Archive for August, 2010
“Marinated” Cat Rescued
Would a cat taste better with red or white wine? This story is all sorts of strange. Buffalo News reports:
Buffalo police rescued a cat from a Cheektowaga man who apparently was planning to make a meal out of his pet because he thought it was ill-tempered, authorities said Monday.
When Ferry-Fillmore District officers pulled over a car driven by Gary L. Korkuc on Sunday night during a traffic stop, they said they heard a cat crying from inside the trunk and investigated.
What they found has left animal lovers at the SPCA Serving Erie County in shock.
The cat, according to police, was in a cage “marinating” in a mixture of crushed red peppers, chili pepper, salt and oil.
“It’s disgusting. It surprises me every day what people are capable of when it comes to violence, whether it is animals or people,” said Gina M. Browning, the SPCA’s director of public relations. “I’ve never heard…
A Handy iPhone App For Climate Change Skeptics
For all you climate change skeptics (who also happen to have an iPhone), The Hill reports that a new app will allow you to post stinging responses to any posts on disinfo.com that even hint of a belief in man-made global warming or other climate change:
Recent weeks have been up-and-down for climate skeptics: The “climate-gate” scandal fizzled as several probes cleared prominent scientists of faking warming data, but the big climate bill also died on Capitol Hill.
As the battle continues, climate skeptics now have a new tool: a recently launched iPhone app called “Our Climate.”
“You have all the information at your fingertips, wherever you go, to help you get a more complete picture on what is happening to our climate!” states the app’s website.
The app notes that, “In the current debate on our climate, you often hear that the ‘debate is over’ or that the consensus of scientists is that global warming…
Eat Meat From Cloned Cattle
If you really enjoyed a steak from one cow, now you can have the exact same cow again! It’s like a Twilight Zone episode where your plate keeps refilling with the same piece of meat. In an attempt to increase production rate of quality meat, the US has been mass producing meat from cloned cattle. BBC has the report:
Some of the cattle cloned to boost food production in the US have been created from the cells of dead animals, according to a US cloning company.
Farmers say it is being done because it is only possible to tell that the animal’s meat is of exceptionally high quality by inspecting its carcass.
US scientists are using a variety of techniques to assess which animals have exceptional qualities.
These attributes include meat quality, productivity or longevity.
There is a long tradition of resurrecting dead animals for cloning – Dolly the sheep being a case in point.
These exceptional…
The Ultimate Stadium Naming Rights Deal: Stonehenge?
The British government has backed out of funding Stonehenge as part of its austerity measures, never mind that doing so was part of Britain’s successful 2012 Olympics bid. The New York Times reports that English Heritage, the part-government-financed body that owns the site, is appealing for private money; could a corporate naming rights deal be part of the package?
The prehistoric monument of Stonehenge stands tall in the British countryside as one of the last remnants of the Neolithic Age. Recently it has also become the latest symbol of another era: the new fiscal austerity.
Renovations — including a plan to replace the site’s run-down visitors center with one almost five times bigger and to close a busy road that runs along the 5,000-year-old monument — had to be mothballed in June. The British government had suddenly withdrawn £10 million, or $16 million, in financing for the project as part of a budget…
On The Internet Everybody Knows You’re A Dog
[disinformation ed.'s note: the following is an excerpt from Deanna Zandt's book Share This!: How You Will Change the World with Social Networking, courtesy of Berrett-Koehler Publishers.]
Thanks to social networks’ transparency, it’s also more important, and more accepted, to use your real name and identity. Identity is a key component of your work in the ecosystem. When you act anonymously, your reach is limited because you’re not leaving a record of your actions. When you participate publicly, your actions leave a public trail. It’s still fine in some cases to build your relationships and social capital under a pseudonym (and there are a few cases where it’s necessary). As divisions between online and offline life dissolve, however, it has become much more valuable to combine many of your identities into one powerhouse.
Contributing our opinions and experiences to public conversations using our real identities plants a stake in the ground, and…
How ‘Star Wars’ Changed Everything
Charles Q. Choi, SPACE.com contributor, says that from household robots to bionic hands to CNN holograms, the world is looking more and more like that galaxy far, far away, in the Christian Science Monitor:
It’s been more than 30 years since “Star Wars” first exploded into theaters, but the swashbuckling sci-fi films from writer-director George Lucas have left a legacy no other blockbuster has surpassed.
Increasingly, the impact of “Star Wars” is not limited to pop culture or even world politics. As science and technology advance, the world is little by little growing more and more like that galaxy far, far away.
A taste of the science fiction franchise’s impact is landing in Orlando, Fla., this week, where devotees from around the world are expected to congregate for the Star Wars Celebration V convention. The four-day convention runs Thursday through Sunday at the Orange County Convention Center.
