Archive for August, 2010
Becoming Unamerican
From the Financial Times, a trend that the U.S. Government would prefer to keep quiet (so of course we’re featuring it here):
At the US Embassy in London, there is a waiting list that none of the officials likes to discuss. On the list are Americans hoping to give up their citizenship, as they seek shelter from the Internal Revenue Service.
One lawyer fighting for her clients’ right to do so is Suzanne Reisman, a former civil rights campaigner, who is now a private-client lawyer in Mayfair, central London.
“You make a lot of sacrifices when you have to pay US taxes and live outside the country for a long time. But you also make a lot of sacrifices when you give up your passport,” she says.
Having lived in London since 1998, Ms Reisman herself has considered giving up her US passport. But she probably won’t. “I don’t think I want to die…
Can Cellphones Become Credit Cards?
AT&T and Verizon are testing a new feature designed to “supplant more than 1 billion plastic cards in American wallets” – by letting people make traditional credit card purchases using their cellphones!
It seems like a glimpse of the future, but it’s already in place in Japan, Turkey and the U.K., with smart phones simply being waved over a reader to complete in-store purchases. “This is definitely a game-changer,” an analyst told Bloomberg news, saying that already cellphone carriers are “the biggest recurring billers in every market. They are experts at processing payments.” And the concept is already being cheered on by retailers. “We have long argued that real competition is missing from today’s payments market,” one industry spokesperson added.
Plus, the cellphone carriers are attacking when credit card companies are already being reviled for their dishonest disclosures on penalty fees. (Today Forbes cited a new study which shows that some credit…
Incoming! The Sun Unleashes A Massive CME at Earth (Video)
The most awesome part of this story from Ian O’Neill on Discovery News is the technology that even recognized this event in the first place, but there are some out there who fear-monger about it (needless to say the title of this story is in jest). I try to keep in mind that the universe is more a wondrous place, than one intent on destroying human life (I’m looking at you, Larry Joseph). Ian O’Neill writes on Discovery News:
Earlier this morning, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) witnessed a complex magnetic eruption on the sun. The joint NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) — a mission sitting at the L1 point between the Earth and the sun — also spotted a large coronal mass ejection (CME) blasting in the direction of Earth.
It is thought that the SDO and SOHO observations are connected, making this a global magnetic disturbance affecting the whole of the Earth-facing side of the sun.
Does Circumcision Cause Psychological Damage?
Dr. Janet Menage writes on Norm UK:
Circumcision is a euphemism for genital reduction surgery or genital mutilation, performed by medically-licensed or unqualified practitioners for various reasons. It is important to define it honestly, for that is how the mind interprets it, with or without superimposed denials, explanations and intellectualisations.
Many circumcisions are performed on children, who, by definition are not able to give informed consent of the kind available to adults. They are vulnerable to coercion and manipulation and generally have little say in what happens to their bodies medically & surgically. They are not usually allowed to say no to medical procedures because it is deemed that parents & doctors “know best”. However, it is unlikely that any child, asked if they would like a person with a knife to cut off part of their penis, would agree to such an action. This would be a normal psychological reaction to…
Machine Elves 101, or Why Terence McKenna Matters
Terence McKenna’s continuing cultural influence is demonstrated in Daniel Moler’s essay for Reality Sandwich. As a side note, here at disinformation we included a documentary look at McKenna on the DVD release of our film 2012: Science or Superstition:
If anyone ever wanted to get to know me (i.e., what makes Daniel tick) the first thing I would have to tell them is, “Read Terence McKenna.” In online forums and real life scenarios alike, I quote McKenna like Jules Winnfield quotes Ezekiel in Pulp Fiction. Passionate. With conviction. My armor and weapon when I’m ready to blast the meandering monotony of day-to-day living. However, most people ask, who is this guy? What exactly is the Terence McKenna circus? And, what makes him so important?
A few weeks ago my friend Michelle suggested I write a “Terence for Dummies” piece. So, since “For Dummies” is under copyright, here’s my bent on the McKenna legacy.
