Archive for April, 2010
SittingNow – Cults, Conspiracies & Secret Societies with Arthur Goldwag
Listen to the episode at SittingNow
Our guest this week is Arthur Goldwag
This week I talk to one of my new favourite authors (and guests), Arthur Goldwag. Arthur is the author of the recently published ‘Cults, Conspiracies, & Secret Societies: The Straight Scoop on Freemasons, The Illuminati, Skull & Bones, Black Helicopters, The New World Order‘, a fantastic book that I recommend to anyone that wants to be introduced to these fascinating topics in a more logical, and non-bias fashion.
In this episode we discuss: The mindset of conspiracy theorists, why the Freemasons are blamed for everything evil in the world, how L. Ron Hubbard’s rise to power baffles us, some of the weirdest cults out there, and the age old question: is Lady Gaga a puppet of the Illuminati?
Obama’s Deal
For those of us who weren’t able to “stay up” on the recent health care battles in Washington as they were happening, here’s a very concise overview from PBS Frontline.
A sobering look at the push to reform health care, revealing the realities of American politics, the power of special interest groups and the role of money in policy making.
The Great Atlantic Garbage Patch
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not alone. We now have our very own on the East coast. Via AP:
Researchers are warning of a new blight on the ocean: a swirl of confetti-like plastic debris stretching over thousands of square miles (kilometers) in a remote expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.
The floating garbage — hard to spot from the surface and spun together by a vortex of currents — was documented by two groups of scientists who trawled the sea between scenic Bermuda and Portugal’s mid-Atlantic Azores islands.
“We found the great Atlantic garbage patch,” said Anna Cummins, who collected plastic samples on a sailing voyage in February.
The debris is harmful for fish, sea mammals — and at the top of the food chain, potentially humans — even though much of the plastic has broken into such tiny pieces they are nearly invisible.
Don’t Just Smoke a Joint on 4/20, Take Action Against Marijuana Prohibition
From Alternet:
Stand up today with other Americans and get the word out there. This war will end; how soon depends, in part, on you.
April 20th (4/20) has long been associated with marijuana, both marijuana use and marijuana activism. Thousands of Americans will gather on that day at rallies in Boston, Boulder, New York, Santa Cruz, Seattle and other cities. For people who prefer to relax with a joint instead of a beer or martini it’s a time to celebrate. For those who don’t use marijuana it’s a time to stand up in support of their friends, family, and fellow citizens who face arrest for nothing more than what they put into their body. For the Drug Policy Alliance and the drug policy reform movement 4/20 represents something even bigger.
The movement to end marijuana prohibition is very broad, composed of people who love marijuana, people who hate marijuana, and people who…
Where Do Your U.S. Tax Dollars Go? (Quiz)
This is the same quiz we created on Facebook (for those of you who have already seen it today).
This quiz was created using information from the National Priorities Project.
Take the quiz by clicking MORE!
My Black Eyed Apocalypse
The JoeBot writes on Confessions of a CyberCasualty:
Last year, I toured with the Black Eyed Peas on their Japan/Australia run. It was dubbed The E.N.D. — World Tour, which was appropriate. The production is a dazzling metaphor for the end of civilization.
As I get older, I frequently find myself forced to compromise my principles — whether ethical or aesthetic — for a higher standard of living. My job is to fly lights, sound, and video — not to judge the artists. My crew chief said this a dozen times. After all, I was paid well, enjoyed fine meals and plush hotel rooms, had fantastic adventures on the streets of Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Melbourne, and Auckland, and I only had to wear a BEP t-shirt one time — when my laundry was dirty. Still, the damage is evident.
I began to absorb the insidious beats and lobotomizing lyrics through constant exposure. To make matters worse, I was born with a hyperactive cerebral sequencer that will sample and loop any catchy tune within a 100′ radius. You hear about nuclear lab technicians who glow green when the lights go out. Well, for months after I came home you could hear “Boom Boom Pow” playing from my head in a quiet room. Just another occupational hazard …
Bettie Page, FBI Consultant
via the smoking gun:
Though J. Edgar Hoover’s minions often probed the interstate transportation of obscene material featuring Bettie Page, the notorious pin-up model was nonetheless willing to help agents when it came to FBI inquiries about the production of certain “flagellation and bondage pictures,” according to bureau records.
When a 1957 police drug raid on a Harlem apartment turned up a cache of obscene magazines and photos, paddles, a riding crop, a whip, and lengths of chain, rawhide, and rope, FBI agents contacted Page for some expert guidance. Specifically, they wanted to know if the apartment was a photo studio where obscene material was produced. According to the below memo sent to Hoover, Page told investigators that she “had never heard of that type of photography being made in Harlem.” An agent reported that Page also advised that the “flagellation and bondage pictures that she had posed for” were shot “in photographic studios or photographers apartments.”
