Archive for May, 2010
Program Or Be Programmed: Programming Is Our Era’s Equivalent Of Literacy
Fascinating, albeit brief, comments by Doug Rushkoff on his blog. I can’t wait to hear more of his thoughts – I think he’s right, but what does it really mean in practice for those of who who aren’t programmers and are well past college?
I am writing Program or Be Programmed as a book. I will be done soon. Weeks, not months. Recent events in the Facebook and Apple universes have convinced me more than ever that programming is our era’s equivalent of literacy. Whether corporations are controlling the direction of technology, or whether technology is an emergent entity doing this on its own, our only option is to participate in its unfolding by participating in its programming…
Obama recently told a college audience that they’re being distracted by their iPads, and that they need to become aware of who is programming the devices they use. He is right…
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Something To Like About Twitter: It Killed Justin Bieber
Justin Bieber. Photo: Kevin Aranibar (CC)
For those of you who have a love-hate (or just a plain hate) relationship with Twitter, maybe this will help you feel better: they’ve killed Justin Bieber, reported in the Village Voice:
Death, taxes and Justin Bieber trending on Twitter, right? Not any more, according to Mashable who are reporting that the 140-character empire has shifted its trending topics algorithm to favor what’s “most breaking” and “immediately popular.”
The tech blog confirmed that “on Wednesday [Twitter] made updates to improve the relevancy of trending topics. In the past, trending topics were dominated by consistently popular items (e.g. Justin Bieber) with little regard as to what was ‘hot’ at any given moment.”
But isn’t Bieber is hot at every moment?
The official Twitter explanation goes like this:
The new algorithm identifies topics that are immediately popular, rather than topics that have been popular for a while or on a daily basis, to help people…
Did A UFO Fly Over New Jersey This Week?
Photo: David Gard/For The Star-Ledger
I don’t know what this is, but my first move would not be to call 911. Not sure what a terrestrial phone operator is going to do for you (unless that was all part of the alien plan…) Stephen Stirling writes in the Star-Ledger:
Police said they were swamped with phone calls after a flurry of callers reported to radio station NJ 101.5 that a UFO was flying above the area. Residents then began calling the Somerville Police Department to report the object.
“I first noticed when all our mechanics started looking up at the sky,” said Terry Weil, a sales associate at Honda Autosport in Bridgewater. “It looked like a big black strip fluttering in the air. Maybe a cylinder.”
Somerville Police Lt. Donna Young said authorities were not sure what the object was, but said it caused no problems other than tying up police phone lines shortly…
Jupiter Loses A Stripe
David Shiga writes on New Scientist:
Jupiter has lost one of its prominent stripes, leaving its southern half looking unusually blank. Scientists are not sure what triggered the disappearance of the band.
Jupiter’s appearance is usually dominated by two dark bands in its atmosphere — one in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern hemisphere.
But recent images taken by amateur astronomers show that the southern band — called the south equatorial belt — has disappeared.
The band was present at the end of 2009, right before Jupiter moved too close to the sun in the sky to be observed from Earth. When the planet emerged from the sun’s glare again in early April, its south equatorial belt was nowhere to be seen.
Read More: New Scientist
Why the Enlightened Liberal Class Is Complicit in the Country’s Downward Spiral
This article from TruthDig is good reminder that just because you are educated, it doesn’t mean you have escaped “The System.”
We are approaching a decade of war in Afghanistan, and the war in Iraq is in its eighth year. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands more Afghans and Pakistani civilians have been killed. Millions have been driven into squalid displacement and refugee camps. Thousands of our own soldiers and Marines have died or been crippled physically and psychologically. We sustain these wars, which have no real popular support, by borrowing trillions of dollars that can never be repaid, even as we close schools, states go into bankruptcy, social services are cut, our infrastructure crumbles, tens of millions of Americans are reduced to poverty, and real unemployment approaches 17 percent. Collective, suicidal inertia rolls us forward toward national insolvency and the collapse of empire. And we do not protest. The peace…
Christian Right’s Favorite Muslim Convert Exposed As Jihadi Fraud
Looks like the Evangelicals have a scandal of their own to contend with now. Alternet reports:
Liberty Seminary President Ergun Caner claims he traveled the road ‘from jihad to Jesus,’ but Baptist bloggers say his stories of terrorist training are false.
