Hour 2
Hour 3
Archive for October, 2010
7 Comments
5 Year-Old Syrian Boy Gets Engaged To 3 Year-Old Girl
While vacationing with his family, young Khalid met Hala and immediately fell in love. After returning home, the distance between him and his new love threw him into a depression. That is, until he reunited with Hala and popped the big question. This sounds like a love story that Lifetime would make a movie about, but the big twist is that Khalid is still in nursery school! From CBS News:
Two Syrian children may be the youngest couple ever to get engaged.
Khalid, 5, popped the question to Hala, who’s just 3, “of his own free will,” following a whirlwind holiday romance.
The families of both children are not only taking the betrothal seriously, they insist the school children are in love and are already planning a wedding for 10 years down the road — when Khalid will be 15 and Hala 12.
The parents arranged the engagement ceremony in their home town of Homs,…
3 Comments
This Is My Nightmare: 700 Clowns Laughing Together Set Record (Video)
This is not OK, and it never will be. The horror. The horror. Via Fox TV DC:
About 700 clowns attended the Fifteenth International Clown Convention in Mexico City last Wednesday, where attendees set a new record. After laughing for 15 minutes, the clowns could not break the “laughing world record” but were able to break the national record in Mexico.
Clowns from the United States, Peru, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and other countries attended three days of meetings, which began on 18 October, participating in conferences, exhibitions and make up competitions.
No Comments
World Cup Oracle Paul The Octopus Dies
Paul the octopus correctly predicted the outcome of eight World Cup matches. I wonder if Paul predicted this too.
2 Comments
This Election Season’s Most Bizarre Campaign Ads
As American electoral politics becomes ever more dysfunctional, political television ads grow all the more entertaining. In the year of Christine O’Donnell’s “I am not a witch” and Rand Paul’s “Aqua Buddha,” the Christian Science Monitor counts down ten of the most surreal campaign ads. I love this spot from Alabama agriculture commissioner candidate Dale Peterson, the message of which is, if you try to steal one of his yard signs, he will shoot at you.
No Comments
Tea Party Climate Change Deniers Funded by BP and Other Major Polluters
The Guardian reports:
BP and several other big European companies are funding the midterm election campaigns of Tea Party favourites who deny the existence of global warming or oppose Barack Obama’s energy agenda, the Guardian has learned.
An analysis of campaign finance by Climate Action Network Europe (Cane) found nearly 80% of campaign donations from a number of major European firms were directed towards senators who blocked action on climate change. These included incumbents who have been embraced by the Tea Party such as Jim DeMint, a Republican from South Carolina, and the notorious climate change denier James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma.
The report, released tomorrow, used information on the Open Secrets.org database to track what it called a co-ordinated attempt by some of Europe’s biggest polluters to influence the US midterms. It said: “The European companies are funding almost exclusively Senate candidates who have been outspoken in their opposition to comprehensive climate policy…
28 Comments
Rand Paul Backer Stomps on Woman Outside Kentucky Senate Debate
Don’t say you weren’t warned about these people. From Tom Diemer at AOL’s Politics Daily:
A Rand Paul supporter stomped on the head of a MoveOn.org volunteer Monday night outside of a debate between the Kentucky Senate candidate and his opponent, Jack Conway.
The woman, identified by CNN as Lauren Valle, was pushed to the ground — her blond wig was pulled off in the scuffle — and then held down…
No Comments 
The Toxic Chemicals That Surround Us
Photo: Nordelch (CC)
Celebrity doctor Sanjay Gupta writes a remarkably candid report on the profusion of chemicals in our lives and why we should be concerned about them, for CNN:
This morning, I will be testifying before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works. When I received the call to do this, truthfully, I was a little nervous. The topic is “Risks of toxic chemicals to children’s health,” something I have been interested in for a long time, and moreso after having three kids of my own. In fact, for the last year, I investigated the interplay between toxic chemicals and human health for a pair of documentaries on CNN.
I learned more than a series of text books could’ve taught me. I spent time with citizens in Mossville, Louisiana, arguably one of the most toxic cities in America. For countless hours, I spoke to government officials and private sector expert scientists…
3 Comments 
The ‘Government Doesn’t Suck’ March
Govloop
Enough with the marches already! Ed O’Keefe reports on yet another march on Washington, for the Washington Post:
Amid growing dissatisfaction with federal employees, a group of younger, web-savvy feds are planning to march on Saturday in defense of their coworkers on the sidelines of Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity.”
