Archive for April, 2010
Google Reveals Number Of Goverment Censorship Requests Around The World
Google has done something pretty cool: it has released information on the number of government requests received to remove content, and the percentage of those requests Google complied with:
Like other technology and communications companies, we regularly receive requests from government agencies around the world to remove content from our services, or provide information about users of our services and products. The map shows the number of requests that we received between July 1, 2009 and December 31, 2009, with certain limitations.
We know these numbers are imperfect and may not provide a complete picture of these government requests. For example, a single request may ask for the removal of more than one URL or for the disclosure of information for multiple users.
Click on the map to access the Google page with interactive features.
Everything You Need to Know About Your Vagina
Can sex stretch it out? Is it supposed to have an odor? And why does it feel so freakin’ good when it’s touched and stroked? Cosmopolitan’s hoo-ha handbook has all the answers plus secrets to staying in top shape down there:
It has more nicknames than possibly any other female body part (sideways smile, anyone?), its own doctor, and the ability to bring you tons of pleasure — not to mention pain, particularly if you plan to have a baby. Yet the vagina remains a mystery to many. In fact, a Cosmo poll found that more than 60 percent of women say they don’t know a lot about their vadge — which is unfortunate, because a new study reports that chicks who feel confident about their down-there area have more orgasms. So we’ve put together a list of 15 bits of info to boost your V-zone comfort level. These are the…
Russia Bans Scientology Writings as Extremist
Scott Rose writes in the Moscow Times:
Works by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard will be added to the country’s list of extremist literature for “undermining the traditional spiritual values of the citizens of the Russian Federation,” the Prosecutor General’s Office said Wednesday.
The ruling — initiated by transport prosecutors in the Siberian city of Surgut and Khanty-Mansiisk customs officers — is the latest use of the hotly debated law on extremism to target systems of belief that are not traditional in Russia.
Individuals in possession of extremist materials can be jailed for up to 15 days or fined 3,000 rubles ($100). The law also allows for harsher punishment of suspects convicted of other crimes.
Prosecutors said they intercepted 28 individual titles, including books, audio and video recordings by Hubbard that were sent to residents in Surgut from the United States. The materials were sent for study to “psychiatrists, psychologists and sociologists,” who determined…
Dick Morris: Bill Clinton Personally Orchestrated the 1993 Waco, Texas Tragedy
The Mount Carmel Center in flames during the assault on April 19, 1993.
Fred Dardick for Canada Free Press:
It looks like somebody is going to have to update the Waco Siege page on Wikipedia. Apparently the whitewashed history that former President Bill Clinton would like us to believe regarding the 1993 federal assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, is missing important details regarding his own personal involvement.
In response to Bill Clinton’s highly publicized linking of the Tea Party movement to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing in an op-ed piece for the New York Times, former Clinton adviser Dick Morris disclosed on Monday that it was Clinton himself, and not Attorney General Janet Reno, as Americans have been led to believe for the past 17 years, who called the shots during the 1993 botched invasion that led to the death of seventy-six people.
Speaking on the Hannity program on the Fox…
KFC Buckets For The Cure Pinkwashing Campaign
Mike Adams for Natural News:
Susan G. Komen for the Cure has now crossed the line into asinine idiocy thanks to its new alliance with Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), where pink buckets of fried chicken are sold under the slogan, “Buckets for the Cure.” I’m not making this up. See the ad image below:
This idea that buying fried chicken is actually going to cure cancer is one of the most utterly idiotic health ideas yet witnessed in American pop culture. Komen for the Cure is so far gone from reality that the organization apparently doesn’t even think twice about suggesting such an absurd idea. Eat more fried chicken, folks, and then what? Loading up on that kind of a diet is more likely to cause you to kick the bucket than to find a cure for cancer.
Does fried chicken actually promote cancer?
Fried chicken, you see, is coated in starches. The recipe…
Extreme Fans Would Give Up A Body Part For Their Team To Win The World Cup
A survey reveals that some soccer fans are so eager to see their national team win at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa that they’d give up a body part to make it happen. I really want England to win, but I’m not sure I’d go that far … would you? Reported by Reuters:
Fifty-one percent of respondents to the tongue-in-cheek survey of 20,000 people, who live in North America but hail from countries with teams in the June 11-July 11 World Cup, said they would starve themselves for a week if that would bring victory to their national squad.
