Archive for September, 2009
Yes Men strike again!
With a giant headline proclaiming “We’re Screwed,” the fake tabloid was devoted entirely to environmental issues.
“Free New York Post! Special Edition!”
Amidst the usual daily bustle of hurried pedestrians and newspaper vendors at Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue subway station this morning, it was easy to spot the Yes Men’s latest prank.
At first blush, the newspaper, which was distributed by volunteers across NYC today, did look a lot like the New York Post. Yet any closer examination revealed that it was clearly not your run-of-the-mill Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid.
With a giant headline proclaiming “We’re Screwed” alongside an image of lighting striking Manhattan’s skyscrapers featured on the cover, the 32-page tabloid was devoted entirely to environmental issues. Check it out online here.
Even the sports section had an environmental bent, with an entire story devoted to enumerating carbon emission cutting opportunities in pro sports (such as NOGASCAR — a hybrid car version of NASCAR).
While a…
Howard Zinn:The Next Page
Most every protester at this week’s G-20 summit has a dog-eared copy of Howard Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of the United States’ in his or her library. Dmitri Ragano talks to the author — not so much about history, but about the future.
Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” has changed the way millions of Americans think about their country’s past and present. Zinn has been on the front lines of political protest for nearly a century. He is critical of many government and business policies that will dominate G-20 discussions this week.
Zinn is a central inspiration for “The People’s Summit” in Pittsburgh this weekend (Sept. 19, 21, 22). It will offer alternative views and discussions on topics including poverty, labor rights and environmentalism. (See www.peoplessummit.com)
This week Dmitri caught up with Zinn and Pittsburgh-born filmmaker Lisa Smith who are collaborating with a galaxy of Hollywood stars on a…
UK’s Prince Charles Wants People To Give Up Cars
The Prince of Wales is urging people to give up their cars in favour of walking and public transport to try to reduce carbon emissions.
The Prince, who has two Jaguars, two Audis, a Range Rover and still drives an Aston Martin given to him by the Queen on his 21st birthday, said developers had a duty to put public transport and the pedestrian at the heart of their housing schemes.
Speaking about the “domination of the car over the pedestrian”, the future King said: “We must surely be able to organise ourselves… in ways in which we are not dependent on it to such a great extent for our daily needs.”
CIA Torturers Running Scared
For the CIA supervisors and operatives who were responsible for torture, the chickens are coming home to roost. That is, if President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder mean it when they say no one is above the law – and if they have the courage to stand up to brazen intimidation.
Unable to prevent Attorney General Eric Holder from starting an investigation of torture and other war crimes that implicate CIA officials past and present, some of those same CIA officials, together with what in intelligence circles are called “agents of influence” in the media, are pulling out all the stops to quash the Department of Justice’s preliminary investigation.
In what should be seen as a bizarre twist, seven CIA directors – including three who are themselves implicated in planning and conducting torture and assassination – have asked the president to call off Holder.
Can someone please tell me how the…
Google Easter Eggs: 15 Best Hidden Jokes
Matthew Moore for The Telegraph: Google loves to slip in-jokes and hidden features known as “easter eggs” into its products. Here are 15 of our favourites.
1) Google Reader ninja
Probably the finest – and certainly the most childish – Google easter egg. Using the arrow keys, type “up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A” while using the firm’s RSS feed reader, and a little ninja appears on the left of the screen, which turns partially blue.
It’s a play on the cheat code that worked on early Nintendo video games produced by Konami, the Japanese entertainment company.
The Ancient Symbolism of the Dog
by Aaron Franz of Transalchemy.com Visual symbols represent a language of their own. The most powerful symbols are ironically the most common things in our daily lives, those things that we all too often take for granted. All of the basic things that we see on an everyday basis have the most influence over our lives, both physically and mentally. Images of the sun, moon, food, and water have always been potent symbols within the “ancient mysteries.” Anyone who is wise enough to understand the importance of the basic elements of life can use them as symbols to influence the minds of other people. Life can be interpreted in any number of ways, and the most popular interpretation on any given day has everything to do with the deliberate use of symbols by an “intellectual elite.” Throughout the ages this has been the case. Within “civilized” society there has always been…
Commercial space CEO defends “personal satellite” program
A “commercial space” company defends pre-booking $8,000 satellite launches on their first low-cost orbits in December of 2010. (And faces some hard questions, like “aren’t you offering to do something that you haven’t proved you can do yet?” and about the fact that their address is a P.O. box in the desert.)
