Archive for April, 2010
Scientologists Sue Organization for $1 million for Slave Wages
From the Telegraph:
Two former Scientologists have shone a less than flattering spotlight on the controversial organization, which counts the actors John Travolta and Tom Cruise among its followers, in a landmark lawsuit.
In the test case against the US-based Church of Scientology, Marc Headley and his wife, Claire, have told how they were treated like slaves and forced to work 20-hour days almost continually through the year.
Mrs Headley claims she was coerced into having an abortion, while Mr Headley has spoken about how he was subjected to a strange mind-control practise by the actor Tom Cruise.
Both were members of Sea Org, the Scientologists’ “religious order” and a supposedly elite vanguard made up of its most dedicated recruits, and signed up to the religion when they were still teenagers.
Members of the order sign a billion-year pledge of loyalty, promise not to have children, and live and work communally.
[Read more at the Telegraph]
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U.K. Embraces ‘Three Strikes’ for Illegal File Sharing
From CNet News :
The U.K.’s House of Commons overwhelmingly voted in favor of creating a law that would enable copyright owners to seek the suspension of Internet service of those accused multiple times of illegal file sharing.
The House of Commons voted 189 to 47 to pass the Digital Economy Bill, which also seeks to give the country’s government the authority to block access to Web sites suspected of engaging in pirated material, according to British publication, the Telegraph.
The bill still needs to go back to the House of Lords, which is nothing more than a formality since that’s where it originated. What this means is that some of the major European governments seem to be lining up behind copyright owners. France passed a similar law in October. Copyright owners applauded the results of the vote.
“The UK legislation recognizes that digital theft is a job killer,” said Rick Cotton, NBC Universal’s general…
Are the Wall Street Bailouts the “Crime of Our Time”?
In the new documentary Plunder: The Crime of Our Time, Danny Schechter explores how the financial crisis was built on a foundation of criminal activity uncovering the connection between the collapse of the housing market and the economic catastrophe that followed.
How should this be prevented from ever happening again? Let us know with the Plunder poll:
Teen Sues Mom for Hacking Facebook Account
From PC World:
Suing your parents isn’t just for celebrities anymore–a 16-year-old Arkansas boy is suing his mother for hacking into his Facebook account and allegedly posting slanderous remarks.
KATV-TV reports that Denise New of Arkadelphia is facing harassment charges from her 16-year-old. Her son, who lives with his grandmother, also requested a no-contact order. Prior to this issue, New and her son reportedly had a “great relationship,” despite their living arrangements.
According to the boy, his mother hacked into his Facebook and email accounts, then changed both passwords. She also allegedly posted remarks that involved slander and information about his personal life.
US Military ‘Trying to Retrieve’ Iraq Killings Video
From BBC News:
The US military says it is trying to retrieve the original video tapes of a controversial helicopter attack on a group of people in Iraq in 2007.
Footage of the attack was published on the internet by the website WikiLeaks.
Two of those killed were Reuters news agency employees whose cameras were mistaken for weapons, the US says.
The Pentagon has not questioned the video’s authenticity but says it cannot make a complete verification until the original tapes have been located.
“We’re attempting to retrieve the video from the unit who did the investigation,” US Central Command spokesman Capt Jack Hanzlik was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency.
Al-Qaeda Targets Soccer World Cup
Somehow the authors of this story focused on the bad guys of the Algerian branch of Al-Qaeda wanting to strike a blow against the infidels of England and the USA when the soccer teams of those two countries play each other in South Africa on June 13, 2010, but I think it’s more likely that the Algerians want to improve their chances of making it to the knockout stage of the competition. Group C comprises, perhaps to the surprise only of the journalists at the Press Association: England, USA, Slovenia and, yes, Algeria.
FIFA are aware of fresh threats made by al-Qaeda to target this summer’s World Cup, but insist nothing will prevent the tournament from being staged in South Africa.
An Algerian wing of the group has claimed they will carry out attacks on England’s Group C match against the United States on June 12 in Rustenberg, prompting new security fears…
Ordinary T-Shirts Could Become Body Armor
via physorg.com
Researchers at the University of South Carolina, collaborating with others from China and Switzerland, drastically increased the toughness of a T-shirt by combining the carbon in the shirt’s cotton with boron – the third hardest material on earth. The result is a lightweight shirt reinforced with boron carbide, the same material used to protect tanks.
