Archive for September, 2010
Dr. Nick Begich and The Black Fridays
The Black Fridays Bonus Episode 29 — Dr. Nick Begich
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Dr. Nick Begich joins us to talk HAARP, Mind Control Technology, The BP Oil Spill and much, muich more. This is the interview we have been waiting for, for some time. Many thanks to Dr. Begich for his time. He was gracious and we appreciate it! We hope you enjoy the talk.
Is Your Brain Addicted To Porn?
A big question from Big Think:
Not long ago, scientists thought of the brain as being “hard-wired.” Neural networks are formed at a young age and remain inflexible throughout the rest of one’s lifetime, they believed. But one of the great discoveries of recent decades is that the brain remains highly adaptable, or plastic, even in old age. On its own, the brain seems to compensate for certain diseases and brain damage like Alzheimer’s by rewiring around damaged areas. But there is a dark side to this phenomenon of “neuroplasticity”: unhealthy behaviors are just as likely to alter the brain as are healthy ones. Addictions are a prime example. “All addiction involves long-term, sometimes lifelong, neuroplastic change in the brain,” says Norman Doidge, psychiatrist and author of The Brain That Changes Itself.
In his book Doidge catalogs some amazing stories of personal triumph, but he also discusses how neuroplasticity can be hijacked by one of society’s most pervasive addictions—porn addiction. “The addictiveness of Internet pornography is not a metaphor,” he says. “Not all addictions are to drugs or alcohol…
Deaf Catholic Sex Abuse Victim Sues Pope
Father Lawrence C. Murphy
Why did he wait 50 years though? From CNN:
MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin – Terry Kohut has kept a dark secret for nearly 50 years. Now he is breaking his silence, becoming a key figure in the sex-abuse crisis in the Catholic Church and the growing controversy over what Pope Benedict XVI did about it.
When Kohut was barely a teen, and for years afterward, he says, he was sexually molested and assaulted by the headmaster and priest of the school where he lived, St. John’s School for the Deaf, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. What occurred there is one of the most notorious cases of sex abuse in the Catholic Church.
Kohut was not alone. From 1950 to 1974 the headmaster of St. Johns, Father Lawrence C. Murphy, raped and molested as many as 200 deaf boys, according to court and church documents.
Kohut has now filed the first sex-abuse lawsuit against the Vatican actually…
Banned Katy Perry Sesame Street Video
Way too hot for Elmo! The producers have yanked the segment from classic kids TV show Sesame Street and it’s rapidly disappearing from YouTube too. Check it out while you can 
No Holiday At Chernobyl
A few years ago disinformation published an alternative travel book by Martin Cohen, No Holiday: 80 Places You Don’t Want To Visit. Somewhat tongue in cheek, Martin created a grueling world tour of political and cultural excursions to the likes of North Korea’s DMZ, Tora Bora in Afghanistan, and, first in line, radiation-blitzed Chernobyl in Russia.
It turns out that Martin was ahead of the curve; AFP reports that Chernobyl is now a top tourist destination! Only 79 more to go Martin…
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine — Yellow Geiger counter in hand, the guide announces that radiation levels are 35 times higher than normal. Welcome to Chernobyl, the site in 1986 of the worst nuclear disaster in history and now an attraction visited by thousands of tourists every year.
Nearly 25 years after a reactor at the Soviet-era plant exploded, the irradiated zone around Chernobyl is attracting curious visitors from around the world, from nuclear specialists to ordinary tourists, willing to pay 160 dollars (122 euros) a day to visit the zone…
How Halley’s Comet Has Changed History Over the Past 2,500 Years
What a great article from Alasdair Wilkins on io9.com. Truly insightful. Alasdair Wilkins writes:
Ancient Greek texts reveal the earliest recorded sighting of the solar system’s most famous comet 2,500 years ago.
Since then, Halley’s Comet has repeatedly cameoed in history, getting credit for toppling armies, birthing empires, and even killing Mark Twain.
Halley’s Comet is the most famous of the short-period comets, which are comets that complete their eccentric orbits in 200 years or less.
It’s the only short-period comet that’s visible to the naked eye, and its 76-year circuit means it’s the one comet that pretty much everyone can hope to see once, if not twice, during their lifetime. Because of this uniqueness and its often dazzling appearances, it’s become something of humanity’s companion throughout human history, popping up again and again in historical records.