“To send a rocket to the Moon is not as difficult as both the industry and the non-technical public would have you believe… once you’re in low-earth orbit, you really are halfway to anywhere in the Solar System.”
And he adds that “the orders are rolling in,” saying now they’re working on setting up a cheap lunar mining program as well.
US commander pushes for rapid escalation of Afghanistan war
With the release of a declassified version of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s recommendations for a change of course in Afghanistan, the Pentagon command is pushing President Barack Obama to quickly approve another major escalation of the US-led war.
The report was first made public Monday on the Web site of the Washington Post, which was leaked the document and then reached an agreement with the Pentagon to post a version from which key passages on US strategy were redacted.
F.D.I.C. May Borrow Funds From Bank
Tired of the government bailing out banks? Get ready for this: officials may soon ask banks to bail out the government.
We’re one-tenth human
Robert S. Boyd
WASHINGTON — Scientists are beginning a large-scale effort to identify and analyze the vast majority of cells in or on your body that aren’t of human origin.
Only about 10 per cent of the trillions of cells that make up a person are truly human, researchers say. The other 90 per cent are bacteria, viruses and other microbes swarming in your gut and on your skin.
“We really are a superorganism,” Brett Finlay, a microbiologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, said in an email. “From the moment we are born until we die, we live in a symbiotic relationship with our microbes.”
“At birth, babies emerge from a sterile environment into one that is laden with microbes,” said Laurie Comstock, a microbiologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston. “The infant’s intestines then rapidly become home to one of the densest populations of bacteria on Earth.”
Most of these microbes…
President Zelaya Has Returned to Honduras
“I am here in Tegucigalpa. I am here for the restoration of democracy, to call for dialogue,” Mr Zelaya told Honduran television. His return raises the stakes for the conservative de facto government, which was installed after the coup and which has defied international pressure to let Mr Zelaya return.
Free Speech? In MY America? It’s Less Likely Than You Think…
The First Amendment is one of America’s favorite Constitutional Amendments. Largely misunderstood, the Amendment is actually far more limited in scope than most think. Far from providing for the right of the individual to say anything, the text (if you’ve never actually read it) can be broken down thusly:
Congress cannot create a state religion
Congress cannot prevent anyone from freely exercising their religion
Congress cannot make laws restricting speech, the press, peaceful protest, or petitions
The first two provisions of the Amendment, involving the free exercise of religion are highly insidious and destructive. All manner of child abuse and social backwardness enjoys broad legal protection because of the establishment clause. But that’s not the issue here today. The First Amendment and the entire concept of “freedom of speech and press” in America is, simply put, a farce. Any serious examination of democratic rights in America will quickly show that free speech, when invoked at all,…
Neo-Conservative Icon Irving Kristol Dies
MSNBC reports:
Irving Kristol, the political writer and publisher known as the godfather of neo-conservatism whose youthful radicalism evolved into an emphatic rejection of communism and the counterculture, died Friday. He was 89.
A Trotskyist in the 1930s, Kristol would soon sour on socialism [and] break from liberalism…appalled by the long-haired youths of the late ’60s.
He was a flagship in the network of think tanks, media outlets and corporations that helped make conservatism a reigning ideology for at least two decades, the “vast right-wing conspiracy” that Hillary Rodham Clinton would claim was out to get her husband. “More than anyone alive, perhaps, Irving Kristol can take the credit for reversing the direction of American political culture,” liberal commentator Eric Alterman wrote in 1999.
The Key to the Lost Symbol: the Power of Intention
by Lynne McTaggart Every so often my life takes such a fantastical turn that I am overwhelmed by the feeling that I am actually in the midst of a lucid dream, and that any moment awakening will hand me back my ordinary world.
