Archive for January, 2010
Ron Paul: The Economy Is Floundering Despite The Stimulus
By Ron Paul, Special to CNN:
A year after a nearly $800 billion stimulus package was passed, the U.S. economy still finds itself mired in mediocrity.
Economic growth is stagnant, unemployment remains higher than almost any time since the Great Depression and millions of Americans are upset that trillions of taxpayer dollars have been committed to numerous government bailout programs with no improvement of the economy within sight.
They question, rightfully, is where this money is going and why it hasn’t been as helpful as the government has claimed.
The problems with stimulus packages are manifold. The primary reason they fail is because they do not address the roots of the problem. If you are unable to identify the cause of your problem, then your solution is doomed to fail.
In the case of the current economic crisis, it had its root in loose monetary policy and easy credit that skewed the allocation of resources…
Thinking Of The Past Or Future Causes Us To Sway Backward Or Forward
From Medical News Today:
Although we can’t technically travel through time (yet), when we think of the past or the future we engage in a sort of mental time travel. This uniquely human ability to psychologically travel through time arguably sets us apart from other species. Researchers have recently looked at how mental time travel is represented in the sensorimotor systems that regulate human movement. It turns out our perceptions of space and time are tightly coupled.
University of Aberdeen psychological scientists Lynden Miles, Louise Nind and Neil Macrae conducted a study to measure this in the lab. They fitted participants with a motion sensor while they imagined either future or past events. The researchers found that thinking about past or future events can literally move us: Engaging in mental time travel (a.k.a. chronesthesia) resulted in physical movements corresponding to the metaphorical direction of time. Those who thought of the past swayed…
Free Speech Lives, But It Will Cost You
From The Smirking Chimp:
Count this as another savage blow for those cherished corporate interests:
In a stunning reversal of the nation’s federal campaign finance laws, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Thursday that as an exercise of free speech, corporations, labor unions and other groups can directly spend on political campaigns.
The justices also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill that barred union- and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.
“The notion that the First Amendment dictated [today's ruling] is, in my judgment, profoundly misguided,” dissenting Judge John Paul Stevens wrote for the others.
“In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it,” he added. (Via FOXnews.com)
I frequently hear arguments from all sides citing the ‘restrictions’ on free speech. What used to be a…
Cheech And Chong On Fox News
Stoner-comedy legends Cheech and Chong somehow got an interview on Fox News, where they called for marijuana legalization. By the end, Fox & Friends host Gretchen Carlson seems to have had her mind blown.
Woman Trips, Rips Historic Picasso Painting
France’s AFP reports on the most notable art-world achievement of 2010 so far:
A significant Pablo Picasso painting was damaged after a woman attending art class lost her balance, fell into “The Actor” and tore it, The Metropolitan Museum of Art said.
The unusually large canvas, measuring 77.25 by 45.38 inches (196 by 115cm), sustained a vertical tear of about six inches (15cm) in the lower right-hand corner in the accident on Friday. The museum, located on the eastern edge of New York’s Central Park, did not elaborate on why the woman fell.
Painted in the winter of 1904-1905, the work hails from Picasso’s critical Rose Period, when the artist shifted from the downbeat tones of his Blue Period to warmer, more romantic hues.
China’s Real-Life Munchkin Land
Yet another way in which 21st-century China trumps America: The Telegraph reports on a mountain town in Kunming, China, where all of the citizens are dwarves. This sounds so magical:
Everyone in the commune must be under 4ft 3 ins tall and they run their own police force and fire brigade from their 120 residents. Now the group has turned itself into a tourist attraction by building mushroom houses and living and dressing like fairy tale characters.
“As small people we are used to being pushed around and exploited by big people. But here there aren’t any big people and everything we do is for us,” said spokesman Fu Tien.
DynCorp Accused Of Looting Billions Of Dollars From Iraq Contracts
Anyone who saw the Robert Greenwald documentary Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers will know that this story about DynCorp in the Wall Street Journal is only the tip of the iceberg in corporate looting of the United States Treasury (meaning taxes paid in by Americans):
The U.S. State Department is struggling with its accounting for billions of dollars spent on police-training contracts in Iraq with DynCorp International Inc.
A report from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, to be released today, says that squaring away just how the money was spent may take years.
The State Department lacks adequate staff in Iraq to closely monitor the work, its biggest contract there, according to the report. DynCorp invoices were regularly found to have errors and often lacked sufficient documentation, the auditors found. “As a result, over $2.5 billion in U.S. funds are vulnerable to waste and fraud,” the report said. Auditors examining three major…
Scientist Says We Should Search For Aliens Here On Earth
The Telegraph reports that the search for alien life forms should be conducted here on Earth rather than in outer space, according to a leading scientist:
Professor Paul Davies, a physicist at Arizona University will tell a meeting at the Royal Society that the best way of proving that extra-terrestrial life exists elsewhere in the universe is to use evidence from earth. The meeting at the Royal Society, which will include representatives from Nasa, the European Space Agency and the UN Office for Outer space Affairs marks the 5th anniversary of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) programme. Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society will also lead one of the sessions.
