Archive for August, 2010
Meet Graham Hancock at Dragon*Con This Weekend!
If you’re in the Atlanta area over Labor Day weekend, come and meet Graham Hancock at Dragon*Con 2010 and Eyedrum Atlanta. (If you can’t make it, Graham will be touring North America this fall in support of his new book Entangled: The Eater of Souls.) More info is available at www.chronotrack.org and www.eyedrum.org.
Here’s the complete schedule of Atlanta-based events, please RSVP on Facebook if you can make it. Hope to see you there!
EYEDRUM ATLANTA More info at www.eyedrum.org.
Date: Friday 9/3 Time: 8 PM
Graham Hancock, bestselling author of Fingerprints of the Gods and Supernatural, will be appearing at Eyedrum on Friday, September 3 in support of his new book, Entangled. Randall Carlson from Sacred Geometry Atlanta will be the opening speaker. Admission is $5.
If you can invite fifty over more people in Atlanta over Facebook to this event over Facebook your admission is free. Please contact programs [at] disinfo.com for more info.
FIVE DRAGON*CON 2010 EVENTS!!! Full schedule at www.DragonCon.org.
Panel: Hollywood vs. History History doesn’t always translate well…
Interviews From Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” Rally
The recent rally led by Glenn Beck brought together an interesting assortment of characters, and with them ideas. The New Left Media recorded various interviews with some of the attendees. More interesting than what bizarre claims they make, most had wrong or speculated information, yet not a single person cited a source from where their information was coming from. Of course except the one women who receives her immigration “facts” from her sister.
FDA To Curb Access of Cough Medicine Used For ‘Robotripping’
Like so many household supplies, cough suppressants have found their way into the drug culture. The FDA is now looking into how to restrict the access to dextromethorphan, the “euphoric” ingredient, especially to the targeted “robotripping” group of adolescents. LA Times reports:
Federal health regulators are weighing restrictions on Robitussin, NyQuil and other cough suppressants to curb cases of abuse that send thousands of people to the hospital each year.
The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday posted its review of dextromethorphan, an ingredient found in more than 100 over-the-counter medications that is sometimes abused for its euphoric effects. The practice, dubbed “robotripping,” involves taking more than 25 times the recommended dose of a cold medicine and is mainly associated with teenagers.
At high doses the drug causes increased blood pressure, heart rate and fever. Abusers can also suffer side effects from other ingredients mixed in cough medicines, such as acetaminophen, which can cause liver…
America’s Opinion On The Ground Zero “Mosk”
Wonkette discovered a novel way of gauging America’s opinion on the proposed mosque in Lower Manhattan: search on Openbook for the term “mosk,” and let the entertainment begin. (Openbook, of course, is a site which shows status updates of Facebook users too dumb to use any privacy settings.)
President Obama on Leaving Iraq (Then and Now)
This evening, President Obama will announce the end of the combat mission in Iraq as well as the reduction of the number of troops in Middle East during a primetime news conference at 8:00 p.m. EST. Below is a replay of the speech:
Now here is a fun exercise for those interested in the intersection of power and language. Remember when Candidate Obama was against “dumb wars” in 2002? Below is a 2008 presidential campaign video made with then Presidential Candidate Obama’s own words:
Heavy Drinkers Outlive Nondrinkers
TIME reports on a finding that contradicts what we’ve been taught our entire lives regarding the perils of alcoholism: people who are heavy drinkers live longer than those who have always been nondrinkers. (And that’s after controlling for nearly all the variables one could think up.) Do teetotalers die early due to missing out on the stress release that alcohol provides so well?
A new paper in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests that — for reasons that aren’t entirely clear — abstaining from alcohol does actually tend to increase one’s risk of dying even when you exclude former drinkers. The most shocking part? Abstainers’ mortality rates are higher than those of heavy drinkers.
Even after controlling for nearly all imaginable variables — socioeconomic status, level of physical activity, number of close friends, quality of social support and so on — the researchers (a six-member team led by psychologist Charles Holahan of…
iPrep Academy: New Direction For Education?
