Archive for July, 2009
Women And Porn
Personally, I like my pizza deliveryman to do one thing: bring me my dinner. But mention this guy to a group of women, and, while most of us will think of cheesy pies with tomato sauce, a good number of us will conjure up that hilariously bad porn cliché, the randy fellow who’s always ready to accept sex in exchange for a medium sausage and mushroom.
Notwithstanding how lame the cliché is, or how simply bad most porn is (and after ten years as a professional reviewer of the stuff, I can report that much of it is very bad), the fact is, millions of women use and enjoy “explicit sexual imagery.”
What’s perhaps more surprising, given the latest scientific research, is that more of us don’t.
In the first three months of 2007, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, approximately one in three visitors to adult entertainment Web sites was female; during the same period,…
‘Doctor Who’ Gains Guinness World Record For Most Successful Sci-Fi TV Series
On Sunday, the Guinness Book of World Records recognized “Doctor Who” as the most successful sci-fi series. “It is too good a show to have just one record,” said Guinness editor in chief Craig Glenday.
Guinness granted the award on the basis of broadcast ratings, DVD sales, book sales and iTunes traffic. “It’s hard to quantify illegal downloads, but we included those as well,” Glenday said.
Longevity was another factor, since “Doctor Who” also holds the Guinness record for longest-running sci-fi TV series. A controversy broke out over that record in 2006, and “Stargate SG-1″ later received the record for longest-running consecutive sci-fi series after completing a 10-year run.
Why the #$%! Do We Swear? For Pain Relief
Dropping the F-bomb or other expletives may not only be an expression of agony, but also a means to alleviate it.
Bad language could be good for you, a new study shows. For the first time, psychologists have found that swearing may serve an important function in relieving pain.
The study, published today in the journal NeuroReport, measured how long college students could keep their hands immersed in cold water. During the chilly exercise, they could repeat an expletive of their choice or chant a neutral word. When swearing, the 67 student volunteers reported less pain and on average endured about 40 seconds longer.
Although cursing is notoriously decried in the public debate, researchers are now beginning to question the idea that the phenomenon is all bad. “Swearing is such a common response to pain that there has to be an underlying reason why we do it,” says psychologist Richard Stephens of Keele…
DNA Not The Same In Every Cell Of The Body
Science Daily reports:
Research by a group of Montreal scientists calls into question one of the most basic assumptions of human genetics: that when it comes to DNA, every cell in the body is essentially identical to every other cell.
The vast majority of genetic samples used in large-scale studies come in the form of blood. However, if it turns out that blood and tissue cells do not match genetically, these ambitious and expensive genome-wide association studies may prove to have been essentially flawed from the outset.
Says Dr. Bruce Gottlieb, a geneticist at McGill University: “Genome-wide association studies were introduced with enormous hype several years ago, and people expected tremendous breakthroughs. They were going to draw blood samples from thousands or hundreds of thousands of individuals, and find the genes responsible for disease…The reality of these studies has been very disappointing, and our discovery certainly could explain at least one of the…
State Fair Butter Sculptures
From Texas to Minnesota, summertime means a special kind of attraction: butter sculptures. A strange, usually overlooked form of folk art, these beautiful works painstakingly crafted from dairy are on display at state fairs across the nation.
The Iowa State Butter Cow is the most famous butter work. I like Butter Elvis, on display in Dallas, TX; I wonder what percentage of the real Elvis’ body has composed of butter when he passed. Anyway, this Flickr set has a pretty great roundup of dairy art.
Obama Birth Certificate Conspiracy Theory Resurfaces, Stronger Than Ever
Speculation about the true citizenship of President Obama has resurfaced in recent days, in part thanks to this viral video:
Despite a widely circulated copy of his certificate of live birth, notices in two Honolulu newspapers, and other evidence, some won’t let the issue die. Fanning the flame are commentators Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh, who have both suggested the question remains unresolved, and 10 House Republicans, who have co-sponsored a bill that would require presidential candidates to provide a copy of their original birth certificate.
Comic-Con: Roland Emmerich’s “2012″ is “the mother of all disaster films”
For those of you who are interested in what might truly happen in 2012 don’t forget to check out 2012: Science or Superstition, the disinformation documentary.
Super heroes are all about saving their cities. Superman’s got Metropolis to look after. Batman has Gotham City.
Roland Emmerich, on the other hand, destroys densely populated areas for a living. He wrecked Washington, D.C., in “Independence Day.” He flooded New York City into a watery grave in “The Day After Tomorrow.” Now, the German director is busy laying waste to the entire planet in “2012.”
