scientists has isolated a protein that mega-boosts your ability to remember what you see.
A group of Spanish researchers reported today in Science that they may have stumbled upon a substance that could become the ultimate memory-enhancer. The group was studying a poorly-understood region of the visual cortex. They found that if they boosted production of a protein called RGS-14 (pictured) in that area of the visual cortex in mice, it dramatically affected the animals’ ability to remember objects they had seen.
Mice with the RGS-14 boost could remember objects they had seen for up to two months. Ordinarily the same mice would only be able to remember these objects for about an hour.
The researchers concluded that this region of the visual cortex, known…
Top 12 Oprah Mistakes, Lies and Embarrassments
Brainz.org: Oprah Winfrey has legions of faithful followers across the country, but they’d do well to keep a careful eye out as they tread the trail that Oprah blazes: the aftermath of her “good works” and “good judgment” is sometimes messy—and even dangerous. Recent news reports have warned of the dangers of taking medical advice from Oprah and her guests, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Free Cars for Everyone: In 2004, Oprah “gave” 276 people in her audience brand new cars. The cars were actually donated by Pontiac, but of course it was Oprah who got the rush of publicity surrounding the event, and we all saw clips of grateful, screaming new-car owners. Most of us would be excited if unexpectedly gifted with a new car, but these recipients were particularly happy—letters from friends and family had helped Oprah’s staff select people truly in need of vehicles.
The cameras had…
How a Rich Suburban Girl Became a Drug Kingpin
Jeff Deeney, Daily Beast: Ever since the murder of Rian Thal two weeks ago in Philadelphia, everyone wants to know how this girl from a wealthy suburb ended up a high-stakes drug trafficker in the city’s
hip-hop scene — but it’s not as unusual as you might think.
In the early evening light of Saturday, June 27, four men barely disguised by low-drawn baseball caps casually strolled into a Philadelphia luxury apartment complex, took the elevator to the seventh floor, and shot up-and-coming club promoter, 34-year-old Rian Thal, in the head. Multiple surveillance cameras captured the seeming ease with which the killers performed. On their way out, one shooter nearly walked into a man carrying a piece of furniture, smoothly side-stepped around him, and slid anonymously out the door.
A sign reading “Under Constant Video Surveillance” is prominently displayed at the entrance to the apartment complex where this took place, and on June…
Want To Keep Your Wallet? Carry A Baby Picture
Hannah Devlin, The Times: What would you do if you found a wallet on the street? Leave it? Take it to a police station? Post it back to the owner? Keep it, even?
The answer, scientists have found, depends rather more on evolution than morality.
Hundreds of wallets were planted on the streets of Edinburgh by psychologists last year. Perhaps surprisingly, nearly half of the 240 wallets were posted back. But there was a twist.
Richard Wiseman, a psychologist, and his team inserted one of four photographs behind a clear plastic window inside, showing either a smiling baby, a cute puppy, a happy family or a contented elderly couple. Some wallets had no image and some had charity papers inside.
When faced with the photograph of the baby people were far more likely to send the wallet back, the study found. In fact, only one in ten were hard-hearted enough not to do so.…
Dow Chemical Vacates London Headquarters To Avoid Bhopal Water
LONDON — A new, beautifully-designed line of bottled water — this time not from the melting Alps, nor from faraway, clean-water-deprived Fiji, but rather from the contaminated ground near the site of the 1984 Bhopal catastrophe — scared Dow Chemical’s London management team into hiding today.
Twenty Bhopal activists, including Sathyu Sarangi of the Sambhavna Clinic in Bhopal, showed up at Dow headquarters near London to find that the entire building had been vacated. Had they not fled, Dow employees could have read on the bottles’ elegant labels:
B’eau-Pal: Our Story: The unique qualities of our water come from 25 years of slow-leaching toxins at the site of the world’s largest industrial accident. To this day, Dow Chemical (who bought Union Carbide) has refused to clean up, and whole new generations have been poisoned. For more information, please visit www.bhopal.org.
The launch of “B’eau-Pal” water came as Bhopal prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of…
Hypocrisy at The Heart of Honduran Coup
Telesur, translated by Kristin Bricker: In 1985, [coup leader Roberto Micheletti] tried to turn the Honduran National Congress into a National Constitutional Assembly in order to reform the same Magna Carta that the coup leaders are now defending as their transcendental symbol during the current political crisis.
