Archive for June, 2010
Mysterious Light Spiral Appears Over Australia (Video)
This is similar looking to what appeared over Norway when President Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize.
The informative Phil Plait writing his Bad Astronomy blog is saying it’s some kind of man-made space rocket.
Maybe so, but time-traveling aliens sounds so much fun to me:
Video Of Israeli Soldiers Killing 19-Year-Old On Gaza Flotilla
Thanks to Douglas Valentine for sending this our way, with an email header entitled “video you won’t see on Meet The Press.”
Call To Act: Save And Strengthen Financial Reform
We have less than a month to go before the Congress votes on financial reform.
Ironically, the deadline seems to be July 4th, our independence day, an occasion that will likely usher in ever more dependence on Wall Street despite appearances.
The conference on the Hill formally begins this week after weeks of behind the scenes legislative “reconciliation”–a fancy name for horse-trading and compromising between the House and Senate over different versions of the “reforms” with thousands of lobbyists for the financial industry using every trick in their infinite playbooks of persuasion and pay-offs to assure that the final bill is loop-hole full, weak and easy to maneuver around.
Matt Taibbi reports real reform is a goner:
“The financial-services industry has reportedly flooded the Capitol with more than 2,000 paid lobbyists; even veteran members are stunned by the intensity of the blitz. “They’re trying everything,” says Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio. Wall…
Soviet Sci-Fi Animation Of The 1980s
Rhizome.org has a collection of animated adaptations of sci-fi stories produced in the Soviet Union. Apparently studios in the USSR churned out these eerily films, based on stories by American authors such as Stephen King and Ray Bradbury, throughout the 1980s. Bradbury’s “Here There Be Tygers” works perfectly as a fable warning of the destructiveness of evil capitalist greed.
Are Lesbians Better Than Straights At Raising Children?
Opponents of gay adoption argue that the ideal family is based around a man and a woman, and that all children deserve the best. But a new study reports that kids raised by lesbian couples (or single lesbian mothers) are actually psychologically healthier and do better in school than those raised by heterosexual parents — is it time for all children to be mandatorily handed over to lesbians for rearing? Time writes:
Children in lesbian homes scored higher than kids in straight families on some psychological measures of self-esteem and confidence, did better academically and were less likely to have behavioral problems, such as rule-breaking and aggression.
“We simply expected to find no difference in psychological adjustment between adolescents reared in lesbian families and the normative sample of age-matched controls,” says Gartrell. “I was surprised to find that on some measures we found higher levels of [psychological] competency and lower levels of behavioral…
White-Wash Guide Multi-Tool
Thanks to disinfo reader Eric Fischer who writes:
“With all the corporate and international craziness going on, it can be rather difficult to separate fact from agenda-driven fiction. foreignpolicy.com has an excellent checklist for disseminating state and corporate propaganda.”
Here’s the list, compiled by Foreign Policy’s Stephen M. Walt:
Powerful states often do bad things. When they do, government officials and sympathizers inevitably try to defend their conduct, even when those actions are clearly wrong or obviously counterproductive. This is called being an “apologist,” although people who do this rarely apologize for much of anything.
Some readers out there may aspire to careers in foreign policy, and you may be called upon to perform these duties as part of your professional obligations. Moreover, all of us need to be able to spot the rhetorical ploys that governments use to justify their own misconduct. To help students prepare for future acts of diplomatic casuistry, and to…
Conspiracy Chicks Video News Show Launches
Ashley and Julie, the “Conspiracy Chicks” at AboveTopSecret.com examine the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the raid on the Gaza aid flotilla, North/South Korea tensions, and more in the debut of their ATS News Video show:
California Plans To Approve Supertoxic Pesticide
By Peter Fimrite for SF Gate:
Farmers planting strawberries and other crops in California will soon have to contend with cancer-causing poison instead of bugs, worms and fungus if regulators get their wish.
The California Department of Pesticide Regulation has proposed registering methyl iodide as a pesticide in California to the dismay of scientists and environmental groups, who say it is so toxic that even chemists are reluctant to handle it.
The chemical will become legal for growers to use after a 60-day comment period ending June 29 unless there is some kind of public outcry.
“This is one of the most egregious pesticides out there,” said Sarah Aird, the state field organizer for Californians for Pesticide Reform, a coalition of watchdog groups opposed to the use of potentially harmful chemicals. “It is really, really toxic. It is actually used in the laboratory to induce cancer cells.”
Methyl iodide was approved by the U.S. Environmental…
Latitude 33, Disney, and High Strangeness. Oh My!