A virtual curriculum, high-tech classes, and a lounge-style classroom. The new direction for education? With the Superintendent of Schools as the acting principle, iPrep Academy opened last week. From Miami Herald:
Dry Summer Weather Reveals Lost ‘Cropmarks’
Photo from English Heritage
Summers with dry weather seems uncommon in England, but this summer the dry agricultural fields revealed new marks depicting buried features from the past. BBC News reports:
Hundreds of ancient sites have been discovered by aerial surveys, thanks to a dry start to the summer, English Heritage has said.
The surveys show marks made when crops growing over buried features develop at a different rate from those nearby.
The newly-discovered Roman and prehistoric settlements include a site near Bradford Abbas, Dorset.
The Roman camp was revealed in June after three sides became visible in sun-parched fields of barley.
The lightly-built defensive enclosure would have provided basic protection for Roman soldiers while on manoeuvres in the first century AD and is one of only four discovered in the south west of England, English Heritage said.
Continues at BBC …
Mainstream Film Rentals Coming Soon To Google/YouTube
Google, YouTube, Hulu, Netflix … it’s only a matter of time till Blockbuster files for bankruptcy. In case we didn’t already have enough access to instant movie viewing, Google is looking for a new deal with Hollywood studios. From Wired:
Google is reportedly in talks with the major movie studios to launch full-length video rentals on YouTube by year’s end.
YouTube has already experimented with film rentals, offering selections from the Sundance Festival earlier this year when it would not rule out the addition of Hollywood movies. And the site was reportedly in talks with the same studios around this time last year, so this does not come as much of a surprise, the Financial Times’ “scoop” notwithstanding.
However, YouTube’s movie rental program currently focuses on independent filmmakers and music artists. The addition of mainstream, pay-per-view feature films to YouTube would represent a significant development, regardless of how long these reported talks have…
Why Time Slows Down In Near-Death Situations
Neuroscientist David Eagleman hatched an experiment to learn about why our sense of time slows to a crawl in near-death situations (such as a free fall from a significant height). Disappointingly, it’s not because our abilities of perception kick into Matrix-style hyperdrive. NPR reports:
“Turns out, when you’re falling you don’t actually see in slow motion. It’s not equivalent to the way a slow-motion camera would work,” David says. “It’s something more interesting than that.”
According to David, it’s all about memory, not turbo perception. “Normally, our memories are like sieves,” he says. “We’re not writing down most of what’s passing through our system.” Think about walking down a crowded street: You see a lot of faces, street signs, all kinds of stimuli. Most of this, though, never becomes a part of your memory. But if a car suddenly swerves and heads straight for you, your memory shifts gears. Now it’s writing down…
Are Nations Obsolete?
In an article for Foreign Policy, Parag Khanna argues that as mega-cities wield increasing political and economic power, the structures and sovereignty of the “countries” that contain them becomes less important. In other words, global power struggles will be less America vs. China vs. Russia and more London vs. Mumbai vs. Tokyo, with the people outside of the super-cities being of little consequence.
In an age that appears increasingly unmanageable, cities rather than states are becoming the islands of governance on which the future world order will be built. This new world is not — and will not be — one global village, so much as a network of different ones.
Time, technology, and population growth have massively accelerated the advent of this new urbanized era. Already, more than half the world lives in cities, and the percentage is growing rapidly. But just 100 cities account for 30 percent of the world’s…
Media Complicity in Financial Crimes
Q: WHY ARE MEDIA OUTLETS DOING SUCH A BAD JOB COVERING WALL STREET?
A: BECAUSE THEY ARE OWNED BY WALL STREET.
When you connect the dots in your writing or look for deeper explanations behind the decisions of policymakers, marketmakers and media-makers, it’s easy to be dismissed as a conspiracy nut.
But forgive me for believing that those who serve interests have more clout that those that just speak out on issues. There are hidden relationships that sometimes predetermine what stories get media attention and which do not.
I have a current film out, Plunder: The Crime of Our Time, taking on big media companies to task for what passes for coverage of the financial crisis. I have been asking why they weren’t paying attention, didn’t warn us about it, or investigate too deeply into how it happened.
