Archive for December, 2009
Student Killed by Exploding Chewing Gum
Insane story. Doug Stanglin writes in USA Today:
RIA Novosoti, the Russian news agency, says the incident occurred while the unidentified 25-year-old student at Ukraine’s Kiev Polytechnic Institute was working at a computer at his parents’ house in the city of Konotop.
“A loud pop was heard from the student’s room,” ukranews.com reports, quoting an aide to the police chief . “When his relatives entered the room they saw that the lower part of the young man’s face had been blown off.”
The report says a forensic examination found that the gum was covered with an unidentified chemical substance, thought to be some type of explosive material.
Investigators found that the student often dipped his chewing gum into a packet of citric acid and had inadvertently dipped it instead into a similar-looking packet holding explosive material that was also on his desk.
Local police feared the substance might explode if they sent it to Kiev for…
The Day Earth Survived the Greatest Stellar Attack, Ever
Casey Kazan writes on the Daily Galaxy:
It came suddenly from the distant reaches of the Constellation Sagittarius, some 50,000 light years away. For a brief instant, a couple of tenths of a second, on December 27, 2004 an invisible burst of energy the equivalent of half a million years of sunlight shone on Earth. Many orbiting satellites electronics were zapped and the Earth’s upper atmosphere was amazingly ionized from a massive hit of gamma ray energy.
The source of the invisible attack was a rare magnetar SGR 1806-20 on the other side of the Milky Way. These soft gamma ray repeaters, SGRs, occur when twisted magnetic fields attempt to realign themselves and crack the magetar’s crust releasing the awesome burst or pulse of energy with a death zone of a few light years. Magnetars have magnetic fields 1000 times those of ordinary pulsars — so powerful as to be lethal at…
The Real Jesus Of The Bible: ‘Everything You Know About God Is Wrong’
The following is a small portion of the late Ruth Hurmence Green’s “The God From Galilee,” one of 41 articles in the Disinformation anthology, Everything You Know About God Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Religion, edited by Russ Kick. Other contributors include Richard Dawkins, Neil Gaiman, Douglas Rushkoff, and H.G. Wells.
In this 25-page article, this archetypal gray-haired granny simply reads the New Testament — particularly the Gospels — and reports what she finds about Jesus: his insults and angry words, his deceptions, his impatience, his contradictions, his hellfire and damnation preaching, his braggadocio, his purposely confusing parables, his refusal to heal a little Gentile girl, his failure to condemn slavery, his horrible treatment of his own family, etc., etc. The results will be shocking to most Christians, and even non-Christians will be stunned to learn that everything they knew about Jesus is wrong. Here are some tasty bits from…
Facebook: Where Souls Go To Die
On 
The First Church of Mutterhals:
I recently saw graffiti written on a train that said “80% of the internet is pornography.” While I don’t normally give much credence to random statistics scrawled on the sides of fast moving freight trains, I have to say this one struck me as fairly accurate. I would even go as far as characterizing the remaining 20% as being comprised of cat pictures, celebrity gossip and social networking sites appealing to the emotional retard in all of us.
Yeah, I said it. Retard.
Facebook is a place for puerile rumor mongering and passive-aggressive pronouncements made from the safety of your profile page. For all the talk about connecting to people around the world, social utilities really only serve to foster the increasing sense of isolation and narcissism already rampant among humanity.
Am I the only person who thinks every update is a provocation aimed directly at me? And…
Let’s Kick Some Pricks
From Buelahman at Black Sun Gazette
I love to watch the lunatic fringe squirm as they realize that their little kingdom is falling apart. Its not that I get jollies knowing the demoRAT party will probably increase the next election round overall, even if the ObamaMeister will force the reTHUGlicans back into the Whitehouse. It is all crazy shit and I blame Americans for being too partisan, stupid, scared or gullible to clearly back away from those “parties” and the devastation the participation brings to our way of life.
Why Journalist Gary Webb Died
From Consortium News:
Five years ago, a tragedy occurred in American journalism: Investigative reporter Gary Webb – who had been ostracized by his own colleagues for forcing a spotlight back onto an ugly government scandal they wanted to ignore – was driven to commit suicide. But the tragedy had a deeper meaning.
Webb’s death on the night of Dec. 9, 2004, came as the U.S. press corps was at a nadir, having recently aided and abetted President George W. Bush in taking the country to war in Iraq under false pretenses. The press corps also had performed abysmally in Bush’s two presidential campaigns in 2000 and 2004, hesitant to take on the powerful Bush Family.
In retrospect, Webb’s suicide could be viewed as an exclamation point on that sorry era, which had begun a quarter century earlier with the rise of Ronald Reagan and the gradual retreat – under right-wing fire – of…
Saturn’s Mysterious Hexagon Emerges from Winter Darkness
From Physorg.com:
After waiting years for the sun to illuminate Saturn’s north pole again, cameras aboard NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have captured the most detailed images yet of the intriguing hexagon shape crowning the planet.
The new images of the hexagon, whose shape is the path of a jet stream flowing around the north pole, reveal concentric circles, curlicues, walls and streamers not seen in previous images.
