Archive for July, 2010
MRIs Of Fruits And Vegetables
The things we eat are pretty strange. Looking at magnetic resonance imaging of foods such as watermelon, below, gives you (pretty psychedelic) views of them you’ve never seen before:
DIY Medicine From YouTube Videos
One of the positive things about the recession era is that it’s inspiring people to get creative — for instance, by performing their own minor surgeries, using how-to videos from YouTube. The Globe and Mail reports:
Before, doctors worried about patients who self-diagnosed after doing Internet research on questionable medical websites. But the social Web has given birth to a new beast: users who document their DIY medical procedures on camera and share the videos on YouTube.
Doug Southern would have preferred to see a doctor, but bad timing meant he was without health insurance. He was laid off from his job a short while before a three-year-old baseball-sized cyst on his back became infected.
When his brother-in-law, a family practitioner, and his sister came to visit him in Tuscaloosa, Ala., he decided to put down a towel and pillow on his kitchen floor and turn it into a makeshift operating room so his…
Feds Nix Marijuana Trademark Category
The legalization movement may be making giant strides in the U.S., but at least one government agency, the Patent & Trademark Office, is having second thoughts and has removed its medical marijuana category, as reported by the Wall Street Journal:
For three months until last week, marijuana dealers had something they could only dream of before: the apparent stamp of approval of a federal agency.
On April 1, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office created a new trademark category: “Processed plant matter for medicinal purposes, namely medical marijuana.” The patent office, part of the Department of Commerce, posted the new category on its website.
The patent-office change set off a land rush by pot dealers in the 14 states where laws permit medical-marijuana sales. Some staked claims on rights to long-used names like Maui Wowie and Chronic. Others applied to trademark business names such as Budtrader and Pot-N. Two companies applied to trademark…
The Washington Post’s Damning ‘Top Secret America’ Report
Well here it is, “Top Secret America,” the Washington Post’s much-hyped critique of an out-of-control public and private intelligence disaster happening in the United States. Here’s the intro, but there’s a whole lot more at the Post’s special report pages:
The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.
These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight…
Who Is That Guy Smoking The Pipe?
Who is that guy smoking the pipe?
That is “Bob,” and he is the world’s greatest salesman. His greatest product is a religion called the Church of the SubGenius, and it preaches the power of Slack. The Subgeniuses insist Slack is the ultimate mystery, but for all intents and purposes Slack is doing your own thing the way you want to. The reason Slack seems so mysterious is because the day you are born you are placed in a system that tries to replace your instincts with its idea of ideal behavior, so-called normality.
But of course there is no such thing as normality — it’s just this monster lie we invented which is now slowly driving us insane because we can never live up to it. So the church touts the value of abnormality as the means to salvation, but that’s just a more subversive way of saying ‘know thyself’ &…
The “War” On Wall Street May Be Over: Guess Who’s Winning?
An unusual word crept into the lexicon of the New York Times op-ed page, the arbiter of approved thought in the age of economic collapse. The new conservative columnist Ross Douthat dusted off a key phrase associated with Marxism, “class war.”
Of course, as you would expect, Karl was spinning again in his resting place at London’s Highgate cemetery by the Timesman’s spin. But in a country where, officially at least, the only classes are found in schools, the very idea of class war is not something you read about every day, even if the person writing about it is certainly on the wrong side.
In fact, the current “war on Wall Street” seems all but over even before the President signs the financial “reform” bill. We have seen very few criminal prosecutions coming out of Obamaland. The recent settlement with Goldman Sachs was limited to one transaction, and quite affordable for the…
A New Mayan Apocalypse
Mayan Pyramid at El Mirador. Photo: Geoff Gallice (CC)
Why don’t humans ever learn from their mistakes of the past? Is it ‘different this time’? The New York Times reports from Guatemala on the re-deforestation of the homeland of the Maya:
EL MIRADOR, Guatemala — Great sweeps of Guatemalan rain forest, once the cradle of one of the world’s great civilizations, are being razed to clear land for cattle-ranching drug barons.