Prof Davies said: We need to give up the notion that ET is sending us some sort of customised message and take a new approach.”
He suggested that the search could focus on deserts, volcanic vents, salt-saturated lakes and the dry valleys of Antarctica – places where ordinary life struggles to survive – to…
Charles Darwin On The Ouija Channel
by Robert David Singer
[Note: If you are not up-to-date with the debate over Evolution, Creationism and Intelligent Design, you will want to read the Preface Notes first, identified by a [p] at the beginning of the sentence. Preface Notes will separate fact from fiction and rumor from humor in my prima facie case for Intelligent Design.]
[p1] Professor Richard Dawkins, one of the greatest living “experts” on blind Watchmakers and selfish gene-centric Evolution got out his Ouija Board to channel the spirit of Charles Darwin, author of The Origin of Species and the father of Naturalism and Atheism.
Contacting Darwin was considered of a dangerous and controversial nature because if his current residence is Hell then a whole lot of evolutionary biologists will be out of work.
[p2] Dawkins and company agreed it was worth the risk because there aren’t enough Evolutionists to rip out the pages of one million copies of Ray…
Is Getting Naked Good For Your Brain?
This article argues the health benefits of nudity, noting that clothes deprive our brain neurons of vital stimulation, since they strangle our range of motion and cause most of our epidermis to atrophy. “Going shoeless is now recognized as an anti-Alzheimer’s, brain-boosting activity because the sole sensation entices your brain into growing extra, efficient neuron connections, while also increasing brain flexibility.”
“Plus, clothes are a breeding ground for filthy fungi and bad bacterium, causing yeast infections, urinary tract infections, and rotting toenails.”
It also notes the historical precedents for nudity — including the 70,000 Germans who attended naked co-ed schools and naked church services in North Africa, Bohemia, the Netherlands, and England. Even famous people were nudists, including Alexander Graham Bell, Leonard Nimoy, and science fiction author Robert Heinlein.
But in addition to all this, clothes are just a huge money/time-suck. “Americans spend at least $900 million annually on bathing suits alone.”
“Our carbon footprint…
Experts Say U.S. Must Do More About Asteroids
From MSNBC:
The United States must do more to safeguard Earth against destruction by an asteroid than merely prepping nuclear missiles, a new report has found.The 134-page report, released Friday by the National Academy of Sciences, states that the $4 million spent by the United States annually to identify all potentially dangerous asteroids near Earth is not enough to do the job mandated by Congress in 2005.
NASA is in dire need of more funding to meet the challenge, and less than $1 million is currently set aside to research ways to counter space rocks that do endanger the Earth — measures like developing the spacecraft and technology to deflect incoming asteroids — the report states.
An early draft of the report, entitled “Defending the Earth: Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard-Mitigation Strategies,” was released in August 2009. The final report, written by a committee of expert scientists, says is ill-equipped to catalog 90 percent…
Media Matters: Fox News Volunteers for Scott Brown’s Campaign
From Media Matters:
Picking up where the network left off in 2009, Fox News jumped into its first political campaign of the year, this time setting its sights on the U.S. Senate to help elect Republican Scott Brown to the seat previously held by Democrat Ted Kennedy. Fox News and other media conservatives anticipated and celebrated Brown’s election with a hyperbolic fervor that would redden the faces of the “Obamaniacs” they most despised in 2008. As conservative media saw it, in defeating Democratic challenger Martha Coakley in Massachusetts, Scott Brown took down Goliath, the 1980 Soviet Olympic hockey team, the Berlin Wall, and the British Empire. Before Brown assumed his seat in the Senate, he had been nominated by Drudge and Fox News to be our next president.
Fox News didn’t simply cheer from the sidelines of this contest. Indeed, the network actively aided Brown’s campaign. Fox News repeatedly hosted Brown in the days leading up to the…
The Myth of the Sony ‘Kill Switch’
From The Telegraph:
For nearly 20 years Sony in Japan has been plagued by the myth of the “Sony Timer” – but is there really a kill-switch that destroys your device just after its warranty runs out? Many Japanese genuinely believe that there is.
It was the recall of more than 4.1 million Dell laptops containing faulty Sony batteries in 2006 that jump-started a rumour that has been around for decades. From 1980 to 2006 geeks and tech-obsessed Japanese had joked about the existence of the timer, creating sarcastic manga and venting anger through online forums. But the Dell recall launched the urban legend into the public eye and angry Sony sufferers jumped at the chance to denounce the company.
