Archive for September, 2010
9/11/10 AE911Truth Press Conference at WTC 7
Richard Gage, AIA of AE911Truth and Manny Badillo of NYC CAN speak to hundreds of activists in front of WTC 7 on 9/11/10.
Your Credit Card Data Is Worth $1.50
JJ Sutherland discovers that his precious credit card info isn’t so precious after all, writing for NPR:
If you’re like me, you’re slightly paranoid about your credit card data. You’ve taken all the precautions, checked your statements frequently for fraudulent spending, carefully hidden them in a ‘top-secret’ shoe compartment. What, wait, you don’t do that?
Well, your precious data that you protect so diligently is worth, wait for it, $1.50. That’s because, well, all those security precautions you take don’t really do that much, especially against trojans and hackers who you probably don’t do enough to defend against. There are so many stolen credit cards that they come cheap.
Brian Krebs found all this out by creating an account on one site that sells credit card data rock3d.cc.
The trouble is, the minute you seek to narrow your search using the built-in tools, the site starts adding all these extra convenience fees (sound familiar?). For…
Moses & The Parting Of The Red Sea Explained By Science
Source: Rune.welsh (CC)
Somehow I doubt the faithful will want to hear this, but apparently the parting of the Red Sea was no miracle. Story from Reuters via LA Times:
Moses might not have parted the Red Sea, but a strong east wind that blew through the night could have pushed the waters back in the way described in biblical writings and the Koran, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.
Computer simulations, part of a larger study on how winds affect water, show wind could push water back at a point where a river bent to merge with a coastal lagoon, the team at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado at Boulder said.
“The simulations match fairly closely with the account in Exodus,” Carl Drews of NCAR, who led the study, said in a statement.
“The parting of the waters can be understood through fluid dynamics. The wind moves the water…
‘Horrorcore’ Rapper Pleads Guilty Of Murder In Virginia.
Another troubled adolescent rebellion we can blame on music. From The Washington Examiner:
A “horrorcore” rapper was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty Monday to killing his 16 year-old girlfriend, her parents and her friend in Central Virginia.
Richard McCroskey III, who had rapped under the name “Syko Sam,” admitted to killing Emma Niederbrock; her parents, Mark Niederbrock and Debra Kelley; and Emma’s 18-year-old friend Melanie Wells. Mark Niederbrock was a Presbyterian minister, and Kelly was a professor at Longwood University. Prosecutors said McCroskey bludgeoned the three females with a wood-splitting tool while they slept Sept. 18, 2009. McCroskey killed Mark Niederbrock when he checked on them.
More charges for serial stabber
Elias Abuelazam, the serial stabber man suspected in three attacks in Leesburg last month, faces five additional charges in Michigan, including one count of murder, in five separate Flint-area attacks.
Story continues at The Washington Examiner …
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Blue Jean Missing Link Discovered!
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground.
This just in…
So it seems that it sometimes takes a number of arty types to explain something as fundamentally proletariat as humble, timeless blue jeans.
I’d love to go off on this subject, but I couldn’t do a better job than The Vancouver Sun:
Workaday staple and fashion favourite, blue jeans have conquered the planet. But were they born in the textile mills of New Hampshire, on France’s southern coast or the looms of north Italy?
Art historians believe they have found a piece of the centuries-old puzzle in the work of a newly discovered 17th-century north Italian artist, dubbed the “Master of the Blue Jeans”, whose paintings went on show in Paris this week.
Nothing comes between me and my…oh well…you know…
Running through his works like a leitmotif is an indigo blue fabric threaded with white, with rips revealing its structure, in the…
CNN Anchor Or Porn Star?
Someone noticed that CNN selects on-air talent with names that sound like adult film actors. If you want to break into the television news biz, it heps to pick a pseudo-porn-star moniker to go by professionally.
How Much Does Weed Cost In Your State?
Price Of Weed gives you approximations of the cost of an ounce of marijuana in every U.S. state, based on user-submitted information on local pot purchases. Where is pot most expensive? In a handful of Southern and Midwestern states, topped off by Iowa ($465/high-quality-oz.),Tennessee ($464), and Louisiana ($463). And really, what else is there to even do in Iowa?
Pulitzer Prize Winning Photos Capture The War On Terror
Can an army make war on a concept? Tyler Hicks’ photography exhibit Histories Are Mirrors: The Path of Conflict Through Afghanistan and Iraq, doesn’t offer any answers where the contradictions of the War on Terror are concerned, but his images chronicle the soldiers and civilians who’ve been cast in the almost-decade-long tragedy. Hicks’ vivid photos show markets and massacres, heroes and hostages, every image taking its place in a sweeping drama presided over by a smiling villain: Saddam Hussein.