The cultural influence of the six “Star…
From Garbage Men to G-Men
Photo by Fruggo (CC)
Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:
Remember London’s call to its citizens to paw through each other’s trash, looking for suspicious materials? Or the numerous times in America politicians have told us in not so subtle ways to keep a watchful and suspicious eye on our neighbors? Now, thanks to the Illinois State Police, trash collectors have been deputized in the surveillance state’s war on the population.
Cook County Sherriff Tom Dart enlisted 25 garbage collectors to train in surveillance tactics such as looking for pot plants in back yards, taking notes on abandoned cars or realizing that large containers could be a potential terrorist threat. The program, dubbed “Waste Watch” by Waste Management Inc, has already been implemented in 100 communities nationwide according to the Chicago Tribune. Sherriff Dart said the partnership is free and is akin to adding new officers on the streets.
Cancer Diagnosis Through Breath Tests
Not only can a breath test tell you how much you’ve had to drink, now it can tell you if you have cancer! Ok, not exactly the same thing, but it’s pretty interesting what your breath can tell. Medical News Today details:
US scientists have developed and tested a prototype breath test to detect lung cancer
The results of the test is published in the international journal of respiratory medicine Thorax.
In tests, the colour testing device, which is about the size of a coin and is not expensive, had a 75 per cent success rate in detecting people with cancer.
It can also detect people with early stages of lung cancer.
However, in testing the device also showed false positives – it picked out people without lung cancer.
Using a technique called a “colorimetric sensor array”, the test picks up the chemical fingerprint of the breath of people with lung cancer.
Lung cancer tumours, like other cancers,…
Annalee Newitz: How ‘Max Headroom’ Predicted My Job, 20 Years Before It Existed
Very interesting essay from Annalee Newitz on io9.com. If you grew up watching American television in the ’80s this was one of the weirdest and most interesting shows on network TV, even for kids like myself who didn’t fully grasp the implications of what I was seeing on the screen. (The show obviously baffled many adults as well, since it only lasted fourteen episodes, thankfully the entire series has finally been released on DVD.)
Making sense of it all and putting the show in perspective twenty years later is Annalee Newitz on io9.com:
For those who don’t know the premise of the 1987—88 series, where every episode begins with the tagline “twenty minutes into the future,” here’s a quick recap. Investigative reporter Edison Carter works for Network 23 in an undefined cyberpunk future, where all media is ad-supported and ratings rule all. Reporters carry “rifle cameras,” gun-shaped video cameras, which are wirelessly linked back to a “controller” in the newsroom. Edison’s controller is Theora, who accesses information online — everything from apartment layouts to secret security footage — to help him with investigations.
They’re aided in their investigations by a sarcastic AI named Max Headroom, built by geek character Bryce and based on Edison’s memories. Sometimes producer Murray (Jeffrey Tambor) helps out, as does Reg, a pirate TV broadcaster known as a “blank” because he’s erased his identity from corporate databases.
In the world of Max Headroom, it’s illegal for televisions to have an off switch. Terrorists are reality TV stars. And super-fast subliminal advertisements called blipverts have started to blow people up by overstimulating the nervous systems of people who are sedentary and eat too much fat…
New York Ad Depicting 9/11 Attacks Beside Mosque Approved
Where would a religious/racial influenced debate be without advertisement? You know the ad sends a powerful message when you have to sue MTA to get it approved. Is there really an argument against an Islamic temple being close to ground zero when Masjid Manhattan mosque already exists a couple of blocks from the proposed site? From AP News:
New York City’s transit agency has approved a bus advertisement that depicts a plane flying toward the World Trade Center’s towers as they burn along with a rendering of a proposed mosque near ground zero.
The ad was paid for by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, an organization that opposes radical Islamic influence in the United States. The group’s executive director says she doesn’t find the ad offensive.
The group sued the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to demand it accept the ad, which was approved Monday.
MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz says the agency doesn’t endorse the ad’s views.
The…
Pentagon: Taliban Can Read WikiLeaks, U.S. Troops Can’t
Noah Shachtman writes on the always interesting WIRED’s Danger Room:
Any citizen, any foreign spy, any member of the Taliban, and any terrorist can go to the WikiLeaks website, and download detailed information about how the U.S. military waged war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2009. Members of that same military, however, are now banned from looking at those internal military documents. “Doing so would introduce potentially classified information on unclassified networks,” according to one directive issued by the armed forces.
That cry you hear? It’s common sense, writhing in pain.
There was a time, just a few months ago, when the Pentagon appeared to be growing comfortable with the emerging digital media landscape. Troops were free to blog and tweet, as long as they used their heads and didn’t disclose secrets. Thumb drives and DVDs could be employed, as long as they didn’t carry viruses or classified information. But the WikiLeaks disclosures…
Take Vitamin C To Beat Cancer
Photo: Ragesoss (CC)
From Natural News a report suggesting that Vitamin C can help combat cancer — not that this is anything new as anyone familiar with the Gerson Therapy will attest:
A half century ago, Linus Pauling began his pioneering research into how vitamin C impacts health (http://www.naturalnews.com/025802.html). Now, almost 25 years after Pauling’s death, a new study backs up his contention that vitamin C has remarkable healing and protective benefits. In fact, now scientists have discovered how vitamin C may put the brakes on the growth of cancer cells.