Organizers of the “Government Doesn’t Suck March” (their choice of words, not ours) were inspired in part by last week’s Washington Post poll that revealed widespread negative perceptions of federal workers.
“We hear it day in and day out: the government sucks, federal employees are lazy and their positions are redundant,” said march organizer Steve Ressler, founder of GovLoop, a social networking Web site for public servants.
“It’s time to turn the tables and remind the world that government employees just happen to be people — people that don’t suck,” Ressler said in a message sent to The Federal Eye on Sunday announcing the…
No Comments 
The Rocket That Will Take Us To Mars
Franklin Chang Díaz. Photo: NASA
Meet Franklin Chang Díaz, the 60-year-old astronaut who has developed a nuclear rocket that could speed humans to Mars within a week, profiled in Popular Science:
You might expect to find our brightest hope for sending astronauts to other planets in Houston, at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, inside a high-security multibillion-dollar facility. But it’s actually a few miles down the street, in a large warehouse behind a strip mall. This bland and uninviting building is the private aerospace start-up Ad Astra Rocket Company, and inside, founder Franklin Chang Díaz is building a rocket engine that’s faster and more powerful than anything NASA has ever flown before. Speed, Chang Díaz believes, is the key to getting to Mars alive. In fact, he tells me as we peer into a three-story test chamber, his engine will one day travel not just to the Red Planet, but to Jupiter and…
2 Comments
So You Think You Can Laugh? ‘Laughology’ Inspires First-Ever Laughter Championship
Contestants and their fans will converge in Montreal on October 27, 2010 for the first ever laughter competition — Le Grand Championnat de Rire de Montreal. Comedy contests are common, however this will be the world’s first televised laughing contest. The contest was inspired by my documentary Laughology, currently distributed by The Disinformation Company, in which I demonstrate that people can laugh spontaneously by using various “active laughter” techniques.
Contestants across Quebec will compete in diabolical laughter competitions, contagious laughter face-offs, and competitive laughter duels to see who will be crowned the “Best Laugher in Quebec.” The show is a pilot for an eventual international laughter competition to demonstrate that laughter could itself be a competitive sport.
The Championnat is a based on the revolutionary concept that because laughter is contagious: laughing makes people laugh. It involves games designed to produce natural contagious laughter. The whole event is also being filmed for Rire Extreme, a documentary for CANAL D. I got the idea for my documentary Laughology after meeting Doug Collins, an American who is said to have the most contagious laugh in the world:
I believe that because of Quebec’s tradition of Joie de Vivre and Quebec may have laughers who are as good or better than Collins. This summer Laughter contests where held at major Quebec festivals, including le Festival du Grand Rire in Quebec, The Western Festival of St. Tite and le Festival de Poutine du Drummonville. The winners of those contests have been invited to the Championnat which takes place at in Montreal in a special ring.
We really found some extraordinary laughers. I’m afraid to imagine what happens when we get them all in the same room. I hope that the idea of a laughter competition is to spread the positive, healthy emotions of laughter. And I’m trying to prove that laughter could be a competitive sport.
Contestants are coming from around Quebec however, we have left one spot open for one last great laugher. Auditions will be held on Oct 27th at Salla Rossa at 5 p.m. Please email hey@laughology.info. to be put on the list.
2 Comments 
Pentagon Spends $19 Billion To Discover That The Best Bomb-Detector Is A Dog
Photo: Piotr Grzywocz (CC)
Having been unable to eat in the presence of some canines throughout my life (folks, you really should have trained your dogs, you know who you are…) this one comes as no surprise. Spencer Ackerman writes on the always interesting WIRED’s Danger Room:
Drones, metal detectors, chemical sniffers, and super spycams — forget ‘em. The leader of the Pentagon’s multibillion military task force to stop improvised bombs says there’s nothing in the U.S. arsenal for bomb detection more powerful than a dog’s nose.
Despite a slew of bomb-finding gagdets, the American military only locates about 50 percent of the improvised explosives planted in Afghanistan and Iraq. But that number jumps to 80 percent when U.S. and Afghan patrols take dogs along for a sniff-heavy walk. “Dogs are the best detectors,” Lieutenant General Michael Oates, the commander of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, told a conference yesterday, National…
18 Comments
Baby Killed When Family Jumps Out Of Paris Window After ‘Seeing The Devil’
From mistaking a husband as the devil to jumping out of the second floor with a baby in their arms, everything about this story seems unbelievable. The Belfast Telegraph reports:
A baby died when a family of 12 leapt from their second floor balcony in Paris claiming they were fleeing the devil.
