Archive for August, 2009
Taser Porn on The Learning Channel
TLC is glorifying the use of tasers in marketing materials for a new reality series. If you find torture porn on family programming disgusting, please contact Discovery Viewer Relations or write via snail mail to:
Discovery Communications
1 Discovery Place
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Or tweet: @tlc_pr.
Waiting for the End of the World: Photos of Bomb Shelters
Self-preservation is something that most humans take quite seriously, and that a few take to extremes.
Faced with the real or imagined threat of attacks levied by nuclear, biological, and chemical weaponry, some people opt to head 25 feet underground, surrounded by concrete and complex air-filtration systems, surviving off rations and waiting, so to speak, for the end of the world.
That’s the subject of Richard Ross’s Waiting for the End of the World, originally published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2004, for which Ross spent five years traveling over three continents, photographing the interiors of bomb shelters.
“I’m a child of the late 1950s,” he says. “I grew up in an era of duck-and-cover drills, where we always had to be acquainted with the idea of The Bomb.” The exploration took Ross into a series of survivalist spaces, offering a visual index of the lengths to which people will go when they…
President Hannity? Talk Show Host Drops Hint
WorldNetDaily: Talk-show host Sean Hannity, a vocal opponent of Barack Obama’s policies, said today he would not rule out a bid for the Presidency in 2012.
Egged on by radio colleague Bill Cunningham, Hannity said he would consider entering the front lines of the political fray if God directed him.
“I’ve never made a decision in my life without — whatever destiny God has you’ve got to fulfill it, he said. I’m not sure that’s destiny.”
Hannity would make a formidable candidate, with the likability of Reagan, good looks and strong convictions. He’s also a polished communicator and knows the issues inside out…
The Lady Gaga Code – Disinformation World News
Disinformation World News – Episode 9: The Lady Gaga Code
iTunes • Direct Download • RSS
In this episode we take a closer look at the psychedelic implications of the book of Genesis and uncover the sinister plots of the Illuminati’s greatest puppet, Lady Gaga. Crack the Lady Gaga Code, this week on Disinformation World News.
Disinformation Podcast T-shirts available here!
The Fascinating Five-Thousand-Year History of Debt
Throughout its 5000 year history, debt has always involved institutions – whether Mesopotamian sacred kingship, Mosaic jubilees, Sharia or Canon Law – that place controls on debt’s potentially catastrophic social consequences. It is only in the current era, writes anthropologist David Graeber, that we have begun to see the creation of the first effective planetary administrative system largely in order to protect the interests of creditors.
Vintage Men’s Magazine Cover Scans
stagmags.com:
The classic men’s girlie and adventure magazines flourished during the 1950’s and 60’s, when popular titles sold by the millions to men all across America and – in the case of soldiers stationed overseas – around the world. They were the successors to the lurid pulps which had enticed readers in earlier decades; like them, the men’s magazines promised tales of blood and sex.
The magazine covers depicted within this website are colorful, rude, shocking, sleazy, and often downright fascinating. They are not politically correct; and they are definitely Not Safe For Work. What they are is, a lot of fun.
I Swam The Amazon
by Sharon Van Geuns
That’s 3,274 miles, swimming 10 hours a day for 66 days.. on two bottles of wine a day *or 196,440 lengths of your average pool.
He’s middle-aged, his ample belly bulges over his Speedos… and he thinks drinking two bottles of wine a day keeps him in shape.
Swimmer Martin Strel would be the first to admit he makes the unlikeliest of athletes.
But the 55-year old hard drinking Slovenian just happens to be the greatest endurance swimmer in the world… ever.
Philip H. Farber Performs Evocation on Mystick Journey Radio
In some traditional magical systems, evocation, “communicating with spirits”, is considered to be one of the most dangerous and difficult arts. Upon closer observation, however, evocation is a form of behavior that most of us experience on a daily basis, though we might not think of our actions in those terms. It has a basis in neurology and is a natural, unconscious process.