The Background
Terence Kemp McKenna (November 16, 1946 — April 3, 2000) was born under the auspices of…
How to Make an ATM Give You Cash (Video)
Erica Naone writes on Technology Review:
During a flashy presentation at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, a computer security expert showed several ways to break into ATMs. Barnaby Jack, who is director of research at IOActive Labs, made cash pour from a machine for minutes on end. After studying four different companies’ models, he said, “every ATM I’ve looked at, I’ve found a ‘game over’ vulnerability that allowed me to get cash from the machine.” He’s even identified an Internet-based attack that requires no physical access.
The same talk was supposed to take place at last year’s Black Hat conference, but it was pulled at the last moment. In his presentation, which did not reveal the exact details of how he performed the attacks, Jack named two vendors — Triton and Tranax — and said he had been in contact with both about fixing the problems.
Jack demonstrated the attacks on two ATMs that he bought online and drove to Las Vegas from his company’s headquarters in San Jose. The hardware kit that he used in the demonstration cost less than $100 to make.
The AboveTopSecret Comic: Mr. Mask’s Adventures In Conspiracy
Some graphic fun going on over at AboveTopSecret where an ATS fan has posted his (or her?) vision for an ATS comic series, Mr. Mask’s Adventures In Conspiracy. Here’s a sample page – check out the rest at AboveTopSecret:
Patients Can Now Sniff-Control Wheelchairs
Paralyzed patients can now sniff out a discussion online or play a game of solitaire on the computer. A device connected to the nose allows a person to control keyboards and wheelchairs by sniffing. The National Geographic reports:
People who are paralyzed from the neck down might soon be leading themselves around by the nose—literally. A new electric wheelchair allows the severely disabled to guide their movements by sniffing into tubes.
Sniffing depends on highly coordinated motions of the back of the roof of the mouth, aka the soft palate. This region receives signals from several nerves that are often unaffected by paralytic injuries and disorders.
That means some patients with disabilities ranging from quadriplegia to “locked-in syndrome”—where a person is completely paralyzed, save for eyeblinks—retain the ability to sniff with precision.
Based on this idea, scientists with the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, devised a new sniff controller, which uses tubes…
Find Out What Corporations Are Downloading Those 100 Million Facebook Profiles Off BitTorrent
Have you heard about this? Jason Chen writes on Gizmodo:
Remember that torrent yesterday that contained the personal information off of 100 million scraped Facebook profiles? I thought it was strange that the guy didn’t sell this information, since many companies would be interested. Turns out they are interested.
Reader Clint discovered that all you had to do is use something like Peer Block, which grabs the IPs of the other users also downloading the torrent and identifies which company or university or organization they belong to. You can check this yourself by hopping on the torrent and doing the same thing.
Here are the major companies that are downloading the torrent. A couple caveats to these. Just because a company is on the list, doesn’t mean that it’s a sanctioned download by the company itself to grab the user information for some purpose. It could easily just be some dude at the company…
Churchill’s Teeth Make A Profit
How much would you pay for a set of someone’s teeth? Winston Churchill’s specially made dentures (designed to maintain his notable lisp) were sold for three times the expected price. The Guardian reports:
A set of false teeth belonging to Winston Churchill’s has been sold for £15,200 at an auction in Norfolk.
The upper dentures, one of several sets made for the wartime prime minister, were specially constructed to preserve his natural lisp and were so important he carried two pairs with him at all times.
The teeth, sold by the son of the dental technician who made them, had been expected to fetch a maximum of £5,000, but they were bought for more than three times that by a British collector of Churchill memorabilia.
The set of dentures were designed to be loose-fitting so that Churchill could preserve the diction famous from his radio broadcasts during the second world war, an expert said.
“From childhood,…
Discover ‘Hidden Wisdom’ with Tim Wallace-Murphy
Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition. Painting by Cristiano Banti (1857).
Chris Orapello writes on The Infinite and The Beyond:
Tim Wallace-Murphy, co author of Rosslyn, The Knights of the Holy Grail, and other books dealing with the Knights Templar and the Freemasons, presents humankind’s pursuit to enlightenment with his new release Hidden Wisdom, Secrets of the Western Esoteric Tradition.
