Archive for May, 2010
Ex-Canadian Defense Minister Says Aliens Have Visited Earth: Hawking Is Wrong About Them
CTV News reports:
Stephen Hawking’s warnings of an alien invasion have prompted a vigorous defence of extraterrestrials by their most prominent Canadian fan. Former federal defence minister Paul Hellyer, 86, believes not only that aliens have visited Earth but also that they have contributed greatly to human technological advances.
So he can’t quite understand why the world renowned astrophysicist views them with such trepidation; Hawking recently warned that malevolent aliens could lead to the destruction of humanity.
The longtime cabinet minister accuses Hawking of spreading misinformation about extraterrestrials.
“I think he’s indulging in some pretty scary talk there that I would have hoped would not come from someone with such an established stature,” Hellyer said in an interview.
“I think it’s really sad that a scientist of his repute would contribute to what I would consider more misinformation about a vast and very important subject.”
Hawking speculates in a new documentary that most extraterrestrial life will be…
Silenced Financial Crisis Blogger Wins Court Case: Re-Posts Materials on Mortgage Specialists’ Fraud
The Mortage Lender Implode-O-Meter blog reports:
In a resounding ruling for free speech, the New Hampshire Supreme Court has reversed a superior court’s ruling ordering the Implode-o-Meter web site to take down contributed materials and divulge the identity of a whistleblower.
The case was The Mortgage Specialists vs. Implode-Explode Heavy Industries, Inc. (the owner of ML-Implode.com). It concerned items posted to MoSpec’s “Ailing/Watch List” entry — the 2007 “Loan Chart” data for the company, and a post by username “Brianbattersby” accusing MoSpec and its President, Michael Gill, of habitual/systemic fraud.
In light of the ruling, the original content has been restored at the company’s ML-Implode profile here.
The portions of the post written by ML-Implode chiefly concerned MoSpec being fined in 2008 by the New Hampshire and Massachusetts banking departments for its practices. (MoSpec’s President, Michael Gill, called these “compliance” issues; the ML-Implode whistleblower argued otherwise.)
Read More: Mortage Lender Implode-O-Meter
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Our Fear of Vulnerability
Photo: Nevit Dilmen (CC)
Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:
For a country that prides itself on its freedoms, we’ve systematically begun to dismantle them in favor of a perceived sense of safety. We have the largest, most powerful military in the world. Our surveillance systems and police technologies are state of the art. We have more law enforcement agencies than acronyms available.
Yet, for all the measures in place to make us feel safe, we live our lives in fear of the next thwarted terrorist attack. To live and believe that we are the most powerful country in the world and simultaneously feel so vulnerable is a mental gymnastics performance that would make Orwell blush.
With all of the shouting in the public square about the constitution and the paranoia some Americans fear over “big government,” how can our elected leaders even begin to fathom, let alone propose and support such draconian and…
Chinese Man Has Eaten 1,500 Light Bulbs Over 42 Years
Simon Crisp writes on Asylum:
Photo: KMJ (CC)
A Chinese man says for the past 40 years he’s snacked on broken glass from lightbulbs, adding that he finds them “crispy and delicious.”
54-year-old Wang Xianjun, from the Sichuan province of China, claims he started eating light bulbs when he was 12 years old, and that he must have now eaten about 1,500 lightbulbs in total.
Xianjun says it all started when he accidentally swallowed a large fish bone as a child. His parents were worried what the bone might do to his insides, but he didn’t feel any discomfort at all.
This experience led him, out of curiosity, to try swallowing a small chunk of broken glass. (Well, why not? Oher than possibly killing yourself.) Again, he felt no adverse effects.
“I accidentally swallowed a piece of thick fish bone, but nothing happened,” he said. “With curiosity, I tried several pieces of broken glasses secretly and…
Legalize Pot? Get Mom Onboard
Pot usage amongst young and middle-aged moms isn’t new and it isn’t a fad. The legalization lobby is smart to target these ladies to help get out the vote. MSNBC reports:
Moms got tougher drunk-driving laws on the books and were directly responsible for passing and then repealing alcohol Prohibition. Now marijuana activists are trying to enlist the nation’s mothers in legalization efforts with a sales pitch that pot is safer than booze.
The nation’s largest marijuana legalization lobby recently started a women’s group. The Moms4Marijuana website draws thousands. And just in time for Mother’s Day, a pot legalization group in Denver has created a pink-carnation web card asking moms to support legalization.
These marijuana moms argue that pot is no worse than alcohol, that teens shouldn’t face jail time for experimenting with it and that marijuana can even help new mothers treat postpartum depression. “I know so many mothers who support this but…
FCC Gives Hollywood The Right To Break Your TV/DVR … Just ‘Cause
It is always disheartening when something is made illegal because you could do something naughty with it. Techdirt reports:
Photo: Mattl (CC)
For a couple years now, the MPAA has been asking the FCC to break your TV/DVR, and let them effectively put a type of DRM (by enabling “Selectable Output Control” or SOC) on video content, such that you will not be able to access the content via third party devices, such as your DVR or your Slingbox. Effectively, they want to break the ability of your equipment to work. You wouldn’t be able to legally record the movie that was playing on your TV. The MPAA’s argument here makes absolutely no sense at all — and when they’re called on it, the doubletalk comes out.
