Archive for October, 2010
Cybershark Feeding Frenzy
An article (largely inspired by Disinfo posts—thank you) that contextualizes recent developments in an increasingly nosey society, published by Taki’s Magazine:
The perverse coupling of surveillance and exhibitionism forms a cornerstone of American technocracy. Most Americans, be they liberals or libertarians, are unnerved by government agents, corporate data-miners, or high-tech Peeping Toms probing their personal details. And yet invasive, weirdly intimate technologies multiply like digital cockroaches, all but devouring the expectation of privacy taken for granted only a generation ago. Progress is simply too en vogue to resist.
Reality television brings a glamorous air to perpetual surveillance. The genre has enjoyed immense popularity over the last decade—comprising nearly a fifth of new broadcast programs this season—with cameramen poking into American life’s every facet. From moneyed luxury’s heights to the working-class struggle’s dregs, everyone’s in line for their 15 minutes of fame.
Consequently, the art of living on film is continually refined. But the recent success of…
College Student, Marisol Valles, Named Police Chief in Mexico Town … Because No One Else Wanted the Job
This is insane. Liz Goodwin writes in Yahoo News’ The Upshot:
A town near drug cartel capital Juarez, Mexico, had just one applicant for police chief after a spate of killings of public officials in drug-related violence.
So now the new chief in Guadalupe, a town of 10,000 residents near the Texas border, is 20-year-old college criminology major Marisol Valles García.
Public officials have increasingly become the targets of assassination as Mecxian cartels try to tighten their grasp on the country. Just this year, 11 Mexican mayors have been slain, including the former mayor of Guadalupe, who was killed in June. In the small town, “police officers and security agents have been killed, some of them beheaded,” according to the AFP.
Valles tells a local paper that she took the job to help the town’s people become less fearful. “Afraid? Everyone is afraid and it’s very natural. What motivates me here is that the project…
Occult of Personality Podcast 92: Tim Wallace-Murphy
Occult of Personality — Podcast Episode 92: Tim Wallace-Murphy
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In this episode, we’re joined by international bestselling author Tim Wallace-Murphy to discuss his most recent book, Hidden Wisdom: Secrets of the Western Esoteric Tradition.
Tim Wallace-Murphy is renowned for his books which delve into the mysteries surrounding the Knights Templar, Rosslyn, sacred geometry, and especially Rex Deus. His latest book encompasses all these and much more, broadening the scope to include the philosophies that were perpetuated and propagated by the guardians of the Western Mystery tradition. Hidden Wisdom begins in prehistory with the dawn of civilization and finishes in modern times, encompassing the intertwined currents of history and esotericism. In our conversation, Tim talks about this secret tradition, as well as its significance to world history and ourselves.
“The influence of the Masonic order has long been a matter of speculation and public concern, but the existence of the Rex Deus families was almost…
Crime-Fighting Over Twitter: UK Police Force Tweets 3,205 Crime Reports
Last Friday, a British police force posted an update on Twitter for every crime report they handled during a 24-hour period. (”We have already had 214 incidents before 5 a.m.,” read their first Tweet.) Facing budget cuts, the police outreach was “designed to highlight the wide range of work the force carries out,” and showed that their activities went beyond simple statistics about criminal activities.
“Reports of four foot doll or robot on Princess Parkway… confused man reporting his tv not working…”
“A lot of what we do is dealing with social and health problems such as missing children, people with mental health problems and domestic abuse,” explained the police chief. When it was over, they reminded the public it was intended “to raise awareness of the wide range of incidents that police officers have to deal with every day.” But the bizarre crime reports had also increased their following on Twitter from…
Joe Miller Handcuffs Democracy
Joe Miller. Photo: Paraserv (CC)
Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:
Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller, one of the more extremist Tea Party darling candidates of this election cycle, seems to have his own set of brownshirts. Joe Miller’s private security detail handcuffed and detained Tony Hopfinger, editor for the Alaska Dispatch and reportedly pushed him into a wall at an event for the GOP Senate candidate. According to Miller’s website, Hopfinger “appeared irrational, angry and potentially violent” and apparently “assaulted another individual.”