Robots Have Been Taught How to Deceive
There’s just not something right about this. Duncan Geere writes in Wired UK:
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology may have made a terrible, terrible mistake: They’ve taught robots how to deceive.
It probably seemed like a good idea at the time. Military robots capable of deception could trick battlefield foes who aren’t expecting their adversaries to be as smart as a real soldier might be, for instance. But when machines rise up against humans and the robot apocalypse arrives, we’re all going to be wishing that Ronald Arkin and Alan Wagner had kept their ideas to themselves.
The pair detailed how they managed it in a paper published in the International Journal of Social Robotics. Two robots — one black and one red — were taught to play hide and seek. The black, hider, robot chose from three different hiding places, and the red, seeker, robot had to find him using…
Bronx Man Finds 3-Foot-Long Snake on His Toilet Seat
Get These Motherfucking Snakes Off My Motherfucking Toilet! Kevin Deutsch and Leo Standora report in the Daily News:
A Bronx man got the scare of his life last night when he went into his bathroom, turned on the light and found a 3-foot snake comfortably coiled on the toilet seat.
“There’s a giant snake on my toilet,” he told cops who arrived at his apartment on White Plains Road in Soundview.
The cops corralled the slithery visitor, which turned out to be a harmless corn snake, bagged it and turned it over to the ASPCA.
The shaken man told cops the reptile wasn’t his pet and probably had made its way into his bathroom through the plumbing.
“Look, anytime you walk into your bathroom and find a big snake staring you in the eye, it’s going to spook you,” said one officer.
“We’ve got enough problems here with bugs and mice. Now there’s snakes coming up through our toilets,” she said. “That’s just scary.”
Summers Is Packing His Bags As The Recession Is Said To Be Over, Media Gears Up For An Election And Buries Reports on Financial Crime
As the November election approaches, the White House seems to be ending its Rip Van Winkle-like slumber and has begun crawling out of the bubble of its own making. Many fear it’s a bit late.
The shakeup of President Obama’s economic team is long overdue. As Larry Summers slithers back to Harvard to save his tenure and write his book, he is likely to be replaced by exactly the wrong kind of person—a business executive, appointed to try to appease the Repugs and the Right. (Summers was paid $586,996-a-year at Hahvard and picks up all kinds of consulting deals on the side from Wall Street.)
This maneuver won’t work of course because nothing Obama does will ever please them because they need him as their piñata, and a symbol of failure. He claims to see that but just can’t seem to get his appeasement gene in check, notes the Naked Capitalism blog:
“As…
Democrats and Republicans Are Both Addicted to Lying, Part 2
You don’t hear much whining from the Cheneys these days now that Obama’s claimed the Presidential right to assassinate American citizens, do you? But back in the summer of 2009:
The Bush team stopped using its harshest interrogation techniques, like waterboarding, years before leaving office. [Supposedly. - G.G.] And in Mr. Bush’s second term, Congress passed legislation bringing federal statutes into alignment with policies like military commissions and surveillance without warrants.
As a senator, Mr. Obama voted for the 2008 bill authorizing the surveillance program, which he has continued since taking office. He voted against a 2006 bill authorizing military commissions, but it passed anyway. While Mr. Obama initially halted the trials, he has since proposed reviving them in a revised form.
Mr. Obama has also drawn fire from human rights advocates for fighting to prevent detainees in Afghanistan from having habeas corpus rights. But his legal team notes that the 2006 Military Commissions…
When your friend says he killed his girlfriend and is carrying her head around, it’s a good idea to at least check his bag. From Oxford English Dictionary Includes ‘Web Lingo’
The Oxford English Dictionary is keeping up with the times, integrating “web slang” into the dictionary. Can’t kids just these slang words up online? CNN reports:
Are years of e-mails, text messaging and status updates finally affecting the written word?
#nokidding.
The venerable Oxford American Dictionary has added a ginormous (adj., not included) list of words inspired by the interweb (noun, included).
The next time you look up a word, expect to see lots of abbreviations, webspeak and casual slang.
The New Oxford American Dictionary has added cultural slang in the past, but never as aggressively as it has in the latest edition.
Its big brother, the less frequently updated Oxford English Dictionary, is also going through major changes.
