Archive for July, 2010
Holy Wars
Directed by GNN co-founder Stephen Marshall (Aftermath: Unanswered Questions From 9/11), HolyWars was shot over a four year period in America, Britain, Lebanon, and Pakistan. The film follows a danger-seeking Christian missionary and a radical Muslim Irish convert, both of whom believe in an apocalyptic battle, after which their religion will ultimately rule the world. Tracking their lives from the onset of the “War on Terror” through the election of Barack Obama, HolyWars shows that even the most radical of believers can be transformed by our changing world.
The movie is screening in Los Angeles and New York. For more information visit the Facebook fan page.
The Mayan Calendar And The Return Of The Extraterrestrials
[disinformation ed.'s note: The following is an excerpt from the new book by Erich von Däniken, Twilight of the Gods: The Mayan Calendar and the Return of the Extraterrestrials, courtesy of New Page Books.]
“There are no absolute truths, and if there were, they would be boring.”—Theodor Fontane, 1819–1898
This sentence cannot really be applied to the exact sciences. Two plus two always makes four. And in geometry, A squared plus B squared always equals C squared. It may be boring, but “exact science” does indeed bring us many “absolute truths.” Alongside all the many errors that are constantly being corrected.
However, our power of reason is not just impressed by the results gleaned by the exact sciences; the humanities—and these include so much that requires interpretation—violate our way of thinking no less. Religions fall into this category, as do philosophy, ethnology and archaeology. Excuse me? Isn’t archaeology a combined science that cites only…
Peter Schiff’s 3 Reasons Why Financial Reform Will Fail
Peter Schiff a/k/a “Dr. Doom” is known for extremely bearish views on the United States stock market, bond market, the US dollar, and the United States economy in general. He tells Yahoo Finance why the Dodd-Frank financial regulation reform law will fail:
1. The bill doesn’t get to the root causes of the crisis. Schiff blames former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s ‘too low for too long’ interest rate policy, combined with government-guaranteed mortgages for the rise and fall of the housing market. “That’s continuing today, it’s untouched by this bill. In fact, the Fed is more reckless today with zero percent interest rates than when they were one percent,” he tells Aaron in this clip.
Plus, with so many private lenders out of business, the government is guaranteeing an even greater…
Sister Of Stonehenge Discovered
In the world of ancient history, this is pretty big news, reported by the Independent:
Stonehenge had a previously unknown wooden “twin” just 900m to its north-west, according to remarkable new archaeological investigations.
Using the ground-penetrating equivalent of an X-ray, scientists have discovered what appears to have been a circle of massive timber obelisks, constructed more than 4,200 years ago.
The newly discovered “henge” would have been visible from Stonehenge itself – and seems to have been part of a wider prehistoric ritual and religious landscape. Roughly 25m in diameter, it was almost the same size as the central part (the circle of standing stones) at Stonehenge itself.
The newly discovered monument – almost certainly some sort of Neolithic temple – is thought to have consisted of 24 wooden obelisks, each around 75cm in diameter and therefore potentially up to 8m high. The circle of obelisks was enclosed by an inner ditch and probable…
Westboro Baptist Church Protests At Comic Con: ‘God Hates Nerds’
I have got to get one of those “God Hates Nerds” signs for the front door of my fraternity house. One of the new arrivals at this year’s Comic-Con is Kansas’s Westboro Baptist Church. The group arrived in San Diego yesterday and held a protest against nerds, and their gay-for-Batman ways:
They have turned comic book characters into idols, and worship them they do! Isaiah 2:8 Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made…
The destruction of this nation is imminent – so start calling on Batman and Superman now, see if they can pull you from the mess that you have created with all your silly idolatry.”
Darth Vader Robs Long Island Bank
Nothing like this ever happens in New York City. Why is all the action out in the suburbs? The New York Post reports:
A man wearing a Darth Vader mask and cape robbed a Chase bank branch on Long Island on Thursday, police said.
The thief entered a branch in Setauket at 11:30 a.m. and demanded money from a teller. But instead of using a light saber, “Darth” threatened the teller with a semiautomatic gun. The teller gave the robber some cash from the drawer.
The Darth Vader thief, described as between 6 feet and 6 feet 2 inches tall, took off heading east through the bank’s parking lot.
The Vast Left-Wing Media Conspiracy
Fred Barnes says everyone knew most of the press corps was hoping for Obama in 2008. Newly released emails show that hundreds of them were actively working to promote him, in the Wall Street Journal:
When I’m talking to people from outside Washington, one question inevitably comes up: Why is the media so liberal? The question often reflects a suspicion that members of the press get together and decide on a story line that favors liberals and Democrats and denigrates conservatives and Republicans.
My response has usually been to say, yes, there’s liberal bias in the media, but there’s no conspiracy. The liberal tilt is an accident of nature. The media disproportionately attracts people from a liberal arts background who tend, quite innocently, to be politically liberal. If they came from West Point or engineering school, this wouldn’t be the case.