The last visible-light images of the entire hexagon were captured by NASA’s Voyager spacecraft nearly 30 years ago, the last time spring began on Saturn. After the sunlight faded, darkness shrouded the north pole for 15 years. Much to the delight and bafflement of Cassini scientists, the location and shape of the hexagon in the latest images match up with what they saw in the Voyager pictures.
“The longevity of the hexagon makes this something special, given that weather on Earth lasts on the order of weeks,” said…
Homeland Security Embarks on Big Brother Programs to Read Our Minds and Emotions
From Alternet:
Half-baked Homeland Security is spending millions to develop sensors capable of detecting a person’s level of ‘malintent’ as a counterterrorism tool.
In the sci-fi thriller Minority Report, Tom Cruise plays a D.C. police detective, circa 2054, in the department of “pre-crime,” an experimental law enforcement unit whose mission — to hunt down criminals before they strike — relies on the psychic visions of mutant “pre-cogs” (short for precognition) who can see the future. It may be futuristic Hollywood fantasy, but the underlying premise — that we can predict (if not see) a person’s sinister plans before they follow through — is already here.
This past February, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) awarded a one-year, $2.6 million grant to the Cambridge, MA.-based Charles Stark Draper Laboratory to develop computerized sensors capable of detecting a person’s level of “malintent” — or intention to do harm. It’s only the most recent of numerous contracts…
Blackwater Tied to Secret CIA Raids
This goes well beyond the “auxiliary service” function documented in Robert Greenwald’s Iraq For Sale. JAMES RISEN and MARK MAZZETTI report in the New York Times:
WASHINGTON — Private security guards from Blackwater Worldwide participated in some of the C.I.A.’s most sensitive activities — clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees, according to former company employees and intelligence officials.
The raids against suspects occurred on an almost nightly basis during the height of the Iraqi insurgency from 2004 to 2006, with Blackwater personnel playing central roles in what company insiders called “snatch and grab” operations, the former employees and current and former intelligence officers said.
Several former Blackwater guards said that their involvement in the operations became so routine that the lines supposedly dividing the Central Intelligence Agency, the military and Blackwater became blurred. Instead of simply providing security for C.I.A.…
Population Control Called Key to Climate Change Deal
Li Xing writes in China Daily:
COPENHAGEN — Population and climate change are intertwined but the population issue has remained a blind spot when countries discuss ways to mitigate climate change and slow down global warming, according to Zhao Baige, vice-minister of National Population and Family Planning Commission of China (NPFPC) .
“Dealing with climate change is not simply an issue of CO2 emission reduction but a comprehensive challenge involving political, economic, social, cultural and ecological issues, and the population concern fits right into the picture,” said Zhao, who is a member of the Chinese government delegation.
Many studies link population growth with emissions and the effect of climate change.
“Calculations of the contribution of population growth to emissions growth globally produce a consistent finding that most of past population growth has been responsible for between 40 per cent and 60 percent of emissions growth,” so stated by the 2009 State of World Population, released…
Nikola Tesla: ‘We Have a Message from Another World’
On the fascinating site Letters of Note:
In the summer of 1899, whilst alone in his Colorado Springs laboratory working with his magnifying transmitter, the inimitable Nikola Tesla observed a series of unusual rhythmic signals which he described as ‘counting codes’. Having just detected cosmic radio signals for the first time, Tesla immediately believed them to be attempted communications from an intelligent life-form on either Venus or Mars, and later said of the experience, ‘The feeling is constantly growing on me that I had been the first to hear the greeting of one planet to another’.
The next year, Tesla was asked by the Red Cross to predict man’s greatest possible achievement over the next century. The letter below was his reply.
A much-needed transcript follows.
Read Nikola Tesla on Letters of Note
And The Winner Is… Iraq Oil Development Contracts Awarded to Shell and Petronas
Iraq has the world’s third largest oil reserves. BBC News reports:
A joint venture between the UK’s Shell and Malaysia’s Petronas oil companies has won the right to develop Iraq’s giant Majnoon oil field.
A total of 44 companies took part in a bid for 10 fields in the second such auction since the invasion in 2003. Shell and Petronas beat a rival bid from France’s Total and China’s CNPC.
Although Majnoon is a huge oil field, with reserves of 13 billion barrels of oil, it currently produces just 46,000 barrels per day.
Iraq is an attractive, but difficult prospect for the international oil industry. The reserves are vast, much of it is relatively cheap to extract and foreign contractors are welcomed by the Iraqi government.
Jon Stewart: Glenn Beck is a Gold Digger
Dan Abramson writes on Huffington Post:
With the value of gold on the rise, Jon Stewart was determined to get to the bottom of what may have caused the increase. The likely fanner of these flames: yep, Glenn Beck.
After noting that gold goes up when people are panicked or concerned, Stewart sat back and enjoyed the greatest hits from “Beck’s hour-long nightly fear-cast.” That alone wouldn’t be enough to credit Beck for initiating this gold rush, but his role as spokesman for Goldline, an internet site where you buy gold, surely sealed the deal. Stewart recapped:
“Glenn Beck is paid by Goldline to drum up interest in gold, which increases value during times of fear; an emotion reinforced nightly on Fox by Glenn Beck.”
