Archive for September, 2009
School of witchcraft opens in Taiwan
Witchcraft is an important part of the Paiwan tribe’s culture, but the number of practising witches it has produced has recently dropped sharply.
The school, which opened last July, has ten students, but the organizers hope it will expand.
Wong Yu-hua, a social affairs official in Pingtung county, where the school is based, told AFP: “We are witnessing the disappearance of the ancient ritual. We are trying hard to preserve it.
“Passing on psychic acts to the young generation is a good way to understand Paiwan culture. We can go back to see how ancestors lived.
“The most sticking problem is that we do not have a written language. That makes it hard for young Paiwans to learn the ritual.”
The Paiwan tribe numbers about 86,000 people but has fewer than 20 witches, a decrease from more than 100 half a century ago.
Taiwan has 490,000 aborigines – descendants of people who have lived on the…
Report Says Having Sex Increases Sports Performance
(AFP) NEW DELHI — India’s cricketers at the Champions Trophy in South Africa are being encouraged by their coach to have sex to boost their on-field performance, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.
The benefits of sex feature prominently in a secret document circulated among players by coach Gary Kirsten and mental conditioning expert Paddy Upton, the Hindustan Times said in a front-page report.
It came as India take on arch-rivals Pakistan in their first Champions Trophy match in Centurion on Saturday.
The large-selling broadsheet, which claimed to have a copy of the document, said the relevant chapter was headlined “Does sex increase performance?”.
“Yes it does, so go ahead and indulge,” the document said, before detailing the benefits of a good sex life and even suggesting “going solo” if no partners were available.
Sex or immortality? Scientists argue cons of longevity diet
Do we have to choose between sex and immortality?
It’s half of a fascinating medical debate about Caloric Restriction diets. Heart function improves, arteries lose plaque, blood pressure drops, bone density increases, according to Paul McGlothin, and it also lowers the risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease. (”Usually making only slight changes will unleash a flood of benefits.”)
But science writer Athena Andreadis argues the animal studies are flawed, and that at best animals are switching from the joy of “reproductive” mode to survival mode…
The Secret History of GI Opposition To the Vietnam War
When liberals and the fake left think of the military, they tend to go pretty quickly to stereotypes. An idiotic jock or frat boy dragging his knuckles on the ground who can’t wait to go kill Ay-rabs. Certainly some evidence indicates that the military has been actively recruiting sociopaths. Still, the core of the U.S. military’s enlisted men are regular working class people, often enticed to join the military with false promises of job training and money for college. The manner in which the enlisted men are treated by the military brass is closely analogous to how corporations treat their employees.
Desertion is an increasing, but conspicuously unreported, problem in Iraq. You haven’t heard about it in the corporate media. But the U.S. military is so concerned about it that they’ve made a renewed effort to track down Vietnam-era deserters to set an example. Their fears are not unfounded. From the Potemkin mutiny to the…
Obama Has Backed Extending Patriot Act Spy Provisions
I know this has already been posted to disinfo.com, it’s worth repeating. Hello, Twitterers.
David Kravets writes in WIRED:
The Obama administration has told Congress it supports renewing three provisions of the Patriot Act due to expire at year’s end, measures making it easier for the government to spy within the United States.
In a letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department said the administration might consider “modifications” to the act in order to protect civil liberties.
“The administration is willing to consider such ideas, provided that they do not undermine the effectiveness of these important authorities,” Ronald Weich, assistant attorney general, wrote to Leahy, whose committee is expected to consider renewing the three expiring Patriot Act provisions.
It should come as no surprise that President Barack Obama supports renewing the provisions, which were part of the Patriot Act approved six weeks after the…
At Last! First Real Evidence for an Earth-Like Planet Outside our Solar System
Hadley Leggett, WIRED: There’s finally proof that Earth-like planets can exist outside our solar system: Scientists have managed to measure the mass of exoplanet COROT-7b, revealing that it’s the first exoplanet with a confirmed density similar to our own.
“This is a day we’ve been waiting for for a long time,” said exoplanet researcher Sara Seager of the Massachusettes Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the research. “It’s the first definitive rocky world beyond our solar system, and it’s opening a new gate for our research. We’re really, really excited about it.”
