Archive for November, 2010
The World’s First BASE Jumper: Franz Reichelt’s 1912 Doomed Leap from the Eiffel Tower (Video)
I admire his desire to develop a parachute in the early days of aviation, unfortunately Mr. Reichelt may have turned out to be the world’s first-ever BASE jumper. As Wikipedia records:
Believing that the lack of a suitably high test platform was partially to blame for his failures, Reichelt repeatedly petitioned the Parisian Prefecture of Police for permission to conduct a test from the Eiffel Tower. He was finally granted permission in early 1912, but when he arrived at the tower on February 4th he made it clear that he intended to jump himself rather than conduct an experiment with dummies.
Despite attempts by his friends and spectators to dissuade him, he jumped from the first platform of the tower wearing his invention. The parachute failed to deploy and he crashed into the icy ground at the foot of the tower. The next day, newspapers were full of the story of the reckless inventor and his fatal jump — many included pictures of the fall taken by press photographers who had gathered to witness Reichelt’s experiment — and a film documenting the jump appeared in newsreels:
China Sentences Woman To Labor Camp For A Twitter Post
A little birdie told me that Twitter is capable of ‘disturbing social order.’ The New York Times reports:
A Chinese woman was sentenced to one year in a labor camp Wednesday after she forwarded a satirical microblog message that urged recipients to attack the Japanese pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo, human rights groups said Thursday.
The woman, Cheng Jianping, 46, was accused of “disturbing social order” for resending a Twitter message from her fiancé that mocked young nationalists who held anti-Japanese rallies in several cities last month. The original message sarcastically goaded protesters to go beyond the smashing of Japanese products and express their fury at the heavily policed expo site.
Ms. Cheng added the words “Charge, angry youth.”
Ms. Cheng was seized last month in the southeastern city of Wuxi on the same day as her fiancé, Hua Chunhui. Mr. Hua, who was released five days later, told reporters the two had planned to…
CERN Scientists Trap ‘Antimatter’ Hydrogen Atoms For The First Time
ALPHA experiment at CERN
Has science fiction finally started to become science? From Daily Mail:
It was once used to propel Captain Kirk across the stars.
Now scientists say they have captured a sample of real-life antimatter for the first time. In an astonishing breakthrough, a team of British and international physicists were able to ‘trap’ 38 atoms of anti-hydrogen in a laboratory for a fraction of a second.
While the experiment is unlikely to lead to the warp engines, anti-matter drives or the faster than light travel of Star Trek, it could shed light on the nature and origins of the Universe.
Antimatter is the mirror of ordinary matter. Normal atoms are made up of positively-charged nuclei orbited by negatively-charged electrons.
However, their antimatter counterparts are the wrong way round. They have negative nuclei and positively-charged electrons.
Continues at Daily Mail …
Britain Deals Trump Card To Rescue Economy: A Royal Wedding
The question all the gossip mags are asking about Prince William’s Royal Wedding is why now? The Prince just said “The timing is right now, we are both very, very happy,” but cynics among us think it could just be a last gasp attempt to prevent Britain from slipping into a 1970s-style economic malaise. The news certainly has British retailers excited according to Reuters:
The marriage of Prince William to Kate Middleton next year could give a 620 million pound ($985 million) boost to the British economy, retail researchers Verdict said on Wednesday.
The forecast came as Asda, Britain’s second-biggest supermarket group, said it was already selling a 5 pound mug to commemorate the engagement of the heir to the British throne to his long-term girlfriend, announced on Tuesday.
Verdict estimated the engagement could be worth 12-18 million pounds in merchandise sales, while sales of wedding-related products could top 26 million pounds.
The real…
Video: The Law Enforcement Guide to Satanic Cults
The 1994 film Law Enforcement Guide To Satanic Cults (available on VHS by mail order) gives cops all the telltale signs to spot Satanic murders in their communities. Watch for the sake of your own safety, this is important.