In Histories Are Mirrors, Hicks, a Pulitzer-winning New York Times staff photographer, documents the wreckage of the World Trade Center and the early years of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, through 2004. Many of the wall labels offer only dates and locations, but the exhibit isn’t merely a timeline. Hicks’ best photographs capture the eternal features that crop up in the emotional landscape of wars everywhere: fear, pain, pride, rage, hubris, hope…
Overdosing On Caffeine As Murder Defense
Woody Will Smith
If that’s his best defense I don’t fancy his chances, but we’re about to find out if a court in Kentucky will go for it, likely triggering massive sales of No Fear Energy! From CNN:
Can too much caffeine make you insane – and mentally unstable enough to unknowingly kill someone?
That’s a question a Newport, Kentucky, jury will have to answer when they eventually deliberate in the trial of a man whose lawyer is expected to claim that too much soda, caffeine-laced diet pills and the energy drink No Fear – combined with sleep deprivation – meant he had no idea what he was doing when he killed his wife.
Woody Will Smith’s murder trial begins Monday, and according to the Kentucky Enquirer, Smith’s lawyer will argue that the combination of all that caffeine was responsible for the death of his wife.
Amanda Hornsby-Smith was strangled with an extension cord in…
We Are Being Lied To? By Whom?
File under: Counterintuitive. From ScienceDaily:
Researchers asked study participants to watch taped job interviews of 2nd year MBA students. Interviewees were all told to do their best to get the job. Half of the interviewees were completely truthful; the other half told at least three significant lies to appear more attractive for the job. All interviewees were guaranteed $20 for making the job interview tape, and both the liars and truth-tellers hoped to receive an additional $20 if a supposed “lie detection expert” watched the tape and believed they were telling the truth.
Several days before the participants watched the tapes, they filled out a questionnaire that measured their trust in other people, with questions such as “Most people are basically honest,” and “Most people are basically good-natured and kind.” They then watched the videos, and rated the truthfulness and honesty of the interviewees.
People high in trust were more accurate at detecting…
Vatican Bank Under Criminal Investigation
Not much of surprise really, although the Vatican issued a statement saying, “The Holy See is perplexed and astonished by the initiatives of the Rome prosecutors.” Presumably they mean they can’t believe that the police had the balls to question the Vatican’s dodgy activities! From the BBC:
The head of the Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, is under investigation as part of a money-laundering inquiry, police sources say. Prosecutors also seized 23m euros ($30m; £19m) from the bank’s accounts with another smaller institution. The inquiry was launched after two suspicious transactions were reported to tax police in Rome.
The Vatican said it was “perplexed and astonished”, and expressed full confidence in Mr Tedeschi. The Vatican Bank, known officially as the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), was created during World War II to administer accounts held by religious orders, cardinals, bishops and priests.
Police intervention
Rome magistrates are looking into claims that Mr Gotti Tedeschi…
Wall Street Vampire Slayings
Tomorrow, September 22, at 11:09 pm in downtown Manhattan, the Aaron Burr Society will gather for a “Wall Street Vampire Slaying” that from the description provided, lands somewhere between more recent anti-war die-ins and the use of the absurd by the situationist movement to draw attention to the greed and self-indulgences of Wall Street and Western Capitalism:
“On the night of September 22, 2010 there will be a Vampire Slaying of Wall Street Bloodsuckers, traitors who wrap themselves in the flag.
Symbolic Slaying 11:09 p.m., arrive at 10:30 p.m. in front of the New York Stock Exchange at Wall & Nassau Streets, NYC 10005. Slayers after–party TBA.”
The mood should be light, as participants are asked to “Dress up, bring lights, noise makers & proper shoes to dance on their collective grave”.
See you there!
Don’t Underestimate The Power Of Palin
Mark Halperin issues a warning memo, in TIME:
FROM: Mark Halperin
TO: Coastal Elites, the Media and Establishment Politicians of Both Parties
RE: Sarah Heath PalinDon’t underestimate Sarah Palin. Yes, she is hyper-polarizing: she sends her fans into rapture and drives her detractors stark raving mad. But she can dominate the news cycle with a single tweet and generate three days of coverage with a single speech (as she did this past Friday in Iowa). Her name recognition is universal.