Hopfinger’s account of the incident appears slightly less hyperbolic. He stated he was surrounded by both private (non-uniformed) security guards and Miller supporters after he followed and attempted to ask uncomfortable and unwelcome questions. Hopfinger admits to pushing a guard out of the way, but only after he began to feel threatened by what seemed like a mob. While Miller’s campaign said Hopfinger was trespassing on a “private” event, that event…
Death Of The Wristwatch
I haven’t worn a wristwatch in years, and I don’t plan to start again — ever — even if it’s a Prada Bluetooth everything device, like the one at right. Will wristwatches become as much of an anachronism as pocket watches? Matthew Battle writes an obituary in The Atlantic:
Who wears a wristwatch anymore? Although luxury mechanical watches remain status symbols, time may be running out for the clock you wear. For a generation with smart phones and other networked devices readily at hand, the utility of the classic timepiece is unclear. “The Beloit College Mindset List,” a much-cited annual index of the rapid pace of cultural drift in the digital age, observes that members of the college class of 2014 are so unfamiliar with the wristwatch that “they’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.” Yup, that’s your wrist, old-timer. Touch of…
End of the Earth Postponed
Or maybe it’s already happened. LiveScience reports:
It’s a good news/bad news situation for believers in the 2012 Mayan apocalypse. The good news is that the Mayan “Long Count” calendar may not end on Dec. 21, 2012 (and, by extension, the world may not end along with it). The bad news for prophecy believers? If the calendar doesn’t end in December 2012, no one knows when it actually will — or if it has already.
A new critique, published as a chapter in the new textbook “Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World” (Oxbow Books, 2010), argues that the accepted conversions of dates from Mayan to the modern calendar may be off by as much as 50 or 100 years. That would throw the supposed and overhyped 2012 apocalypse off by decades and cast into doubt the dates of historical Mayan events. (The doomsday worries are based on…
Astronomers Discover Oldest Galaxy Yet
European Southern Observatory
What’s the farthest we can see from Earth? Galaxy UDFy_38135539, 13.1 billion light years away, thanks to Europe’s Very Large telescope. Daily Mail reports:
Astronomers have discovered the oldest and most distant object in the universe – a galaxy so far away that its light has taken 13.1 billion years to reach the Earth.
The galaxy, which was spotted by Europe’s Very Large telescope in Chile, is the most remote cluster of stars, gas and dust ever measured.
It is so distant, scientists are observing it when the universe was in its infancy – aged just 00 million years old, or four per cent of its present age.
Dr. Nicole Nesvadba of the Institute of Space Astrophysics in Paris said: ‘Measuring the most distant galaxy so far is very exciting in itself, but the astrophysical implication of this detection are even more important.
Continues at Daily Mail …
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Media Matters Receives $1 Million Donation From Soros
George Soros
If you’re a millionaire and are think right wing conservative media should be held “accountable for their reporting,” then donate to a left wing activist group. The New York Times reports:
Media Matters, the liberal activist group that wages a rhetorical war against Fox News Channel and others in the conservative press, will announce on Wednesday the receipt of a $1 million donation from the philanthropist George Soros.
In a statement obtained by The Caucus, the organization says it plans to use the money to intensify its efforts to hold the Fox host Glenn Beck and others on the cable news channel accountable for their reporting.
“Fox has transformed itself into a 24-7 G.O.P. attack machine, dividing Americans through fear-mongering and falsehoods and undermining the legitimacy of our government for partisan political ends,” the group will say in the statement, to be released Wednesday afternoon.
In an accompanying statement, Mr. Soros, a billionaire who has…
Controversial Charity Paying U.K. Drug Addicts £200 To Be Sterilized
Is it eugenics, bribery, or a clever way of fixing social dysfunction? A North Carolina-based charity is paying U.K. drug addicts to be sterilized, with the hope being that it will save money for the taxpayer in the long run. The idea went over swimmingly in the United States but is encountering resistance in Britain. BBC News reports:
The first person in the UK to accept the cash is drug addict “John” from Leicester who says he “should never be a father”.
The move has been criticised by some drug charities who work with addicts. Project Prevention founder Barbara Harris admitted her methods amounted to “bribery”, but said it was the only way to stop babies being physically and mentally damaged by drugs during pregnancy.
Mrs Harris set up her charity in North Carolina after adopting the children of a crack addict. Speaking to the BBC’s Inside Out programme, she said: “The birth mother…
World Climate Change Vulnerability Map
Maplecroft, a “global risks advisory firm,” has just released a world map for 2011 that shows the risk from climate change borne around the world. (Dark green/blue areas are most vulnerable.) The calculation is based on both the odds of sea-level-rise/natural disasters, and the ability of local authorities to deal with those issues. The countries least likely to suffer due to climate change are those in Scandinavia, while the United States is graded as “medium risk”…although things look pretty calm out in Idaho, at least.
Coming Soon: A New American Civil War?
It’s a crazy thought, but Stephen Gandel at TIME suggests that “The Creature From Jekyll Island,” better known to most Americans as our privatized central bank, the “Federal” (ain’t nothing federal about it) Reserve, could trigger a new civil war:
What is the most likely cause today of civil unrest? Immigration. Gay Marriage. Abortion. The Results of Election Day. The Mosque at Ground Zero. Nope.
