Archive for August, 2010
Nazi Vacation: Hitler In A Home Video
This amateur 8mm film, found at an estate sale, is a fascinating historical artifact: clips of a European vacation taken in 1938 include footage of Hitler at a massive May Day celebration at Berlin Stadium. Wondering who shot this makes it all the more creepy.
Lego Is The Most Popular Toy Ever – But Has Lost Its Patent
Would you have guessed Lego, the Danish phenomenon that has intrigued generations of kids and adults alike? Maybe, but can Lego hold that Number 1 spot now that its patent has expired? Report from Fast Company:
If you grew up thinking Lego was the bomb, better than any other toy in your collection, turns out you’re not alone: A new broad-ranging survey of over 3,000 folks has revealed it’s the most popular toy ever manufactured, even more so than Barbie, Game Boys and a dozen other pretenders.
Firebox.com, an online toy and…
CIA Finds Secret Tapes ‘Under Desk’
Ramzi Binalshibh at Guantanamo
So what else has the CIA got under its desks? Exclusive report from AP via LA Times:
The CIA has tapes of 9/11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh being interrogated in a secret overseas prison. Discovered under a desk, the recordings could provide an unparalleled look at how foreign governments aided the U.S. in holding and questioning suspected terrorists.
The two videotapes and one audiotape are believed to be the only remaining recordings made within the clandestine prison system.
The tapes depict Binalshibh’s interrogation sessions at a Moroccan-run facility the CIA used near Rabat in 2002, several current and former U.S. officials told The Associated Press. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the recordings remain a closely guarded secret.
When the CIA destroyed its cache of 92 videos of two other al-Qaida operatives, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri, being waterboarded in 2005, officials believed they had wiped away all of the…
A Fun New (Old) Game to Play While Drinking
While the readers — and writers — on this site are no strangers to a good time, even the heartiest of partiers can find themselves stranded in a rut caused by lack of novelty. We’ve all known the soul-crushing boredom that results from having the same conversation with the same people in the same place again. It can transform one’s imbibing from recreational to medicinal. We can all use a shake-up every now and then, and it often seems that the best way forward can be found by reaching back.
The next time your good times are more boring than blaring, why not introduce an Exquisite Corpse?
Wikipedia explains:
Exquisite corpse (also known as exquisite cadaver or rotating corpse) is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule (e.g. “The adjective noun adverb verb the adjective noun”)…
Soak The Very, Very Rich
A sensible suggestion from the capable mind of The New Yorker’s James Surowiecki, but what are the chances that our government will implement it, one wonders (whilst thinking of all those campaign contributions made by the very rich):
The fight on Capitol Hill over whether to extend the Bush tax cuts is about many things: deficit reduction, economic stimulus, supply-side ideology. But at its core is a simple question: who counts as rich? The Obama Administration’s answer is that you’re rich if you make more than two hundred thousand dollars a year as an individual or two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year as a household, and therefore you should have your taxes raised. Conservatives suggest that this threshold is far too low, and argue that Obama would be taxing mostly small-business owners, or the people a Fox News host has referred to as “the so-called rich,” rather than fat…
China’s Economy Moves Up To Second Place
China has been growing in the past decade, which as allowed it to surpass Japan’s economy, and reintroduce itself as a large player in the global economy of commercial and political powers. The Associated Press reports:
China has eclipsed Japan as the world’s second-biggest economy after three decades of blistering growth that put overtaking the U.S. in reach within 10 years.
Japan is still far richer per person after confirming Monday that economic output fell behind its giant neighbor for the three months ending June 30. However, the news is more proof of China’s arrival as a force that is altering the global balance of commercial, political and military power.
Analysts are already looking ahead to when China might match the United States in total output — which the World Bank and others say could be no more than a decade away.
“This means the world will pay more attention to China, especially when most…
We Sold You The Secret – Now Buy The Power
Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret, originally released as a film, became a book publishing phenomenon in 2006, with 19 million copies printed in 46 languages, not to mention disinformation’s own Beyond The Secret, in which Alexandra Bruce dissected the teachings of Byrne and her fellow “life coaches” that comprised the so-called “Secret.”
For reasons unknown (to us and the rest of the general public, anyway), Rhonda won’t be promoting the sequel, The Power. Could it be that she really can’t think of a way to tell interviewers what’s different in this book from the fluff in the previous one? Her publishers have resorted to advertising on TV with the promo below — it goes on sale at midnight tonight…
Proof of Aliens Could Come Within 25 Years, Scientist Says
From Space.com:
SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Proof of extraterrestrial intelligence could come within 25 years, an astronomer who works on the search said Sunday.