The mass spontaneous combustion of those batteries damaged Sony’s reputation in Japan enormously. For a nation proud of their technological innovations, burning laptops and the biggest product recall in history were not exactly…
USGS Claims Venezuela Sits on Earth’s Largest Oil Reserves
From The Raw Story:
Venezuela may have just become the center of an energy-starved world.The Orinoco Belt, situated squarely underneath the South American nation, may hold some 513 billion barrels of crude oil, according to a new report by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
That’s twice the size of Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves, placing Venezuela firmly atop the list of oil-rich nations.
The timing of the USGS announcement is striking. On Jan. 28, international firms will take part in an auction for contracts to drill in the Orinoco Belt. The deadline for auction registration was Jan 18, according to industry publication Petroleum World. Results will be announced on Feb. 10.
However, the USGS did not make an estimate of how much oil is actually recoverable. The Orinoco Belt’s reserves are typically thick and tar-like, with some patches difficult to reach with current drilling technology.
[Read more at The Raw Story]
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We Need to Get Rid of the Perverse Notion of “Corporate Personhood”
From Alternet:
Corporations are not people too.
With the unbelievable right-wing judicial activism of the Roberts court, we are now on the brink of losing our Republic and seeing our political system devolve into something like Mussolini’s definition of Fascism (Mussolini said: “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power”). Don’t think this is an exaggeration.
People for the American Way (do I need to disclose that PFAW gave me a very modest fellowship 5 year ago?), is mounting a campaign to preserve our nominal democracy by passing a Constitutional amendment giving Congress the power to regulate corporate campaign money. It’ll be an uphill battle — the last Amendment to the Constitution, the 27th, was enacted 18 years ago; it had originally been submitted in 1789.
I don’t know the specifics of their preferred amendment. But I’m pleased to see a piece of the progressive…
No More Senate Super Majority Illusion
From Truthout:
There is very little upside to the election of a Republican far right senator to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) for Democrats, progressives and reformers. My list is very short: (1) everyone should now understand that we never had a real workable Senate Super Majority to begin with despite all the media hype, (2) watering down progressive legislation has now been shown to produce electoral defeat for Democrats and (3) Democratic candidates at all levels can now clearly see that they will suffer if Democratic House and Senate members do not start acting more aggressively in opposition to Republican actions and spin.
The Senate Democrats should never let Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut) caucus with them. Lieberman was rejected by Connecticut Democrats at the polls. He was not elected as a Democrat. He often opposes the Democratic legislative agenda in the Senate. Lieberman supports and campaigns for Republicans. Letting…
Leonardo da Vinci’s Bones to be Dug Up by Italian Scientists
From The Times:
Scientists seeking permission to exhume the remains of Leonardo da Vinci plan to reconstruct his face to discover whether his masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, is a disguised self-portrait.
A team from Italy’s National Committee for Cultural Heritage, a leading association of scientists and art historians, has asked to open the tomb in which the Renaissance painter and polymath is believed to lie at Amboise castle, in the Loire valley, where he died in 1519, aged 67.
Giorgio Gruppioni, an anthropologist, said the project could throw new light on Leonardo’s most famous work. “If we manage to find his skull, we could rebuild Leonardo’s face and compare it with the Mona Lisa,” he said.
The identity of the Mona Lisa has been debated for centuries, with speculation ranging from Leonardo’s mother to Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine merchant.
[Read more at The Times]
Futuristic NASA Think Tank to be Shut Down
From New Scientist:
NASA will likely shut down its Institute for Advanced Concepts, which funds research into futuristic – and often far-out – ideas in spaceflight and aeronautics, officials say. The controversial move highlights the budgetary pressures the agency is facing as it struggles to retire the space shuttles by 2010 and develop their replacement.
The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) was established to “give an opportunity for people outside of NASA to develop really revolutionary and creative concepts for future aeronautics and space missions”, says Robert Cassanova, who has served as the institute’s director since its inception in February 1998.
The institute, which operates from an office in Atlanta, Georgia, US, receives about $4 million per year from NASA. Most of that is used to fund research into innovative technologies; recent grants include the conceptual development of spacecraft that could surf the solar system on magnetic fields, motion-sensitive spacesuits that could…
Scientologists Using Touch to ‘Heal’ Haitian Earthquake Victims
Charles Onians writes on the AP via Yahoo News:
PORT-AU-PRINCE — Amid the mass of aid agencies piling in to help Haiti quake victims is a batch of Church of Scientology “volunteer ministers”, claiming to use the power of touch to reconnect nervous systems.
Clad in yellow T-shirts emblazoned with the logo of the controversial US-based group, smiling volunteers fan out among the injured lying under makeshift shelters in the courtyard of Port-au-Prince’s General Hospital.
A wealthy private donor provided his airplane to fly in 80 volunteers from Los Angeles, along with 50 Haitian-American-doctors, in a gesture worth 400,000 dollars, said a Parisian volunteer who gave her name as Sylvie.
“We’re trained as volunteer ministers, we use a process called ‘assist’ to follow the nervous system to reconnect the main points, to bring back communication,” she said.
“When you get a sudden shock to a part of your body the energy gets stuck, so we re-establish…