The seized porn, which included “two books and four pictures depicting Betty Page in various poses,” was shipped to Washington for “examination” by the FBI Laboratory, according to a second memo. At some point, agents planned to quiz the apartment’s inhabitants about “what the source of these items was, and to what use they were putting them to.”
Every Black Hole Contains Another Universe?
Ker Than writes on National Geographic News:
Like part of a cosmic Russian doll, our universe may be nested inside a black hole that is itself part of a larger universe. In turn, all the black holes found so far in our universe — from the microscopic to the supermassive — may be doorways into alternate realities.
According to a mind-bending new theory, a black hole is actually a tunnel between universes — a type of wormhole. The matter the black hole attracts doesn’t collapse into a single point, as has been predicted, but rather gushes out a “white hole” at the other end of the black one, the theory goes.
In a recent paper published in the journal Physics Letters B, Indiana University physicist Nikodem Poplawski presents new mathematical models of the spiraling motion of matter falling into a black hole. His equations suggest such wormholes are viable alternatives to the “space-time…
More Than 53% of Your Tax Payment Goes to the Military
I think this 53 percent number is debatable, but I don’t doubt that the U.S. government’s (i.e. the taxpayer’s) greatest expense is the military. Dave Lindorff writes on Common Dreams:
If you’re like me, now that we’re in the week that federal income taxes are due, you are finally starting to collect your records and prepare for the ordeal. Either way, whether you are a procrastinator like me, or have already finished and know how much you have paid to the government, it is a good time to stop and consider how much of your money goes to pay for our bloated and largely useless and pointless military.
The budget for the 2011 fiscal year, which has to be voted by Congress by this Oct. 1, looks to be about $3 trillion, not counting the funds collected for Social Security (since the Vietnam War, the government has included the Social Security Trust…
Amazing Northern Lights Show Over Erupting Iceland Volcano (Photo)
Major props to “ice,” an Icelandic photographer with one very cool collection of photos of the current volcanic eruption in Iceland. Not so cool is that the volcanic ash in the air over northern Europe has stopped all UK air traffic, so for anyone planning to meet the disinformation crew at the London Book Fair next week, stay tuned…
Here’s the pick of the crop of photos, showing the Northern Lights a/k/a Aurora Borealis:
(c) 2010 "Ice" – shown here in reduced size as fair use.
Nationwide Tax Day Protests
The Tea Party movement will do something today that pretty much all Americans identify with: they’re protesting taxes, an activity as all-American as … well you can name your own favorite American pastime. Glenn Harlan Reynolds reports for the Wall Street Journal:
Today American taxpayers in more than 300 locations in all 50 states will hold rallies — dubbed “tea parties” — to protest higher taxes and out-of-control government spending. There is no political party behind these rallies, no grand right-wing conspiracy, not even a 501(c) group like MoveOn.org.
So who’s behind the Tax Day tea parties? Ordinary folks who are using the power of the Internet to organize. For a number of years, techno-geeks have been organizing “flash crowds” — groups of people, coordinated by text or cellphone, who converge on a particular location and then do something silly, like the pillow fights that popped up in 50 cities earlier this month.…
Outlawing Bottled Water
For those paying attention, calls for removal of plastics from our food and water and elsewhere in our household and workplace environments have been getting a whole lot louder recently and will receive worldwide attention during World Water Week in September. For those who liked Annie Leonard’s Story of Stuff, she’s made a new film, The Story of Bottled Water:
The message is starting to go mainstream. TIME Magazine recently highlighted “The Perils of Plastic.” Here’s what they have to say about Bisphenol A (BPA), the type of plastic used to bottle water:
What It Is: A chemical used in plastic production
Found In: Water bottles, baby bottles, plastic wraps, food packaging
Health Hazards: The government’s National Toxicology Program has concluded that there is some concern about brain and behavioral effects…
Some Serious Thinking About Obesity
The obesity crisis gets the intellectual treatment in this article by Marc Ambinder in the Atlantic:
By 2015, four out of 10 Americans may be obese. Until last year, the author was one of them. The way he lost one-third of his weight isn’t for everyone. But unless America stops cheering The Biggest Loser and starts getting serious about preventing obesity, the country risks being overwhelmed by chronic disease and ballooning health costs. Will first lady Michelle Obama’s new plan to fight childhood obesity work, or is it just another false start in the country’s long and so far unsuccessful war against fat?
