Archive for September, 2010
If HIV Was In Monkeys For Years, Why Didn’t We Get It?
Neil Katz poses the question for CBS News:
The precursor to H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, may be older than you think. Way older.
According to new research, simian immunodeficiency virus (S.I.V.) has been in monkeys for millennia, potentially putting humans at risk for the last 32,000 years and possibly much longer.
And yet, for all that time, humans didn’t get sick in mass. Only in the 20th century did H.I.V. become a global scourge that has claimed 25 million lives.
Why?
According to the New York Times, for as long as monkeys have had S.I.V., humans who have butchered them have put themselves at risk of infection from a mutated form. But because the infected people in Africa were fairly isolated, the chances for an epidemic were small. That changed, some theorize, with the explosive growth of African cities and wide spread use of cheap syringes.
But the reality is, no one really knows…
Ayn Rand and Political Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
From Slate’s 2009 review of Jennifer Burns’ Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right and Anne Heller’s Ayn Rand and the World She Made:
Alisa Rosenbaum (her original name) was born in the icy winter of czarism, not long after the failed 1905 revolution ripped through her home city of St. Petersburg. Her father was a self-made Jewish pharmacist, while her mother was an aristocratic dilettante who loathed her three daughters. She would tell them she never wanted children, and she kept them only out of duty. Alisa became a surly, friendless child. In elementary school, her class was asked to write an essay about why being a child was a joyous thing. She instead wrote “a scathing denunciation of childhood,” headed with a quote from Pascal: “I would prefer an intelligent hell to a stupid paradise.”
But the Rosenbaums’ domestic tensions were dwarfed by the conflicts raging outside. The worst anti-Jewish violence since the Middle Ages was brewing, and the family was terrified of being killed by the mobs—but it was the Bolsheviks who struck at them first. After the 1917 revolutions, her father’s pharmacy was seized “in the name of the people.” For Alisa, who had grown up surrounded by servants and nannies, the Communists seemed at last to be the face of the masses, a terrifying robbing horde…
Pope Says Religion Has Been Marginalized Around The World
Photo: Fabio Pozzebom/ABr (CC)
I, for one, wouldn’t argue with Herr Ratzinger on this point. The BBC reports on his speech during his unwelcome UK visit:
The Pope has warned that religion – and Christianity in particular – is “being marginalised” around the world.
His comments came in his keynote speech to UK MPs, senior members of British society, and religious leaders at Westminster Hall in central London.
Pope Benedict XVI warned that there were some people who wanted to see “the voice of religion be silenced”.
He returned to the subject in a service at Westminster Abbey, asking Christians to speak out about their faith.
BBC correspondent Peter Hunt described the speech at Westminster Hall as “a rallying call, and a plea – for religion not to be squeezed out by secular society”.
The Pope was speaking as a sixth man was arrested as counter-terrorism detectives investigate an alleged threat to Pope Benedict XVI’s visit.
In his speech…
Conspiracy Phobia On The Left
From Michael Parenti’s 1996 book Dirty Truths:
Often the term “conspiracy” is applied dismissively whenever one suggests that people who occupy positions of political and economic power are consciously dedicated to advancing their elite interests. Even when they openly profess their designs, there are those who deny that intent is involved. In 1994, the officers of the Federal Reserve announced they would pursue monetary policies designed to maintain a high level of unemployment in order to safeguard against “overheating” the economy. Like any creditor class, they preferred a deflationary course. When an acquaintance of mine mentioned this to friends, he was greeted skeptically, “Do you think the Fed bankers are deliberately trying to keep people unemployed?” In fact, not only did he think it, it was announced on the financial pages of the press. Still, his friends assumed he was imagining a conspiracy because he ascribed self-interested collusion to powerful people.
At a World Affairs Council meeting in San Francisco, I remarked to a participant that U.S. leaders were pushing hard for the reinstatement of capitalism in the former communist countries…
The Loneliest Man In The World
This past month Slate wrote about the “most isolated man on the planet,” the sole remaining member of an Amazonian tribe, living a solitary existence in the jungle. Obviously, dozens of people may be choosing to live in remote locations by themselves — the difference is that this man’s isolation is not a conscious decision. Rather than seeking contact, Brazilian authorities are managing the surrounding area so as to prevent outside influence from disrupting his way of life — the whole scenario is slightly Truman Show-esque.
The most isolated man on the planet will spend tonight inside a leafy palm-thatch hut in the Brazilian Amazon. As always, insects will darn the air. Spider monkeys will patrol the treetops. Wild pigs will root in the undergrowth. And the man will remain a quietly anonymous fixture of the landscape, camouflaged to the point of near invisibility.