Join us for a guided exploration of a simple, safe and extremely useful form of magical evocation. Mr. Farber will explain the process and take willing listeners on a short experiential journey to find the spirits that share our lives.
Mexico Decriminalizes Drug Posession
Associated Press reports: Mexico decriminalized small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and heroin on Friday — a move that prosecutors say makes sense even in the midst of the government’s grueling battle against drug traffickers.
Prosecutors said the new law sets clear limits that keep Mexico’s corruption-prone police from shaking down casual users and offers addicts free treatment to keep growing domestic drug use in check. The new law sets out maximum “personal use” amounts for drugs, also including LSD and methamphetamine. People detained with those quantities no longer face criminal prosecution … Anyone caught with drug amounts under the new personal-use limit will be encouraged to seek treatment, and for those caught a third time treatment is mandatory.
Officials said the legal changes could help the government focus more on big-time traffickers.
Humour Is An Act Of Aggression, Claims German Academic
The ability to make others laugh confers a degree of control which dominant people exploit to show they are in charge, claims Helga Kotthoff of the Frieburg University if Education.
“Those ‘on top’ are freer to make others laugh. They are also freer to be more aggressive and a lot of what is funny is making jokes at someone else’s expense,” she said.
“Displaying humour means taking control of the situation from those higher up the hierarchy and this is risky for people of lower status, which before the 1960s meant women rarely made other people laugh — they couldn’t afford to.
Homeless Man Leaves Behind Surprise: $4 Million
Every day on NPR, listeners hear funding credits — or, in other words, very short, simple commercials.
A few weeks ago, a new one made it to air: “Support for NPR comes from the estate of Richard Leroy Walters, whose life was enriched by NPR, and whose bequest seeks to encourage others to discover public radio.”
NPR’s Robert Siegel wondered who Walters was. So Siegel Googled him.
An article in the online newsletter of a Catholic mission in Phoenix revealed that Walters died two years ago at the age of 76. He left an estate worth about $4 million. Along with the money he left for NPR, Walters also left money for the mission.
But something distinguished Walters from any number of solvent, well-to-do Americans with seven-figure estates: He was homeless.
McDonald’s Website (Just for Black People) … Finally!
“McDonald’s has really stepped up to the plate with 365Black.” — Kevin M., Radio Personality and Former McDonald’s Employee, Washington, D.C.
“I promote a lot of events through my job at the radio station, and now that I think about it, the first party I ever promoted was my birthday party at McDonald’s. I worked there as a teenager too – I made money while working with my friends and I loved it. I learned teamwork and still keep that with me today. Now, I’m involved with McDonald’s on a much deeper level.
I see ways that McDonald’s can show the community they are “deeply rooted” and I bring those ideas to my local restaurants. These restaurants have had events like a clothing drive, reading nights and a coin drive every weekend during Black History Month. We raised over $1,000 for a community scholarship with the coin drive. McDonald’s is deeply rooted…
Is the Human Brain a ‘Belief Engine’?
Casey Kazan, Daily Galaxy: Lewis Wolpert believes that mankind’s “incorrigible and wholly irrational” religiosity is as human, and as explicable, as the flint axe and the computer. It is a tool for the soul.
Religion and belief in a supernatural being is a natural consequence of how we are wired as human beings: our brains evolved to become “belief engines.” And for that reason, we should not accept that our beliefs, particularly our religious beliefs, are correct.
Along with Richard Dawkins, the provocative Wolpert is one of Britain’s best known atheists explainers of science. An eminent developmental biologist at University College London, he believes it is “ethically unacceptable and impractical to censor any aspect of trying to understand the nature of our world.”
Wolpert penned a book-length meditation on “the evolutionary origins of belief,” published as Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast. Having pondered the subject, Wolpert sees no reason to modify his reductionist,…
The Kids in the Hall Return with Murder Mystery
CBC News: Fifteen years after The Kids in the Hall aired on CBC Television, the five original members of the Canadian sketch comedy team have reassembled in North Bay, Ont., to shoot an eight-part TV series. Death Comes to Town will premiere on CBC in January.