“I actually think the chances that we’ll find ET are pretty good,” said Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute in Mountain View, Calif., here at the SETI con convention. “Young people in the audience, I think there’s a really good chance you’re going to see this happen.”
Shostak bases this estimation on the Drake Equation, a formula conceived by SETI pioneer Frank Drake to calculate the number (N) of alien civilizations with whom we might be able to communicate. That equation takes into account a variety of factors, including the rate of star formation in the galaxy, the fraction of stars that have planets, the fraction of planets that are habitable, the percent of those that actually develop life, the percent of those that…
Your Brain on Computers – Studying the Brain Off the Grid, Professors Find Clarity
Partial map of the Internet based on the January 15, 2005 data found on opte.org. Source: Matt Britt (CC)
Sounds like a good way to expense your summer vacation for these scientists! But on the other hand, the research may actually be very instructive as to how much time we should spend connected to computers and the Internet. Report from the New York Times:
…Mr. Braver, a psychology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, was one of five neuroscientists on an unusual journey. They spent a week in late May in this remote area of southern Utah, rafting the San Juan River, camping on the soft banks and hiking the tributary canyons.
It was a primitive trip with a sophisticated goal: to understand how heavy use of digital devices and other technology changes how we think and behave, and how a retreat into nature might reverse those effects…
Some of the scientists say…
Criminal Gang Of 100 Fake Monks Strikes In China
I wish this news went hand-in-hand with reports of a massive criminal gang of nuns in Italy. Via the Guardian:
Police in northern China faced an unexpected and unholy menace last week when more than 100 fake monks besieged their police station, a Chinese newspaper reported today.
Police from Baotou city, in inner Mongolia, told the North News that the incident began last Wednesday when what appeared to be a group of monks attacked a toll booth and escaped by bus.
Officers stopped the vehicle at a roadblock after a lengthy car chase and arrested 31 of the men – but the suspects fought back with steel bars and knives, allowing the rest to make their getaway on a double-decker bus.
The following day, more than 100 men, apparently monks, besieged the city’s Guyang police station to demand the release of those arrested.
They arrested 178 fake monks, confiscating the sticks, knives, fake medicines and…
Scientists Develop A Vaccine For Stress
Is this a step on the path to a Brave New World? The head of a research team at Stanford says he is on the verge of producing a vaccine that would deactivate the brain’s stress-causing chemicals. For the first time, people could shut off the fight-or-flight mechanism that has determined our behavior (and helped ensure our survival) since the caveman era. Via CBS News:
Dr Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscience professor at Stanford, says after 30 years of studying stress, his team might be on the verge of a novel cure.
Sapolsky has long theorized that, unlike some animals, humans are unable to turn off stress chemicals used for the fight-or-flight mechanism. A class of hormone called glucocorticoids are one of the chief offenders, according to Sapolsky.
So his team has pioneered a way to bootstrap a “herpes virus to carry engineered ‘neuroprotective’ genes deep into the brain to neutralize the rogue hormones…
The Skateboarding Priest Video
“Come on kiddies, you’re safe with me — I can skate!” … Hmmm, I’m not sure this Hungarian priest looks like someone I want my kids to skate with, but believe it or not Reverend Zoltan Lendvai, 45, who lives and preaches in Redics, a small village on Hungary’s border with Slovenia, has become a YouTube sensation!
Donald Duck: Pervert?
The Smoking Gun reports on a woman who charges that the beloved Disney character wanted to love her back, but not in the way you’d want…
While visiting Epcot Center in Florida, a Pennsylvania woman alleges that a Disney employee dressed as Donald Duck grabbed her breast and molested her after she sought an autograph.
After the alleged groping, Donald Duck made gestures–apparently with his snowy white hands—“indicating he had done something wrong,” according to a lawsuit filed last month by April Magolon. The Upper Darby woman, 27, was visiting Epcot with her children and fiancé in May 2008 when the incident reportedly occurred.
Magolon, pictured at right, is suing Disney for negligence, battery, and infliction of emotional distress, and is seeking in excess of $50,000 in damages. The entertainment giant has petitioned to have the lawsuit, which was filed in Pennsylvania’s Court of Common Pleas, transferred to federal court in Philadelphia…
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How Many “Top Priority” Issues Does Obama Have?
