Archive for December, 2009
The Right Finds A New Champion In Lt Col Allen West
Is he the Right-Wing’s answer to Obama? Yes, according to The Inquisitr:
Change we can believe in? The American right has found a new champion in the form of retired Lieutenant Colonel Allen West.
Appearing in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Lt. Col. Allen West argues the case against Obama like few have done before him: he is articulate, well spoken, oh, and for good measure he’s African American as well.
West ran for Congress in Florida in 2008 and failed, but he’s going for another shot in 2010. Some parts of the US right are also suggesting he could be Presidential material as well.
Whether you agree with his views or not, there’s very little argument on the fact that he is a highly articulate, and able spokesman for the GOP. The Hannity interview as follows:
Jerusalem Tomb Discovery Casts Further Doubt On Turin Shroud
From the Telegraph:
Archaeologists say they have discovered the first known pieces of a burial shroud from the time of Jesus in Jerusalem, casting doubt on the authenticity of the Turin Shroud.
Researchers believe the fabric of the fragments, the first of their kind to be discovered in Jerusalem, are of a different weave to those of the Turin Shroud, hailed by many as Christ’s burial cloth but dismissed by others as a fake.
Radiocarbon tests on artefacts found in the cave, in Jerusalem’s Old City, prove almost beyond doubt that it was from the same time of Christ’s death. It was made with a two-way weave – not the twill weave used on the Turin Shroud, which textile experts say was introduced more than 1,000 years after Christ lived.
Professor Shimon Gibson, the archaeologist who discovered the tomb, said ancient writings and contemporary shrouds from other areas had suggested this design, and…
White House to Restore Emails from Plame Cover-Up Period
[Note: You can hardly swing a cat without hitting a headline related, according to me, to me The Most Important Issue in the History of the Universe.]
The agreement—first reported by Mother Jones on Friday—is a major victory for the plaintiffs, some of the recovered messages could potentially shed light on controversies such as the lead-up to the Iraq war and the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert CIA identity.
A Major Victory?
I can hardly stop laughing!
Valerie Plame first became a household name when her identity was disclosed by conservative columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. The column came only a week after her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, had written an op-ed for the New York Times asserting that White House officials twisted pre-war intelligence on Iraq.
Her outing was seen as political retaliation for Wilson’s criticism of the Administration’s claim that Iraq sought uranium from Niger for a nuclear weapons program.
According to…
How Facebook Is Making Friending Obsolete
Julia Angwin explains why you should pay attention to those new Facebook privacy settings before your status updates show up in Google search results, for the Wall Street Journal:
Friending wasn’t used as a verb until about five years ago, when social networks such as Friendster, MySpace and Facebook burst onto the scene.
Suddenly, our friends were something even better – an audience. If blogging felt like shouting into the void, posting updates on a social network felt more like an intimate conversation among friends at a pub.
Inevitably, as our list of friends grew to encompass acquaintances, friends of friends and the girl who sat behind us in seventh-grade homeroom, online friendships became devalued.
Suddenly, we knew as much about the lives of our distant acquaintances as we did about the lives of our intimates – what they’d had for dinner, how they felt about Tiger Woods and so on.
Enter Twitter with a…
Notes From The Drug Wars: UK
Mark Pothier for the Boston Globe:
In the long and tortured debate over drug policy, one of the strangest episodes has been playing out this fall in the United Kingdom, where the country’s top drug adviser was recently fired for publicly criticizing his own government’s drug laws.
The adviser, Dr. David Nutt, said in a lecture that alcohol is more hazardous than many outlawed substances, and that the United Kingdom might be making a mistake in throwing marijuana smokers in jail. His comments were published in a press release in October, and the next day he was dismissed. The buzz over his sacking has yet to subside: Nutt has become the talk of pubs and Parliament, as well as the subject of tabloid headlines like: “Drug advisor on wacky baccy?”
But behind Nutt’s words lay something perhaps more surprising, and harder to grapple with. His comments weren’t the idle musings of a reality-insulated…
Will Sex Robots Provide “Longevity Orgasms”?
