Archive for May, 2010
Two Minutes Hate
From Nick Pell at Red Star Times
Four things happened recently that I think require attention. They speak to not just the world that we live in as it is, but the direction where we are headed. It’s a cliche to repeat, but that won’t stop me–the Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times” applies now more than ever.
We do, indeed live in “interesting” times. Times as interesting as 1914, 1929 or 1939. We will live to see days like 1905, 1936 and 1968. Only time will tell if they blossom into 1789, 1871 or 1917, but the alternative is too terrifying to even contemplate.
Druid Stones Prevent Car Accidents In Austria
If they wanted, could druids use their powers to cause accidents? The U.K.’s Metro reports:
Austrian motorway authority ASFINAG said it was skeptical at first and kept the project a secret. But it went public after the druids’ efforts cut the number of deaths at the notorious crash site from six a year to zero in two years.
Arch druid Ilmar Tessmann was called in as a last resort after a high number of fatal accidents were reported on a straight stretch of motorway near Salzburg.
He said the crashes were caused by radiation from a nearby mobile phone mast disrupting the area’s normal ‘terrestrial’ radiation. As well as using quartz standing stones to restore the area’s ‘natural energy’, the druids…[buried] magnets in the ground.
The Richest And Poorest U.S. Presidents
The Atlantic goes through U.S. history president-by-president and breaks down the peak wealth of each. Barack Obama’s $5 million fortune is relatively paltry, making him the poorest of our last ten presidents. The all-time richest? Either JFK or George Washington, who was worth $525 million in today’s dollars:
His Virginia plantation, “Mount Vernon,” consisted of five separate farms on 8,000 acres of prime farmland, run by over 300 slaves. His wife, Martha Washington, inherited significant property from her father. Washington made significantly more than subsequent presidents: his salary was two percent of the total U.S. budget in 1789.
Toynbee Tiles: A Strange Message Found in Sidewalks Worldwide
Now this is a whole level of weird I wasn’t expecting to come across today. Via Wikipedia:
The Toynbee tiles (also called Toynbee plaques) are messages of mysterious origin found embedded in asphalt in about two dozen major cities in the United States and three South American capitals. Since the 1980s, several hundred tiles have been discovered. They are generally about the size of an American license plate, but sometimes considerably larger. They contain some variation on the following inscription:
TOYNBEE IDEA IN KUBRICK’S 2001
RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPITER.
Some of the more elaborate tiles also feature cryptic political statements or exhort readers to create and install similar tiles of their own. The material used for making the tiles was long a mystery, but evidence has emerged that they may be primarily made of layers of linoleum and asphalt crack-filling compound.
Read More: Wikipedia
A National Outrage: Our Tax Dollars Subsidize Foods That Make Us Fat And Unhealthy
Tony Isaacs for Natural News:
At the same time that our Surgeon General has declared we have an epidemic of obesity, our government is using our tax dollars to cater to special interests and to subsidize the very foods that are making us fat. Thanks to lobbying, Congress chooses to subsidize foods that we’re supposed to eat less of.
Take a look at these numbers which tell how the percentage of federal food subsidies spending is allocated:
* Meat/Dairy – 73.8 percent
* Grains – 13.2 percent
* Sugar/Oil/Starch/Alcohol – 10.7 percent
* Nuts/Legumes – 1.9 percent
* Vegetables/Fruits – 0.4 percentJust 2.3 percent of subsidies go to nuts, legumes, fruits and vegetables while 84.5% goes to meat, dairy, sugar, oil, starch and alcohol. Is it any wonder that a salad often costs you more than a Big Mac?…
[continues at Natural News]
Palin Says Obama’s An ‘Opium Addict’
By Polly Davis Doig for Newser:
If only what happens in Vegas really did stay in Vegas: Sarah Palin brought her act to a retail Realtors’ convention this weekend, but instead of giving a leadership speech, she delivered her stump speech, slammed Obama as an “opium addict” (Other People’s Money, get it?), and stuck in an awkward reference about being able to replace lost luggage at an Idaho mall. “What would our communities be without our shopping centers?” the Las Vegas Sun quotes her as saying. “Meeting our needs is what it is that you do.”