Ergun Caner’s rise to the top of conservative evangelical celebrity — and to the presidency of the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell — was fueled by how aggressively he capitalized on the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, to portray himself as a personal example of the power of Jesus to save even someone raised as a jihadist, which he claimed to be.
There’s only one problem with that part of Caner’s story: it appears not to be true.
In 2001, Caner was pastoring a church in Colorado. After 9/11, he became a hot commodity on the speaking circuit as someone who knew about the evils of Islam…
ACLU Fights Against Jail Time For Swearing In Pennsylvania
For those who like to pepper their speech with profanity (and don’t we all from time to time?), you might want to steer clear of Pennsylvania until the ACLU makes it safe for you: they are suing the police in Pennsylvania for issuing tickets, which carry a jail sentence, to people for swearing. Story via Reuters:
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which filed the lawsuits earlier, argues that the right to use profanity is protected by the U.S. Constitution.
“Unfortunately, many police departments in the commonwealth do not seem to be getting the message that swearing is not a crime,” said Marieke Tuthill of the ACLU of Pennsylvania. “The courts have repeatedly found that profanity, unlike obscenity, is protected speech.”
Obscenity, under the Supreme Court’s definition, refers to speech that mainly appeals to the “prurient interest” in sex, according to the ACLU.
One lawsuit involves an unidentified woman in Luzerne County in northeast…
Laser War In Space To Prove Einstein’s Theory Of Relativity
This is pretty cool science! From PopSci:
CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is currently the biggest science experiment in operation, but it may have to pass that mantle on soon enough. A collaboration between NASA and the ESA plans to launch three spacecraft into orbit around the sun 3 million miles apart, then have them shoot lasers at each other, all in the name of proving the existence of gravitational waves, the last piece of Einstein’s relativity theory that is as yet unproved.
Einstein’s general relativity predicts several things, such as gravity’s ability to bend time light and the constant speed at which gravity travels. But a means to prove the existence of gravitational waves — huge ripples in time and space that flow outwards from the collision of huge celestial bodies like black holes — has eluded scientists for years.
The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, or LISA, aims to do just that. Three…
List of 1,000 Former Church of Scientology Members Publicly Speak Out Against The Church
The following is a press release sent to disinformation by Anonymous:
Over 1,000 former members of the Church of Scientology have spoken out publicly against the so-called church, according to a list researched and compiled by Anonymous over the last year and announced on April 11th 2010.
The individuals on the list have spoken out under their real names against the abuses seen and experienced within the so-called church despite being subjected to Scientology’s “Fair Game” policy, which gives members permission to destroy its critics. Most former members do not ever speak out against the church, largely because of this policy.
The stories told by these ex-members are similar to the revelations made recently by former members speaking out against Scientology in highly visible stories in the New York Times, the St. Petersburg Times, and most recently, in a five-part series on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360. According to the Church of Scientology, these…
The Trilateral Commission Calls For War With Iran
Trilateral Commission logo
Don’t ask me how Jim Tucker knows this stuff (put it down to the tricks of his trade, perhaps), but here is his report from Dublin, at American Free Press:
Trilateral Commission (TC) members, angry over their failure to establish a world government and the economic crisis they generated, called for war with Iran when they gathered behind closed doors here in Dublin, Ireland May 7-10.
War plans were revealed by Mikhail Slobodovsici, a chief adviser to the Russian leadership, when he strolled off the grounds of the Four Seasons resort, where TC had hunkered down behind armed guards and locked doors. He thought he was talking to a TC colleague when speaking with Alan Keenan, who operates the web site WeAreChange.org.