Science author Hank Hyena predicts sex robots in the future will provide orgasms “Three times a week or whatever our physician/longevity coach recommends. Because orgasms — particularly the hormone-exploding O’s we’ll enjoy with carnal cyborgs — are excellent for our mental and physical health.” (One researcher reports we can live 4-8 years longer if we have at least 350 orgasms per year.)
But there’s other benefits besides health benefits… “Remember the most convulsive, brain-ripping climax you ever had…? Sexbots will electrocute our flesh with climaxes twice as gigantic because they’ll be more desirable, patient, eager, and altruistic than their meat-bag competition, plus they’ll be uploaded with supreme sex-skills from millennia of erotic manuals, archives and academic experiments, and their anatomy will feature sexplosive devices…”
So when will they finally get here? Henrik Christensen, founder of the European Robotics Research Network, predicts fully-functioning sex robots by 2011 (and this article suggests features that…
Do Conservatives Hate ‘Avatar’ for Being Science Fiction With a Brain?
I’m posting part of this idiotic review from Big Hollywood here because no matter how badly the Democrats screw up, Republicans have to deal with voices like this in their Party:
Set in 2154, Avatar is a thinly disguised, heavy-handed and simplistic sci-fi fantasy/allegory critical of America from our founding straight through to the Iraq War…
…Visually Avatar doesn’t break any new ground. It looks like a big-budget animated film with a garish color palette right off a hippie’s tie dye shirt. Never for a moment did I believe the Na’vi or the world of Pandora was something organic or real…
So Big Hollywood prefers entertainment that doesn’t question any societal norms or human history … no matter where you go, there you are. What a terrible turn for society for Cameron to have this in mind … let’s listen to the big “liberal” himself talk about his new film on the Today Show:
Science fiction with “thinking” — how strange — that’s what I have always enjoyed about it…
Polanski and Kubrick: Two Occult Tales
Jacques Vallee writes on BoingBoing:
In our age of rational science the occult has never been more in demand: Angels and demons are popular, the Da Vinci code and lost symbols fascinate audiences worldwide and Hollywood is eager to turn out more movies with a paranormal theme.
So why is it that so many of these stories seem flat, and fail to reach the level of insight into hidden structures of the world true esoteric adventures are supposed to promise?
Perhaps the answer has to do with the failure of gifted directors to come to grips with the enormity of the unknown issues of human destiny, or to pose the fundamental questions their esoteric subject would demand.
We go away charmed by artistic visions, dazzled by the pageantry of cardinals in red capes and titillated by women in black garters but the Illuminati only scare us because of the blood they spill, not the…
First Gourmet Marijuana Restaurant Opens In Denver
DENVER (CBS4) reports:
A medical marijuana dispensary in Denver has decided to get creative and make the business into a full-service restaurant that caters to those who need to use medicinal marijuana to ease physical ailments.
The owner of Ganja Gourmet located at 1810 South Broadway Avenue said the restaurant will “aim to help distribute medicinal marijuana to those licensed to have it and provide an atmosphere where patients can visit with one another in a safe environment.”
Ganja Gourmet plans to offer lasagna, gourmet pizza, jambalaya, paella, chocolate mousse and flavored cheesecakes, among other gourmet dishes.
“It’s a different buzz too. It’s a more alert, more awake buzz,” Medical Marijuana Chef Evan “Budman” said.
U.S. Firms Lose Out in Bidding for Iraq Oil Fields
Patrick Martin writes on World Socialist Web Site:
In a clear signal of the declining influence of American capitalism, even in a country conquered and occupied by the US military, companies from China, Russia, Malaysia and Angola, along with several European oil giants, won most of the rights for exploration and development of Iraq’s oil fields.
The concessions were awarded Friday and Saturday by the Iraqi oil ministry, after a competitive auction in which joint ventures of European and Asian companies won the lion’s share. Of the ten concessions awarded so far, including in an earlier auction, US-based companies will play the lead role in only one, while getting a lesser share in a second.