Members of Congress and politicians accuse Manuel Zelaya of trying to extend his term and change the Honduran Constitution, but what he tried to do was hold a non-binding opinion poll. Micheletti, on the other hand, did want to [extend the president's term and change the Constitution] 24 years ago.
Zelaya’s proposal is far from what happened in 1985 when then-congressman Roberto Micheletti (who has been a member of Congress for 28 years) called a Constitutional Assembly to extend the mandate of the president of that era, Roberto Suazo Córdoba.
It’s worth noting that 24 years ago the effects of the low-intensity war were still being…
Hypocrisy at The Heart of Honduran Coup
Translated by Kristin Bricker.
In 1985, [coup leader Roberto Micheletti] tried to turn the Honduran National Congress into a National Constitutional Assembly in order to reform the same Magna Carta that the coup leaders are now defending as their transcendental symbol during the current political crisis.
Members of Congress and politicians accuse Manuel Zelaya of trying to extend his term and change the Honduran Constitution, but what he tried to do was hold a non-binding opinion poll. Micheletti, on the other hand, did want to [extend the president's term and change the Constitution] 24 years ago.
Zelaya’s proposal is far from what happened in 1985 when then-congressman Roberto Micheletti (who has been a member of Congress for 28 years) called a Constitutional Assembly to extend the mandate of the president of that era, Roberto Suazo Córdoba.
Original in Spanish can be viewed here.
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Apollo 11 Moon Mission Reincarnated As Website
Retrace lunar steps in ‘real-time’. Forty years after Neil Armstrong made his historic first steps on the moon, Apollo 11 is beginning the same trip to the lunar surface this week via the internet.
The website WeChooseTheMoon.org was launched today, sponsored by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum to recreate the lunar mission minute-by-minute as it happened back on July 20, 1969.
Fight the Government With Your Own Surveillance?
Imagine telling a police officer that “For quality control and training purposes, your interaction is being recorded.”
Computer Engineering professor Steve Mann argues first-person recordings can create evidence against governments and bureaucracies — whether it’s Iran’s elections, watching Britain’s prime minister, or filming a police killing on cameraphone. And “communications prosthetics” (indicating remote witnesses with real-time communication capability) could even reduce the need for self-defense weapons like pepper spray and firearms.
Some life insurance companies already lower their rates if you’ll wear one of these “personal safety devices.” But he also cites a Rutgers professor who continuously webcasts his location after a false arrest by the FBI.
“Let’s not make the oversight of forgetting ‘undersight’ — we need to watch both from below and above.”
Disinfo on Flickr: Photo Gallery
Enjoy, some may be Disinfo-related and some not. Thanks Flickr:
2009 Bohemian Grove Meeting Of Elites Is Underway
The Bohemian Grove, a redwood-spired sanctuary to powerful men for 120 years, today opens its gates near Monte Rio [California] for its annual, two-week encampment.
The gathering of the all-male Bohemian Club is expected to draw a small group of protesters this weekend when the bulk of the guests are expected to arrive. The encampment lasts through July 26.
The small demonstration contrasts with some of the larger-scale protests of earlier years, usually coinciding with Republican presidential administrations over the past three decades. Every Republican president since Herbert Hoover reportedly has belonged to the 2,500-member club.
Mary Moore, who helped found the Bohemian Grove Action Network in the 1980s, said she is happy that new activists are still trying to draw attention to leaders of government, banking, business and the military who gather in the grove.
Ted Kennedy As You’ve Never Seen Him Before
Premieres on HBO, Monday July 13th at 9 PM EST, the start of the HBO documentary summer season:
Edward Moore “Teddy” Kennedy has been in the public eye all his life. A child of privilege, Ted Kennedy and his siblings were brought up to believe that the highest calling was to serve the public. Serving 46 years, the nine-time senior Mass. Senator has also shouldered the patriarchal mantle of America’s most famous family for almost four decades. Enduring countless personal tragedies and the burden of oversized family expectations, Kennedy has forged a political career that is unparalleled in American history.