I had that feeling yesterday when I got an email from my editor informing me that me, my book The Intention Experiment, my website and a good deal of my research were named, explained and used as the background source of a major plotline in Dan Brown’s new book.
I spent last night skimming the entire text of The Lost Symbol. For those of you who haven’t read it yet, the book centers around the recovery of kidnapped head of the Smithsonian Peter Solomon by Brown’s long-standing protagonist, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, and Solomon’s sister, Katherine.
Solomon is a ‘noetic scientist’, a 50-year-old black-haired woman who has written two popular books about…
Polygamist Tours In Colorado City
Experience a day in the FLDS life with former FLDS members who were born and raised in the Creek. Stories of growing up in this unique religion, a picnic set in the beautiful Vermillion Cliffs of southern Utah and northern Arizona, and intimate views of markets, parks and cemeteries, frame the previously closed community with detail and respect.
Wondering what it would be like to live on a Mormon compound in notorious Colorado City, our nation’s hotbed of polygamist religious extremism? Well now there’s a fun way to find out! Identity Tours is offering day-long “polygamy tours” to show what life in their community is really like. You can go for $69.95, or get a discounted rate by booking for a group of 20 or more.
Coffins From Ghana
For the Ga tribe in coastal Ghana, funerals are a time of mourning, but also of celebration. The Ga people believe that when their loved ones die, they move on into another life — and the Ga make sure they do so in style.
They honor their dead with brightly colored coffins that celebrate the way they lived.
The coffins are designed to represent an aspect of the dead person’s life — such as a car if they were a driver, a fish if their livelihood was the sea — or a sewing machine for a seamstress. They might also symbolize a vice — such as a bottle of beer or a cigarette.
Ablade Glover, an artist who works with the carpenters, says the coffin acts as a home in the afterlife, so it must be beautiful.
But he laments that after putting so much time into creating the coffin, it gets hidden underground.
“By…
“The lie of the powerful”: The Battle of Algiers
Considering our most recent topics of discussion and our current geopolitical situation, I thought the following 7-pages from “Ordinary Victories” by Manu Larcenet would be appropriate to share, not to mention extremely relevant considering the number of countries that are presently occupied by foreign powers.
The pages deal with the consequences of atrocities committed for lies. Ignore the period referenced if you wish, project to the date of your choice, and adjust the scale of the atrocities accordingly.
To help put the pages into context, you may wish to watch the following movie first, The Battle of Algiers, embedded below. It is a cinematic masterpiece and “the only film in Oscar history to be a nominee in two separate non-consecutive years”.
Ron Paul Q&A: Audit the Fed, Then End It
For three decades, Rep. Ron Paul has waged a lonely battle in Congress to abolish the Federal Reserve. But he has more foot soldiers across the nation today, particularly after the financial crisis, who are leading the drive for wider congressional audits of the central bank.
In his new book — End the Fed — released today, Rep. Paul walks through his critique of the central bank and lays out a strategy (briefly) for eliminating it. We sat down with the congressman to hear his views on a money system backed by gold, the Fed’s challenge of withdrawing its stimulus and his legislation to audit the central bank. Excerpts of the interview:
What would a world without the Fed look like?
You’d go back to the day that if you wanted to borrow money to build a house, somebody would’ve had to save some money. You wouldn’t have zero savings and all the credit…
Russian Billionaire Installs Anti-Photo Shield on Giant Yacht
Wired Gadget Lab reports: Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich has a rather curious new addition built in to his latest oversized yacht. The 557-foot boat Eclipse, the price tag of which has almost doubled since original plans were drawn to almost $1.2 billion, set sail this week with a slew of show-off features, from two helipads, two swimming pools and six-foot movie screens in all guest cabins, to a mini-submarine and missile-proof windows to combat piracy.
It might not seem like somebody with such ostentatious tastes would crave privacy, but along with these expensive toys, Ambramovich has installed an anti-paparazzi “shield”. Lasers sweep the surroundings and when they detect a CCD, they fire a bolt of light right at the camera to obliterate any photograph. According to the Times, these don’t run all the time, so friends and guests should still be able to grab snaps. Instead, they will be activated when…