“We are deciding the future of the world,” Slobodovsici said. “We need a world government,” he said, but, referring to Iran, said “we need to get rid of them.”
Clearly,…
Gold On The Way To $5,000 Per Ounce
About seven months ago I posted a story about the price of gold going up to $5,000+ per ounce. Since then there have been some ups and downs but the price has indeed continued to climb. Today the New York Times carries a Reuters Breaking Views commentary agreeing that we could very well be on the way to $5,000+/oz.:
It sounds like a gold bug’s dream. But looking back to the last inflation-adjusted peak price in 1980, it’s far from impossible that the gold price could soon go above $5,000 an ounce.
The potential level of a new high can be estimated in several ways. Based on consumer price inflation, the peak of $875 an ounce in 1980 is equivalent to about $2,300 today, almost twice the current gold price. But there’s a case for taking account of economic expansion as well as price inflation. The world’s economic output has increased about sixfold…
Top Bank Executives In Iceland Jailed, Sued For Billions
Yet another instance in which the United States could learn something from our Scandinavian brethren: In Iceland, bank executives who helped bring about the nation’s financial meltdown are being rounded up and jailed, issued international arrest warrants, and sued for billions of dollars. AFP reports:
More than a year and a half after Iceland’s major banks failed, all but sinking the country’s economy, police have begun rounding up a number of top bankers while other former executives and owners face a two-billion-dollar lawsuit.
On Wednesday, the administrators of Glitnir’s liquidation announced they had filed a two-billion-dollar (1.6-billion-euro) lawsuit in a New York court against former large shareholders and executives for alleged fraud.
Four former Kaupthing executives, who all live in Luxembourg, have meanwhile been arrested in Iceland in the past week and Interpol has issued an international arrest warrant for that bank’s ex-chairman, Sigurdur Einarsson.
Former head of the bank’s domestic operations, Ingolfur Helgason, and…
Wave Of Deadly Knife Attacks On Children Continues In China
Scariest-trend-ever alert: madmen going on knife and hammer rampages in Chinese schools. The Economist reports:
ALL month schools in China have been on what the state-controlled press calls a “red alert” for possible attacks on pupils by intruders. In one city police have orders to shoot perpetrators on sight.
In the latest reported incident, on May 12th, seven children were hacked to death at a rural kindergarten in the northern province of Shaanxi. Eleven other children were injured. It was one of half a dozen such cases at schools across China in less than two months.
Assailants were often said to be lone, deranged, men venting their frustrations on the weak.
‘Hey Obama, Give Me A Freakin’ Job’
More anti-Obama billboards, reported by Yahoo News:
“I need a freakin’ job.” That’s the message President Obama saw as he arrived in Buffalo, N.Y., this afternoon for an event talking up the administration’s success in creating new jobs. He also pitched Congress on approving a $30 billion credit for small-business growth.
Yet critics say Obama has been focusing his recovery efforts too narrowly and hasn’t done enough to help people find work. After all, the latest job figures show 9.9 percent of the country still out of work. That inspired a group of unemployed Buffalo residents — who also have a website called INAFJ.org — to appeal to the president in the form of a billboard along the route his motorcade took into town. Here is a photo of the billboard:
[continues at Yahoo News]
Israel Is Building A Robot Army
Israel has quietly become a world leader in robotic weaponry. After deploying the first unmanned aircraft in 1981, Israel developed unmanned ground vehicles and speedboats, and even border guard robo-snipers and camouflaged robot snakes. (Plus a nine-inch tall robot that shoots hostiles with a mini Uzi submachine gun…) Israel’s goal is to robotize one-third of its military machinery in the next 10-15 years, and for peacetime applications, they’ve also developed a robotic prosthetic hand and a bionic retina implant.