The series is about a killing spree in a small town and the trial that follows. It opens with the character of Death, played by Mark McKinney, getting off a Greyhound bus. “It’s our version of comedy … with a whodunit as the engine,” Kids co-founder Bruce McCulloch told CBC Radio’s cultural affairs program Q from North Bay on Friday.
The troupe’s five members — Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, McCulloch, McKinney and Scott Thompson — reunited at Montreal’s Just for Laughs festival in 2007 and toured across North America last year. “We never broke up,” McCulloch said. “We just didn’t do anything.” The Kids in the Hall…
Canine Lifeguards Hit Italy’s Beaches
TIME: The dog days of summer have hit Italy hard this year. During my family’s beach holiday on the enchanting island of Sardinia, the surprise star was Totò, a pint-size, black-and-white, eight-month-old mixed-breed from Naples whom our friends brought along to a house we shared near the southern town of Pula.
Totò — named for the famed Neapolitan comedian, not Dorothy’s pooch — has exactly one trick in his repertoire: misbehaving. He swiped everything from pasta al pesto to a half-pound of butter off the kitchen table, ran around the yard with a neighbor’s flip-flop between his teeth, and even left a summer-holiday gift on another neighbor’s driveway. My attempts to get him to retrieve a Frisbee failed as soon as he realized it wasn’t a pork chop.
And Totò’s disobedience seemed downright spiteful when compared to that of some of the other dogs that can be found on Italy’s shorelines this…
Slain Model’s Breast Implants Were Key to ID-ing Remains
AP: The remains of a former model whose killing set off an international manhunt for a reality television star were so badly mutilated that investigators had to use the serial numbers on her breast implants to identify her.
The man charged with Jasmine Fiore’s murder, reality TV show contestant Ryan Alexander Jenkins, has been on the run since reporting her missing the evening of Aug. 15. Her nude body had been found that morning, stuffed in a bloodstained suitcase in a trash bin in Buena Park, an Orange County city about 20 miles southeast of Los Angeles, but authorities wouldn’t be able to identify her for a few more days.
Detectives tracked the serial number on the implants because they could not use fingerprints or dental records, said Farrah Emami, a spokeswoman for the Orange County district attorney’s office.
Authorities believe Jenkins, a contestant on VH1’s “Megan Wants a Millionaire,” may have fled…
Republicans, Religion and the Triumph of Unreason
Something strange has happened in America in the nine months since Barack Obama was elected. It has best been summarised by the comedian Bill Maher: “The Democrats have moved to the right, and the Republicans have moved to a mental hospital.”
The election of Obama – a black man with an anti-conservative message – as a successor to George W. Bush has scrambled the core American right’s view of their country. In their gut, they saw the US as a white-skinned, right-wing nation forever shaped like Sarah Palin.
When this image was repudiated by a majority of Americans in a massive landslide, it simply didn’t compute. How could this have happened? How could the cry of “Drill, baby, drill” have been beaten by a supposedly big government black guy? So a streak that has always been there in the American right’s world-view – to deny reality, and argue against a demonic phantasm…
World Population Projected to Reach 7 Billion in 2011
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The world’s population is forecast to hit 7 billion in 2011, the vast majority of its growth coming in developing and, in many cases, the poorest nations, a report released Wednesday said.
A staggering 97 percent of global growth over the next 40 years will happen in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the Population Reference Bureau’s 2009 World Population Data Sheet.
“The great bulk of today’s 1.2 billion youth — nearly 90 percent — are in developing countries,” said Carl Haub, a co-author of the report. Eight in 10 of those youth live in Africa and Asia.
“During the next few decades, these young people will most likely continue the current trend of moving from rural areas to cities in search of education and training opportunities, gainful employment, and adequate health care,” Haub continued, calling it one of the major social questions of the next few decades.
In…
Human Sex from the Inside Out
New Scientist: Sex as you’ve never seen it before, the first video of a couple getting it together in an MRI scanner.