Other parts of the Maya Biosphere Reserve, Central America’s largest protected area, have been burned down by small cities of squatters.
Looters and poachers, kept at bay when guerrilla armies roamed the region during the country’s 36-year civil war, ply their trades freely.
“There’s traffickers, cattle ranchers, loggers, poachers and looters,” said Richard D. Hansen, an American archaeologist who is leading the excavation of the earliest and largest Mayan city-state, El Mirador, in the northern tip of the reserve. “All the bad guys are lined up…
The Washington Post’s Plans To Blow The Lid Off U.S. Intelligence
The Washington papers show no love for each other… here the Washington Times accuses its more fabled neighbor the Post of getting in the way of national intelligence, showing this memo:
Who’s A Racist Now?
Deb Nicklay/Globe Gazette, via Associated Press. The North Iowa Tea Party’s short-lived billboard in Mason City, Iowa.
Commentary by Tobin Harshaw in the New York Times:
On Tuesday, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People released this statement: “Over 2,000 N.A.A.C.P. delegates today unanimously passed a resolution—as amended—called ‘The Tea Party Movement,’ asking for the repudiation of racist Tea Party leaders.”
That same day, a White House official told ABC News’s Jake Tapper that “al Qaeda is a racist organization that treats black Africans like cannon fodder and does not value human life.” (It was a followup to President Obama’s statement that “these terrorist organizations … do not regard African life as valuable in and of itself.”)
A day later, an Iowa Tea Party group “replaced a billboard comparing President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin, calling the sign a bad decision that reflected poorly on the organization.”
For some observers,…
Now You Can Turn Office Documents Into Toilet Paper
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Photo: Brandon Blinkenberg (CC)
By David Gutierrez for Natural News:
A Japanese company known as Oriental has invented a device that recycles office paper into toilet paper onsite.
“All the customers needs to do is put the shredded paper in, take the toilet paper out and supply the machine with water,” said Oriental’s technology manager, Kimihiro Nozawa.
The machine, dubbed White Goat, can turn 40 regular sheets of office paper into a roll of toilet paper in only 30 minutes. According to Oriental, the device removes all staples then shreds the paper, mixes it with water and turns it into pulp, flattens and dries the pulp, then converts into a toilet paper roll. Accounting of operating costs of the machine, it costs only 10 cents to produce a single roll.
The Telegraph notes that this is substantially cheaper than a typical roll of high-quality toilet paper, which retails for approximately 38 pence (59 cents). The…
Aleister Crowley: A Passion for Evil? – Disinformation: The Podcast
Disinformation: The Podcast: Episode 12 — Aleister Crowley: A Passion for Evil?
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This episode features an interview with playwright John Burns. John’s latest work, Aleister Crowley: A Passion for Evil, is being performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this summer.
We discuss little known aspects of Crowley’s life, including his childhood and his experiences as a mountaineer. We also discuss the recent Disinformation documentary Aleister Crowley: In Search of the Great Beast 666, which attempts to dramatize Crowley’s history through filmmaking.
Chinese Airport Closes After UFO Sighting
Spotted over the Hangzhou Airport
Shanghaiist reports on a UFO sighting in China that resulted in the shutting down of an airport. (The loudspeaker announcement must have been interesting.)
On Wednesday, Hangzhou’s Xiaoshan airport was shut down for about an hour while airport authorities scrambled to figure out what unidentified flying contraption was hovering on their radars.
According to a story that first appeared in Zhejiang Online, the UFO showed up on radar a little past 8:30pm. Suddenly, airport personnel saw a “shining light” in the air, later confirmed by passengers that were flying at the time.
Some have theorized it was a private jet [or] a piece of rocket debris. At least one official has said it has a “military connection” – which is why more details of the incident can not be divulged.
