Archive for October, 2010
Scientists Suggest That Cancer Is A Man-Made Disease
Source: Joshua Sherurcij (CC)
Basing their findings on research conducted at the University of Manchester’s KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology, professors Rosalie David and visiting Villanova professor Michael Zimmerman assert:
“In an ancient society lacking surgical intervention, evidence of cancer should remain in all cases. The virtual absence of malignancies in mummies must be interpreted as indicating their rarity in antiquity, indicating that cancer causing factors are limited to societies affected by modern industrialization”.
You can read more here
Moving from prehistory to modern times utilizing literary and mummified remains, there is little occurrence or reference to cancer, until the 17th century, where the team found the first reports in scientific literature of operations for breast and other types of cancer.
It has been suggested that the short life span of individuals in antiquity precluded the development of cancer. Although this statistical construct is true, individuals in ancient Egypt and Greece did live long enough…
Has Your Organic Breakfast Been Tasting Evil Lately?
Most of the “organic” eggs sold in supermarkets are a legal fiction, produced in the same overcrowded corporate aviaries as their non-organic counterparts. This via BoingBoing:
Woman Becomes American Citizen After Entering The Country 101 Years Earlier
Sometimes patience does pay off. A century of patience. BBC News reports:
More than a century after she crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico into the US, Eulalia Garcia has become an American citizen at the age of 101.
“I feel really good about what I have accomplished – at my age and with my health,” she said.
Ms Garcia, who entered the US on 12 October 1909, became a citizen on the 101st anniversary of her arrival.
She said the first thing she wanted to do as an American was vote in the mid-term elections on 2 November.
“Sure, I do – for the best [candidate],” Ms Garcia said.
The naturalisation ceremony took place on Tuesday in a federal courthouse in Brownsville in the US state of Texas, where Ms Garcia has lived almost all her life.
Continues at BBC News …
Congressional Campaign Cash Seating Chart
What if members of Congress were seated not by party but according to their major business sponsors? (It would probably be a more accurate representation of whose agenda they’re representing than just splitting them into Democrat/Republican/Independent.) Mother Jones went ahead and did it. Looks like the Senate is on FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate, that is)!
Did New Yorkers See UFOs Hovering Overhead?
In parts of Manhattan yesterday, people thronged the streets, straining to see a cluster of mysterious shiny objects in the sky. Are the hovering figures UFOs? It would be fitting, as a retired NORAD officer had predicted that UFOs would be spotted overhead on October 13. The Daily News took note:
A mysterious shiny object floating high over Manhattan’s West Side set off a flurry of reports and wild speculation Wednesday that a UFO was flying over the city.
Police and the FAA said they began getting flooded with calls starting at 1:30 p.m. from people reporting a silvery object hovering high over Chelsea.
Law enforcement sources said they believed the object was likely some sort of balloon, but as of late Wednesday they had not confirmed exactly what it is.
A Daily News reporter could see a tiny, silver dot floating approximately 5,000 feet above 23th St. and Eighth Ave., where dozens of people…
South Park’s Latest Victim: New Jersey
Everything east of the Rockies is now part of New Jersey!! South Park is in danger of becoming West Jersey within the week. As the Jerseyites spill into Colorado and approach South Park, Randy and the boys stand strong against the onslaught…
Watch this instant classic at SouthParkStudios.com (the official site).
Click Through to Watch "Jersey Thing" at SouthParkStudios.com
Physics Professor: ‘Global Warming is the Greatest and Most Successful Pseudoscientific Fraud…’
The professor’s letter of resignation speaks for itself and deserves to be reproduced in full, so here it is:
From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara
To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society
6 October 2010
Dear Curt:
When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists.…
When Asteroids Collide
One of the most likely ‘Earth Apocalypse’ scenarios among the many bandied about by 2012 alarmists is that a “Near Earth Object” — as asteroids, meteors and other space junk that might collide with us are known in the trade — might smash through our atmosphere and impact with our planet. The Hubble Telescope has recorded a taste of what that might mean, reported in the Register:
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the aftermath of just what happens when two asteroids collide at 11,000 mph (17,702 km/h), prompting an explosion “as powerful as the detonation of a small atomic bomb”.
P/2010 A2. Photo: NASA
The result is a “peculiar” object – dubbed P/2010 A2 – which boasts a comet-like debris trail behind a mysterious X-shaped formation.
