Archive for August, 2009
Does Human Evolution Have a Mutation Rate?
Luke McKinney, Daily Galaxy: First things first: You’re a mutant. But don’t waste your time trying to fly or look through people’s clothes, as your amazing mutant powers are “not having pseudopods” and “consisting of more than a single cell.” All of evolution results from random changes in DNA, and now scientists have recorded the current rate of human mutation.
A global team of researchers recruited two men from a remote Chinese village. The subjects’ family had lived their for over two centuries, leaving the men extremely distant relations (thirteen generations apart). By examining sections of their Y chromosomes and screening out mutations caused by the scientific work (which somehow failed to create an army of unstoppable mutant clones), the team worked out the rate of change of human DNA. (dhuman/dt, if you like.)
One in thirty million nucleotides mutate per generation — which doesn’t sound much until you realise you have…
WTF: Marvel To Be Bought by Disney in $4 Billion Dollar Deal
Stephen Adams, Telegraph: Marvel Entertainment, the comics colossus which has given the world such superheroes as Spider-Man and Iron Man, is to be bought by Disney in a deal worth £2.5 billion ($4bn).
Over the decades the company has grown into a stable with some 5,000 characters. The comic inventions, which also include the X-Men, the Incredible Hulk, Captain America and The Fantastic Four, will become the intellectual property of Disney under terms of the deal.
Robert Iger, Disney’s president and chief executive, said: “We believe that adding Marvel to Disney’s unique portfolio of brands provides significant opportunities for long-term growth and value creation.
“We are pleased to bring this talent and these great assets to Disney.” He compared the purchase of Marvel to Disney’s 2006 acquisition of Pixar Animation for $7.4 billion. Ike Perlmutter, Marvel’s chief exectuive, said Disney was “the perfect home for Marvel’s fantastic library of characters given its proven…
Fired for Using ALL CAPS IN EMAIL
NextWeb: Vicki Walker, an Auckland (New Zealand) accountant, was sacked for sending supposedly confrontational emails with words in red, in bold and in CAPITAL LETTERS.
The Employment Relations Authority in New Zealand ruled that Walker was not fairly terminated from her position after sending the emails to co-workers. Her previous employers, ProCare, have now been ordered to pay New Zealand dollars $17,000 (US $11,500/€8000) for unfair dismissal.
Fired in December 2007, after two years with the company, ProCare claim Walker had “caused disharmony in the workplace by using block capitals, bold typeface and red text in her emails.”
Walker claims that the one email used in evidence was in regard to how her team should fill claim forms, and specifies a time and date highlighted in bold red, and a sentence written in capitals and highlighted in bold blue. It reads: “To ensure your staff claim is processed and paid, please do follow…
The Rise And Fall of the U.S. Dollar 1800–2009
Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge: And this is just the beginning. Chairman Ben has yet to be fully unleashed.
Machines in Control: How Real is the Threat of Autonomous Technology?
Economist.com: Hollywood has made at least half a dozen films based on Mary Shelley’s gothic masterpiece — mindless travesties all of them, even the Kenneth Branagh version released in 1994. That is a pity because the parable of the Genevan protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, deserves wider appreciation, especially among those concerned about technology getting out of control.
In the actual story, there is no crazed assistant, no criminal brain stolen from a grave, no violent rampage, and no angry mob hunting down and killing the monster. Instead, the rejected creation pleads to be accepted, and cared for, by its creator and tries hard to fit in with society. Yes, there is violence and revenge — it wouldn’t be a gothic novel without them. In the end, however, the autonomous being departs to commit suicide after its creator dies of disease.
What makes the tale such an enduring classic are the moral questions it…
Space Shuttle Replaced by Private Space Cargo Ship!
Next year on re-supply missions to the International Space Station, the Space Shuttle will be replaced by “SpaceX,” a private space cargo company, as part of a $3.5 billion NASA resupply contract.
SpaceX (created by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk) launched the first privately-developed liquid fuel rocket into orbit 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii with a 364-lb payload, and hopes to reduce the costs of transporting cargo to space. And Musk is also the CEO of Tesla Motors, which sells the only non-prototype highway-capable electric car in North America.
“With Falcon rockets delivering payloads to space and Teslas electric cars putting market pressure on established players … SpaceX and Tesla Motors are likely to become dominant players in 21st century transportation.”
Sitting Now Podcast: Druids, Satan and Crud with Isaac Bonewits
Isaac Bonewits has had a fantastically rich career in occultism. From becoming the ArchDruid of the RDNA, to helping reconstruct the ‘Caliphate’ branch of the OTO, Isaac gives us a fantastically engaging, frank and often funny, interview.