The MPAA’s argument is that if it could block people from recording movies, they could release the movies on things like PPV before they release them on…
Technoccult Dossiers: William S. Burroughs, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison
Technoccult is now running dossiers like those of Disinfo-Past. The first three up are: William S. Burroughs, Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. Enjoy!
Herschel Captures the Birth of a Giant Star
The Universe is so large that you can look around and see events so rare that they only happen once in the course of millions of years. TG Daily reports:
Photo: European Space Agency
ESA’s Herschel telescope has snapped an embryonic star likely to turn into one of the biggest and brightest in our galaxy within the next few hundred thousand years.
The star-forming cloud RCW 120 already contains eight to ten times the mass of the Sun, and is still surrounded by an additional 2,000 solar masses of gas and dust from which it can feed further.
“This star can only grow bigger,” says Annie Zavagno of the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille. But, she says, “According to our current understanding, you should not be able to form stars larger than eight solar masses.”
This is because the fierce light emitted by such large stars should blast away their birth clouds. Now that Herschel has observed…
Seven Worst Mother’s Day Gifts
Lou Cabron writes on 10 Zen Monkeys:
Mother’s Day lets you recognize mom’s good qualities — like her saint-like patience for your jackass sensitivity.
Or, to put it another way — her sense of humor.
So here’s our list of the seven worst mother’s day gifts we could imagine.
“But Mom loves you already. So what have you got to lose?”
MIT Researchers Print Solar Cell on Paper
What if everyday objects where constantly soaking up the power of the sun? This breakthrough from the folks at MIT could make that possible. Green Technology Daily reports:
Photo: Martin LaMonica, CNET
Scientists at the Eni-MIT Solar Frontiers Research Center have successfully printed thin-film solar on paper. By coating white sheets of paper with organic semiconductors, the researchers are, in effect, able to turn an everyday object into a current-producing device.
MIT President Susan Hockfield and Paolo Scaroni, CEO of the Italian oil company Eni, officially dedicated the new research center last week. Vladimir Bulovic, the center’s director, took the opportunity to unveil the paper solar panel.
The process is said to be similar to an inkjet printer. Just as an inkjet deposits ink onto paper fairly quickly and cheaply, the MIT scientists are depositing carbon-based dyes, used as organic semiconductors, to absorb the sunlight and then convert it into solar electricity.
According to Bulovic, any…
Eight New Rules for Fighting Cancer
Via h+ magazine:
Futurist Alex Lightman unveils eight new rules for fighting cancer. Among them: “There are dogs that, if they see or smell cancer, will snarl, bark, and try to bite off the cancerous skin. Strange as it sounds, you actually want to get one of these dogs, and you want your friends to get one too. You want to let the dog sniff you and see you slowly twirl around in all your naked glory at least once a week. Even more importantly, you want a dog that can sniff your urine and bark if you have cancer.”
Other rules:
— “The more obese someone is, the more likelihood he or she will get cancer, particularly cancers of internal organs.” (Though you still need enough fat to absorb essential vitamins…)
— After your mid-60s, you’re less likely to die of cancer each year. “A study of centenarians revealed that fewer than 4% died of cancer…”
— “The sun on your body is your friend for up to 10 minutes a day. After that, it’s trying to kill you.”
Lightman believes cancer should be fought by each of us as individuals. “Cancer is a tax on fat people, lazy people, smokers, and people who consume processed meats and coat their bodies with lots of chemicals. You don’t have to pay this tax, but it does mean changing or eliminating what you eat, drink, smoke, or rub on your skin.”
British Taxpayers Ordered to Bail Out Euro
Looks like it’s Europe’s turn for a round of taxpayer funded bailouts. The Telegraph reports:
Photo: Julien Jorge (CC)
All 27 EU finance ministers have been summoned to Brussels on Sunday to sign up to a “European stabilisation mechanism. Britain will be unable to veto this as it will be put through under the “qualified majority voting” system.
The deal, effectively to shore up the euro, was denounced as a “stitch-up” last night after it emerged Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President and Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, had devised it behind closed doors and were attempting to push it through at a time when there is no clear government in Britain.
It was declared a “done deal” by the 16 euro zone leaders who met in the early hours of Saturday morning.
The decision was taken as David Cameron was locked in talks with the Liberal Democrats to try to form a government.
Alistair Darling, the Chancellor,…
Does the Sun Have A Jupiter-Sized Companion Star in the Far Reaches of Our Solar System?
Editor’s note: This paper submitted to arXiv, which is an electronic service for academic papers supported by Cornell University, is citing evidence for the controversial Nemesis star theory, which claims our solar system is actually a binary star system. Below is the abstract is this paper. The authors of this paper are claiming this star exists in the boundary of our solar system, the Oort cloud and is around (in astronomical terms) the size of Jupiter. John J. Matese and Daniel P. Whitmire write via arXiv.org:
We present an updated dynamical and statistical analysis of outer Oort cloud cometary evidence suggesting the sun has a wide-binary Jovian mass companion. The results support a conjecture that there exists a companion of mass ~1–4 M_Jup orbiting in the innermost region of the outer Oort cloud.