More than 40 percent offered to give up dating for a year, while seven percent said they would gladly give up their job to see their country win the title.
A further four percent were willing to give away a body part.
The survey was conducted by U.S.-based international calling firm VIP…
Roger Ebert: Games Are Not Art and Never Will Be
From the Guardian:
Five years, ago film critic Roger Ebert wrote that video games were inherently inferior to film and literature. When questioned on this stance by one of the readers of his Chicago Sun-Times column he responded:
“To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. That a game can aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience, I accept. But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.”
His argument provoked a furious response from games writers, pundits and players, many of whom mistakingly understood his position to be generally anti-games – and therefore evil. Perhaps because of vociferous barrage his comments gave rise to, he has refused to clarify his position.
Until late last…
Randall Carlson: “Earth Changes and The Precession of The Equinoxes”
From renegade scholar Randall Carlson, he takes the viewer through the relationship of Sacred Geometry in Time and Space and it’s manifestation of the phenomenon of the Precession of The Equinoxes (POE). The POE cosmic time cycle presents the frame work for understanding the cosmic cycles of destruction and rebirth.
Modern Psychedelic Scientists Find Data in Countercultural Past
From Wired:
A sprawling Holiday Inn by the San Jose Airport does not seem like the right place for a conference on the new science of psychedelic drug therapies.Yet, last week, the stucco-walled hotel played host to a mèlange of playful scientific researchers, serious drug self-experimenters, and roving bands of hippies in handmade-looking clothing. The scene was as strange as you’d expect at a conference called “Psychedelic Science in the 21st Century.”
Scientists and doctors studying the medical uses of psychedelics are trying to figure out what to do with the cultural heritage of their drugs. There is a lot of baggage associated with LSD, for example, that new pharmaceuticals don’t carry: There are no Jay-Z songs about Zoloft. On the other hand, the vast numbers of experiences drug users have had with psychedelics could be a dark dataset that, with the right filters, helps aid the pursuit of scientific knowledge.
For the…
Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity Movie Crashes A Computer
A funny thing happened when they tried to screen The Singularity is Near. After the lights went down, a computer crash prevented the movie from starting! “Ray Kurzweil got back on stage…and good-naturedly reassured us that the technology was getting better. A couple of minutes later, the movie started…”
The new documentary is a clear rendition of the ideas in Kurzweil’s book, including nanotechnology and artificial intelligence, “with Bill McKibben in the role of the friendly flat out opponent, Bill Joy playing the reasonable but worried man, and Mitch Kapor doubting the technological possibilities… K. Eric Drexler, MIT roboticist Cynthia Breazeal, desktop manufacturing guru Neil Gershenfeld and many many more are woven in to support the idea – and the more hopeful potentials – of accelerating change leading to radical alterations in life (itself).”
The movie includes a second fictional narrative showing the future, “and – one of them, at least – is rather…
Psychedelia and Cynicism in ’60s Counterculture
From Boston.com:
There once was a group of surfers in Southern California, many of them former teen rebels, who became “enlightened.’’ Specifically, the young men sought to achieve a higher state through the ritual ingestion of psychedelic drugs. Though their impact on the American counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s would be considerable, this group of self-styled religious visionaries has been largely forgotten. If they’re remembered for anything, according to Nicholas Schou in his book “Orange Sunshine,’’ it is the newspaper reports that detailed various members’ eventual escapades in the nefarious underworld of the international drug trade. Journalists covering the police raids that broke up their smuggling enterprises typically made wry observation of the group’s name: the Brotherhood of Eternal Love.