Continues at CNN …
Childhood and Totalitarian Dictatorship
[disinfo editor's note: Alice Miller, PhD (12 January 1923, Lwow, Poland – 14 April 2010, Saint-Rémy de Provence, France) was a psychologist and author who is noted for her work on child abuse in its many forms, including physical abuse, emotional abuse and child sexual abuse.]
Alice Miller compares the rules of an abusive family with those of Nazi Germany and comes to some interesting, though not really surprising, conclusions:
The Führer once told his secretary that during one of the regular beatings given him by his father he was able to stop crying, to feel nothing, and even to count the thirty-two blows he received.
In this way, by totally denying his pain, his feelings of powerlessness, and his despair- in other words, by denying the truth – Hitler made himself into a master of violence and of contempt for human beings. The result was a very primitive person, incapable of any empathy for…
Fire From The Heartland: Rise Of The Mama Grizzlies
Fire From The Heartland is a new DVD about the “rise of the conservative woman.” The most scary thing about this trailer is that it exemplifies the trend/movement/meme of Sarah Palin-types identifying themselves as “mama grizzlies”.
Return of the Czars
Elizabeth Warren, Consumer Protection 'Czar'
Has anyone else noticed that one of the hallmarks of the Obama presidency is the proliferation of “Czars”? There seems to be a Czar for pretty much anything you can think of, whether it’s Medicare, the War on Drugs, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Consumer Protection (that would be Elizabeth Warren) or Intellectual Property.
One thing they have in common is that very few of them have been confirmed by the Senate, so they are essentially given significant executive powers with no congressional scrutiny as to their suitability for the post or the agenda they bring to their roles.
Wikipedia reports that of 39 Czar titles doled out by Obama, 33 of them were appointed without Senate confirmation. Don’t think his predecessor, George W. Bush, was much better though: of 32 Czars he appointed, 27 were not confirmed by the Senate. Note that who is and is not a Czar…
Vatican Astronomer: Aliens Have Souls, Can Be Baptized
One of the most important cosmological questions has been answered, with word coming directly from the Vatican. The Guardian reports:
Guy Consolmagno, who is one of the pope’s astronomers, said he would be “delighted” if intelligent life was found among the stars. “But the odds of us finding it, of it being intelligent and us being able to communicate with it – when you add them up it’s probably not a practical question.”
Speaking ahead of a talk at the British Science Festival in Birmingham tomorrow, he said that the traditional definition of a soul was to have intelligence, free will, freedom to love and freedom to make decisions. “Any entity – no matter how many tentacles it has – has a soul.” Would he baptise an alien? “Only if they asked.”
Kafka’s Last Trial
Franz Kafka
Elif Batuman relates a tale of eccentric heirs, Zionist claims and a court fight that Franz Kafka himself would have understood all too well, in the New York Times Magazine:
During his lifetime, Franz Kafka burned an estimated 90 percent of his work. After his death at age 41, in 1924, a letter was discovered in his desk in Prague, addressed to his friend Max Brod. “Dearest Max,” it began. “My last request: Everything I leave behind me . . . in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others’), sketches and so on, to be burned unread.” Less than two months later, Brod, disregarding Kafka’s request, signed an agreement to prepare a posthumous edition of Kafka’s unpublished novels. “The Trial” came out in 1925, followed by “The Castle” (1926) and “Amerika” (1927). In 1939, carrying a suitcase stuffed with Kafka’s papers, Brod set out for Palestine on…
Mapping Stereotypes
UK-based graphic designer Yanko Tsvetkov has created a fun set of maps revealing what he terms “the geography of prejudice.” Just one example is shown below, but a visit to his site reveals many more.
Europe According to the United States of America
Bob Woodward Says Obama Wants Out Of Afghanistan
Woodward definitely has high level access in Washington, so it’s entirely possible that his claims are accurate. No surprise that Obama’s generals didn’t give him an exit plan from Afghanistan, of course. From the Washington Post:
President Obama urgently looked for a way out of the war in Afghanistan last year, repeatedly pressing his top military advisers for an exit plan that they never gave him, according to secret meeting notes and documents cited in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward.
Frustrated with his military commanders for consistently offering only options that required significantly more troops, Obama finally crafted his own strategy, dictating a classified six-page “terms sheet” that sought to limit U.S. involvement, Woodward reports in “Obama’s Wars,” to be released on Monday.
According to Woodward’s meeting-by-meeting, memo-by-memo account of the 2009 Afghan strategy review, the president avoided talk of victory as he described his objectives…