Tel Aviv skyline. Photo: Deanb (CC)
But this article also notes that Israel’s “Renewable Energy Initiative” seeks to replace all fossil fuel with renewable resources, primarily solar, within the next 10 years. (One Israeli company even signed a deal recently to build solar energy farms in California and Nevada.) Israel aims to be the first nation with a national electric car network, fully operational by late 2011, and Israeli engineers are also developing…
Fire On the Bayou; Conspiracy, Prophecy, and Dropping the Bomb on the Big Oozy
Anchor handling tugs battle the blazing remnants of the off shore oil rig Deepwater Horizon.
Disinfo visitor Shawn M alerted us to a New Orleans blog that raises some ideas on the Gulf Oil Spill Disaster we hadn’t heard before, such as a North Korean submarine being responsible for blowing up the rig. Conspiracy theories: we’ve got ‘em! From Big Medicine:
Strange days here in the Big Easy. Life goes on as normal, we still feel our Who Dat high from winning the Super Bowl, we have our new Mayor and the post Jazzfest hangover is gone. But looming like Katrina’s big brother offshore is the Big Oozy, the mega disaster that will impact the planet for generations. One scans the news, local and national and it doesn’t seem to be the Big story. Celeb antics, political gesturing and plain fluff obscures from the minds of men the massive event playing out…
America’s Ten Most Corrupt Capitalists
How in the world is deregulatory kingpin Robert Rubin advising President Obama? Zach Carter writes on Alternet:
The financial crisis has unveiled a new set of public villains — corrupt corporate capitalists who leveraged their connections in government for their own personal profit. During the Clinton and Bush administrations, many of these schemers were worshiped as geniuses, heroes or icons of American progress. But today we know these opportunists for what they are: Deregulatory hacks hellbent on making a profit at any cost. Without further ado, here are the 10 most corrupt capitalists in the U.S. economy.
1. Robert Rubin: Where to start with a man like Robert Rubin? A Goldman Sachs chairman who wormed his way into the Treasury Secretary post under President Bill Clinton, Rubin presided over one of the most radical deregulatory eras in the history of finance. Rubin’s influence within the Democratic Party marked the final stage in the Democrats’ transformation from the concerned citizens who fought Wall Street and won during the 1930s to a coalition of Republican-lite financial elites.
Rubin’s most stunning deregulatory accomplishment in office was also his greatest act of corruption. Rubin helped repeal Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era law that banned economically essential banks from gambling with taxpayer money in the securities markets. In 1998, Citibank inked a merger with the Travelers Insurance group. The deal was illegal under Glass-Steagall, but with Rubin’s help, the law was repealed in 1999, and the Citi-Travelers merger approved, creating too-big-to-fail behemoth Citigroup.
Has The Voyager 2 Spacecraft Been Hijacked by Aliens?
Editor’s note: For a less speculative version of events, see here. Attila Albert writes in Bild:
With a golden record on board, it left the Earth 33 years ago. NASA installed the 12-inch disk containing music and greetings in 55 languages in case intelligent extraterrestrial life ever found it.
But now the Voyager 2 spacecraft is sending back what sounds like an answer: Signals in an unknown data format!
The best scientific minds have so far not been able to decipher the strange information — is it a secret message?
A New Earthquake Hits Haiti: Monsanto’s Deadly Gift Of 475 Tons Of Genetically-Modified Seeds
By Fr. Jean-Yves Urfie for the Center for Research on Globalisation:
Haiti’s earthquake on 12 January this year has been a lucky business break for some. The transnational firm Monsanto is offering the country’s farmers a deadly gift of 475 tonnes of genetically-modified (GM) seeds, along with associated fertiliser and pesticides, which will be handed out free by the WINNER project, with the backing of the US embassy in Haiti. Do Haitians know Monsanto made the “Agent Orange” defoliant sprayed over Vietnam by US planes during the war there, poisoning both US soldiers and Vietnamese civilians?
Do Haitians know that these GM seeds have been declared dangerous by many countries? They often come in kits along with a Monsanto herbicide called “Roundup,” which contains glyphosate. In my native Brittany, it has already polluted the water table. But Monsanto insists its product is biodegradable. It is being sued for this by anti-frauid officials…