The whole routine went over like a lead balloon, reports Joe Weisenthal at Business Insider…
Ocean Floor Rising By 13 Feet Per Day In Australia
From Ray Alex’s Website:
This is very disturbing. More and more things are happening that really shouldn’t. Is the 2012 events we are waiting for, starting already? The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has a Tsunami station in event mode activated for Station 55023 – STB Coral Sea located at 14.803 S 153.585 E (14°48’9″ S 153°35’6″ E). The tsunami station has been in event mode since the large quakes occurred in the area for several days now. This is triggered by the buoys’ anomalies of water column height above the sea floor. If you do a data search for 2010 March 20th to 2010 April 13th you get this- Over 100 meters or 328 feet less distance from buoy to sea floor in 24 days! That’s 13 feet per day since the quakes. As you will see from the waves on the line graph it matches the tide lines perfectly…
[continues…
Hubble Finds Star Eating a Planet
Reads like an extreme case of global warming … unlike what’s going to happen to Earth is around 5 billion years when the Sun expands enough to consume most of the inner Solar System (one theory), this planet is moving towards its star. The poor thing only has around 10 million years left.
Man, the Hubble keeps finding cool stuff.
So the clock’s ticking (in astronomical terms), it’s time for the one scientist over there who no one is listening to about this planet’s impending destruction to rocket his infant son off into the universe … not too far from Earth. Reports the Hubble Site News Center…
GM Food Dangers With Jeffrey Smith (Video, Part 1)
Author and filmmaker Jeffrey Smith discussed the dangers of eating genetically modified (GM) foods, and how the biotech industry has tried to cover up negative reports. The stakes are high right now, with a Supreme Court battle over approval of genetically modified alfalfa, and the Dept. of Justice combined with the Dept. of Agriculture investigating if Monsanto is a monopoly, he reported.
These Golden Books Are Not For Children (Photos)
This definitely would have messed with my head as a kid. Thanks to Luke Plunkett for the post about Josh Cooley’s wonderfully twisted artwork. Luke Plunkett writes on Kotaku:
Most, if not all of you, will at some stage of your life been read to from a Golden Book. They’re a childhood staple. But what if there were Golden Books that, uh, weren’t exactly suitable for the little ones?
They’d look like these! Josh Cooley, an artist at Pixar, has been whipping these up in his spare time for the past two years, and they’re amazing. Most are pretty self-explanatory — and if I have to tell you the movie, you won’t get the joke — but if you’re finding yourself lost by most of them, you might want to catch up on your ’70s movies…
Rep. Alan Grayson Introduces the War Is Making You Poor Act (Video)
Rep. Grayson introduces a bill to cut separate funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and uses the money to eliminate federal income taxes on every American’s first $35,000 of income. Cosponsors of this bill include Ron Paul, Walter Jones, John Conyers, Lynn Woolsey, and Dennis Kucinich.
Arizona Uses Puppet Video To Sell Immigration Law
What is wrong with Arizona?!? By Jordan Fabian for The Hill:
Who knew that Kermit the Frog was this into politics. The campaign of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) has put out a video that features a frog puppet — that looks much like the famous Sesame Street character — to help sell the state’s controversial immigration law.
The frog encourages opponents to read the immigration law before criticizing it.
Some may scoff, but the law has boosted Brewer in the polls over her Democratic opponent, Terry Goddard.
Watch it here:
UFODC-Obama Adviser Says Documented UFO/ET Landings On U.S. Capitol ‘Could Destabilize Society’
Alfred Lambremont Webre writing at the Examiner:
Wilbur “Will” Allen, a former White House employee and Air Force One engineer under U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, has stated that Everett Bellamy (Senior Assistant Dean of Georgetown Law Center), on behalf of John Podesta, who is a full-time faculty member at Georgetown Law Center, a former White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton (1998-2001) and Co-chair of the Obama Transition Team (2008-9), told Mr. Allen that the frequent UFO and extraterrestrial over flights and landings on the U.S. Capitol that Mr. Allen is able to document photographically using state of the art high definition equipment could, if made widely public, “destabilize society,” and urged Mr. Allen to cease his activity documenting these UFO/ET over fights and landings.
Ironically, at a November 14, 2007 press conference at the National Press Club, John Podesta himself called for public examination…
Google Attorney Calls Intellectual Property Treaty “Gollum-like”
Nothing like a good Lord of the Rings reference to make your point about Copyright Law. Declan McCullagh writes on CNET News:
Gollum sculpture at Wax Museum in Mexico City. Photo: Vic201401 (CC)
An attorney for Google slammed a controversial intellectual property treaty, saying it has “metastasized” from a proposal to address border security and counterfeit goods to an international legal framework sweeping in copyright and the Internet.
