Archive for January, 2010
UFOs and Underground Bases with Dennis Balthaser (Sitting Now Podcast)
Via Right Where You Are Sitting Now:
It’s been a while since we’ve visited the realm of UFO investigation; so we felt when we did return, we would need to bring along a true expert in the field. Luckily for us, we found just that in Dennis Balthaser. Dennis actually lives in Roswell New Mexico, and has been studying the famous ‘Roswell Incident’ for many years. He has appeared on countless television and radio shows, and is often published in UFO Magazine.
This week we discuss: The Roswell Incident, Dulce underground base, Area 51, The state of Ufology today and much more. Please feel free to email ken@sittingnow.co.uk. Enjoy!
TSA Agent Plants White Powder on Passenger as ‘Joke’
Daniel Rubin writes in the Philadelphia Inquirer:
In the tense new world of air travel, we’re stripped of shoes, told not to take too much shampoo on board, frowned on if we crack a smile. The last thing we expect is a joke from a Transportation Security Administration screener — particularly one this stupid.
Rebecca Solomon is 22 and a student at the University of Michigan, and on Jan. 5 she was flying back to school after holiday break. She made sure she arrived at Philadelphia International Airport 90 minutes before takeoff, given the new regulations.
She would be flying into Detroit on Northwest Airlines, the same city and carrier involved in the attempted bombing on Christmas, just 10 days before. She was tense. What happened to her lasted only 20 seconds, but she says they were the longest 20 seconds of her life.
Moscow’s Stray Dogs Evolving Greater Intelligence, Including a Mastery of the Subway
From PopSci:
For every 300 Muscovites, there’s a stray dog wandering the streets of Russia’s capital. And according to Andrei Poyarkov, a researcher at the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, the fierce pressure of urban living has driven the dogs to evolve wolf-like traits, increased intelligence, and even the ability to navigate the subway.
Poyarkov has studied the dogs, which number about 35,000, for the last 30 years. Over that time, he observed the stray dog population lose the spotted coats, wagging tails, and friendliness that separate dogs from wolves, while at the same time evolving social structures and behaviors optimized to four ecological niches occupied by what Poyarkov calls guard dogs, scavengers, wild dogs, and beggars.
The guard dogs follow around, and receive food from, the security personnel at Moscow’s many fenced in sites. They think the guards are their masters, and serve as semi-feral assistants. The scavengers roam the city…
Average Age of Churchgoers Now 61, Church of England Report Finds
From The Telegraph:
The report, compiled by the research and statistics department of the Archbishops’ Council, also found half of those in the pews are pensioners.
Some rural congregations were older than 65 on average, while the youngest Anglicans were found in London, with the ‘standard’ churchgoer aged 54.
It compares with the population as a whole where the average adult age is 48.
This is the first year in which the Church has analysed the ages of its congregations in detail, so no long-term trends can be determined.
However, weekly church attendance continues to fall according to separate figures published on Friday. Around 1.14m people went to a church service at least once a week in 2008, the latest figures show, but average Sunday attendance was down to 960,000 from 978,000 the previous year.
There were also slightly fewer infant baptisms, confirmations, marriages and funerals.
Details of the ages of churchgoers are likely to reinforce fears…
President Obama, Remember Who Your Friends Are
From Truthout:
In the wake of a crushing Democratic defeat in the Massachusetts Senate race, we find ourselves faced with the one-year anniversary of a spirit-changing day in the history of the United States, the inauguration of President Barack Obama. This odd confluence of events provides an opening for a very timely warning: It is time to remember who your friends are, Mr. President.
Your friends are not the suits on Wall Street, the same ones who fooled Timothy Geithner for years. Your friends are not the timid centrists, who Rahm Emanuel coddles. Your friends are not the giants of the mortgage industry, who fought you tooth and nail to keep the foreclosure crisis out of the courts. Your friend is not George W. Bush, whose crimes you continue to conceal.
Your friends are the progressives across this country, who, when you asked for their faith and inspired them with beautiful words, placed…
Keith Olbermann: Supreme Court Ruling Makes Every Politician ‘A Prostitute’
This may be the one time I can say I don’t think Olbermann is guilty of bombast. He recently abandoned the long, special comment format on his show and instead makes two nightly “quick comments” (because I think even his core audience was getting tired of the long-winded tirades) but if there’s a reason to get worked up, it’s this. I know disinfo.com visitors have plenty to say and I’m curious to hear your thoughts on KO’s special comment “U.S. Government for Sale”:
2009 Was Record Year for Lobbyists
This is why we need more action from the Obama administration on this. The recent disastrous Supreme Court decision on campaign financing will make 2009 seem like child’s play to these people.
Arthur Delaney writes on Huffington Post:
The lobbying industry demonstrated its resilience last year in the face of the recession and is fully expected to smash previous spending records. On Wednesday, lobbyists filed their fourth-quarter reports, offering the first glimpse at their spending totals for the year.