When astronomers discovered COROT-7b in February, they couldn’t determine its mass because they didn’t have precise enough measurements of the velocity of its star. Now, using 70 hours of observation data from the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) spectrograph, scientists from the European Southern Observatory have calculated that the exoplanet is only about five times more…
Amtrak Riders Can Now Carry Guns on Trains (As If You Couldn’t Do This Before…)
AP: The Senate to permit riders on the Amtrak passenger railroad to transport handguns in their checked baggage.
The proposal, approved by a 68-to-30 vote, seeks to give Amtrak riders rights comparable to those enjoyed by airline passengers, who are permitted to transport firearms provided that they declare they are doing so and that the arms are unloaded and in a securely locked container.
“Americans should not have their Second Amendment rights restricted for any reason, particularly if they choose to travel on America’s federally subsidized rail line,” said Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who made the proposal.
Wicker’s amendment would deny the money-losing railroad its $1.6 billion taxpayer subsidy unless it changes the gun policy. Current Amtrak policy, put in place after the bombings of passenger trains in Madrid five years ago, prohibits weapons, including firearms, from being carried on its trains.
Homeowners Fight Back
For an example of what form nascent resistance to the current crisis might take, I present the “show me the note” movement.
In short, banks have become so arrogant that they aren’t even bothering to keep paperwork showing who owns what mortgage. Homeowners- really a misnomer as the bank usually owns it- are fighting back by demanding that banks actually produce proof of ownership of debt. And in many cases, it’s keeping people in their homes for several years. Even more militant language is being used by (of all people) Democratic House Member Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, who is urging residents to squat their homes.
Homeowners Fight Back
For an example of what form nascent resistance to the current crisis might take, I present the “show me the note” movement.
In short, banks have become so arrogant that they aren’t even bothering to keep paperwork showing who owns what mortgage. Homeowners- really a misnomer as the bank usually owns it- are fighting back by demanding that banks actually produce proof of ownership of debt. And in many cases, it’s keeping people in their homes for several years. Even more militant language is being used by (of all people) Democratic House Member Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, who is urging residents to squat their homes.
Will Ferrell & MoveOn’s ‘Protect Insurance Companies’ PSA
Hollywood speaks out to help insurance companies:
Is THIS How the Bank Bailout Money is Being Used? Where is the Bank Bailout Money Ultimately Going?
Who Picks up the Pieces in the Wake of the Financial Meltdown?
An internal war within the financial system is unfolding. Lehman Bros goes bankrupt, Merrill Lynch is bought up … Mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are taken over by the government.
Bear Stearns collapses, America’s largest insurance company AIG’s share collapse from $22.19 on September 9 2008, to less than $4.00 at the close of trading on September 16, a decline of more than 80 percent of its value.
With the collapse in stock market values, listed companies experience a major collapse in the price of their shares, which immediately affects their creditworthiness and their ability to borrow and/ or to renegotiate debts ( which are based on the quoted value of their assets).
Bankruptcies and Foreclosures constitute a money-spinning operation for the financial giants. Among the companies on the verge of bankruptcy are some highly lucrative and profitable operations. The…
Landmark Decision: Massive Relief for Homeowners and Trouble for the Banks
A landmark ruling in a recent Kansas Supreme Court case may have given millions of distressed homeowners the legal wedge they need to avoid foreclosure. In Landmark National Bank v. Kesler, 2009 Kan. LEXIS 834, the Kansas Supreme Court held that a nominee company called MERS has no right or standing to bring an action for foreclosure.
MERS is an acronym for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, a private company that registers mortgages electronically and tracks changes in ownership. The significance of the holding is that if MERS has no standing to foreclose, then nobody has standing to foreclose — on 60 million mortgages. That is the number of American mortgages currently reported to be held by MERS.
Over half of all new U.S. residential mortgage loans are registered with MERS and recorded in its name. Holdings of the Kansas Supreme Court are not binding on the rest of the country, but they…
Federal Reserve Rejects Request for Public Review
The institution which creates and oversees America’s currency wants to keep a “low profile,” according to a published report on Monday, and may willing to dodge the U.S. Treasury in order to do so.
According to Bloomberg News, the Federal Reserve Bank will not submit to a voluntary public study of its internal structure and methods of governance, as it was requested to do so by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
Geithner is the former New York Federal Reserve Bank chairman. The review he requested is part of President Barack Obama’s financial regulatory reforms, which he proposed in mid-June. Part of those reforms would have studied the Fed’s “ability to accomplish its existing and proposed functions” — a proposal the bank’s board of governors appears to have flatly rejected.