The asteroid belt pile-up happened in early 2009, according to NASA, but it wasn’t until January this year that the Lincoln Near-Earth Research (LINEAR) Program Sky Survey…
Gubernatorial Candidate Arrested Outside Debate Tuesday Night
Laura Wells in Sacramento
From the San Jose Mercury News:
As gubernatorial hopefuls Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown sparred off on stage at Tuesday night’s debate, another candidate for California’s top post was arrested for trying to enter the debate using another person’s ticket, San Rafael police said.
Oakland resident and Green Party candidate Laura Wells, 62, attempted to enter Dominican University’s Angelico Hall at 5:20 p.m. when she presented a ticket that police said was not issued to her.
For security reasons, tickets to the event were numbered, coded and checked by campus security before ticket holders were admitted to the debate hall.
Police said Wells refused to cooperate with campus security when they requested she surrender the ticket.
Wells became argumentative and refused to leave the area, police said, even after she was warned that if she persisted she would be subject to a citizen’s arrest because she was on private property.
A security officer…
Sync Your Smartphone To Your Heart Implant
From a Dutch company comes a phone app that tracks your heart’s activity, and, one may assume, lets you pick a customized alert tone to sound when you enter cardiac arrest. Via Popular Science:
The new Human++ system adds one very powerful new peripheral to Android smartphones: your own body. It interprets electrocardiogram (ECG) readings, and can be used for medicinal or recreational purposes: Let your doctor know that you’re having a heart attack, or let your Facebook friends know that you’re playing basketball.
Created by Dutch research firm IMEC, Human++ is a type of wireless BAN (body area network). This particular version uses a dongle that actually plugs into your phone’s microSD slot (which is one reason it’s limited to Android–the iPhone, for one, doesn’t have a microSD slot) and receives data over a low-power radio system. Though Bluetooth is more popular, the nRF24L01+ frequency was chosen for its low power…
Are Redheads Descended From Neanderthals?
Source: 120 (CC)
In Entangled, Graham Hancock’s debut novel, an essential part of the story involves the so-called “Neanderthal Enigma,” a raging academic debate over what caused Homo neanderthalensis to die out some 35,000 years ago. Hancock’s Neanderthals, called the “Uglies,” play an important role in Entangled. They are depicted as gentle, sensitive, telepathic, creative: They did not make cave paintings but they did use makeup.
Shocking new scientific research suggests that Hancock’s depiction of Neanderthals may be far closer to the truth than even he may have thought. Jennifer Viegas reports for Discovery News via MSNBC:
Neanderthals are often depicted as brutish club wielders, but a new book suggests Neanderthals had a sensitive side, displaying “a deep seated sense of compassion.”
The findings, also published in the journal Time & Mind, are part of a larger study charting how empathy and other related feelings evolved in early humans.
Researchers Penny Spikins, Andy Needham and Holly…
Aliens Arriving Today! Seriously.
Just another Wednesday? Not so fast. Retired air force officer Stan Fulham predicts October 13, 2010 as the tentative date for a fleet of extraterrestrial vehicles to hover for hours over the earth’s principal cities. Fulham believes that this event to be the first in a series intended to avert a planetary catastrophe resulting from increasing levels of carbon-dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere dangerously approaching a “critical mass.”
I suppose there’s no need to be on the internet, you could just look up to the sky where the visitors will be hovering. For more information, click here.
There are many versions of this event online, with predictions of contact “by the end of the year”.
Wall Street To Break Record Again With $144 Billion In Pay This Year
Having déjà vu? Top Wall Street firms will once again break their own salary record this year. If that’s not a sign we’re in economic boom times, I don’t know what is! MSNBC reports:
Wall Street pay is on pace to break a record high for a second consecutive year, according to a report in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal.
Some three dozen top banks and securities firms will pay $144 billion in salary and benefits this year, the paper said. That’s a 4 percent increase from the $139 billion paid out in 2009, according to a survey conducted by the Journal. Compensation is expected to rise at 26 of the 35 firms surveyed, including banks, investment banks, hedge funds, money-management firms and securities exchanges.
Large Wall Street banks are unlikely to accelerate bonus payouts, however, to help their employees avoid the higher tax rates that may be coming when tax cuts enacted by the…
Why Won’t Israel and the U.S. Define Borders With Palestine?
Seems like a reasonable demand by the Palestinians – why the reluctance from Israel and big brother U.S.? From AFP:
RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories — The Palestinians on Wednesday called on the US administration and Israel to define borders in response to Israel’s demand for recognition as the Jewish state.