That description relies on a few unknowable assumptions, obviously,…
21.2% Of Young Adults Experimented With Illegal Drugs In 2009
The U.S. government is blaming it on marijuana (you know, the ‘gateway drug’)… from CBS News:
A new government report blames increased marijuana use for an uptick in the overall use of illicit drugs among Americans.
The annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health shows the rate of illicit drug use rose from eight percent in 2008 to 8.7 percent in 2009. The survey also found increases in the use of ecstasy and methamphetamines.
Authorities are especially concerned about use of illicit drugs by young people. The survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found 21.2 percent of young adults experimented with illegal drugs in 2009. The report says the trend “was also driven in large part by the use of marijuana.”
National Drug Control Policy Director Gil Kerlikowske told CBS Radio News, young people are being exposed to “mixed messages” about marijuana including the idea that it is a…
Christmas With A Capital C Trailer
The weather’s growing a little colder, and before we know it, the holidays will be upon us. One of the seasonal highlights this year will be Christmas With A Capital C, starring a Baldwin brother and the Bundys’ neighbor from Married With Children, an insane film about spiteful atheists attempting to hijack Christmas. This is going to be big among the tea-partier crowd in three months.
How BP Could Trigger Another Economic Meltdown
Matt Taibbi says the worst may yet be to come from BP’s unacceptable antics in the Gulf, in Rolling Stone:
It was sickening enough when British oil giant BP set new standards for corporate scumbaggery in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, turning the Gulf of Mexico into its own personal toilet and imperiling entire species of wildlife in an attempt to save a few nickels. But with the Gulf geyser finally capped, there’s still a way for BP to cause an even more unthinkable disaster: an AIG-style, derivative-fueled financial shitstorm. If the company decides to declare bankruptcy — a very real possibility with these bastards — it could trigger chaos in our casino system of finance, underscoring the insane levels of leverage and systemic risk we have left in place, even after the global economic crash of 2008.
The first serious whiff of trouble came on June 15th, when Barack Obama manned…
Rush Limbaugh: Wikipedia Hypocrite
So Rush, is Wikipedia reliable, or not? Report from Gawker:
“Everybody in the world knows you don’t believe anything on Wikipedia,” Rush Limbaugh told his listeners last year. So, uh, it must be embarrassing for him that he just used Wikipedia as a source—and got his facts wrong.
On Tuesday, Limbaugh told his listeners about Judge Roger Vinson, of the Federal District Court in Pensacola, Florida, is presiding over a legal challenge to the country’s new health-care reform law. Here’s a transcript, quoting liberally from Vinson’s Wikipedia article:
Who is this judge? Judge Clyde Roger Vinson is a Ronald Reagan appointee. Judge Clyde Roger Vinson is an avid hunter. He’s an amateur taxidermist. Do you know what a taxidermist is? That’s right. For our liberal caller today, this would not be good news. A taxidermist stuffs dead game. If you go into a big, all-male club, you’ll see some moose head over the…
‘Halo’ Is Bigger Business Than Any Movie
So what would you rather spend your money on: an amazing game that you can spend tens or hundreds of hours playing, or a two-hour movie that you have to travel to and get ripped off on ridiculously overpriced popcorn and soda? No prizes for the correct answer… From The Atlantic:
Microsoft has announced that the fourth installment of their space-themed first-person shooter franchise, Halo: Reach, has netted $200 million dollars in sales in only one day of release. To put that massive number in perspective, it beats out the opening day numbers of any Hollywood blockbuster ever, and it far outpaces this year’s opening weekend numbers of Iron Man 2 ($128 million) and Alice in Wonderland ($116 million). Still, Bungie and Microsoft were certainly hoping that the title would unseat the current gaming record-holder Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 which brought in $310 million when it was released…
The Culture of Contact on the Black Fridays
The Black Fridays Bonus Episode 28 — Jeremy Vaeni
Website • iTunes • Direct Download • RSS
Jeremy Vaeni joins Stacy from The Black Fridays to discuss religion, consciousness, and self.
In part 2 of Stacy’s series looking at religions and faiths of all types, he explores Jeremy’s experiences and how they have helped formed his world view.
20% Of Children In United States Living In Poverty
Shocking, ain’t it? And it’s the official number from the U.S. Census Bureau, so probably the real number is higher. From the New York Times:
Forty-four million people in the United States, or one in seven residents, lived in poverty in 2009, an increase of 4 million from the year before, the Census Bureau reported on Thursday.