You are right to complain that she is not offering specific policy proposals and that her inaccessibility to media outlets other than the one that pays her — Fox News — puts her beyond the kind of scrutiny and accountability we have come to expect for our leaders.
But the mistake you are making is to assume that Palin needs or wants to play by the standard rules of American politics. Or that it even…
Building Sandcastles Illegal On Florida Beaches
Put your plastic spade and bucket away if you’re heading to the beach in Florida. No digging means no sandcastle building. The Raw Story reports:
Ever go to the beach and not think of slapping together a sand castle? And who doesn’t enjoy the feeling of wet, warm sand between her toes?
According to federal authorities who recently intercepted an oil-hunting reporter on a Florida beach, those activities have been deemed “illegal.”
The officers’ legal revelation (which is not actually true) came as something of a surprise to Dan Thomas, reporter for WEAR ABC 3 in Pensacola, Florida, who was visiting the Gulf Islands National Seashore for a special report.
Continues at The Raw Story …
DARPA Seeking Small Business Partners To Develop Robots
Hard to believe that DARPA is feeling the pinch as Obama’s never-ending wars push our national debt to unimaginable levels, but apparently they need help. Report from Fast Company:
Back in July the government identified robots as one of the R&D priorities for the 2012 budget (about a decade behind the rest of us). Now there’s a research funding round to aid small business robotic’s efforts, to build robot gear DARPA can’t manage.
The Office of Science and Technology Policy was behind July’s thinking that “Robotics is an important technology because of its potential to advance national needs such as homeland security, defense, medicine, healthcare, space exploration,” and a whole list of other purposes. The OSTP thinks it’s also a tech at “a tipping point in terms of its usefulness and versatility,” thanks to innovations in programming, hardware, and computer vision.
Now the White House has announced that five federal agencies have banded together…
Scientists Develop Real-Life Tractor Beam
Australian scientists have built device that generates a tractor beam, commonly considered a figment of alien abduction scenarios and Star Trek. The researchers’ creation thus far is capable of transporting small objects distances of up to five feet, using only a beam of light, Popular Science reports:
Using only light, Australian researchers say they are able to move small particles almost five feet through the air. It’s more than 100 times the distance achieved by existing optical “tweezers,” the researchers say.
Not quite a simple grabby tractor beam, the new system works by shining a hollow laser beam at an object and taking advantage of air-temperature differences to move it around.
It works by shining a hollow laser beam around small glass particles, as Inside Science explains. The air around the particle heats up, but the hollow center of the beam stays cool. The heated air molecules keep the object balanced in the dark center.…
New Jersey Residents Say Man Fell from Sky … But Where is He?
Weird. Via ABC6 TV:
EGG HARBOR TWP, NJ — If a man falls from the sky, but nobody can find a trace of him, did it really happen?
Some employees of Shore Veterinarians on the Blackhorse Pike in Egg Harbor Township think so. Kelly Hale is one of those employees. “There is no doubt it was a person; we are 100% sure,” Hale said.
Hale was one of three employees who looked out a window Tuesday afternoon to see a horrifying site in the sky. “I’d seen the guy falling on an angle, straight down, no parachute, no paraglider. You could see the arms and legs flailing and his clothes were blue, a dark blue like a navy, black and gray,” Hale said.
Off in the distance, one of the women saw what they say was a tan single engine plane that soon disappeared. “We don’t know if he came out of that plane, we don’t know if he fell out a wheel well, we don’t know,” Hale said.
Prince Charles Says He Talks With Trees
A true British eccentric, or is he barking mad? From ABC News:
If anyone visiting Prince Charles’ home had opened the right door at just the right time, they may have been greeted with an unusual sight: the Prince of Wales laying face flat on the floor, eyes closed and ears perked in concentration.
He was, of course, trying to eavesdrop on some of the 30,000 annual tourists…
The Return of COINTELPRO?
Well it certainly seems like it! Former Army Intelligence case officer in Vietnam, Jeff Stein writes for the Washington Post:
There was a time in the 1960s when the FBI’s illegal surveillance of left-wing groups seemed, and maybe even was, sinister if not broadly menacing. Parts of today’s Justice Department report on its more recent activities, however, evoke that old saw about history repeating itself as farce.
The Inspector General’s report covered a number of FBI targets following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: an antiwar rally in Pittsburgh; a Catholic peace magazine; a Quaker activist; and members of the environmental group Greenpeace as well as of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA.
My favorite story was about the rookie FBI agent who was dispatched to an antiwar rally in Pittsburgh with a camera and told to look for terrorism suspects.
It was “a slow work day,” the IG report said —…