It’s a big job. And Emmerich, a detail-oriented director, is the man to do it. The film from Sony stars John Cusack and Woody Harrelson.
Sony didn’t trot out the actors to promote the film at Comic-Con alongside Emmerich. It didn’t have to. The real star is Earth. Emmerich shows the planet shrugging off entire neighborhoods the way a dog shakes off…
Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man
A robot that can open doors and find electrical outlets to recharge itself. Computer viruses that no one can stop. Predator drones, which, though still controlled remotely by humans, come close to a machine that can kill autonomously.
Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone.
Their concern is that further advances could create profound social disruptions and even have dangerous consequences.
As examples, the scientists pointed to a number of technologies as diverse as experimental medical systems that interact with patients to simulate empathy, and computer worms and viruses that defy extermination and could thus be said to have reached a “cockroach” stage of machine intelligence.
Pioneering Fortean Investigator John Keel Dead at 79
John A. Keel, famed investigator of Fortean strangeness, died on July 3, 2009 at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. Keel was the author of several classic books on Fortean phenomena, including Disneyland of the Gods, Operation Trojan Horse, The Eighth Tower, and Jadoo.
However, it is for his legendary book The Mothman Prophecies that he is best known and for which he will forever be remember by fans of Forteana. The Mothman Prophecies chronicled Keel’s investigation into the terrifying encounters experienced by the people of Point Pleasant, West Virginia during 1966 and 1967.
Mr. Keel’s influence on the field of UFOlogy was enormous. He was among the first to reject the extraterrestrial hypothesis, concluding instead that these phenomena have always been a part of the earth. He was fond of quoting Charles Fort himself who said, “We are property.” John A. Keel had come to the same conclusion.
…
Believers Beware — The Sequel to Hijacking Humanity
New from CraigBrockie.com and DivergentFilms.com comes the anticipated sequel to “The Cause of Effect: Hijacking Humanity”:
Please visit http://TheCauseOfEffect.com to learn more, and be sure to check out an exclusive article on the production of Believers Beware in the August Edition of Tragedy and Hope Magazine – http://www.TragedyAndHope.com
“Believers Beware” features over 2 dozen exclusive interviews with such visionaries as:
-International author/speaker David Icke
-http://meria.net radio host Meria Heller
-Gerson Institute founder Charlotte Gerson,
-8thEstate Media founder Richard Grove
-”The Holy Mushroom” author/researcher Jan Irvin
-”Loose Change” filmmaker Dylan Avery
-Hip-Hop artist Remo Conscious
-http://WeAreChange.org founder Luke Rudkowski, -”Illuminati” author/researcher Henry Makow Ph.D
-”Sacred G” creator Cory Herter
-”Fabled Enemies” filmmaker Jason Bermas, -Healer/researcher Kennith Walter
-Healer/researcher Lorne Stefanus
-Researcher/entrepreneur Adam Earth
and many many more!
This video is a long-form trailer with short excerpts from some of the film’s main interviews.
This film covers a variety of subjects, from Hemp and Cannabis to the Prison Industrial Complex, then delving into the history of the FDA, Big…
Report: Bush Mulled Sending Troops Into Buffalo
WASHINGTON – The Bush administration in 2002 considered sending U.S. troops into a Buffalo, N.Y., suburb to arrest a group of terror suspects in what would have been a nearly unprecedented use of military power, The New York Times reported.
Vice President Dick Cheney and several other Bush advisers at the time strongly urged that the military be used to apprehend men who were suspected of plotting with al Qaida, who later became known as the Lackawanna Six, the Times reported on its Web site Friday night. It cited former administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
U.S. Government Agency Plans Mandatory Flu Vaccination
Now’s the time to speak up if you are against government imposed control of what chemicals and drugs go into your body.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – All U.S. children aged 6 months to 18 years should get a seasonal influenza vaccine every year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday.
How Robot Drones Revolutionized The Face Of Warfare
Barely an hour’s drive from the casinos of Las Vegas, a group of unassuming buildings have become as important as the trenches were to WWI. The big difference? Today’s warriors are fighting without getting in harm’s way, using drones to attack targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
U.S. Air Force fighter pilot Major Morgan Andrews is one such combatant. He kisses his wife goodbye, drives to Creech, a tiny desert air force base in Nevada, and within minutes could be killing insurgents on the other side of the world.