In this book Tim Wallace-Murphy takes a look into the evolution of human spirituality and its relationship as a species to divinity and the manifested world throughout the periods of civilization. Starting with the dawn of time and continuing up to the present day, he provides a historical commentary on the growth of thought and through his focus establishes a chain of understanding while revealing some of the pivotal relationships that exist between the faiths, theologies, philosophies as well as the political, social, industrial and technological elements of human growth that have developed over…
Why The New World Order Will Fail
This YouTube video features the voices of Terence McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson and Noam Chomsky, with this description:
The New World Order is a catch-all phrase that is used by fear mongering propagandists to captivate people with dread. Too many people for too long have been put under a spell with feelings of hopelessness and despair by this fairy tale concept that there is a secret society or race of reptiles out there to get them and their children, and that they are succeeding at doing it. Please show this video to anyone you can to help break the spell of fear placed over those who wish to make this world a better place.
An Overlooked Source Of Hormone-Altering Bisphenol-A? Paper Receipts
When you’re handed a receipt at a drug store or supermarket, you might be accepting more than you wish: scientists have announced that about half of paper receipts from stores and ATMs are coated with bisphenol-A, a chemical which affects the endocrine system, contributing to reproductive problems and cancer. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able buy groceries without risking an involuntary sex change? The Washington Post reports:
The Environmental Working Group found BPA on 40 percent of the receipts it collected from supermarkets, automated teller machines, gas stations and chain stores. In some cases, the total amount of BPA on the receipt was 1,000 times the amount found in the epoxy lining of a can of food, another controversial use of the chemical.
Sonya Lunder, a senior analyst with the environmental group, says BPA’s prevalence on receipts could help explain why the chemical can be detected in the urine of an estimated…
Sketchy-Luggage Stickers For Your Suitcase
The next time you fly somewhere, spice up your journey by adorning your bag with one these questionable-contents suitcase stickers produced and sold by The Cheeky. Sadly, Canada has banned these, following some unfortunate incidents.
Republicans Kill 9/11 Health Bill
Anyone who lives in New York most likely knows someone whose health suffered as a result of being a first responder at Ground Zero on September 11, 2001. It’s scandalous that many of those people, whose actions can fairly be described as heroic, have not been guaranteed health care to recognize what they did for the rest of us on that day and the days following as the rescue efforts continued. Just when it finally looked as though a health bill would become law, Republicans played politics and have scuppered the bill, as reported by Politico.com:
Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) kept up pressure on Republicans Monday, pointing to their vote against a health care bill for Sept. 11 workers as an example that “nothing is above politics for them.”
Weiner launched into a now famous tirade on the floor of the House last week…
Is Plagiarism OK?
The New York Times ponders plagiarism in the digital age, where films like Rip: A Remix Manifesto question traditional notions of copyright and fair use:
At Rhode Island College, a freshman copied and pasted from a Web site’s frequently asked questions page about homelessness — and did not think he needed to credit a source in his assignment because the page did not include author information.
At DePaul University, the tip-off to one student’s copying was the purple shade of several paragraphs he had lifted from the Web; when confronted by a writing tutor his professor had sent him to, he was not defensive — he just wanted to know how to change purple text to black.
And at the University of Maryland, a student reprimanded for copying from Wikipedia in a paper on the Great Depression said he thought its entries — unsigned and collectively written — did not need to be credited since…
Meet Your Surgeon: I, Robot
I wonder how its bedside manners are? Probably less important than that it presumably is not subject to human error, hangovers, working without sleep for days, etc. From Fast Company:
Paging Dr. 3PO. One day soon robots could performing routine procedures in the OR.
Bioengineers at Duke University announced yesterday that they’ve created a robot that can “locate a man-made, or phantom, lesion in simulated human organs, guide a device to the lesion and take multiple samples during a single session,” all without a doctor’s supervision. Researchers hope these developments could one day lead to robots working autonomously on basic surgical operations.
Nicknamed the Biopsy Bot, the robot relies on 3-D and…
The Web’s New Gold Mine: Your Secrets
A Wall Street Journal investigation finds that one of the fastest-growing businesses on the Internet is the business of spying on consumers:
Hidden inside Ashley Hayes-Beaty’s computer, a tiny file helps gather personal details about her, all to be put up for sale for a tenth of a penny.
The file consists of a single code— 4c812db292272995e5416a323e79bd37—that secretly identifies her as a 26-year-old female in Nashville, Tenn…
George Orwell vs. Aldous Huxley
Interesting comic adaption by Stuart McMillen of Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death posted on Accelerating Future:
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