The scientists started with plain, white T-shirts that were cut into thin strips and dipped into a boron solution. The strips were later removed from the solution and heated in an oven. The heat changes the cotton fibers into carbon fibers, which react with the boron solution and produce boron carbide.
The result is a fabric that’s lightweight but tougher and stiffer than the original T-shirt, yet flexible enough that it can be bent, said Li, who led the group from USC. That flexibility is an improvement over the heavy boron-carbide plates used in bulletproof vests and body armor.
Russian Scientists Create Superheavy Element 117
Time to take down that old periodic table poster tacked on your wall — a new element, number 117, has been synthesized by physicists in a Russian lab. Like most “superheavy” elements, it can exist only for a instant, with a half-life of 78 milliseconds. No word on when they will synthesize vegan ice cream that tastes like the real thing. Science News writes:
Physicists have reported synthesizing element 117, the latest achievement in their quest to create “superheavy” elements in the laboratory.
The new element, which has yet to be named, slips into a place on the periodic table between elements 116 and 118, both of which have already been discovered. Such superheavy elements are usually very radioactive and decay away almost instantly. But many researchers think it is possible that even heavier elements may occupy an “island of stability” in which superheavy atoms stick around for a while.
Read more from Science…
20% Of People Believe Aliens Are Living With Us
Aliens exist and they live in our midst disguised as humans — at least, that’s what 20 percent of people polled in a global survey believe, via Reuters:
The Reuters Ipsos poll of 23,000 adults in 22 countries showed that more than 40 percent of people from India and China believe that aliens walk among us disguised as humans, while those least likely to believe in this are from Belgium, Sweden and the Netherlands (8 percent each).
However, the majority of people polled, or 80 percent, don’t believe aliens in our midst.
“It would appear that that there’s a modest correlation between the most populated countries and those more likely to indicate there may be aliens disguised amongst them compared with those countries with the smaller populations,” said John Wright, Senior Vice President of market research firm Ipsos.
“Maybe the it’s a simple case that in a less populated country you are more likely…
Philadelphia To Decriminalize Small Amounts Of Marijuana
Overwhelmed by more serious crimes, my hometown has announced that the courts will no will no longer criminally prosecute those arrested for small-scale marijuana possession. Unfortunately, the cops say they will continue locking people up for possessing pot, out of force of habit — it’s what they’re “trained to do.” From Philly.com:
The city’s new district attorney and the state Supreme Court are moving to all but decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use in an effort to unclog Philadelphia’s crowded court dockets.
Under a policy to take effect later this month, prosecutors will charge such cases as summary offenses rather than as misdemeanors. People arrested with up to 30 grams of the drug – slightly more than an ounce – may have to pay a fine but face no risk of a criminal record.
Police have been briefed on the policy shift, but appear less than enthusiastic about…
This Anti-Wall Street Film Isn’t Just for Michael Moore Fans
Wall Street eats itself as its namesake newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, talks up Danny Schechter’s damning documentary Plunder: The Crime of our Time:
Independent filmmaker Danny Schecter would like to remind Wall Street that the disdain for bankers “is not coming from a bunch of lefties in some basement in the East Village. It is coming from mainstream America.”
Schecter hopes such mainstream angst can propel his latest film, “Plunder: The Crime Story of Our Time,” into the big leagues. Filmed on a budget of less than $50,000 and based on his book of the same title, the movie traces the roots of the financial crisis from the home owners who defaulted on their mortgages to the Wall Street banks loading up on mortgage investments.
The film sounds like the many books and made-for-television movies about the crisis. But Schecter, who has worked at ABC News and CNN, promises that his narrative…
Tiger Woods’ ‘Nike Of The Living Dead’ Commercial – Raunchy Remix
Disinformation’s Ralph Bernardo already posted his favorite Tiger Woods commercial remix, but the people at Popeater have assembled a great collection of additional parody remixes of the now infamous Nike commercial with Tiger and the voice of his late father. Check them all out at Popeater. Here’s just one example:
Next Big Hit On TV: Vegas Hookers for Jesus
Well it should be entertaining, in a car-crash kind of way… as reported by TheWrap.com:
Las Vegas hookers are headed to [U.S. cable TV network] Investigation Discovery.
Lost in the blizzard of announcements by bigger siblings TLC, Discovery and OWN was “Saved on the Strip,” a new reality series for ID revolving around ex-prostitute Annie Lobert’s Vegas-based outreach ministry Hookers for Jesus, as well as the group’s Destiny Center. Each episode will focus on the extreme makeover of one woman trying to quit the streets and establish a better life.