So You Think You Write Like A Famous Author
I Write Like is a new site that analyzes your writing style to tell what famous author you write like most. The page contains a window where you can type or paste a paragraph from your personal writings and it will tell you if you write like James Joyce, or Chaucer, or Twain. The program contains numerous excerpts of famous writers’ work which it uses to analyze similarities in your own personal style. The site has had a few interesting results that prove it needs a bit more work. The Huffington Post, points out:
The funniest result so far must be what Margaret Atwood got when she tried out the tool. Atwood, whose name is one of the results that users can get, tweeted on July 13, “According to the I Write Like analysis, I write like… Ta da! Stephen King! Who knew?”
If you need a bit of inspiration, motivation, or just…
Eighteenth Century Ship Found Buried Below Ground Zero
Workers have found a 300-year-old ship beneath the ruins of the 9/11 World Trade Center attack, TIME reports:
On Tuesday, as workers were preparing the site of the September 11 attacks for the future World Trade Center, they uncovered what turned out to be a ship approximately 30 feet below street level. Thought to be from the 18th century, the vessel was uncovered in an area that wasn’t excavated when the original World Trade Center was being built.
Also found nearby was a 100-pound anchor. It’s thought that the ship and the anchor, along with other fragments, were used at one time to fill in land in order to expand Manhattan further into the Hudson River.
True Blood For African Addicts
At what point do people need a fix so bad that they are willing to inject another person’s blood into themselves? With the constant presence of AIDS related deaths in Africa, and the progressive educational-outreach towards sex workers and addicts, it would seem a foolish thought. BBC reports:
Desperate heroin users in a few African cities have begun engaging in a practice that is so dangerous it is almost unthinkable: they deliberately inject themselves with another addict’s blood, researchers say, in an effort to share the high or stave off the pangs of withdrawal.
The practice, called flashblood or sometimes flushblood, is not common, but has been reported in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on the island of Zanzibar and in Mombasa, Kenya.
It puts users at the highest possible risk of contracting AIDS and hepatitis. While most AIDS transmission in Africa is by heterosexual sex, the use of heroin is growing in some cities, and…
Bring Out Your Dead – And Put Them Down Drain
From Sky News/Yahoo:
Undertakers in Belgium have said they want to save the environment by liquefying corpses instead of cremating them.
It has been claimed the process of dissolving the dead in a caustic potash solution would use less energy than a crematorium – it would also not emit any harmful carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
The body sludge could then be given to relatives to flush away as a final goodbye.
The Flemish Association of Undertakers is now trying to get permission to carry out the green procedure, which is known as chemical hydrolysis.
Bodies are dissolved by placing them in a container of water and salts. The mixture is then pressurised and after about two hours, all that remains is mineral ash and a liquid gunk.
But the idea is controversial in a country which has strong religious beliefs.
Many people associate the idea with something out of a gangster movie – an awkward…
Federal Judge Rules That CIA Can Cover Up Torture
Press release from the ACLU, via Common Dreams:
NEW YORK – July 15 – A federal judge today ruled that the government can withhold information from the public about intelligence sources and methods, even if those sources and methods were illegal. The ruling came in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation filed by the American Civil Liberties Union for Justice Department memos that authorized torture, and for records relating to the contents of destroyed videotapes depicting the brutal interrogation of detainees at CIA black sites.
The government continues to withhold key information, such as the names of detainees who were subjected to the abusive interrogation methods as well as information about the application of the interrogation techniques. Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York today ruled that the government can continue to suppress evidence of its illegal program.
The following…
Controversial ‘Right-To-Die’ Billboards On New Jersey Roads
This billboard on Route 22 in Hillside, N.J., has many people up in arms. Courtesy CBS
Let’s hope that people who agree with the message don’t decide to act on it while driving… Report from CBS:
The message on a billboard in New Jersey is stirring up a lot of controversy.
It centers on whether a person suffering from a painful disease has the right to take his or her own life.
The billboard looms over a busy section of Route 22 in Hillside, facing the eastbound lanes. Some drivers said they are confused by the message.
“My Life My Death My Choice. So what does that mean?” Hillside resident Steve Leo said.
The Final Exit Network paid for the advertisement that reads “My Life My Death My Choice” and offers a website. The national non-profit group said it provides guidance to adults who suffer from illnesses that are so painful that they want to…
