Archive for September, 2010
France’s Naked City At War Over Public Sex
Sign on the beach at Cap d'Agde. Photo: Appraiser (CC)
So public nudity at the beach is OK for French traditionalists, but sex isn’t? John Lichfield reports for The Independent:
To make a French nudist blush might appear to be a mission impossible. Not at Cap d’Agde, on the Languedoc coast, home to “naked city”, Europe’s largest nudist holiday colony.
A long-simmering war between two tribes of the unclothed – “traditional” nudists and so-called “libertines” or exponents of free sex – exploded into a public protest at the town’s council meeting this week.
Old-fashioned naturists have been complaining for years that Cap d’Agde’s once-sedate nudist quarter has been disfigured by an influx of partner-swapping clubs and raunchy hotels. A flurry of arson attacks on sex clubs two years ago was blamed on low-level terrorism by nudist fundamentalists.
At this week’s Cap d’Agde council meeting, the protests took a more peaceful form. Old-fashioned nudists complained that…
The Love Hormone In Nasal Spray Can Help Overcome Shyness
Wow, just a little toot of Oxytocin and you’re in… From the Telegraph:
Scientists have discovered that the hormone oxytocin could help wallflowers overcome awkwardness in social situations
The chemical dubbed “the hormone of love” is known to increase empathy and bonding – especially parents and their children. But now researchers have found it improves the social skills of the shy – but has little effect on those who are naturally confident.
The finding could have implications for those with severe social deficiencies, often apparent in conditions like autism. Researchers at Israel’s Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment and Columbia University were examining whether the hormone, which occurs naturally in the body could make us more understanding of others.
They conducted a test of 27 healthy adult men, giving them the hormone or a placebo via a nasal spray and then asking them to perform an ‘empathic accuracy task’ – which measures their…
The Evolution of Altruism
From ScienceDaily:
Defined as the ability to sacrifice yourself for the sake of others, altruism has been a bit of a genetic mystery. Understanding why altruism evolves is one of the fundamental challenges in evolutionary theory.
However, a paper published online in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society by researchers affiliated with MSU’s BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action has shed new light on the subject. This study marked the first time that scientists have been able to test such generalizations of kin selection theory.
“The ability to conduct research in digital systems enabled us to learn nuances of kin selection theory that may have been difficult to discover via evolutionary experiments in natural systems,” said team member Charles Ofria.
Using digital evolution technology, the team learned how altruism evolves by setting up different experimental situations. Through this, the researchers found that genes were more likely to help others that were…
Anthony J. Hall and Joshua Blakeney Challenge Michael Shermer About His 9/11 Denialism
Posted by Joshua Blakeney, Media Coordinator of Globlalization Studies, University of Lethbridge:
Here is the latest action by Prof. Anthony J. Hall and I. We were so disgusted with Prof. Michael Shermer’s lack of knowledge about 9/11…
USAF: Aliens Still Controlling Nuclear Arsenal
On Monday The National Press Club will be hosting several retired USAF and RAF officers who will be testifying to the intervention and active monitoring of ICBMs by unidentified flying objects while they were stationed at missile facilities:
“I was on duty when an object came over and hovered directly over the site,” Salas said, regarding the March 16, 1967, event at Malmstrom AFB in Montana. “The missiles shut down, 10 Minuteman missiles. And the same thing happened at another site a week later,” he said.
While this story has been picked up by the illustrious Fox network here, there are other more detailed accounts of these events here, which include scans of the “declassified” documents. Salas has also penned a book about the events at Malmstron AFB in 1967 entitled Faded Giant.
The Wikileaks Server’s Fortress Inside A Mountain
Bahnhof ISP is the Swedish internet service provider that hosts Wikileaks’ servers. Their headquarters is a jaw-dropping fortress built in a Cold War nuclear bomb shelter inside of a mountain — basically a James Bond villain’s hideout rendered in real life. Check out panoramic views.
The Curious Case of the Christian Hipster
Is “Christian Hipster” an oxymoron? Not according to Brett McCracken, author of Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide, writing at CNN:
I grew up within conservative evangelical Christianity, and I’m thankful I did. But throughout my youth – and indeed, even now, at 27 – there are things about it that made me bristle. Things like televangelism, angry political picketing, boycotts, horrible Christian movies, copycat Christian music, anti-intellectualism, hyper-politicized discourse, “Left Behind” hysteria about the “end times,” and “hell houses” (don’t ask).