The poverty rate climbed to 14.3 percent — the highest level since 1994 — from 13.2 percent in 2008. The rise was steepest for children, with one in five residents under 18 living below the official poverty line, the bureau said.
The report provides the most detailed picture yet of the impact of the recession and unemployment on incomes, especially at the bottom of the scale. It also suggested that the temporary increases in benefits in aid provided in last year’s stimulus bill eased the burdens on millions of families.
For a single adult in 2009, the poverty…
Fake Afghan Voter Cards Made By Pakistani Printers
In the US fake IDs are printed, near the Afghan border fake voter registration cards are printed. What will this do to President Hamid Karzai’s term? From the Associated Press via NPR:
Printers in this city near the Afghan border say they have produced thousands of fake voter registration cards at the request of Afghan politicians for use in that country’s parliamentary elections on Saturday.
The cards, some shown to The Associated Press, add to evidence that fraud could undermine the elections and further destabilize the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.
A fraud-marred presidential election last year threatened the credibility of the Afghan administration at home and with the Western nations waging war on the country’s resurgent Taliban.
Regulation of voting has been improved, but an influx of fake cards raises the possibility of a person with multiple voter cards voting many times and could still cause problems in an insecure country where monitoring…
The Psychology Of Oil
Lisa Margonelli of the New America Foundation Energy Policy discusses the psychology of oil and how it effects both our political policy and individual behavior. Did you know that oil pumps are consciously designed to look like ATMs?
Is the U.S. Government a Dysfunctional Family?
Source: AnxietyCulture.com
From Anxiety Culture:
A branch of psychology called Transactional Analysis (TA) has a diagram called The Drama Triangle which is used for analysing psychological games.
Interestingly, this triangle seems equally applicable to political games. The Persecutor/Rescuer polarity appears to reflect the conservative/liberal dichotomy in politics. In the TA psychological model, both persecutors and rescuers need victims in order to play their psychological power games. The same seems true in traditional politics: the conservative game requires victims to criticise, castigate, scapegoat and punish; the liberal game requires victims to “help”, patronise, pity and redeem. The liberal game appears more altruistic, but, like the conservative game, it’s about power – it’s about the monkey urge to be higher up in the tree. This can be seen from the fact that many liberal schemes for “helping” people are compulsory, ie “you must accept our help” (meaning: “you must play the role of victim”).
The survival of traditional politics depends on the…
The Banned Pregnant Nun Ice Cream Ad Photo
Pregnant nuns? It’s not like it’s unheard of, but as the UK government tries to pretend it really wants the uber-expensive Papal visit this week, its Advertising Standards Authority has banned the ad. The ice cream maker couldn’t have asked for a better marketing coup!
McDonald’s Death Video
I’m no fan of McDonald’s, and as Morgan Spurlock proved, eating too much of the processed junk they pass off as food is calamitous for your health … but this ad from the nonprofit vegan group Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine takes criticism of Mickey D’s to a whole new level!
Google Engineer Stalked, Spied On Teens Through Their Gmail
It never hurts to forget that gigantic internet companies aren’t necessarily safeguarding your privacy, and that they’re comprised of humans (who can be fallible, and creepy). Gawker writes:
A Google engineer spied on four underage teens for months before the company was notified of the abuses.
David Barksdale, a 27-year-old former Google engineer, repeatedly took advantage of his position as a member of an elite technical group at the company to access users’ accounts, violating the privacy of at least four minors during his employment, we’ve learned. Barksdale met the kids through a technology group in the Seattle area while working as a Site Reliability Engineer at Google’s Kirkland, Wash. office. He was fired in July 2010 after his actions were reported to the company.
It’s unclear how widespread Barksdale’s abuses were, but in at least four cases, Barksdale spied on minors’ Google accounts without their consent, according to a source close to the…
Firefighters Rescue Camel From Sinkhole In Oregon
Photo from Clackamas Fire District
It’s not everyday you see a camel stuck in a sinkhole. Then again, it’s not everyday you see a domestic camel in Oregon. The local Oregon City News reports:
Clackamas County officials had an exotic — and unusual — assignment involving a camel, a sink hole and Oregon City.
The camel went into the hole and firefighters got it out.
Oh, and the camel’s name is Moses.It’s the pet of the family in the 15700 block of South Maplelane Road in Oregon City. They called 9-1-1 at about 9:40 Tuesday night, saying one of their camels had fallen into a sink hole about 6-feet deep and might be injured. Members of the Clackamas Fire District #1 and the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office arrived to find Moses, who weighs 1,500 pounds, stuck up to his shoulders in a muddy hole.
They had to call in more resources and spent hours digging the creature out of…