A good question, from CBS News:
After the Senate passed that $600 million Border Security Bill yesterday, President Obama issued a statement asserting that securing the southwest border has been “a top priority” since he took office.
But if you think Mr. Obama can have but a single “top priority,” you’d be wrong. He’s got a load of them.
In an Address to the Nation two months ago, Mr. Obama declared “our top priority is to recover and rebuild from a recession that has touched the lives of nearly every American.”
More than any other issue, he has used the phrase “top priority” about digging the economy out of the recession and creating jobs. And on this issue, he drew a distinction between “a” top priority and “the” top priority.
“Creating jobs in the United States and ensuring a return to sustainable economic growth is the top priority for my Administration,” he said in an…
The Price of Truth
Adrian Lamo
“You’re free, but in your mind, your freedom’s in a bind.” — Janelle Monáe
Adrian Lamo’s critics faced him down at a hacker’s conference. Lamo sat on the stage, placid, blinking pronouncedly as his hecklers continued. They prodded him, asking if he would have been tempted to release the data that a man who contacted him had sworn upon threat of military legal prosecution never to release had Lamo not faced his own prosecution as an accessory. One attendee demanded that hacking veteran Lamo take an internationalist perspective into the world events which led Lamo to turn over one Bradley Manning to the authorities. The hacker beside Lamo cajoled him for not having ignored the initial messaging by Bradley Manning.
Lamo simply replied with his gratitude that he lived in a country where he would not have to take a bullet to the head for attending a hacker’s conference, period. And for…
Why Did the Nazis Film the Dying Jews of Warsaw?
Sharon Waxman on her blog WaxWord:
In a French-themed café a block from the teeming beach, producer Noemi Schory explained why her new Holocaust documentary, “An Unfinished Film,” did not deserve the R rating that the MPAA handed down last week after a final appeal.
Yes, she said, the film has shocking images: corpses on the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto, starving children, a mass grave. And some nudity: naked men, and then women, entering a ritual bath.
It is a harsh film, even a brutal one. But it is also an historical document that until now has been unseen by the public, and whose purpose remains a mystery.
“I am upset about (the rating) theoretically, and practically this will create difficulties,” she said, ignoring an iced lemonade. “It puts up another obstacle to seeing it. “
With whichever rating, ‘An Unfinished Film’ is not a typical Holocaust documentary. Instead it investigates a mysterious Nazi…
Rabid Vampire Bats Bite 500 People, Kill 4 In Peru
BBC News reports:
Peru’s health ministry has sent emergency teams to a remote Amazon region to battle an outbreak of rabies spread by vampire bats.
Four children in the Awajun indigenous tribe died after being bitten by the bloodsucking mammals.
Health workers have given rabies vaccine to more than 500 people who have also been attacked.
Some experts have linked mass vampire bat attacks on people in the Amazon to deforestation.
The rabies outbreak is focused on the community of Urakusa in the north-eastern Peruvian Amazon, close to the border with Ecuador.
The indigenous community appealed for help after being unable to explain the illness that had killed the children.
Watch A Never-Before-Screened Scene Cut from the Original ‘Star Wars’ Trilogy
Looks like Gawker is keeping it on the ‘net here:
This is incredibly epic …
A never-before-screened scene cut from Return of the Jedi in which Darth Vader tempts Luke Skywalker to join the dark side, paired with footage of Luke constructing/activating his green lightsaber and officially becoming a Jedi Knight.
TorrentReactor Buys and Renames Russian Town
Hard to believe this? Ernesto writes on TorrentFreak:
TorrentReactor, listed among the five most popular torrent sites on the Internet, has surprised friends and foes by acquiring a small town in central Russia. The town formerly known as Gar has reportedly been bought for the equivalent of $148,000 and was quickly renamed after the Russian-based torrent site.
The last time a torrent site attempted to buy some land, the plan miserably failed. Early 2007 The Pirate Bay launched its ‘Buy Sealand” campaign. The plan was to raise enough money so they could buy the micronation of Sealand and offer “high-speed Internet access, no copyright laws and VIP accounts to The Pirate Bay.”
Within a few weeks the campaign raised some $20,000 from potential citizens, but this wasn’t enough. Sealand turned out not to be an option as it was prized at 750 million euros, which equals to nearly one billion US dollars. Other…