Calling Beck’s ethics into question, Stewart finished by stating, “You can’t spell ‘gold’ without G-O-D.”
America’s Stonehenge: A Classic Whodunit and Whydunit
Jay Atkinson visits America’s Stonehenge for the New York Times:
Salem, N.H. — At this leafless and gloomy time of year I traveled, in the spirit of the symbologist Robert Langdon of “The Da Vinci Code,” to America’s Stonehenge, in this town five miles from the Massachusetts border. Scholars have debated whether the stone cairns and chambers here were built by early American Indians, enterprising colonial settlers or, more controversially, a migrant European culture that visited these woods nearly 4,000 years ago.
Determined to plumb these mysteries, I arrived at a rustic information center and gift shop on a cold and gray Sunday morning. Inside I was greeted by the aptly named Dennis Stone, 55, a commercial airline pilot who along with his wife, Pat, 59, owns this unusual roadside attraction. (Dennis’s father, Robert E. Stone, 80, began leasing the site in 1958 and bought all 105 acres in 1965, saving it…
Brain Scan Used In Murder Sentencing For First Time
Welcome to the future, from Wired Science:
A defendant’s fMRI brain scan has been used in court for what is believed to be the first time.
Brain scan evidence that the defense claimed shows the defendant’s brain was psychopathic was allowed into the sentencing portion of a murder trial in Chicago, Science reported Monday. Brian Dugan, who had been convicted of the rape and murder of a 10-year-old, was sentenced to death, despite the fMRI scans.
While the possibility of using fMRI data in a variety of contexts, particularly lie detection, has bounced around the margins of the legal system for years, there are almost no documented cases of its actual use.
How In Vitro Meat Will Change Everything
From H+, a number of ways in which the arrival of animal-free, laboratory-created meat will be a revolution:
Red meat & poultry will vanish from the marketplace, similar to whale oil’s flame out when kerosene outshone it in the 1870’s. Predictors believe that IVM will sell for half the cost of its murdered rivals. This will grind the $2 trillion global live-meat industry to a halt.
IVM sales will be aided by continued outbreaks of filthy over-crowded farm animal diseases like swine flu, Mad Cow, avian flu, tuberculosis, brucellosis, and other animal-to-human plagues.
Today’s gentle drift into urbanization will suddenly accelerate as unemployed livestock workers relocate and retrain for city occupations. Rural real estate values will plummet as vast tracts of ranch land are abandoned and sold for a pittance.
Edwardo Robot Hands
SittingNow.co.uk continue their rebooted ‘CounterTech’ series, with another great article from DisInfo’s Joe McFall:
Almost 'throwing some horns', which would be handy at metal shows
This week, Italian scientists announced that in a month-long experiment conducted last year, an amputee’s nervous system was attached to a mechanical hand disconnected from his body. The man, Pierpaolo Petruzziello, was not only able to move the robotic appendage, but was apparently able to receive feedback and feel sensations from the hand. From the Baltimore Sun:
- The Italy-based team said at a news conference in Rome on Wednesday that in 2008 it implanted electrodes into the nerves located in what remained of Petruzziello’s left arm, which was cut off in a crash some three years ago.
- The prosthetic was not implanted on the patient, only connected through the electrodes. During the news conference, video was shown of Petruzziello as he concentrated to give orders to the hand placed next…
Green (Gross?) Cremation Method Produces Liquid Fertilizer
From Mother Nature Network:
There are an awful lot of people on the planet, and modern methods for disposing of human remains aren’t exactly earth-friendly. A new alternative to cremation and burial could change that — and even increase food production for those still living — if we can get past the ‘ick factor’ of liquefying our dead relatives.
“Resomation” is the process of disposing of human corpses through alkaline hydrolysis, which occurs when the body is sealed inside a vault-like tube filled with water and lye and steam-heated to 300 degrees. Three hours later, some powdery bone fragments and 200 gallons of fluid are all that remains.
Essentially, Resomation — which was developed by Scottish company Resomation Ltd. — is just like the natural process of decomposition, but on fast-forward. The fluid can be safely dumped into sewer systems or even used as fertilizer on farms and gardens — a proposal that…
Who Killed Kenny? Ambulance Crew Drop Obese Man Who Then Dies
Here’s one more reason why obesity is extremely hazardous to your health, albeit one that hopefully won’t be repeated, as reported in the Telegraph:
A 30-stone [420 lb] man has died after the stretcher being used to load him into an ambulance tipped over, spilling him into the street.
Kenny Williams, from Newmarket, Suffolk, was being taken to hospital when the accident occurred outside his home. The East of England Ambulance Service has launched a review into its procedures for transporting obese patients following the accident.
But ambulance chiefs have warned that the movement of overweight patients is becoming increasingly problematic for paramedics who can sometimes risk their own safety.
Earlier this year it was revealed that medics were considering using a Chinook helicopter to take Britain’s heaviest man to hospital after ruling out conventional methods of transport. Paul Mason, who weighed in at 70 stone [980 lb], had to travel more than…