Margreet Vissers, associate professor at the University of Otago’s Free Radical Research Group in New Zealand, headed the study which was just published in the journal Cancer Research. “Our results offer a promising and simple intervention to help in our fight against cancer, at the level of both prevention and cure,” Dr.Vissers said in a statement to the press.
She pointed out that the role…
The 23 Enigma: Captain Clark Welcomes You Aboard!
Movie poster for the 2007 film 'The Number 23' starring Jim Carrey.
Disinfo.com editor’s note: This classic dossier by Dave “daev” Walsh was originally published on this site on Oct. 18, 2000.
Well, we don’t have any explanation. We’re not into saying, “This is why”. I don’t come to any conclusion. I simply think it’s interesting.
— Genesis P-Orridge, interview in ‘Tape Delay’ by Charles Neal, 1987.
The ‘23 Enigma’, as discovered by William S. Burroughs, presents itself as a good omen for some — disaster for others. Trying to convey the phenomenon to the uninitiated is as easy as describing the night sky to someone who has been blind from birth.
When Burroughs was in Tangiers, he knew a Captain Clark who ran a ferry over to Spain. One day, Clark told Burroughs that he had been doing the route for 23 years without an accident. That day, the ferry sank … that evening,…
Drug Resistant Indian Superbug Spreading
From Reuters:
A new superbug could spread around the world after reaching Britain from India — in part because of medical tourism — and scientists say there are almost no drugs to treat it.
Researchers said on Wednesday they had found a new gene called New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase, or NDM-1, in patients in South Asia and in Britain.
NDM-1 makes bacteria highly resistant to almost all antibiotics, including the most powerful class called carbapenems, and experts say there are no new drugs on the horizon to tackle it.
With international travel in search of cheaper healthcare increasing, particularly for procedures such as cosmetic surgery, Timothy Walsh, who led the study, said he feared the new superbug could soon spread across the globe…
[continues at Reuters]
SHCOOL: North Carolina Road Marking
It sums up the state of our education system very succinctly, doesn’t it? You know, a picture is worth a thousand words and all that… (via BBC News):
Valedictorian Schools The System!
I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant. — H. L. Mencken
Invisibility Cloak Made Of Silk
Photo: Gerd A.T. Müller
Discovery News reports that silk, a material used for thousands of years, could be the key to creating a soft, Harry Potter-style invisibility cloak:
For thousands of years people have worn shimmering silk to stand out in a crowd. Within the next few years people could wear silk to become invisible in a a crowd.
For the first time ever, scientists have created an invisibility cloak made from silk, and coated in gold.
The new metamaterial, as invisibility cloaks and their kin are technically called, only works on relatively long terahertz waves (a region of the electromagnetic spectrum between radio and infrared light), but the Boston-area scientists who developed the technology think that silk could work as an invisibility cloak at much smaller wavelengths, even in the visible range.
The research could lead to a wide range of optically unique materials for use in biomedicine or defense.
“This is an unusual angle for…
The Fluoride Fraud
By Abby Martin for Mediaroots.org:
When was the last time you stopped to think about the one thing you can’t live without? I don’t mean the Internet – I’m talking about water. Without clean drinking water, life could not go on. This is why it’s so important that we know what is in our water. For the past sixty-five years, city governments nationwide have been adding a controversial substance called fluoride to municipal water supplies.
You probably recognize the word fluoride from the back of your toothpaste tube or from your visits to the dentist. But the fluoride added to our water is not the same as that in our toothpaste. The chemical added to our water is a fluorine compound called hexafluorosilicic acid that is generated as a by-product from the phosphate fertilizer industry.
Phosphates are minerals that are used to make fertilizer, and phosphate mining industry is a giant moneymaker. Fluoride is created by the production of fertilizer as…
Former Guantanamo Detainee Running For Office in Afghanistan
What do detainees do when they’ve been released from Guantanamo? Well, Izatullah Nusrat decided to run for office. What would it mean for Afghan-American relations if Nusrat wins? WGBH News reports:
Izatullah Nusrat, 42, was held at the U.S. facility in Guantanamo for nearly five years. Now he is back in Afghanistan and running for election to Parliament in the Sept. 18 election. Nusrat has harsh words for Americans, but he favors working with the current government over the Taliban and says he wants the fighting to stop.
So far, not many clear themes have emerged in the campaign for the Sept. 18 parliamentary elections.
But one candidate has an interesting distinction: He is the only former Guantanamo detainee running for office.
Anti-American, Anti-Karzai Sentiment
Campaigning is in full swing, but that’s not what is bringing people into the streets these days in Kabul. Anti-American sentiment is strong in Afghanistan, particularly among people outraged over recent…