The most aggressive bidder was the China National Petroleum Company (CNPC), while Lukoil and Gazprom of Russia, and European firms like Royal Dutch Shell, ENI (Italy), British Petroleum, Statoil (Norway) and Total (France) all won bids. Petronas, the…
Your Corporate Masters Are In Control
Nick P. at Black Sun Gazette writes:
A new poll reveals what you already knew: the economy is fucking depressing. You can’t help but wonder how many people have committed suicide over losing a job or a house, or how many relationships have been strained to the breaking point by a lack of money.
It’s proof that we live in Bizarro world that we even take such things for granted. Much like the tenets of organized religion, if you simply lay out the reality in simple terms — you and I are subject to the whims and vagaries of a tiny group of social parasites who produce nothing while taking everything, and when their investments tank our lives go in the shitter — it’s patently ludicrous.
To those suckling at the teat of corporate control, however, it seems as natural as sunshine.
A Real Life Lex Luthor? Switzerland Geologist on Trial for ‘Causing Quakes’
A real life Lex Luthor… Was it all a real estate scam to create “beachfront” property in this land-locked country? Let’s find out. BBC News reports:
The head of a geothermal energy company has gone on trial in Switzerland accused of damaging property by triggering earthquakes. Markus Haering’s company had been working with the authorities in Basel to try to convert the heat in deep-seated rocks into electricity.
But the project was suspended in 2006 when drilling triggered the quakes.
They caused no injuries but led to $9m (£5.54m) of damage. Mr Haering denies deliberately damaging property.
The project was shut down permanently last week after a government study found that similar quakes caused by the project would lead to millions of dollars worth of damage each year.
Televangelist Oral Roberts, Dead
Or floating forever on a giant pile of money in the Kingdom of Heaven. You decide.
from the NY Times:
Oral Roberts, the charismatic Pentecostal evangelist whose televised ministry attracted millions of followers worldwide and made him one of the most recognizable and controversial religious leaders of the 20th century, died Tuesday in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 91.
The cause was complications of pneumonia, said Melany Ethridge, a spokeswoman for Mr. Roberts.
At the height of his influence, Mr. Roberts sat at the head of a religious, educational and communications enterprise based in Tulsa, Okla., that managed a university, conducted healing “crusades” on five continents, preached the gospel on prime-time national television and published dozens of books and magazines.
By 1985, the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association and the university that bore his name employed more than 2,300 people and earned $110 million in revenue. The expanse of Mr. Roberts’s ministry, coupled with his fiery preaching, tycoonlike vision and jet-set lifestyle, also attracted persistent questions throughout his career about his theology and his unorthodox fund-raising techniques, although no credible evidence of malfeasance was ever produced. Some of the harshest criticism was generated by former members of his staff.
Mysterious, Maybe Murderous Yale ‘Dauphin’ Releases Video of Skull & Bones’ Secret Lair
From Gawker:
A Yale freshman who called himself the Dauphin is believed to have terrorized his peers with death threats, ritualistic vandalism, and a hit and run accident. Among his rumored loot: Secret society video footage, which has since surfaced on YouTube.
The video, uploaded by new YouTube user Dauphinish and caught first by IvyGate, looks like it could belong the vaunted secret society that counts three generations of Bushes as its members. Unfortunately, vaunted secret societies don’t really have publicists, so it’s hard to confirm. (Yalies, take a stab in comments?) There are gothic arches, dust, skull imagery, and a stray coffin lying around. Dauphinish has tracked his video with what can only be described as conspiracy theory electronica:
But here’s the rub: Though Dauphinish claims he is a 58-year-old Syrian, he sounds an awful lot like a certain Yale frosh who used to call himself the Dauphin…
Howard Bloom: Buckle Up for Catastrophe
Howard Bloom writes on Scientific Blogging:
Climate change will happen with or without carbon sequestration and green technology — much as green technology and green energy are necessities. How do we know? There have been 60 ice ages in the two million years during which we’ve climbed from Homo erectus to our current peak as Homo industrialus. And there have been 20 sudden global warmings in the 120,000 years since we emerged from our pre-human state to our current physical form as fully modern humans, Homo sapiens.