Eight more were injured, some seriously, in the tragedy when they jumped 20 ft into a car park in Paris suburb of La Verriere.
The baffling incident occurred when a wife woke to see her husband moving about naked in the room, police said.
She began screaming ‘it’s the devil! it’s the devil!’, and the man ran into the other room where 11 others adults and children were watching television. One woman grabbed a knife and stabbed the man before others pushed him out through the front door.
12 Comments
It’s 2030: China Owns America Because of the Health Care Bill (Video)
Ben Smith writes on the Politico: “This slickly-produced new ad from Citizens Against Government Waste — in a major national buy, I’m told — attacks spending in the Mandarin-speaking voice of a gloating, future Chinese professor.”
1 Comment
Graham Hancock Talks ‘Entangled’ With George Noory
Ignislucis.com has posted audio from Hancock’s recent multi-hour interview on Coast To Coast AM:
10-18-10 – Ancient Mysteries & Parallel Dimensions – Graham Hancock
Hour 1
No Comments
Two-Thirds of the West African Nation of Benin is Underwater
Via BBC News:
The UN refugee agency is to start an emergency airlift of tents to the West African nation of Benin this week, amid the worst flooding there in decades.
Some 3,000 tents will be flown in from Denmark to provide shelter for some of the estimated 680,000 people affected.
Two-thirds of Benin has suffered from months of heavy rain, and about 800 cases of cholera have been reported.
It is the worst flooding to hit the country — one of the poorest in the world — since 1963.
Areas previously thought not to be vulnerable to flooding have been devastated and villages wiped out.
“There are huge areas that are covered in water so people are living on the tops of their houses, because people try to stay near their homes,” Helen Kawkins of the Care aid agency told the BBC.
29 Comments
Wikileaks Founder Walks Off CNN Interview
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange walks out of an interview with CNN reporter Atika Shubert after asking personal questions.
2 Comments
Has Apple Killed the CD?
I thought the changing of the iTunes graphic to a CD-less one for iTunes 10 was an interesting symbolic gesture, but looks like Apple is taking it a step further with the MacBook Air, which many agree is the future of their laptop/netbook line. I realize many non-Apple netbooks have done this for a while, so the difference here is that Apple with the introduction of the Mac App Store is further reducing the need for CDs to install programs (i.e. Apps in Apple-speak). (And in all fairness for alternatives to our electronic overlord Steve Jobs, this TechCrunch article states Google and Mozilla are working on similar e-Store concepts.)
I, for one, am welcoming this electronic future free of physical containers to transport information. MG Siegler writes on TechCrunch:
Stop. Take a deep breath. Before my headline ["Yep, Apple Killed The CD Today"] gets you all worked up, consider what I’m saying here. The…
13 Comments
Americans Don’t Believe Good News From Scientists
It’s probably because governments and corporations are always using “science” to try to make us buy into their latest propaganda. From Canada.com:
A newly released American study suggests the public often rejects the opinions of scientific experts.
Photo: Urcomunicacion (CC)
The public tends not to trust scientists, says research from California – but there’s a twist. People are mainly reluctant to believe good news, it turns out – such as the message that a flu vaccine is safe. But the public is more likely to trust the researchers who frighten with bad news.
Overall, the study, published in a research journal called Public Understanding of Science, concludes that “scientists’ efforts to influence public opinion have a limited effect.”
The work is based on a public opinion survey of 1,475 Californians to assess whether people trust safety studies on offshore oil drilling. It predates this summer’s massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, but offshore…
9 Comments 
Trauma-Based Mind Control
Tim Boucher
Tim Boucher wrote back in 2005:
As far as I understand it (which admittedly is nothing close to first-hand experience), trauma-based mind control is kind of similar to the whole favorite-album phenomenon. The idea is basically that you condition the mind according to certain stimuli. When you experience a sensory trigger, a correlated interior state is achieved. The most common example of this is called Classical or Pavlovian Conditioning:
Classical Conditioning is the type of learning made famous by Pavlov’s experiments with dogs. The gist of the experiment is this: Pavlov presented dogs with food, and measured their salivary response (how much they drooled). Then he began ringing a bell just before presenting the food. At first, the dogs did not begin salivating until the food was presented. After a while, however, the dogs began to salivate when the sound of the bell was presented. They learned to associate the sound of…