Andrews fights not from the seat of the F16 he joined the air force to fly but from a darkened ground control station. He pilots a remote-controlled Predator, a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) which can spy on and attack positions and personnel without risk to its controller, shooting deadly Hellfire missiles at enemy fighters in support of fellow soldiers.
“You’re talking to them on the…
‘Abu Ghraib Victim’ Confronts John Yoo In Classroom
The hosts of Chasers War, an Australian comedy show, made a visit to California and filmed a segment in which they snuck into the UC Berkeley classroom of Bush torture policy architect John Yoo. After Yoo called campus security, they left the class with, “OK, I’ll go to the human rights class down the road, Professor. I think you probably won’t be teaching there.”
FBI Lab Processes 600 Billion Fingerprint Sets a Day
An underground fingerprint lab in West Virginia is the nexus point for every crime committed in the country and even for some committed overseas.
The FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services building in Clarksburg houses a multi-billion-dollar computer system that processes 600 billion fingerprint sets a day, according to a CBS news reporter who visited the lab. The prints come in 24-hours-a-day from crime scenes around the country as well as from overseas, such as in Iraq where prints lifted from IED explosives are sent to CJIS to match against known terrorist suspects.
Agents in the field use wireless scanners to transmit fingerprint samples to the center, where matches can be returned as quickly as seven seconds.
The facility also processes fingerprint searches on travelers scanned at border entry points under the U.S. Visit program, as well as on teachers, day-care center employees, government workers and others who must undergo background checks for their…
Naked Girls Plow FIelds For Rain
PATNA, India (Reuters) – Farmers in an eastern Indian state have asked their unmarried daughters to plow parched fields naked in a bid to embarrass the weather gods to bring some badly needed monsoon rain, officials said on Thursday.
Witnesses said the naked girls in Bihar state plowed the fields and chanted ancient hymns after sunset to invoke the gods. They said elderly village women helped the girls drag the plows.
World Leaders Who Are Missing George Bush
Barack Obama trumps George W. Bush easily in global approval, according to numerous polls. However, there are definitely a few heads of state pining for their old pal Dubya, including:
Álvaro Uribe, President of Columbia
What he misses: Unconditional support in the drug war. The Colombian president was a staunch pro-U.S. voice in a region where Bush had few friends. The affection was mutual. Bush authorized millions in military aid for Colombia’s war against drug cartels and leftist rebels and awarded Uribe the Presidential Medal of Freedom, citing his “immense personal courage and strength of character.”
These days, things aren’t quite so friendly. Obama opposed a free-trade agreement with Colombia, citing human rights issues. There is also growing concern in the administration over Colombia’s methods in the war on drugs. An anonymous source told the Washington Post that Obama planned to question Uribe on a recent United Nations report that characterized extrajudicial killings…
More on Tokyo’s 54-Foot-Tall ‘Transformer’ Robot!
Why exactly did the city of Tokyo build a giant 54-foot robot to promote its new environmental project? RX-78-2 is “no less a symbol of the greening of space-conscious industrial Japan than the Toyota Prius,” notes this article.
While RX-78-2 was originally part of the “Mobile Suit Gundam” series whose designs spawned the original Transformers, it will now reinforce industrial Tokyo’s push for more green spaces. “From its beginning, the series told of a time when tension existed between people on earth and those who migrated to outer space…following environmental degradation and damage incurred by industrialization,” says a studio manager.
A creature developer at Industrial Light & Magic (who worked on the Transformers films) says the original series “raised the animation culture…It did not cheat the kids, and it did not take their smarts for granted.” But now the series’ original mechanical designer now gets to build a 54-foot replica 30 years later…
Enjoy The Atlas Obscura
Welcome to the Atlas Obscura, a compendium of this age’s wonders, curiosities, and esoterica.
The Atlas Obscura is a collaborative project with the goal of cataloging all of the singular, eccentric, bizarre, fantastical, and strange out-of-the-way places that get left out of traditional travel guidebooks and are ignored by the average tourist.
If you’re looking for miniature cities, glass flowers, books bound in human skin, gigantic flaming holes in the ground, phallological museums, bone churches, balancing pagodas, or homes built entirely out of paper, the Atlas Obscura is where you’ll find them.
At right: Welcome to Tokyo’s newest — and perhaps shortest-lived — tourist attraction, a 20-meter robot standing in a park, overlooking the harbor of the world’s manga metropolis.
The lifesize, plastic replica of a robot from Gundam, opened on
July 11, 2009 and will be closed to the public on August 31st. It is part of the celebrations for Gundam’s 30th anniversary.