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, is “something that has grown in the shadows, Gollum-like,” without public scrutiny, Daphne Keller, a senior policy counsel in Mountain View, Calif., said at a conference at Stanford University.
Both the Obama administration and the Bush administration had rejected requests from civil libertarians and technologists for the text of ACTA, with the White House last year even indicating that disclosure would do “damage to the national security.” After pressure from the European Parliament, however, negotiators released the draft text two weeks…
Bulgarian Scientist Claims Alien Contact, Falls Silent
Tim Brosnan writes at Technorati:
I received an email today updating me on the strange case of Lachezar Filipov.
On November 26, 2009, London’s Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail reported that Filipov, deputy director of the Space Research Institute (NASA equivalent) of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, had announced that, “aliens are currently all around us, and are watching us all the time.” He claimed that he and a team of BAS scientists had interviewed several aliens (by means not disclosed) and that the answers to their questions were encoded in crop circle formations. According to the Telegraph, BAS issued a report on these communications, but I’ve yet to find it online.
A Phoenix-based paranormal talk radio host named Kevin Smith says he contacted Filipov by phone shortly after the articles were published and Filipov agreed to be interviewed, saying it was his “duty” to make his team’s discoveries public.
Then, Smith says, the good doctor…
Are Apps The Online Equivalent Of White Flight?
Does anyone agree with Virginia Heffernan’s New York Times essay about the rise of apps being equivalent to “the online equivalent of white flight”?
The Web is a teeming commercial city. It’s haphazardly planned. Its public spaces are mobbed, and signs of urban decay abound in broken links and abandoned projects. Malware and spam have turned living conditions in many quarters unsafe and unsanitary. Bullies and hucksters roam the streets. An entrenched population of rowdy, polyglot rabble seems to dominate major sites.
People who find the Web distasteful — ugly, uncivilized — have nonetheless been forced to live there: it’s the place to go for jobs, resources, services, social life, the future. But now, with the purchase of an iPhone or an iPad, there’s a way out, an orderly suburb that lets you sample the Web’s opportunities without having to mix with the riffraff. This suburb is defined by apps from the glittering…
Bill Nye ‘The Science Guy’ Reviews Ideas For Solving Gulf Coast Oil Spill
CNN iReporters submitted their ideas on how to solve the oil disaster in the Gulf. CNN asked scientist Bill Nye to take a look at them; he found problems with some proposals but merit in others.
Struggle and Substance: Convicted of High Revolution
From Jaguar Press:
We are made sick in this world. Fed on garbage and medicated on fear, our bodies are reaching their toxic limit physically and psychically. Who could tell us not to get fucked up, when we have to deal with genocide, factory slaughter, and the perpetual betrayal of our democracy and freedom. When the tortures of capitalist society circle our heads like a bloody carousel, where is there relief? This article will examine briefly the relationship between alcohol and marijuana and revolution.
We find solace in the effect of altering our perception and the routine of addiction. Alcohol is one of our favorites, of course, and we get drunk and act stupid and laws get put on the books and the drunks go to jail. It’s subject to absurd levels of social control and cultural stigma so that we have a hard time breaking from the mind numbing routine—drinking at…
Chemtrails and Monsanto’s New Aluminum Resistance Gene – Coincidence?
Barbara H. Peterson asks why Monsanto developed an aluminum resistance gene, at Farm Wars:
Monsanto is currently marketing an aluminum resistance gene. Here’s the spin, folks:
Small-scale, resource-poor farmers in developing countries face daily stresses, including poor soils, drought, and lack of inputs. Ongoing trends such as climate change and population growth will likely exacerbate binding stresses. A new generation of genetically engineered (GE) crop research aims to alleviate these pressures through the improvement of subsistence crops—such as cassava, sorghum, and millet—that incorporate traits such as tolerance to drought, water, and aluminum in soils as well as plants with more efficient nitrogen and phosphorus use. (Source)
Now, let’s take a look at journalist Michael Murphy’s research into chemtrails, geo-engineering, and the fact that extremely high levels of aluminum and barium are found in water, snow and soil, in areas shown to have heavy chemtrail patterns (three-part video):