Now, after learning I’d been targeted for a smear attack by a…
Newt Gingrich Takes Saudi’s Lead On “Tolerance”
Newt Gingrich. Photo: Gage Skidmore (CC)
Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:
Newt Gingrich, like many other Americans on the far right, has a problem with Mosques, more specifically the planned Islamic community center near Ground Zero. This doesn’t come as a shock in the least, his reasoning (H/T Justin Elliott at Salon) is that there aren’t any churches in Saudi Arabia and also, New York already has Mosques, so we should take the Saudi’s lead on this one:
“There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over.
Those Islamists and their apologists who argue for “religious toleration” are arrogantly dishonest. They ignore the fact that more than 100 mosques already exist in New York City. Meanwhile, there are no…
Allergies: Nature’s Way Of Preparing Nerds For The Rejection Of High School
Humor site Cracked.com rubs some raw nerves with this report:
Source: Cracked.com
The Eleven Pens Of Barack Obama: Signing Financial Reform Is Signing Up For A New Struggle To Make It Real
With eleven pens for souvenirs, President Obama signed the financial reform bill in a rare celebratory moment. Significantly, the ceremony did not take place in the Oval Office but up the block at the Ronald Reagan building perhaps to signal recalcitrant Republicans that this is a cause they should sign on to.
It wasn’t clear if he was aware that he was signing up for a new volatile phase of struggle to rein in out of control financial power.
The three GOP lawmakers who voted for the bill received a standing ovation from the largely democratic crowd that watched Obama embrace Paul Volcker, while Elizabeth Warren stood by applauding (before taking her picture with the former Fed head).
Warren’s presence didn’t make many news stories or the Times photo caption perhaps because many—mostly bankers and some Obama advisors—want her out of the picture permanently. They say Banks need protection too. Quips David Sirota,…
Is Comic-Con Too Mainstream?
Some of CNN’s iReporters are saying that Comic-Con just isn’t for the geeks anymore:
What is seen by some as the holy four-day weekend for geek culture at San Diego Comic-Con has gone mainstream in a big way for the past few years.
Starting today, there will be panels called “I Can’t Write, I Can’t Draw, But I Love Comics!” and “Indie Comics Marketing 101″ taking place alongside “USA Network’s ‘Psych’ ” and “Aloha, Earth!” a panel about CBS’ upcoming remake of “Hawaii Five-0.”
But this recent spate of panels about movie and TV properties with no sci-fi or comic book elements has some fans fuming.
“The mainstream TV and film representation at Comic-Con has outstripped the original essence of the convention,” said iReporter Brad Powers who attended Comic-Con the past two years, mainly for the panels on “Lost.” He believed that this “mainstreaming” of the convention has played a hand in it being…
Thought Control On Modern American College Campuses
In April of 2009 I designed and printed fliers for the group Students for Concealed Carry on Campus at a Pittsburgh community college. I included facts such as “The Supreme Court ruled that police have no obligation to protect the people.” These fliers earned me a meeting with the Dean of Student Development, Yvonne Burns, who angrily promised that the club would never be allowed on “her” campus, and ordered me to destroy all related literature.
I had been in a public quad handing out informational pamphlets–and had asked for permission to do so! Dean Burns told me I was soliciting; she had obviously been fed that line by a superior without thinking about it. When I told her that the legal definition of “solicitation” involved trying to sell something, she told me I was trying to “sell an idea.” Wait, isn’t that… college?
The SCCC website, concealedcampus.org, contains a link to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE; www.thefire.org), which recognized the violation of my First Amendment rights and worked with me to restore them — not because it supports gun rights, but because it supports free speech on campus. FIRE throws a wrench into the system of disinforming entire generations of college students — who are treated like children in need of supervision and protection from wayward improper ideas — with one simple tool: publicity. So, even if you hate guns or just don’t like me – please take a moment to look at www.thefire.org. You’ll be shocked by some of the things that college administrators do when they think no one’s watching. The moral outrage you feel after reading a few cases might inspire you to want to help FIRE restore liberty to our campuses…
MediaMatters Shreds Andrew Breitbart
Mediamatters tells us “Never Trust Andrew Breitbart.” Do you think he’s lost all credibility, or actually gained some amongst Tea Party types?
The Sarah Palin Facebook Translator
disinformation author Marty Beckerman (Dumbocracy) has landed himself a prime gig as Esquire’s online features editor. He’s already written a number of posts for Esquire. Here’s the latest:
“Refudiate,” we have taught the ex-governor by now, is not a word. Not even on Twitter, where she took to defending her vocabulary this week. But it’s on Facebook where Sarah Palin takes to pushing her policy, her endorsements, and her general paranoia. Because if you can’t hold office for that whole final year, what better way to talk to two-million constituents at a time than through a thousand whole words on the “Notes” section?! And even if you take her postings seriously, they’re still pretty difficult to understand. Since Palin is sort of running for president but not really, we combed through her oeuvre with fine-toothed erudiation.