Eric Cantona Foments A New French Revolution
Eric Cantona first achieved fame playing soccer for Manchester United and France. He was an extremely talented striker, but perhaps is best known for his flying kung fu-style kick at a heckling fan. That’s all in the past though, and Cantona has a new career as a budding indie film star. Apparently he’s also quite conscious of the fact that there’s not much liberté, égalité or fraternité in France or the rest of the world these days, and he knows just how to bring about another revolution: everyone should go to their bank and withdraw all their cash. The system would crash and, voilà, la Révolution! Here he is in an October interview explaining how it works:
The Tea Party Is The New Birch Society
Before the Tea Party there was the John Birch Society, which decried “big government” as part of a communist plot to enslave America. These so-called “loonies in the basement” were kept in check for many years by the likes of William F. Buckley, who represented the more moderate, intellectually-grounded strain of the conservative movement. This clip John Birch speaking in 1958 is being circulated by the Birchers themselves to draw attention to the similarities:
Can JP Morgan Really Be ‘Crashed’ By Buying Silver?
Max Keiser, financial analyst and host of RT’s Keiser Report, and Texas radio host Alex Jones are telling their listeners and fans to buy silver. Ostensibly the reason is to destroy the value of the JP Morgan bank. The cynic in me wonders if Alex and Max have an existing position in silver that they’d like to see increase in value. Anyone have any real insight?
According to Keiser, the goal of the “Crash JP Morgan – Buy Silver!” campaign is to force JP Morgan to cover its negative bets…
Patti Smith: ‘Don’t Let Technology Kill Books’
Respect to rocker Patti Smith for crossing over from music into literature and winning “the Oscar of the book world.” She’s a massive fan of books, but apparently not ebooks. From BBC News:
Veteran rock singer Patti Smith has won a prestigious US book award for her memoir, Just Kids.
The 63-year-old received the National Book Award for non-fiction for her work, which chronicles her youth in 1960s New York.
As she collected her $10,000 (£6,254) prize, Smith urged publishers not to let technology kill traditional books.
“There is nothing more beautiful than the book, the paper, the font, the cloth,” she said at the New York event.
I’m with Patti in terms of loving books as objects, but my shelves are full and some books I don’t really want to keep anyway, so ebooks are a good solution for me when I can’t get to a lending library. What do other disinformation readers think?
…
Ron Paul Introduces The American Traveler Dignity Act
Who is this fool?
Congressman Ron Paul decries TSA abuses on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives:
Mr. Speaker, today I introduce legislation to protect Americans from physical and emotional abuse by federal…
‘… And the Dish Ran Away With the Spoon.’
A characteristically surreal collaboration between Mark Ryden and Marion Peck:
Actroid-F: Japan’s Most Realistic Robot Yet
The newly unveiled Actroid-F mimics the actions of its operator, acting as a sort of “surrogate.” The level of lifelike authenticity is unnerving — people will soon be falling in love with robots.
Do Tax Cuts for the Richest 2% Help or Hurt You? Read the Surprising Answer Here
Kudos once again to the fine team and readership at disinformation. Their comments continue to be extremely thought provoking. This article, chart and supporting calculation in the attached workbook are in resonse to their many insightful questions about inept Republican tax and economic policies.
I get pissed when some dipwad tries to pull a fast one on me, as should we all. The responsible conduct of business requires a level of trust that is decisively undermined when we’re lied to. And while there is a time and place for everything, the place for bullshit is the weekend pintfest at a local pub, not in debates about income tax policy. That’s why the fundamental dishonesty of Republican’t talking points has me so fired up.The specific steaming pile that currently has me cheesed off is EGTRRA. No, it’s not some type of horrible fat-free egg substitute; it’s the ironically named Economic Growth and Tax Relief…
Torture In The Middle Ages: Revisited
Torture rack in the Tower of London
A German researcher has studied medieval criminal law and found that our image of the sadistic treatment of criminals in the Dark Ages is only partly true. Torture and gruesome executions were designed in part to ensure the salvation of the convicted person’s soul.
Peter Nirsch would have been seen as a monster at any time in history. While traveling south through Germany, he had a penchant for cutting open pregnant women and removing their unborn babies. Nirsch butchered more than 500 people before he was captured near Nuremberg in September 1581.