TEDDY: IN HIS OWN WORDS tells the story of Camelot’s last male survivor through his own words, from his childhood through his speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
TEDDY: IN HIS OWN WORDS deftly combines the Senator’s own voice — culled from past commentary, speeches and public and private sources — with archival newsreel…
I’ve Seen 1,200 Torture Photos
The Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) of Australia revealed several of these photographs, video of the head slamming, and video of prisoners forced to masturbate, as part of a news report broadcast in 2006. But the full collection has not been made available to the public or to a special prosecutor, although it was shown to members of Congress in 2004. When these photos are eventually made public, I encourage you to take a good look at them. After you get over feeling ill, it might be appropriate to consider Congress’ past 5 years of inaction. You’ll be able to feel sick all over again.
Michael Jackson ‘Had Two Gay Lovers’, New Book Claims
Michael Jackson had at least two gay lovers and would go out disguised as a woman for secret liaisons in motel rooms, according to a new book.
The star was allegedly “madly in love” with a half-Asian construction worker and had another fling with a Hollywood waiter.
Writer Ian Halperin claims in his unauthorised biography that “virtually everybody” around Jackson knew that the singer was gay.
Jackson’s affair with the builder, who was in his early 20s, began in Las Vegas in 2007, according to Halperin. “He rarely left his residence, but when he did, according to one of Jackson’s closest confidants, it was to meet a boyfriend at a run-down motel.
“Michael would leave the house in disguise, often dressed as a woman, and would go to meet his boyfriend at a motel that was one of Vegas’ grungiest dives. Michael was broke. He struggled to put food on the table for…
Goldman Sachs: The Great American Bubble Machine
Matt Taibbi uncovers the greed behind Goldman Sachs and the company’s role in creating our current recession and recessions to come:
The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.
They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again. The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending…
Michael Jackson’s Ghost Captured On CNN
CNN conducted a video tour of Michael Jackson’s now-deserted Neverland Ranch, to draw footage to go with an audio interview with Jermaine Jackson. However, something strange happened: a grey, man-sized shape walks across a doorway down the hall. Is Michael Jackson’s ghost haunting Nerverland Ranch already? Would you be willing to move in regardless?
Cheney Linked To Concealment Of C.I.A. Project
From the New York Times:
The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees.
The disclosure comes a day after an inspector general’s report underscored the central role of [Cheney] in restricting to a small circle of officials knowledge of the National Security Agency’s program of eavesdropping without warrants, a degree of secrecy that the report concluded had hurt the effectiveness of the counterterrorism effort.
Questions over the adequacy and the truthfulness of the C.I.A.’s briefings for Congress date to the 1970s after disclosures of agency assassination and mind-control programs and other abuses. But complaints increased in the Bush years, when the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies took the major role in pursuing Al Qaeda.
…
Britain Confronts Black-Ops Journalism
SARAH LYALL and TIM ARANGO, NY Times: Perhaps the most surprising thing about the accusations this week that a British tabloid newspaper had routinely hacked into the cellphone messages of celebrities, sports figures and politicians is how widespread, even accepted, such dubious journalistic methods are in Britain.
“They will go to any lengths to get material: pretending to be someone they’re not, dressing as the gasman to get into someone’s home, paying neighbors, going through trash bins, convincing relatives that the person has given them permission to talk,” the anchor of Channel 4 News, Jon Snow, said of British tabloid reporters.
The focus this week has been on a particular paper, the News of the World, which is owned by News International, the British subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. The paper was accused by another newspaper, the Guardian, of hiring private investigators to hack into the cellphone messages of thousands of…
Ernest Hemingway Revealed As A Failed KGB Spy
John Dugdale, The Guardian: Up till now, this has been a notably cheerful year for admirers of Ernest Hemingway – a surprisingly diverse set of people who range from Michael Palin to Elmore Leonard. Almost every month has brought good news: a planned Hemingway biopic; a new, improved version of his memoir, A Moveable Feast; the opening of a digital archive of papers found in his Cuban home; progress on a movie of Islands in the Stream.
Last week, however, saw the publication of Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, which reveals the Nobel prize-winning novelist was for a while on the KGB’s list of its agents in America. Co-written by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev, the book is based on notes that Vassiliev, a former KGB officer, made when he was given access in the 90s to Stalin-era intelligence archives in Moscow.
Its section…