Discussed this week: Why Neo-paganism appears to be changing, How to get thrown out of the Church of Satan by Aton Lavay, being awarded the only recognised academic degree in ‘Magic’, the effect of ‘crud’ on estoterism, and uncle Aleister.
We finally did it, we reached episode 30! To celebrate the ‘big 3 0′ we decided to invite back co-hosts Raymond Wiley and Austin Gandy to get the proceedings in full swing, and booked a guest that we’ve been hankering after for a while now. To top this off, we also recorded the show live (something we plan to do from now on), and our audience gave us some great questions!
…
$1,000 Per Day Fine And 30 Days In Jail For Refusing The Swine Flu Vaccine In Massachusetts?
Massachusetts imposes fines of up to $1,000 per day and up to a 30 day jail sentence for not obeying authorities during a public health emergency. So if you are instructed to take the swine flu vaccine in Massachusetts and you refuse, you could be facing fines that will bankrupt you and a prison sentence on top of that.
The YouTube video below is of a news report about this disturbing new law. In particular, pay attention at the 1:40 mark when the anchor and reporter discuss the new penalties for not obeying the health authorities during an emergency…
Find Out How You’ll Die, In 4 Easy Online Steps
A new website lets you figure out how you might die, by sorting death data by cause of death, sex, and age. For American males ages 20-29, the most common cause of death is accidents (40.2 percent of deaths), followed by homicide (17.5 percent), and suicide (11.7 percent). Urinary tract infections? 0.3 percent.
The Death Risk Rankings site was compiled by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, and seems to have about a zillion ways to organize the data. It’s quite cumbersome to use, so I’m going to save you the effort.
I generated tables for cause of death by age group and by sex. Here’s some of the highlights and a cheat sheet on how to find your own data.
For American females, ages 20-29, the most common cause of death is still accidents (32.3 percent), followed by cancer and homicide. Are women dying more from cancer than men? No. Looking at the the…
House of Saud Assassination Attempt Took Place on August 28th
“Prince Muhammad bin Naif, assistant interior minister for security affairs, escaped an assassination attempt on Thursday night when a wanted terrorist blew himself up inside the prince’s house.”
He was treated at a hospital for minor injuries after the incident. “The prince, who is the son of interior minister Prince Naif, the third in line to the throne, was shown on Saudi television on Friday sitting with King Abdullah, who had gone to the hospital … This is the first known assassination attempt against a member of the royal family since a group affiliated to al-Qaeda started a campaign to destabilise the house of Saud in 2001.”
As for the House of Saud and their relationship with the ruling class in the United States, the following PBS Frontline documentary is a good, albeit an incomplete, introduction to the topic.
A very important event took place in Saudi Arabia on August 28: Assassination attempt Saudi Royal
“Prince Muhammad bin Naif, assistant interior minister for security affairs, escaped an assassination attempt on Thursday night when a wanted terrorist blew himself up inside the prince’s house.”
He was treated at a hospital for minor injuries after the incident. “The prince, who is the son of interior minister Prince Naif, the third in line to the throne, was shown on Saudi television on Friday sitting with King Abdullah, who had gone to the hospital… This is the first known assassination attempt against a member of the royal family since a group affiliated to al-Qaeda started a campaign to destabilise the house of Saud in 2001.”…
As for the House of Saud and their relationship with the ruling class in the United States, the following PBS Frontline documentary is a good, albeit an incomplete, introduction to the topic.
Glenn Beck And The Missing Letter
Is Fox News trying to make its viewers feel as if they’re stoned while watching? Glen Beck creates an insane chalkboard flow chart that somehow spells out the non-word “OLIGARH”.
Five Myths About Health Care In Other Countries
So, you think that all the other developed nations besides the United States have “socialized” medicine? Not true. Britain, New Zealand and Cuba have government hospitals and the government foots medical bills. However, countries such as Germany, Japan, and the Netherlands depend on private hospitals and insurance plans. A few of the European countries are arguably less “socialistic” than America in regards to health care.
Oh, and does public health care stifle innovation? Not the case. Republican politicians may claim that the profit motive drives U.S. medical research, putting us at the forefront of the field, but this is largely exaggeration; British, Swiss and Japanese labs have invented many of our cutting-edge medicines, hip and knee replacements are the work of the French, and the cost controls imposed in “socialized” health systems overseas actually drive innovation in various cases.
Writing in the Washington Post, T.R. Reid takes on these and other…
(Podcast) Druids, Satan and Crud with Isaac Bonewits
Raymond Wiley and Austin Gandy (DisInfocast), join Ken Eakins (SittingNow) and a live audience to interview this weeks guest.
Isaac Bonewits has had a fantastically rich career in occultism. From becoming the ArchDruid of the RDNA, to helping reconstruct the ‘Caliphate’ branch of the OTO, Isaac gives us a fantastically engaging, frank and often funny, interview.