Our most restrictive prediction is that the orientation angles of the orbit normal in galactic coordinates are centered on the galactic longitude of the ascending node Omega = 319 degree and the galactic inclination i = 103 degree (or the opposite direction) with an uncertainty in the normal direction subtending ~2% of the sky.
Congress Members Bet on Fall in Stocks
This can’t possibly be a good sign. WSJ reports:
Photo: Asy arch (CC)
Some members of Congress made risky bets with their own money that U.S. stocks or bonds would fall during the financial crisis, a Wall Street Journal analysis of congressional disclosures shows.
Senators have criticized Goldman Sachs Group Inc. for profiting from the housing collapse. And Congress is considering legislation to curb Wall Street risk-taking, including the use of financial instruments known as derivatives and of leverage, or methods that amplify returns.
According to The Journal’s analysis of congressional disclosures, investment accounts of 13 members of Congress or their spouses show bearish bets made in 2008 via exchange-traded funds — portfolios that trade like stocks and mirror an index. These funds were leveraged; they used derivatives and other techniques to magnify the daily moves of the index they track.
There’s no evidence the legislators and their spouses used privileged information or failed to follow rules on…
President Obama Ordered An Assassination Against An American Citizen…
And then, there’s that Predator drone joke. 
From Nick Pell at Black Sun Gazette:
Before I launch into an extended rant about the recent BP exploision, I wanted to highlight something that I thought was very important.
At a recent Washington Correspondents Association, President Barack Obama made an off-handed joke about using predator drones to keep the Jonas Brothers off his daughters. I know that this is one of those many times where I’m going to be told that I’m overreacting.
But let’s think for a second about the record of Barack Obama. A man who ran for office on promises of “hope and change” quickly proved that he was the same type of establishment hack as the man who sat in the chair before him. This was proven, above all, by maintaining the status quo in the Department of Defense, despite being elected in large part due to a massive backlash against American involvement in two imperialist wars.
There are real victims of American attacks on Pakistan with predator drones, many of them children. Over a thousand civilians are known to have been killed by predator drone attacks since they began in Pakistan. Further, Barack Obama has ordered not just predator drone attacks that kill civilians in Afghanistan. He is also the first President in world history to order an assassination against an American citizen.
Mystery Disease Linked to Missing Israeli Scientist
A strange fungus has stricken a number of people in the Pacific Northwest. Is it a bio-weapon gone wrong? Truthout reports:
Media outlets across the Northwest United States began reporting on April 24 that a strange, previously unknown strain of virulent airborne fungi that has already killed at least six people in Oregon, Washington and Idaho is spreading throughout the region. The fungus, according to expert microbiologists, who have expressed alarm about the emergence of the strain, is a new genotype of Cryptococcus gatti fungi. Cryptococcus gatti is normally found in tropical and subtropical locations in India, South America, Africa and Australia. Microbiologists in the United States are reporting that the strain found here, for reasons not yet fully understood, is far deadlier than any found overseas.
Physicians in the Pacific Northwest are reporting that an undetermined number of people in the region are ill from the effects of the strange strain. Physicians…
For Airport Security, Size Matters
Photo: Miami-Dade Police
Via the Smoking Gun:
A Transportation Security Administration screener is facing an assault rap after he allegedly beat a co-worker who joked about the size of the man’s genitalia after he walked through a security scanner. The May 4 confrontation involved Rolando Negrin, 44, and other TSA employees who had previously taken part in a training session at Miami International Airport, according to the below Miami-Dade Police Department reports.
Negrin, pictured in the mug shot at right, and his co-workers had been training with new “whole body image” machines — the controversial kind that provide very revealing images of a traveler — when Negrin walked through the scanner. “The X-ray revealed that [Negrin] has a small penis and co-workers made fun of him on a daily basis,” reported cops. Following his arrest, Negrin told police that he “could not take the jokes anymore and lost his mind.”
Read More: Smoking Gun
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Congress Shot Down, Last Night, The Most Important Wall Street Reform Ever Proposed
What is Congress getting right now? A Philosopher’s Stone? The Holy Grail? The Ark of the Covenant? Your ideas are quite welcome. Zach Carter writes on Alternet:
Late last night, the U.S. Senate rejected the single most important element of Wall Street reform by a vote of 33 to 61.
The SAFE Banking Act would have forced the break-up of the nation’s six largest banks, and dramatically reduced the political clout of America’s financial elite.
The 61 votes against the measure are votes in favor of Wall Street’s stranglehold on our economy.
No matter what else is ultimately enacted in the name of Wall Street reform, Congress has decided that it will not confront the single greatest problem in the U.S. economy: too big to fail.
On Wednesday, the Senate also voted down a $50 billion Wall Street tax that would have been used to fund the cost of shutting down a major failing bank.…