“We officially demand that the US administration and the Israeli government provide a map of the borders of the state of Israel which they want us to recognise,” senior Palestinian official Yasser Abed Rabbo told AFP.
His remarks came after the US State Department asked the Palestinians to extend a counter-proposal to Israel’s call for recognition as a “Jewish state” in exchange for a possible extension of restrictions on settlement building.
The Palestinians rejected the offer, saying recognition of Israel’s Jewish identity had no relation to the peace process. They instead demanded that the US administration set the 1967 lines as the starting point for negotiations about…
2012: Time For Change – In Theaters Now!
2012: Time for Change presents an optimistic alternative to apocalyptic doom and gloom. Directed by Emmy Award nominee João Amorim, the film follows my quest for a new paradigm that integrates the archaic wisdom of tribal cultures with the scientific method. As conscious agents of evolution, we can redesign post-industrial society on ecological principles to make a world that works for all. Rather than breakdown and barbarism, 2012 heralds the birth of a regenerative planetary culture where collaboration replaces competition, where exploration of psyche and spirit becomes the new cutting edge, replacing the sterile materialism that has pushed our world to the brink. The film features Sting, Ellen Page, David Lynch, Gilberto Gil, and many other artists and visionaries.
The film opens in New York this weekend. Apologies if you don’t live in the area – we will soon offer video on demand and DVDs for sale. You can also work with us to organize a screening where you live…
Late Night TV and Web Surfing Can Cause Obesity
Source: CAD-Comic.com (CC)
Although recent research suggests that obesity may be partly genetic, intuitively one feels that being a late night TV couch potato or site surfer can’t help. The LA Times reports on a study showing just that, but with an unexpected twist:
Researchers already know that people who stay up late watching TV, playing video games or surfing the Web have an increased risk of becoming obese. The thought was that all that sedentary awake time amounted to more opportunities to snack, and thus to put on pounds.
But a study published online Monday says another mechanism may be at work too – the additional exposure to light at night messes with one’s circadian rhythm and throws the body’s metabolism out of whack.
To prove that light at night actually causes obesity, researchers from Ohio State University and University of Haifa in Israel kept three groups of mice. One group followed the normal pattern of 16 hours of full light and…
Pathocracy: Is Civilization the Creation of Psychopaths?
Clinton Callahan, writing for Dissident Voice back in 2008:
I make the effort to share this information because it gives me, at last, a plausible answer to a long-unanswered question: Why, no matter how much intelligent goodwill exists in the world, is there so much war, suffering and injustice? It doesn’t seem to matter what creative plan, ideology, religion, or philosophy great minds come up with, nothing seems to improve our lot. Since the dawn of civilization, this pattern repeats itself over and over again.
The answer is that civilization, as we know it, is largely the creation of psychopaths. All civilizations, our own included, have been built on slavery and mass murder. Psychopaths have played a disproportionate role in the development of civilization, because they are hard-wired to lie, kill, cheat, steal, torture, manipulate, and generally inflict great suffering on other humans without feeling any remorse, in order to establish their own…
Waiting For Superman: Good Luck, Going to Public School, Kids Today! (Parents Take Notice.)
As a product of the public school system in the Great State of New York, this film is well overdue. Everyone, please watch this.
If you attended public school in any state in the U.S. I think you know what I mean.
And if you have kids, please, at least watch at least a minute into this trailer. You will realize the filmmaker’s intent.
The public school education system is BROKEN …. if you’re working within it, please speak out and join the effort to reform it. I knew something wasn’t right as a child in the system, but what the hell do kids really know? Time to make a change,
Fetus Abductresses Stalk Pregnant Women
Korena Roberts
It was June, 2009 and Korena Roberts had let everyone know that she was expecting a baby. Excitedly, she had set about sewing clothes. She had bought formula, a stroller, and parenting magazines. As the big day was drawing near, she invited Heather Snively, an eight months pregnant woman that she had befriended on Craigslist, over to her house to “exchange baby clothes.”
What Snively did not know was that Roberts was not pregnant. Since delivering a stillborn child in 2007, she had become “obsessed with babies, repeatedly watching videos of births on YouTube,” and generally making herself crazy with what she could not have. She had been staging her pregnancy, and Snively was there because it was time to stage a delivery.
The paramedics who arrived at the scene were soon able to determine that Roberts had not given birth. For murdering Snively, extracting her unborn baby and claiming it as…