“Saved,” from executive producers Jon Kroll (”Amish in the City,” “Big Brother”) and Sharon Liese (”High School Confidential”), will follow the activities of Lobert and what Kroll calls her “quirky posse of ex-sex workers.”
“I love projects that are provocative on the surface but incredibly human at their core,” Kroll said Thursday via e-mail. “Annie is resurrecting the lives of women who have no…
Ever Listen to the Full ‘Cheers’ Theme Song Lyrics?
If you grew up in the ’80s watching American television, this show was a staple of NBC’s “Must-See TV” line-up on Thursday nights. Little did I know how badly these folks needed to go to a neighbor bar “where everybody knows your name” after hearing these lyrics:
Roll out of bed, Mr. Coffee’s dead;
The morning’s looking bright;
And your shrink ran off to Europe,
And didn’t even write;
And your husband wants to be a girl;
Study Sheds Light on What Makes People Shy
I’m not suggesting that “shyness” means you secretly are an alien from the planet Krypton, who has to disguise one’s true nature from everyone around you … but it can feel like that at times. Reports LiveScience:
The brains of shy or introverted individuals might actually process the world differently than their more extroverted counterparts, a new study suggests.
About 20 percent of people are born with a personality trait called sensory perception sensitivity (SPS) that can manifest itself as the tendency to be inhibited, or even neuroticism. The trait can be seen in some children who are “slow to warm up” in a situation but eventually join in, need little punishment, cry easily, ask unusual questions or have especially deep thoughts, the study researchers say.
The new results show that these highly sensitive individuals also pay more attention to detail, and have more activity in certain regions of their brains when trying to process visual information than those who are not classified as highly sensitive.
Vatican Criticizes Avatar
From New Statesman:
James Cameron’s new film, Avatar, may be breaking box-office records, but the Vatican is not impressed — or amused. The Holy See’s newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, has called it “bland” and “facile”, while its radio station claimed that the 3-D spectacular was “a wink towards the pseudo-doctrines which have made ecology the religion of the millennium … Nature is no longer a creation to defend, but a divinity to worship.”
The comment comes just days after the Pope publicly criticized world leaders for failing to agree a treaty at the Copenhagen climate summit. “To cultivate peace, one must protect creation,” he said. But he has also warned before against “a new pantheism tinged with neo-paganism, which would see the source of man’s salvation in nature alone, understood in purely naturalistic terms”.
I agree with the Pope that “being green” has gone way beyond a general duty to take reasonable care of…
Looking at Sick People Gives Your Immune System a Boost
Photo by Leonid Mamchenkov (CC)
Start here. Erica Ho writes on Lifehacker:
According to a University of British Columbia study, looking at sick people can boost your immune system. (Hanging around them does not.) That means you’re better equipped to fight a cold after merely looking at the picture in this post. (You’re welcome!)
In the study, young adults were asked to watch a 10-minute slide show containing a series of unpleasant photographs. Some pictures included people who looked obviously ill in some way.
The subjects’ blood samples were then tested for levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6), a substance produced by the immune system that indicates your immune system is ramping up to more aggressively fight infection.
As a control, pictures of people brandishing guns were also used on some participants—and they barely resulted in a significant increase in IL-6 production, signifying that IL-6 production is not simply a reaction to stress.
Image via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Read…
Disinformation’s Raymond Wiley Talks About the Georgia Guidestones on Panopticon
Panopticon — Episode 3: The Georgia Guidestones with Raymond Wiley
Website • Direct Download • RSS
In this episode, Panopticon speaks with our esteemed guest, Raymond Wiley of Disinformation, about the Georgia Guidestones: a mysterious, granite monument in northeastern Georgia.
Some think the Georgia Guidestones are a sort of ten commandments of the New World Order, and some think they’re a means of navigating a post apocalyptic world.
What do you think? Super fun and super informative!
Aleister Crowley: Wicked
A wonderful set of photographs from the life of the ‘Great Beast’, via LIFE:
Born the son of a wealthy and devout British family in 1875, Edward Alexander Crowley became a rebel after his father’s death when he was 11. He became increasingly skeptical of Christianity and was expelled from school for “corrupting” another boy. Crowley’s own mother, alarmed by his affinity for what she saw as morbid and morally questionable pursuits (i.e., black magic), referred to him as “the Beast.” In time, as Crowley’s notoriety as an occultist and very public celebrant of unrestrained hedonism grew, the press dubbed him “the wickedest man in the world.”
View more photos at LIFE.