Disneyland Entryway Plaque. Photo: Cburnett (GNU)
This is a wonderfully giant bucket of weird – in the “Happiest Place on Earth!” Let us journey down the rabbit hole into some strange factoids about Disneyland:
• Disneyland theme park is located at roughly 33 degrees latitude.
• 33rd Degree Masons include J. Edgar Hoover, famed occultist Manly P. Hall, former President George Bush Sr, and none other than Walt Disney himself.
• A private club at Disneyland is called “Club 33″, supposedly named after the first 33 corporate sponsors of the theme park. It is the only place in the park where alcohol is served.
• Disneyland was designed by Harrison “Buzz” Price and Cornelius Vanderbilt Wood, consultants from the famed Chevron Oil-founded, DARPA-funded Stanford Research Institute which produced such gems as “Men Staring At Goats” remote viewing projects for the U.S. Army as a part of our battle to keep up with the Russians and…
Saudi Clerics Tell Women To Feed Their Breast Milk To Male Friends
Not that this kind of thing is restricted to Saudi – remember the New York City chef who’s serving his wife’s breast milk cheese? – but still! From AOL News:
Women in Saudi Arabia should give their breast milk to male colleagues and acquaintances in order to avoid breaking strict Islamic law forbidding mixing between the sexes, two powerful Saudi clerics have said. They are at odds, however, over precisely how the milk should be conveyed.
A fatwa issued recently about adult breast-feeding to establish “maternal relations” and preclude the possibility of sexual contact has resulted in a week’s worth of newspaper headlines in Saudi Arabia. Some have found the debate so bizarre that they’re calling for stricter regulations about how and when fatwas should be issued.
Sheikh Al Obeikan, an adviser to the royal court and consultant to the Ministry of Justice, set off a firestorm of controversy recently when he said…
HIV ‘Bombs’ Latest Afghanistan Hazard
I’d suggest taking this report with a pinch of salt as it comes from the notorious Murdoch-owned British tabloid The Sun, but one has to admit, it’s scary if true:
Taliban fighters are burying dirty needles with their bombs in a bid to infect British troops with HIV, The Sun can reveal.
Hypodermic syringes are hidden below the surface pointing upwards to prick bomb squad experts as they hunt for devices.
The heroin needles are feared to be contaminated with hepatitis and HIV. And if the bomb goes off, the needles become deadly flying shrapnel. The tactic, used in the Afghan badlands of Helmand, was exposed by Tory MP and ex-Army officer Patrick Mercer.
Senior backbencher Mr Mercer said yesterday: “Are there no depths to which these people will stoop? This is the definition of a dirty war.”…
[continues in The Sun]
From LSD To Cyberculture Legend
The legendary editor behind Mondo 2000 magazine reveals how LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, and a high school underground newspaper all fermented into High Frontiers, Reality Hackers and eventually his famous cyberculture publication as part of the new “Mondo 2000 History Project”.
R.U. Sirius shares the introduction, where he remembers an avante-garde newspaper in college. (”We all have a roaring great time interviewing Timothy Leary… We’re all dazzled, feeling like the host of Planet Earth’s party had lifted the velvet rope and let us in.”) But he also describes how he came to edit the first “cyber culture” magazines (predating Wired) from 1984-1998, and announces a new “open source history project” – a collaboratively-edited electronic document with stories and perceptions from “All those who touched directly upon the history of the scene/magazine”.
At the age of 31, Sirius moves to Marin County with a California to-do list: “Start the Neopsychedelic Wave. Start a Neopsychedelic band. Start a…
Boston Hardcore Revisited, Part I: Boston Crew
From Nick Pell at Red Star Times
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I don’t think a city ever needed a hardcore scene more than Boston. Beantown is a cold city, both the temperature and the population. Whether you’re a Beacon Hill patrician or a Charlestown townie a basic attitude of “fuck you” underlies each and every human interaction. Add to that an influx of obnoxious art school and college kids and you’ve got a recipe for extreme alienation for anyone with a brain and an independent streak.
It’s hard for me to imagine what Boston was like before hardcore dropped. Legend has it that the city was full of, in the eloquent words of Al Barille, “new wave faggots and new romantic bullshit.” I’d like to say that I can’t imagine BU students going to Landsdowne on a Friday night in pirate shirts and Adam Ant-style warpaint, but sadly I can picture such a thing all too…
The “As Seen On TV” Diet
Photo: Toddst2 (CC)
In a sort of Supersize Me-type of experiment, scientists have shown what most of us (hopefully) already know: Food advertised on television is not good for you, reported by Science Daily:
Making food choices based on television advertising results in a very imbalanced diet according to a new study comparing the nutritional content of food choices influenced by television to nutritional guidelines published in the June issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.