Here’s what HuffPost has found so far by looking at some of the biggest companies in the banking, health care and energy industries: The heavy hitters indeed hit harder than ever in 2009.
To wit: The Chamber of Commerce, lobbying muscle for all manner of businesses on all manner of issues, spent an eye-popping $71 million on lobbying in the fourth quarter of 2009 alone, bringing its yearly total to $123 million, almost double the $62 million…
Are Plants Using Quantum Entanglement In Photosynthesis?
Michael Moyer writes in Scientific American:
As nature’s own solar cells, plants convert sunlight into energy via photosynthesis. New details are emerging about how the process is able to exploit the strange behavior of quantum systems, which could lead to entirely novel approaches to capturing usable light from the sun.
All photosynthetic organisms use protein-based “antennas” in their cells to capture incoming light, convert it to energy and direct that energy to reaction centers — critical trigger molecules that release electrons and get the chemical conversion rolling. These antennas must strike a difficult balance: they must be broad enough to absorb as much sunlight as possible yet not grow so large that they impair their own ability to shuttle the energy on to the reaction centers.
This is where quantum mechanics becomes useful. Quantum systems can exist in a superposition, or mixture, of many different states at once. What’s more, these states can interfere with one another — adding constructively at some points, subtracting at others. If the energy going into the antennas could be broken into an elaborate superposition and made to interfere constructively with itself, it could be transported to the reaction center with nearly 100 percent efficiency.
The Science Establishment Acts To Knock Out Publication That Dared To Support An Outsider
Peter Duesberg
Here’s a crazy, but none-too-surprising, story from the UK’s Times Higher Education illustrating the way that establishment academics and scientists rally to discredit and run out of town any “rogue” scientists or scholars who dare question the orthodox view of things. THE’s own language is a bit suspect concerning Peter Duesberg, but nevertheless, the point is well made:
It has published papers on everything from ejaculation as a treatment for nasal congestion to why modern scientists are so dull, but the future of Medical Hypotheses is hanging in the balance after a host of complaints from high-profile researchers.
The irreverent publication is the only Elsevier journal not to subject its submissions to peer review. Instead, its editor decides what to publish on the basis of how interesting or radical a paper is, and how well expressed the arguments are.
But its future is in doubt after editor-in-chief Bruce Charlton, professor of theoretical medicine…
Does the Fourth Amendment Cover ‘The Cloud’?
James Urquhart writes on CNet News:
One of the biggest issues facing individuals and corporations choosing to adopt public cloud computing (or any Internet service, for that matter) is the relative lack of clarity with respect to legal rights over data stored online. I’ve reported on this early legal landscape a couple of times, looking at decisions to relax expectations of privacy for e-mail stored online and the decision to allow the FBI to confiscate servers belonging to dozens of companies from a co-location facility whose owners were suspected of fraud.
However, while I’ve argued before that the government has yet to apply the right metaphor to the modern world of networked applications and data, there has been little literature that has actually dissected the problem in detail. Even worse, I’ve seen almost no analysis of how the United States Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, applies to…
Humans Were Once an Endangered Species
Lin Edwards writes on PhysOrg:
Scientists from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City in the U.S. have calculated that 1.2 million years ago, at a time when our ancestors were spreading through Africa, Europe and Asia, there were probably only around 18,500 individuals capable of breeding (and no more than 26,000). This made them an endangered species with a smaller population than today’s species such as gorillas (approximately 25,000 breeding individuals) and chimpanzees (an estimated 21,000). They remained an endangered species for around one million years.
Modern humans are known to have less genetic variation than other living primates, even though our current population is many orders of magnitude greater. Researchers studying specific genetic lineages have proposed a number of explanations for this, such as recent “bottlenecks”, which are events in which a significant proportion of the population is killed or prevented from reproducing. One such event was the Toba…
California Supreme Court Upholds Medical Marijuana Laws
The San Francisco Chronicle reports on a major victory for medical marijuana proponents with this ruling by California’s Supreme Court:
In a victory for medical marijuana users, the state Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a state law that protects them from arrest if they show police official identification cards. The court also overturned a law that limits how much pot patients can carry and how many plants they can grow.
The court unanimously ruled that the limits – 8 ounces of dried marijuana, six mature plants or 12 immature plants – conflicted with Proposition 215, the 1996 initiative that made California the first state to legalize marijuana for medical use.
Prop. 215 said a patient, with a doctor’s approval, could possess an amount of marijuana that was “reasonably related to the patient’s current medical needs,” and set no numerical limits.
The 2003 legislation, which allowed a jury to convict a defendant who possessed or grew…
Bankers Destroy $7 For Every $1 They Earn
BBC News reports on a study analyzing the true societal value of different occupations. In many cases, it seems one’s salary is inversely proportional to the value one generates for society as a whole:
The research, carried out by think tank the New Economics Foundation, says hospital cleaners create £10 of value for every £1 they are paid.