When I discovered that dodgy lenders and credit card companies pumped more than $3 billion into media…
Obama Speaks Out On His Religion (Video)
TThis one just won’t go away, will it? President Obama takes a break from his vacation to talk to NBC to protest widespread belief that he is a Muslim. Oh and he also says “I can’t spend all my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead”!
Glenn Beck: The New Messiah? Palin Running Mate? Or What?
You have to hand it to him — Glenn Beck has come a long way from his humble cable TV and radio origins, taking Washington by storm today. What should we make of him? Is he a racist? Does he want to be President? What’s his relationship with Sarah Palin about? The Mormon thing?
Official (From Castro): Osama Bin Laden Was CIA Spy
Former Cuban president Fidel Castro meets Lithuanian author and conspiracy theorist Daniel Estulin in Havana. Photograph: Alex Castro/EPA
Why should it take Castro for this to make headlines? It’s not exactly new news after all… Good publicity for Daniel Estulin though! From the Guardian:
Fidel Castro has more reason than most to believe conspiracy theories involving dark forces in Washington. After all, the CIA tried to blow his head off with an exploding cigar.
But the ageing Cuban revolutionary may have gone too far for all but the most ardent believer in the reach and competence of America’s intelligence agency. He has claimed that Osama bin Laden is in the pay of the CIA and that President George Bush summoned up the al-Qaida leader whenever he needed to increase the fear quotient. The former Cuban president said he knows it because he has read WikiLeaks.
Castro told a visiting Lithuanian writer, who is known…
Ayahuasca Vision Quest on Disinformation: The Podcast
Disinformation: The Podcast: Episode 13 — Ayahuasca Vision Quest
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This episode features an interview with Adam Elenbaas, author of Fishers of Men: The Gospel of an Ayahuasca Vision Quest. Adam discusses his experiences in the Peruvian jungle with a psychedelic tea called Ayahuasca, and explains how it changed his spiritual outlook.
Stay tuned after the interview for details on Raymond & Joe’s upcoming appearances at Dragon*Con 2010 in Atlanta. The guys will be supporting events and lectures by Disinfo favorite Graham Hancock.
Rare Hunter S. Thompson Documentary Surfaces on YouTube
It’s been nearly 5 years since The Good Doctor said adiós and pulled that silver trigger, bringing Gonzo to an end for good – or so one would think.
Since his suicide at his Colorado ranch, Thompson seems more present than ever. A number of competing biographies have filled the stores, several new films about the man have flickered into the theaters, DVD shelves and bit torrent sites, and nary a week goes by that we don’t stumble across some bit of news regarding the troubled production of the Johnny Depp film of Hunter’s first novel, The Rum Diary.
In the midst of all the hubbub, I overlooked a grimy little treasure: The Crazy Never Die. Crazy’ is an odd film with a strange provenance that gives the viewer a front-row seat at a rather lucid 80’s-era university lecture by Thompson.
MIT Unveils Nanotech/Robot Swarm To Skim Ocean Oil
Saturday MIT reveals a swarm of autonomous floating robots that can digest an oil spill. The 16-foot robots drag a nanowire mesh that acts like a conveyor belt to soak up surface oil “like paper towels soak up water,” absorbing 20 times its weight and then harmlessly “digesting” the oil by burning it off.
Facebook Alternative, Diaspora, To Launch September 15
Diaspora (in Greek, διασπορά – “a scattering [of seeds]“) is any movement of a population sharing common national and/or ethnic identity. The new Facebook? Via Wired:
Diaspora, a nascent open competitor to Facebook that raised $200,000 from online contributors (including, ahem, the top dog at Facebook) will launch its much-anticipated service Sept. 15, the company said in a blog post Thursday.
The project aims to create a social network that puts users in charge of their own data — or as Diaspora puts it, a “privacy-aware, personally controlled, do-it-all open source social network.”
Diaspora was started by four New York University students earlier this year after hearing a talk from Free Software guru Eban Moglen, who said Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg had done more harm to the world than anyone his age ever had.
Diaspora’s idea of taking on the social network giant gained momentum and wide publicity in the spring, following yet another…