For many of my peers who grew up within this peculiar milieu, it was enough to sour them on Christianity entirely (lamentable, but understandable). But for many others, it simply urged them to rediscover the heart of the faith and explore Christian identity in terms that felt more pertinent to the world around them.
This impulse among younger generations of Christians has led to, among other things, a subculture which we might call “Christian hipsters.” They are Christians who seek to cultivate a strong aesthetic sensibility and intellectual rigor, things that were largely put on the back burner in the church of their youth. They are sooner found at Radiohead or Arcade Fire concerts than at Christian music shows, prefer contemporary art galleries to Thomas Kinkade showrooms, and exercise Christian “fellowship” through conversations about Sartre over fair-trade coffee or a round of craft beers…
Laughter Disrupts New York Morning TV (Video)
The “Laughman” Doug Collins arrived in New York this morning in a way that the hosts of the popular morning show on WPIX 11 TV won’t forget for some time. He had them laughing so hard they couldn’t read the news, as you’ll see in this clip (make sure to watch till the end).
The Laughman is in New York City for the Great Union Square Laugh-In, taking place at Manhattan’s Union Square South at 4:00 PM EST, Saturday September 25, 2010. If he can do this to a few people in a sterile TV studio, one can only imagine what’s going to happen to the hundreds of people planning to attend. For details of the event check out the Facebook Page.
Warren Buffett: ‘We’re Still In A Recession’
The Oracle of Omaha says what all of us know, no matter what the government says: WE ARE STILL IN A RECESSION! He adds, “We’re not gonna be out of it for awhile.”
Ahmadinejad Tries to Join the 9/11 Truth Movement
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Photo: Jose Cruz (CC)
From the Washington Post:
The U.S. delegation walked out of the U.N. speech of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday after he said some in the world have speculated that Americans were behind the Sept. 11 terror attacks, staged in an attempt to assure Israel’s survival.
He did not explain the logic of that statement that was made as he attacked the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Ahmadinejad has called for the destruction of Israel and is deeply at odds with the United States and European allies over its nuclear program and suspicions that it is designed to produce an atomic bomb. Iran says it is only working on technology for electricity generation.
The U.S. delegation left the hall after Ahmadinejad said there were three theories about the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks:
- That “powerful and complex terrorist group” penetrated U.S. intelligence and defenses.
- “That some segments within the U.S. government…
Two New Dinosaurs Discovered in Utah
Illustration from Utah Museum of Natural History
The two new dinosaurs found in Southern Utah are said to have more horns on their head than any known dino. Now the only question is whether they were functional or just fashionable? From National Geographic:
Two newly discovered horned dinosaur species from an ancient “lost continent” are some of the most surprising and ornate yet found, paleontologists say.
The new dinosaurs are members of the ceratopsids, the group of dinosaurs that includes Triceratops. The animals were generally four-legged herbivores with horns and bony frills rising from the backs of their heads.
The larger of the two dinosaurs, Utahceratops gettyi, had a 7-foot-long (2.3-meter-long) skull, prompting study co-author Mark Loewen of the University of Utah to compare the animal to “a giant rhino with a ridiculously supersized head.”
The other new dinosaur, Kosmoceratops richardsoni, is “one of the most amazing animals known, with a huge skull decorated with an assortment of…
Iran: Surface Truths, Inner Lives
[disinfo ed.'s note: R Tousi is the pseudonym of an Iranian writer.]
There is calm and normality to be found in everyday urban Iran. But a series of conversations reveals a more fluid picture, finds R Tousi in Tehran.
It’s what passes for an Iranian society wedding these days. The bride is beautiful in an Italian handmade gown; the groom as sleek as a member of the “rat pack” in a vintage suit that his father had worked in in the 1960s. There are smartly uniformed ushers and waiters in each corner ready to serve the 300 guests spread around a country-villa in the northeastern outskirts of Tehran.
Some are lavishly hosted in a grand hall where a Persian classical ensemble gently plays in the background; others are seated around sumptuous lantern-lit tables in the garden filled with fragrant pots all evidently in full bloom; while the huge indoor pool has been covered…
Stephen Colbert To Testify Before Congress
First Elmo, then Kevin Costner, and now Stephen Colbert gets to testify before Congress at an immigration hearing entitled “Protecting America’s Harvest.” With Colbert testifying in Congress and Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Return Sanity,” the lines between politics and political comedy are increasingly blurred. From New York Daily News:
It’s no joke — Stephen Colbert will testify before Congress.
The Comedy Central host will head to Capitol Hill and appear before a House Judiciary subcommittee for a hearing on immigration called “Protecting America’s Harvest.”