[Meanwhile,] leading bankers are a drain on the country because of the damage they caused to the global economy…They reportedly destroy £7 of value for every £1 they earn.
By devising schemes to cut the amount of money available to the government, tax accountants destroy £47 in value for every pound they generate.
Dirty Harry’s Favorite Gunmaker’s Punk Move
From TheStreet.com’s Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street:
Something dirty is going on at Dirty Harry’s favorite gunmaker.
Amaro Goncalves, Smith & Wesson’s vice president for sales, was one of 22 individuals indicted by the U.S. Justice Department Tuesday for violating federal bribery laws involving the sale of firearms. Goncalves and crew were charged with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and conspiracy to commit money laundering involving the sale of guns and body armor.
The indictments were filed in December after agents worked undercover last year to expose the ring. The individuals were arrested on Monday in Las Vegas and Miami.
Go ahead and make our day, because a Dumbest entry rarely gets cooler than this.
According to the indictment, an unidentified business associate who was a former executive for an arms manufacturer set up a meeting between Goncalves and two representatives of an unnamed African country’s minister of defense. Little did he know, however,…
The Case For An Electronic Congress
Should Congress become virtual, meeting over the internet rather than in a physical building in Washington D.C.? Conor Friedersdorf argues on Politics Daily that doing so would make our leaders more accountable to constituents and would fight the influence of special interests:
As professional lobbyists grow ever more powerful, it is increasingly consequential that members of Congress spend significant stretches of time hundreds or thousands of miles from their constituents, but mere minutes away from every K Street firm.
An e-Congress wouldn’t merely result in legislators more attuned to their constituents by virtue of spending their working lives among them — it would make influence peddling far more difficult on lobbying firms, who’d find it more expensive and time-consuming to get face-time.
Henry Lincoln: By Any Other Name
Origins of The Da Vinci Code, featuring Henry Lincoln exploring Rennes-le-Chateau
The legendary Henry Lincoln, who many people credit with starting the whole bloodline of Christ theory that caused such a furor upon the publication of The Da Vinci Code, has taken to blogging. He now lives full time in Rennes-le-Chateau and his latest blog post relates his often hilarious interactions with tourists:
At Rennes-le-Château, I fear, change has become inevitable. But some changes, it seems, are beginning to spread confusion. I have, for instance, often been asked for directions to the Devil’s Armchair. My response is now frequently met with: “But I thought that was the Seat of Isis … !” (And vice versa.) Well … yes!
This seems to be one of the unlooked-for effects of the Da Vinci Code. The goddesses seem to be taking over. So … Isis now sits in the Devil’s Armchair … the Fourtou Cave has become…
The Growing Price Of Obesity: Buy Two Seats To Fly Air France
Air France now requires that obese passengers must purchase two seats to fly on its airplanes. I once flew from Charlotte to New York with half of my upper body covered by just such a passenger, who couldn’t have been nicer and more apologetic, but I was still pretty upset by the experience, so personally I hope other airlines take note (United does have a similar policy). From the Telegraph:
From next month seriously overweight flyers will be asked to pay for two seats, or not be allowed on board for “safety reasons”, the airline announced yesterday.
“People who arrive at the check-in desk and are deemed too large to fit into a single seat will be asked to pay for and use a second seat,” said Monique Matze, an Air France spokesman.
“They will be charged 75 per cent of the cost of the second seat, which is the full price excluding…
The Problem Of Politics
Aaron Cynic at Diatribe Media:
Yesterday, the Supreme Court handed electoral politics over to corporations, who will undoubtedly spit in the court’s face and sue it for not giving them their right to blatantly buy elections sooner. In a 5-4 decision handed down by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and backed by five Republican presidential appointees, the court ruled that corporations and unions can spend their own treasury funds on broadcast ads or billboards in favor of a particular political candidate or urging the defeat of another. Speaking for the court, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy invoked the idea of corporate personhood, stating “The First Amendment does not permit Congress to make these categorical distinctions based on the corporate identity of the speaker and the content of the political speech.”
Plenty of people have already (thankfully) raised their eyebrows and fists over this and hopefully, that hand wringing will translate into some sort…
Amateur Astronomer Rivals NASA’s Hubble Telescope
An amateur stargazer has stunned astronomers around the world with his photographs of the universe – taken from his garden shed, as reported in the Telegraph:
Peter Shah, 38, cut a hole in the roof of his wooden shed and set up his modest eight-inch telescope inside. After months of patiently waiting for the right moment he emerged with a series of striking images of the Milky Way.
His photographs of a vivid variety of star clusters light years from Earth have been compared to the images taken from the £2.5 billion Hubble space telescope.
But it cost Mr Shah just £20,000 to equip his garden shed with a telescope linked to his home computer. He said: “Most men like to potter about in their garden shed – but mine is a bit more high tech than most…
[continues in the Telegraph]