Discussed this week: Why Neo-paganism appears to be changing, How to get thrown out of the Church of Satan by Aton Lavay, being awarded the only recognised academic degree in ‘Magic’, the effect of ‘crud’ on estoterism, and uncle Aleister.
Interrogating The CIA
A clever, streetwise classmate of mine at the Central Intelligence Agency’s junior officer training program—a former Delta Force officer—quickly and rudely discovered that counterterrorism in the much-vaunted Reagan years wasn’t a serious endeavor at Langley. He had original and provocative ideas on using physical force to scare the bejesus out of terrorist suspects who had American blood on their hands. Although the CIA was then filling up with operatives pretending to be engaged against a growing terrorist menace, Langley’s counterterrorist data bank and real operational planning were near zero. My friend’s ideas were too unsettling. He resigned. By the time I resigned in 1994, CIA counterterrorism had become an inflexible, lumbering creature, incapable of countering the wicked anti-American forces gaining strength in the Middle East.
Fast forward to eight years after 9/11: Has Attorney General Eric Holder damaged the CIA’s improved counterterrorist capacity by his decision to employ a special prosecutor…
Single Molecule, One Million Times Smaller Than A Grain Of Sand, Pictured For First Time
It may look like a piece of honeycomb, but this lattice-shaped image is the first ever close-up view of a single molecule.
Scientists from IBM used an atomic force microscope (AFM) to reveal the chemical bonds within a molecule.
‘This is the first time that all the atoms in a molecule have been imaged,’ lead researcher Leo Gross said.
The researchers focused on a single molecule of pentacene, which is commonly used in solar cells. The rectangular-shaped organic molecule is made up of 22 carbon atoms and 14 hydrogen atoms.
In the image above the hexagonal shapes of the five carbon rings are clear and even the positions of the hydrogen atoms around the carbon rings can be seen.
To give some perspective, the space between the carbon rings is only 0.14 nanometers across, which is roughly one million times smaller than the diameter of a grain of sand.
…
UK Prime Minister Protests Assertions That His Government Traded Lockerbie Bomber For Oil
LONDON, England (CNN) — The British government did not make a deal to send the Lockerbie bomber home in exchange for an oil contract with Libya, Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s office said Monday.
“There was no deal over the release” of Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, a spokesman for Brown told CNN.
The government was responding to reports that the British government wanted al Megrahi to be eligible for release in order to smooth the way for the British oil giant BP to win exploration rights in Libya.
“The central assertion in this story is completely untrue and deeply misleading,” Brown’s office said in response to a story that originated in the Sunday Times.
But Justice Minister Jack Straw acknowledged Sunday that a key element of the story was correct — that Libya had demanded al Megrahi be included in a prisoner transfer agreement, and that, after initial resistance, the UK agreed to the…
Mobile Phones And Towers Kill Bees
Mobile towers are posing a threat to honey bees in Kerala [India] with electromagnetic radiation from mobile towers and cell phones having the potential to kill worker bees that go out to collect nectar from flowers, says a study.
A plunge in beehive population has been reported from different parts of Kerala and if measures are not taken to check mushrooming of mobile towers, bees could be wiped out from Kerala within a decade, environmentalist and Reader in Zoology, Dr Sainudeen Pattazhy says in his study.
Paganism and Being Pagan
The Infinite and the Beyond — Podcast: Episode #007 — Paganism and Being Pagan
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In this episode of The Infinite and the Beyond, we have a discussion of the meaning of the word Paganism and explore the idea of being Pagan with Amie Tolomeo co-owner of Sun and Moon a south Jersey Metaphysical Shoppe and co-coordinator of the South Jersey Pagan Pride Day. Amie offers us some wonderful feedback from her own path, life and her experience as a metaphysical store owner and organizer of major local yearly south Jersey event.
I respond to listener email and getting into a personal reveal about paranormal investigation. Like how to spot poor investigative practices, recognize misinformed and disfunctional ghost hunter groups before you even get involved with them, as well as how to debunk paranormal reality television as if that needed to be addressed! If you have a favorite ghost TV show you could be in for a surprise. Check it out!
We learn about Hermes Trismegistus and Hermeticism in A Corner of the Occult. Hermes and his alleged legacy is the foundation for western esotericism, occultism, and modern paganism. The thrice greatest man himself is not to go unrecognized by anyone from the western mystery tradition come and find out why!
We see who won the copy of Arthur Hinds’ album Poetry of Wonder, whom we met in episode six. And as we continue with our journey through The Kybalion we discuss the Principle of Vibration. It’s a big episode! Enjoy!
To message the show please go here.