Example A (Posted July 20, 2010)
Subject: “An Intolerable Mistake on Hallowed Ground”
What She Said: “To build a mosque at Ground Zero is a stab…
Discover of New Antibody Takes Step Forward Towards AIDS Vaccine
The progress made recently in HIV and AIDS research seems to have taken the media by storm. With advancements such as earlier treatment in HIV and AIDS patients, and a vaginal gel found to decrease the risk of infection, it appears we’re a step closer towards vaccination. The most recent breakthrough with the discovery of three new HIV antibodies gives hope to scientists that a vaccine will be found. Drew Halley of SingularityHub reports:
Will HIV eventually go the way of smallpox and polio? Earlier this month, scientists at the National Institute of Health (NIH) announced their discovery of three new HIV antibodies, the most powerful of which neutralizes 91% of all HIV strains. These are the strongest antibodies yet found, and they could hold the key to developing a vaccine to AIDS.
HIV antibodies themselves aren’t rare, and scientists regularly find ones that are effective against a few different strains. But until last year, the most powerful…
Binaural Beats with SbaGen Developer Jim Peters
Bavsa: binaural beat visual analysis tool
An interview with Jim Peters, developer of SbaGen, who’s source code was used without permission for the notorious I-Doser. Via Technoccult:
Technoccult: Do you believe that I-Doser can actually deliver on their promise of providing a variety of discrete recreational psychoactive experiences? My own experience working with SbaGen, Brainwave Generator, and sound and light machines is that it does feel like “something happens,” but I haven’t found that the specific experience each one is aiming for (“relaxation,” “creativity,” “stimulation,” etc.) In fact, I actually conducted some controlled experiments with classmates as a research project in college. We investigated whether the “intelligence enhancement” setting of a particular sound and light machine was effective at improving MENSA test exam scores. We didn’t get statistically significant results.
Peters: No, I don’t believe that I-Doser can deliver on their promise. If I hit you over the head with a mallet you will…
Virgin Galactic May Be Selling Tickets By Autumn
Photo: SpaceShipTwo under the Mothership WhiteKnight2 in Mojave, CA. Photo from Virgin Galactic/Mark Greenberg
Virgin Galactic will offer suborbital rides if the SpaceShipTwo spaceliner is approved after tests. Virgin Galactic will be the first program that will allow private tourists to take a scenic trip to see the darkness of space. The first full-crewed flight proved successful on July 15, with more tests to follow, there is a confident possibility for the first commercial tour to be this fall. MSNBC reports:
A private spaceship built to launch space tourists on suborbital joyrides could by flying on its own by this fall, Space.com has learned.
The SpaceShiftTwo spacecraft VSS Enterprise, which the space tourism company Virgin Galactic has been flying on test flights attached to a huge mothership, could make its first drop flights over California’s Mojave Desert for glide and landing tests.
“There’s a reasonable possibility that we could see the first drop flight in…
“It Fell in Silence: The Collapse of World Trade Center 7″
Many Americans are unaware that three buildings within the World Trade Center complex fell on Sept 11, 2001. Located just 300 feet from the North Tower,World Trade Center Building 7 (WTC 7) was a forty-seven story steel framed building, which collapsed vertically in 6.5 seconds more than 6 hours after the collapse of the Twin Towers. Although the collapse of the towers was televised hundreds of times in the days following 9/11, the collapse of WTC 7 was seldom shown or discussed. The widely publicized 9/11 Commission Report fails to mention the collapse of WTC 7 in its 568 pages. Looking beyond the limited information provided by the mass media about the fall of WTC 7, a number of questions arise.
Construction began on WTC 7 in 1984; it was opened to the public in 1987. The building had 47 stories, was 570 feet tall, and had 81…
Are The Drones Spying On ‘Them’ … Or ‘Us’?
Nat Hentoff suggests that those friendly drones may not be quite so confidence-inspiring as our government would have us believe, at WorldNetDaily:
In May of last year, David Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David Petraeus from 2006 to 2008, co-authored a strategic analysis (”Death from Above, Outrage Down Below,” New York Times, May 17, 2009). He emphasized that the “public outrage” among Pakistan’s civilians caused by our drone attacks “is hardly limited to the region in which they take place.”
Extensively reported by the news media, “the persistence of these attacks on Pakistani territory offends people’s deepest sensibilities, alienates them from their government, and contributes to Pakistan’s instability.”
A year later, in Foreign Policy in Focus (fpif.org, May 19), Conn Hallinan, reporting on the increase in drone strikes in Pakistan, notes that the continuing controversy over the actual number of corollary civilian deaths “is a sharply debated issue.” Neither President Obama, who…