The Brotherhood was responsible for naming Orange Sunshine, the potent form of LSD that Schou says was 200 times stronger than the acid then on the market. After shifting much…
A Picture of 9/11 Is Not a Thing to Put on Your Truck
Thanks, Adrian Chen of Gawker:
There’s more on Gawker to read about meaning of the license plate here…
U.S. Park Police: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell; and Image Control
Yesterday, after six discharged veterans, Lt. Dan Choi, Capt. Jim Pietrangelo II, Petty Officer Larry Whitt, Petty Officer Autumn Sandeen, Cadet Mara Boyd, and Airman Victor Price, handcuffed themselves to the White House front fence, U.S. Park Police forced the public and the media to leave Lafayette Park, which takes up about an acre in front of the executive offices and residences.
The six chained themselves in protest against the don’t ask, don’t tell policy regarding homosexuals serving in the U.S. military, which places a prohibition on both inquiring of a servicemember’s sexual orientation and the explanation by a servicemember of their non-heterosexual orientation.
Barely more than a month ago, the White House’ front gate has played host to protests where some disparaged the president as a mass murderer, and yet the public and the media did not have to leave the park. Police around the White House barred protesters, but not…
Monstrous Teenagers from the Charles Burns Comic ‘Black Hole’ Brought to Life
Looks like the source site The Operators is currently down, but thankfully Cyriaque Lamar on io9.com posted a bunch of these wonderfully disturbing recreations of the Charles Burns classic graphic novel Black Hole:
The “Bug” never looked so freaky…
The Eyeborg Rob Spence Wants Augmented Reality in His Head
What is augmented reality? Check out the Eyeborg’s latest project:
Disinformation: The Podcast interviewed Rob Spence last year, take a listen. Also check out this impromptu CrunchGear interview with the Eyeborg (right in the NYC Disinformation office) that took place around the same time:
Arcade Hire
Until recently, Nick Pell worked the night shift at an adult arcade, indulging a lifelong desire to be a fly on the wall of booth culture. His experiences with customers, the boss and the reality of life in the back room of an adult video store follow, via Just Out:
The electronic chirp sounds before I hear the door. Sitting up straight to look presentable, I see three guys walk in—young guys, apparently successful and, above all, handsome guys, well groomed and well dressed. I hand them each five ones. They gossip a bit in front of me, seemingly expecting me to join in. I don’t. I smile politely before putting all of my energy into ignoring the Missing Persons track and people of genders common and rare taking facials on plasma televisions all around me.
The computer’s alarm tells me to check the arcade. I do this every 15 minutes. It keeps…
The New U.S. $100 Bill
It’s both amusing and exasperating to see such great effort to bolster the authenticity of our currency. Especially knowing it holds no “real” value to begin with. Here’s what newmoney.gov has to say about it:
Officials from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the Federal Reserve Board and the United States Secret Service today unveiled the new design for the $100 note. Complete with advanced technology to combat counterfeiting, the new design for the $100 note retains the traditional look of U.S. currency.
“As with previous U.S. currency redesigns, this note incorporates the best technology available to ensure we’re staying ahead of counterfeiters,” said Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner.
“When the new design $100 note is issued in TBD, the approximately 6.5 billion old design $100s already in circulation will remain legal tender,” said Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board Ben S. Bernanke. “U.S. currency users should know they will not have to…
12 Evilest Photos Of The Pope
Why is the Pope so terrifying? And that’s even without taking the latest round of pedophilia scandals into consideration. Via Buzzfeed, some of the most horrifying, dream-haunting pictures of the current Pope:
Freaky…
Georgia To Ban Implanting Microchips In People Against Their Will
Georgia’s state legislature has passed Bill SB235, which now awaits the governor’s signature, following some, er, colorful testimony, including a women claiming her coworkers torment her via a microchip in her rectum. Is this bill insane, or prescient of a scary future? From the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
Three states have instituted bans, and others have considered the legislation. In Virginia, a bill supporter declared microchips to be the “666″ mark of the beast referred to in the Book of Revelation.
[Former] Gov. Roy Barnes argues, if someone holds him down to insert a microchip in his head, “it should be more than a damned misdemeanor.”
A hefty woman who described herself as a resident of DeKalb County: “I’m also one of the people in Georgia who has a microchip.”
She spoke of the “right to work without being tortured by co-workers who are activating these microchips by using their cell phones and other electronic…