Try the Federal Reserve. November 3rd is when the Federal Reserve’s next policy committee meeting ends, and if you thought this was just another boring money meeting you would be wrong. It could be the most important meeting in Fed history, maybe. The US central bank is expected to announce its next move to boost the faltering economic recovery. To say there has been considerable debate and anxiety among Fed watchers about what the central bank should do would be an understatement. Chairman Ben Bernanke has indicated in recent…
UK To Record All Emails, Phone Calls & Website Visits
Tom Whitehead reports that every email, phone call and website visit by UK citizens is to be recorded and stored after the British government revived controversial Big Brother snooping plans, in the Telegraph:
It will allow security services and the police to spy on the activities of every Briton who uses a phone or the internet.
Moves to make every communications provider store details for at least a year will be unveiled later this year sparking fresh fears over a return of the surveillance state. The plans were shelved by the Labour Government last December but the Home Office is now ready to revive them.
It comes despite the Coalition Agreement promised to “end the storage of internet and email records without good reason”.
Any suggestion of a central “super database” has been ruled out but the plans are expected to involve service providers storing all users details for a set period of time.
That…
Homer Simpson Is Catholic
Jill Serjeant reports for Reuters via Yahoo News:
“The Simpsons” just got a blessing from the Vatican.
The official Vatican newspaper has declared that beer-swilling, doughnut-loving Homer Simpson and son Bart are Catholics — and what’s more, it says that parents should not be afraid to let their children watch “the adventures of the little guys in yellow.”
“Few people know it, and he does everything to hide it. But it’s true: Homer J. Simpson is Catholic”, the Osservatore Romano newspaper said in an article on Sunday headlined “Homer and Bart are Catholics.”
The newspaper cited a study by a Jesuit priest of a 2005 episode of the show…
The Tea Party: A “Slave Management” Operation?
Mark Ames, founding editor of The eXile, dissects the Tea Party movement on the Dylan Ratigan Show:
Nancy Drew and the Case of the Phantom Pooper
You’ve heard of Mothman, Spring-Heeled Jack, and the Mad Gasser of Mattoon. Now meet the Phantom Pooper of Idaho:
Isaac Newton, Alchemist
William Blake's 'Newton' (1795)
Natalie Angier has written an excellent introduction to the work of Sir Isaac Newton in the tradition of alchemy, which is generally downplayed in the history books but was a major part of Newton’s research, for the New York Times:
…Sir Isaac had a whole other full-time career, a parallel intellectual passion that he kept largely hidden from view but that rivaled and sometimes surpassed in intensity his devotion to celestial mechanics. Newton was a serious alchemist, who spent night upon dawn for three decades of his life slaving over a stygian furnace in search of the power to transmute one chemical element into another.
Newton’s interest in alchemy has long been known in broad outline, but the scope and details of that moonlighting enterprise are only now becoming clear, as science historians gradually analyze and publish Newton’s extensive writings on alchemy — a million-plus words from the Newtonian…
African Newspaper Purposefully ‘Outs’ Gays, Suggests Hanging
Photo: AP
This is quite a shocker, reported by Godfrey Olukya and Jason Straziuso for AP, especially as it seems to have been instigated by American Christian fundamentalists:
KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — The front-page newspaper story featured a list of Uganda’s 100 “top” homosexuals, with a bright yellow banner across it that read: “Hang Them.” Alongside their photos were the men’s names and addresses.
In the days since it was published, at least four gay Ugandans on the list have been attacked and many others are in hiding, according to rights activist Julian Onziema. One person named in the story had stones thrown at his house by neighbors.
A lawmaker in this conservative African country introduced a bill a year ago that would have imposed the death penalty for some homosexual acts and life in prison for others. An international uproar ensued, and the bill was quietly shelved.
But gays in Uganda say they have faced…
Sculptures Made Of Recycled Human Blood
A recycling website asks, “Is using human blood for a sculpture the ultimate in recycling or is it going too far?” That’s actually only the beginning of the questions I would have regarding the behavior of British artist Marc Quinn. Two decades ago, he discovered that human blood is a high-quality sculpting material, and since has been taking large quantities from his body and using it to create self-replicas:
Marc Quinn created his first self-portrait in 1991 when he was only 27 years old. Over the course of almost a year, he drew 4.5 liters (9.5 pints) of his own blood and used it to create a sculpture of his head. The blood needs to be frozen, otherwise the sculpture will melt. The bold statement behind the sculpture — namely that any material can be used — catapulted Quinn to art world stardom in the early ’90s and he became a representative…