The 12,000 year stretch from the end of the Ice Age to today has been an abnormally long period of climate stability. We are long overdue for a major climate flip. And frankly, we do not know whether that flip will be a rapid warming or a dip into an icy deep freeze like the ones that plagued us during the Pleistocene era. There’s only one…
Mystery Volcano May Have Triggered Mini Ice Age
From NPR:
Global warming may be making some people nervous now, but from 1810 to 1819, people worried because the Earth was colder than usual.
For an entire decade, the Earth cooled almost a full degree Fahrenheit. In fact, 1816 was known as the year without a summer. And until recently, scientists weren’t quite sure why everyone was shivering.
The chill of 1816 has long been blamed on an Indonesian volcano called Tambora, which erupted the year before. But no one could figure out why the years before Tambora’s eruption were also colder than usual.
Now, newly uncovered evidence in the ice of Antarctica and Greenland suggests that yet another volcanic eruption may have contributed to the worldwide dip in temperatures.
Jihong Cole-Dai, a chemistry professor at South Dakota State University, led the expeditions to Antarctica and Greenland. He tells NPR’s Guy Raz that volcanoes dump large quantities of ash and sulfur dioxide into the…
Protesters in Seattle Warned Us What was Coming, but We Didn’t Listen
From The Guardian:
Copenhagen must face up to the decade lost in curbing volatile finances, corporate power and the pillage of resources.
Ten years ago, protesters gathered in a port city; politicians arrived for intense backroom negotiations; the city’s hotels were booked out by representatives of thousands of NGOs from all over the world. In 1999 Seattle, like Copenhagen this week, was a big international meeting attempting to exert some governance over globalisation. There’s a fitting symmetry that these two meetings bookend this decade. For while the Seattle protests were deliberately misrepresented and widely misunderstood at the time, their agenda has proved unanswerable. Copenhagen is belatedly grappling with just one aspect of Seattle’s unfinished business.
For those for whom Seattle is a hazy memory, let’s recap. The World Trade Organisation had become the bete noire of a heterogeneous global coalition bizarrely labelled as the anti-globalisation movement. The WTO meeting to hammer out an international…
Black Hole Only Half as Far Away from Earth as Once Thought … but Don’t Dive for Cover Just Yet
From The Daily Mail:
A black hole is far closer to Earth than first thought, astronomers have discovered.
The scientists discovered the hole was in fact about half as distant as previously thought. It is the first time the distance between our planet and the void has been measured accurately.
But before you go running for cover you will be relieved to hear it is still 7,800 light years away – with one light year equivalent to 5.8trillion miles.
Black holes are a region of space from which nothing, not even light, can escape. The point of no return is called the ‘event horizon’.
The researchers said their analysis suggested the black hole had developed from a supernova – a stellar explosion from a dying star, and that it received a ‘kick’ from this propelling it through space at a rate of about 25 miles per second.
The dying star eventually collapsed to the point of zero…
Report: UN-Backed Congo Troops Killing Civilians
From Yahoo News:
JOHANNESBURG – A U.N.-backed Congolese military operation to oust rebels from eastern Congo has caused more civilian casualties than damage to rebels, with more than 1,400 people deliberately killed over a nine-month period, human rights groups said Monday.
Human Rights Watch said it had documented “vicious and widespread” attacks against civilians by soldiers and rebels between January and September. Soldiers being fed and supplied with ammunition by the United Nations have killed civilians, gang-raped girls and cut the heads off some young men they accuse of being rebels or supporting the enemy, groups said.
“For every rebel combatant disarmed, one civilian has been killed, seven women and girls have been raped, six houses have been burned and destroyed and 900 people have been forced to flee their homes,” British-based organization Oxfam said.
Human Rights Watch said it documented the killings of 732 civilians between January and September by the Congolese army and troops from neighboring Rwanda fighting…