Colbert will speak alongside United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez.
The comedian spent a day working at a farm in New York last month after Rodriguez came on the show to discuss UFW’s “Take Our Jobs” campaign, which challenges the view that illegal immigrants are stealing jobs from Americans.
Continues at New York Daily News …
Computer Virus Targets Iran’s Nuclear Infrastructure
It was only a matter of time before governments started using viruses to attack other nations’ computers. I wonder which agency was behind this one, reported by the BBC:
One of the most sophisticated pieces of malware ever detected was probably targeting “high value” infrastructure in Iran, experts have told the BBC.
Stuxnet’s complexity suggests it could only have been written by a “nation state”, some researchers have claimed.
It is believed to be the first-known worm designed to target real-world infrastructure such as power stations, water plants and industrial units. It was first detected in June and has been intensely studied ever since.
“The fact that we see so many more infections in Iran than anywhere else in the world makes us think this threat was targeted at Iran and that there was something in Iran that was of very, very high value to whomever wrote it,” Liam O’Murchu of security firm Symantec,…
United Nations As Evil Organization
If you’re in New York City right now you may well be cursing the United Nations as security measures have brought East Side traffic to a standstill, but is it really an evil, Nazi movement? Here’s Alex Jones on Russia Today…
Interview With ‘The American Book of the Dead’ Author Henry Baum
Via Technoccult:
How much do you buy the fringe ideas that have influenced the The American Book of the Dead novels? For example, do you really think the world is in need of a mass die-off to curb over population?
Baum: It’s a disturbing concept and one I’m still exploring. I look at the recent mosque controversy and wonder, for instance, what would happen if there was UFO disclosure. If people think Obama’s a socialist Hitler terrorist now, they might be turned into David Ickean conspiracy theorists at that point – he’s a reptilian. There’s just so much volatility that seems like it could end in violence. People are crazy – how do we introduce new radical ideas into the culture if a centrist like Obama is seen as a radical? I’m not advocating genocide…
Massive Solar Flare To Paralyze Earth In 2013
So was Lawrence Joseph right when he warned of a potentially catastrophic solar flare in the disinformation film 2012: Science or Superstition? This story from the Daily Mail lends his theory some credence, albeit a year later than he predicted:
A massive solar flare could cause global chaos in 2013, causing blackouts and wrecking satellite communications, a conference heard yesterday.
On August 1, 2010, almost the entire Earth-facing side of the sun erupted in a tumult of activity. There was a C3-class solar flare, a solar tsunami, multiple filaments of magnetism lifting off the stellar surface, large-scale shaking of the solar corona, radio bursts, a coronal mass ejection and more. These images taken by the STEREO Ahead satellite from 3:47 to 15:47 UT on August 2nd show the movement of the CME cloud, on the right of the disc, as it expands toward Earth. Credit: NASA/STEREO
Nasa has warned that a peak in…
W. Reginald Bray, The Great British Mail-Prankster
The New Yorker writes about W. Reginald Bray, a legendary prankster who, more than one hundred years ago, tested the limits of the British postal system. I’m not sure whether today you could get away with mailing a stamp-covered skull:
Bray was an avid collector who amassed stamps, postmarks, train tickets, and girlfriends, and who, after reading the entire British Post Office Guide, impishly determined to take the rules as challenges. He tried posting an unimaginable array of things, to see whether the post office would deliver them. Apparently, at the time, the smallest item that could be posted was a bee, and the largest an elephant. Bray seems to have tried most things in between. At one point or another, he mailed a bowler hat, a rabbit skull (the address spelled out on the nasal bone, and the stamps pasted to the back), a purse, a slipper, a clothes brush, seaweed,…
The Founding Fathers Read The Koran
For Founding Fathers, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson among them, being properly educated included owning and reading the Koran. Via Boston.com, a glimpse at the little-known long history of the Koran in America:
Reports of Korans in American libraries go back at least to 1683, when an early settler of Germantown, Pa., brought a German version to these shores. Despite its foreign air, Adams’s Koran had a strong New England pedigree. The first Koran published in the United States, it was printed in Springfield in 1806.
Why would John Adams and a cluster of farmers in the Connecticut valley have bought copies of the Koran in 1806? Surprisingly, there was a long tradition of New Englanders reading in the Islamic scripture. No book states the case more plainly than a single volume, tucked away deep within the citadel of Copley Square — the Boston Public Library. The book known as Adams 281.1…