“The agency also said that while the report requested by Secretary Geithner and his department has not yet been scrapped, no work has been done…
Obama: We Need To Bail Out Newspapers Or Blogs Will Run The World
Yael Bizouati and John Carney
Sep. 21, 2009, 8:44 AM
Obama yesterday expressed concern at the sorry state of the news industry and said that he will look at a news paper bailout, because otherwise, blogs will take over the world, and that would be a threat to democracy, The Hill reports.
“I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding,” he said.
He said he would be happy to look a bills that could give tax newspapers tax-breaks if they were to restructure as 50 (c) (3) educational corporations. One of the bills is that of Senator Ben Cardin, who has introduced the “Newspaper Revitalization Act.”
This strikes us as…
The Old Media Is Dead—Really, Truly
Michael Wolff, Newser: The world is about to radically change. Let me explain.
The Internet business, which began to radically change the world in the mid-nineties, stalled out in 2001 partly because the Internet didn’t work very well. It just wasn’t fast enough to do all the things it promised to do. Then high-speed connections became the norm and the business started to grow again. A new boom started around 2006 with the advent of widespread video and the expectation that the Internet would soon attract TV-like advertising and TV-like advertising dollars.
But after the first video-everywhere euphoria, and then the magic of YouTube, which made all videos playable, it soon became clear that video on the Internet actually sucked. It was convenient, but, with its low quality image and stop and start motion, not pleasurable.
Hence, advertising growth stalled. This is pretty much where the business is now. The Internet is an…
‘The Age of Stupid’ Is the Future of Film
Jon Reiss, Huffington Post: One of the most important films of the year (perhaps decade) is about to be released. Take note. While this film is about the collective future of humanity, this film is equally or more important because it represents the future of film, film culture and film distribution and marketing.
Since the recent collapse of the independent distribution and monetization model (of about 5000 feature films produced a year, perhaps a handful will recoup their investment), independent filmmakers have been searching and experimenting with new DIY and hybrid models of distribution and marketing. It has become apparent that no longer can filmmakers rely on a white knight to swoop down, pay them handsomely and guarantee them a release (if that ever really happened).
Filmmakers need to realize that getting your film in front of an audience is at least half of their job as filmmakers.
The filmmakers behind ‘The Age…
Kirk Cameron’s ‘Origin Of Species’ Plan: Ex-Actor To Distribute 50,000 Altered Darwin Books
HuffPo: In a video posted recently to YouTube, Kirk Cameron lays out a plan to subvert ‘Darwin Day’ on November 22, 2009 — a date marking the 150th anniversary of the publishing of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. Cameron says that he and like-minded activists plan to deliver 50,000 copies of an altered version of Darwin’s book to students at dozens of U.S. universities.
Cammy: A New Canadian Lake Monster?
Move over, Sasquatch: Some say there’s a new monster in Canada, living in a small lake on Vancouver Island.
John Kirk, co-founder of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, says his organization began cataloguing sighting reports of an odd creature in Cameron Lake about five years ago, when two people reported seeing a long black animal in the water.
“Witnesses have been describing what looks like a dark creature in the lake,” Kirk said, adding that British Columbia has more reputed lake monsters than anywhere else in the world.
Kirk, who researches mysterious and unknown creatures, believes that the creature may be found, and spent one day aboard a boat searching the lake, courtesy of the local tourism board. Using a fish finder, Kirk’s team found what he believes was a giant object amid a school of fish about 60 feet below the surface. Because the sonar picked up the object over the…
Fox News Producer Coaches 9-12 Protestors
We just received the following behind the scenes footage from an anonymous tipster showing what appears to be a Fox News producer encouraging a crowd to scream and holler during a “report” by Fox News’ Griff Jenkins at the 9/12 protest:
Here’s how it looked on Fox News…
We would expect that type of behavior from a producer of, say, a daytime talk show with a live studio audience like Oprah or Maury or Jerry, but from a cable news producer? Really?
I guess it wasn’t enough for Fox News to promote the hell out of Glenn Beck’s 9/12 death march – they also needed to incite the crowd – you know, get them nice and pumped up so they’d looked good for the cameras.
Fair & Balanced? More like Fake & Staged.
Sigh.