Investigators found that a 2,000-calorie diet consisting entirely of advertised foods would contain 25 times the recommended servings of sugars and 20 times the recommended servings of fat, but less than half of the recommended servings of vegetables, dairy, and fruits. In fact, the excess of servings in sugars and fat is so large that, on average, eating just one of the observed food items would provide more than three times the recommended daily servings…
Bilderberg Agenda Revealed: Globalists In Crisis, Supportive Of Attack On Iran
Paul Joesph Watson writes for Prison Planet:
The 2010 Bilderberg agenda has been revealed by veteran Bilderberg sleuth Jim Tucker and it paints a picture of crisis for the globalists, who are furious at the increased exposure their gatherings have received in recent years, as well as being dismayed at their failure to rescue both the euro and the failing carbon tax agenda, but more alarmingly according to Tucker, the majority of Bilderberg members are now in favor of military air strikes on Iran.
American Free Press muckraker Tucker has proven routinely accurate with the information he obtains from sources inside Bilderberg, which makes this year’s revelations all the more intriguing…
Sex While Sleeping: Sexsomnia
Who knew? From the New York Times:
Some people sleepwalk; others talk in their sleep. Now a study finds that 1 in 12 patients with sleep disorders reported having had sex while they were asleep.
Researchers reviewed the medical charts of 832 consecutive patients seeking help at a Toronto sleep center and found that 63 patients, or 7.6 percent, reported either having had sex or engaging in other sexual activity, like masturbating, while asleep.
The phenomenon, called sexsomnia, is a form of parasomnia, a disorder in which people who are asleep but in a state of semi-arousal engage in behaviors they are not conscious of. Sexsomnia is defined by the International Classification of Sleep Disorders and may take place during a sleepwalking episode.
The study, which has not yet been published, is among the first to try to quantify how prevalent sexsomnia is among patients with sleep problems. (An abstract was to be presented…
The $1200 Burger
Here in burger-mad New York City, seemingly every year there is an outcry over the latest celebrity chef’s outlandishly expensive creation billed as a burger but usually having little in common with the American classic (e.g. Daniel Boulud’s “Royale,” stuffed with red wine-braised short ribs (off the bone), foie gras, a mix of root vegetables and preserved black truffle, for $120). We’ve been trumped, though, by some Aussies, as reported by Reuters:
An Australian cafe is claiming a world record after cooking a giant hamburger with an 81 kg (178 lb) patty that took 12 hours to cook and four men to flip.
The monster burger cooked up by Sydney cafe owners, Joe and Iman El-Ajouz, weighed in at 90 kg in total, eclipsing the previous record of 84 kg, set in Michigan in the United States….
The giant burger contained the giant beef patty, 120 eggs, 150 slices of cheese, 1.5 kg of…
British Airways Mag Shows Osama Bin Laden As ‘Frequent Flyer’
WTF, from the Hindustan Times:
In an embarrassing turn of events, a staff magazine of British Airways carried a front-page photo of Osama Bin Laden, labelling him as a frequent flyer with the airlines.
BA’s in-house Heathrow newspaper LHR News showed a photo illustrating a scheme to let passengers receive their boarding pass via their iPhones.
The photo shows a smiling check-in steward greeting a happy passenger while another holds his iPhone up to the camera. A close-up shows a white boarding pass bearing the name Bin Laden/Osama.
To compound BA’s embarrassment, the pass also classes the world’s most wanted terrorist as a “frequent flyer”.
The gaffe doesn’t end there – Bin Laden’s seat is 7C, which would put him firmly in the luxury of First Class…
[continues in the Hindustan Times]
Wal-Mart’s Competitors Help Fund Activist Campaigns
When we helped Robert Greenwald distribute his classic exposé documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, we trumpeted the fact that we were receiving support from a panoply of unlikely allies, from the Sierra Club to the Petroleum Institute. It turns out that some of the megastore’s competitors have been helping out too, according to this report by Ann Zimmerman for the Wall Street Journal:
MUNDELEIN, Ill.—Robert Brownson long believed that his proposed development here, with its 200,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter, was being held hostage by nearby homeowners.
He had seen them protesting at city hall, and they had filed a lawsuit to stop the project.
What he didn’t know was that the locals were getting a lot of help. A grocery chain with nine stores in the area had hired Saint Consulting Group to secretly run the antidevelopment campaign. Saint is a specialist at fighting proposed Wal-Marts, and it uses tactics it…