The courts were not squeamish in their treatment of the serial killer. First he was tortured, and then hot oil was poured into his wounds. Then the culprit was tied to the rack, where his arms and legs were broken. In the…
33 Chilean Women Lock Themselves In 9,000 ft Deep Mine
A group of Chilean men were just recently pulled out of a mine creating quite a media parade. Now a group of Chilean women have willingly entered a mine in protest. If a group of men can gain global attention from being in a mine, so can women. At least, that’s the approach. From BBC News:
Thirty-three women in Chile have shut themselves in a mine after a government jobs programme that helped the victims of last February’s earthquake ended.
The women, in an echo of the story of the 33 trapped and then rescued miners, went into a former coal mine 500km (300 miles) south of Santiago.
“We’ve done many things to be taken into account but the government hasn’t listened to us,” a spokeswoman said.
The rescue of the miners made headlines around the world.
The women were part of an emergency works programme generating jobs at one point for some 12,000 people…
U.S. Scientists Significantly More Likely to Publish Fake Research
Via LiveScience:
U.S. scientists are significantly more likely to publish fake research than scientists from elsewhere, finds a trawl of officially withdrawn (retracted) studies, published online in the Journal of Medical Ethics.
Fraudsters are also more likely to be “repeat offenders,” the study shows.
The study author searched the PubMed database for every scientific research paper that had been withdrawn — and therefore officially expunged from the public record — between 2000 and 2010.
A total of 788 papers had been retracted during this period. Around three quarters of these papers had been withdrawn because of a serious error (545); the rest of the retractions were attributed to fraud (data fabrication or falsification).
The highest number of retracted papers were written by first authors in the U.S. (260), accounting for a third of the total. One in three of these was attributed to fraud.
The UK, India, Japan, and China each had more than 40 papers…
Professor to Install Camera in the Back of His Head
Tracy Staedter writes at Discovery News:
According to this article from the Wall Street Journal, Wafaa Bilal, an Iraqi assistant professor at New York University is having a camera surgically embedded in the back of his head.
The unusual act is part of a museum installation called 3rdI. For a year, the camera will take still pictures in one-minute intervals and send them wirelessly to Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar, which will display them on monitors.
Bilal is known for his provocative art. He has a tattoo on his back that details American and Iraqi casualties, he set up a website where people could shoot him remotely with paint balls and created a suicide-bomber avatar of himself in a video game that hunted down President George W. Bush.
The 3rdI project, which launches December 15, has raised a bunch of privacy concerns that the university is still addressing. The semi-permanently installed…
How The American Dream Ended
It feels as if every media outlet has lamented 21st century America’s declining fortunes and crisis of confidence. Still, it’s interesting to read German paper of record Der Spiegel’s outsider perspective on the death of the American dream. The United States comes off as a rotted, moribund shell:
Florida was the finale of the American dream, a promise, a symbol, an American heaven on earth, because Florida held out the prospect of spending 10, perhaps 20 and hopefully 30 years living in one’s own house. For decades, anywhere from 200,000 to 400,000 people moved to the state each year. The population grew and grew — and so too did real estate prices and the assets of those who were already there and wanted bigger houses and even bigger dreams. Florida was a seemingly never-ending boom machine.
America has long been a country of limitless possibility. But the dream has now become a…
Jail the Bankers Or This Economy Will Never Fully Recover
Echoing Danny Schechter’s call for a “Jailout Not A Bailout,” Joshua Holland makes it clear in his essay for Alternet that without criminal prosecution of the banksters who landed us in this never-ending recession, we’ll never emerge from it:
The Great Recession showed the world that the crimes that create the most victims are not committed by terrorists, gangbangers or drug traffickers, but by well-heeled crooks in Wall Street’s executive suites. Tens of millions of people have seen their jobs disappear and their pension funds fleeced, and had their homes taken out from under their feet as a result of the crash of Wall Street’s Great Casino. Yet so far, the culprits have been given little more than a slap on the wrist.
Failing to prosecute Wall Street’s high-flying crooks doesn’t only represent a great miscarriage of justice. Powerful voices within the economic establishment are now making the case that holding the bankers criminally…