In 1948, Congress doled out $5 billion to Europe in the first installment of the Marshall Plan, the World Health Organization was born, a simian astronaut named Albert I was launched into the atmosphere (he died), and doctors…
Library of Congress To Archive Your Tweets
Doug Gross writes on CNN:
Every 140-character snippet of info you’ve ever shared publicly on Twitter will soon have a home next to the Declaration of Independence.
Twitter and the Library of Congress announced Wednesday that every public tweet posted since Twitter started in 2006 will be archived digitally by the federal library.
The purpose, according to a blog post by Library of Congress communications director Matt Raymond, is to document “important tweets” as well as gather information about the way we live through the sheer masses of tweets on the site.
“I’m no Ph.D., but it boggles my mind to think what we might be able to learn about ourselves and the world around us from this wealth of data,” Raymond said in the post. And I’m certain we’ll learn things that none of us now can even possibly conceive.”
Twitter says it receives about 55 million tweets every day — amounting to billions…
Champions Of Their Checkbooks
Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:
I’m left wondering how the right purport to speak for the financial interests of Joe Six Pack. According to varied statistics, the “average” American household makes somewhere around $50,000. How is it then, that the talking heads of the right can accurately describe life on main street, when they’re really living on easy street? By boiling public blood over taxes that go to pay for schools, roads, care for the elderly, the military, infrastructure, etc they’ve successfully been able to make fast cash:
Sarah Palin took in around $166,000 in 2007. Since she quit her job as governor, she’s raked in $12 million between her book and speaking engagements.
Glenn Beck made an estimated $23 million in 2008.
In the time it took to type and hyperlink this sentence, Rush Limbaugh earned more money than many Americans make in a day. He makes $33 million a year.
Michele Bachmann $174,000, a sum modest in comparison.…
Telepathy? There’s An App For That
The “Neuophone” app allows iPhone commands through telepathy! An EEG headset wirelessly sends signals to an iPhone, making it possible to “think dial” friends when their photo appears on your iPhone.
EEG electrodes monitor brainwaves (with a gyroscope to detect the head’s position) using Emotiv’s EPOC headset, interpreting brain signals with algorithms developed from MRI brain scans…
WikiLeaks, The Future Of Journalism And Government 2.0, With David Forbes
Via Technoccult:
David Forbes is an Asheville, NC based journalist and blogger. He’s a senior journalist at The Mountain Xpress, a regular contributor to Coilhouse (both print and online), and runs his own blog The Breaking Time. You can find him on Twitter here. As a fellow media-geek I asked David to chat with me about WikiLeaks, the future of journalism, and Government 2.0.
Klint Finley: Personally I don’t think there’s one single future for journalism, but many different futures. I think WikiLeaks is one of journalism’s futures – what do you think?
David Forbes: I would agree that there’s not one single future, just as there’s not one single past for journalism — is made up of many different methods of pursuing and conveying information. WikiLeaks represents that raw, juicy information aspect, and there is a role for that, though it’s more limited in impact that some of its apostles may think.
There’s also…
‘Ancient Aliens’ Becomes A TV Series
Disinformation friend Giorgio Tsoukalos just emailed us to let us know that the “Ancient Aliens” special starring Giorgio and Erich von Daniken (among others) is becoming a full-blown TV series. The special was the rare History Channel show that avoided the usual skeptical treatment afforded by that channel’s producers and was well worth watching, so I have high hopes for the series:
We did it. This time, we REALLY did it!
I don’t even know where to begin, so I’ll just make it very short and VERY sweet:
Due to the success of ANCIENT ALIENS (2009), the show was picked up by the History Channel for a series!
It is with great pride that I announce to you:
Ancient Aliens: THE SERIES premieres on the History Channel on Tuesday, April 20, 2010 at 8PM with Episode I: The Evidence!
In total, there will be 5 two-hour episodes and I once again had the privilege to serve as the…
Defense Contractors Sponsor Sesame Street Programming Special
If you fill out and send in this form, you can remove you or your ward’s name from a list of prospective American military recruits. Its completion moves a name into a “suppression file” in the Department of Defense’s Joint Advertising and Marketing Research & Studies. This makes it much harder for military recruiters to reach out to a prospective recruit whose contact information they may have acquired in various ways. Federal law actually requires that they have as much access to high school students as any other prospective employer.
Sesame Street has become loved and reviled for its socially-conscious programming; in one famous example from 1983, after an actor on the show died, Sesame Street took the chance to impart to very young children the temporal nature of human existence by marking his character’s death on the show. The forward-thinking episode invited some degree of opposition because even adults 
themselves continue to find death very uncomfortable or even impossible to psychologically confront.
Premiering tonight on PBS at 8 p.m. EDT is a program, “When Families Grieve,” that features four families, two of which features fathers from the American military…
