Archive for December, 2010
Top New Words For 2011: Palinism, Obama-mess
‘Palinism and ‘Obama-mess’ are funny, but what has me worried is the prediction that we’ll all be talking about the Great Recession in 2011. The Global Language Monitor has released their top 10 words to be in vogue in 2011:
- Twenty-Eleven – The English-speaking world has finally agreed on a common designation for the year: Twenty-eleven far outstrips ‘two thousand eleven’ in the spoken language. This is welcome relief from the decade-long confusion over how to pronounce 2001, 2001, 2003, etc.
- Obama-mess – David Letterman’s neologism for 2010 also works for 2011. This word is neutral. If Obama regain his magic, he escaped his Obama-mess; if his rating sinks further he continues to be engulfed by it.
- Great Recession – Even the best case scenario has the economy digging out of this hole for the foreseeable future.
- Palinism – Because the media needs an heir to Bushisms and Sarah Palin is the candidate of choice here.
- TwitFlocker – Can’t say what…
So, Why is WikiLeaks a Good Thing Again?
Interesting website to check out:
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Mobile Bubble Homes In France
Initially produced by designer Pierre Stephane Dumas, “bubble tents” are now available for use at a growing number of campsites across France, the Daily News reports. Equipped with wardrobes, shelves and electric lights, the bubbles can be rented for around $600 per night, or purchased outright for $12,000. Right now they’re a luxury option for European campers, but I dream of a day in which this will be a viable housing option:
Electronic Pickpockets And The Wallet To Stop Them
DataSafe wallet and passport protector. (Kena Kai)
Turns out the paranoid people with tin foil on their heads weren’t completely wrong. Except the foil doesn’t need to protect your head, but your wallet. The latest thing in pickpocket-technology is being able to scan your credit or ID cards from several feet away. The Washington Post reports:
Stuck on the tarmac, flipping through a travel magazine, you’re struck by the blurb for metal-lined wallets. Purpose: to prevent digital pickpocketing by blocking radio frequencies.
These handsome babies start at $79.99 and top out at the $225 Italian Leather Teju Lizard Embossed Travel Wallet.
Your reaction: Wow! Luxury accessories for paranoids! But you would be wrong. Maybe.
Because, says electronic security expert Bruce Schneier, crystallizing the view of many: “As weird as it sounds, wrapping your passport in tinfoil helps. The tinfoil people, in this case, happen to be correct.
[Continues at The Washington Post]
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U.S. Government Forced to Release Documents on Domestic Spying Program
The Inter Press Service reports:
Last week’s release of 900 pages of U.S. government documents dealing with the implementation of the nation’s primary surveillance law suggests that the government has been systematically violating the privacy rights of U.S. citizens.
How many citizens is unclear, since the documents were extensively redacted. The previously secret internal documents were obtained through a court battle by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
The government declined to disclose the number of citizens who had their telephone calls, e-mail, or other communications intercepted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act of 2008. They also declined to discuss any specific abuses, the ACLU said.
The 900 documents were delivered in keeping with a previously agreed schedule.
Alex Abdo, a senior attorney with the ACLU, told IPS, “For two years now, the government has had the authority to engage in the dragnet and unconstitutional surveillance of Americans’ communications with little to no…
Walmart To Screen DHS Propaganda Messages
CNN reports on a new public-private partnership between Walmart and Department of Homeland Security for a program called ‘If You See Something, Say Something’ which ”encourages the American public to take an active role in ensuring the safety and security of the nation.” Beginning in 2011, shoppers will be shown this Orwellian video message on Walmart checkout screens:
WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange In Jail For Failure To Use Condom
I can’t imagine the late Swedish novelist Stieg Larsson would have dared have Lisbeth Salander kick a hornet’s nest as hard as Julian Assange has with his death-defying (so far) revelations of the U.S. government’s foreign “diplomacy.” Neither can I imagine Larsson coming up with such a ridiculous plot element as Assange’s arrest for failure to use a condom. This is definitely in the “truth is stranger than fiction” category, and it has captured the world’s attention just as The Millennium Trilogy did. The latest from the Guardian, which seems to have become the leading authority on all things WikiLeaks:
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was today refused bail and remanded in custody until 14 December over claims he committed sex offences in Sweden.
Assange told City of Westminster magistrates court today that he intended to fight his extradition, setting up what could be a long legal battle.
The 39-year-old Australian turned himself in to…
The Unabomber’s Montana Land For Sale In A ‘Very Secluded’ Area…
So reports the AP Via Yahoo News:
LINCOLN, Mont.— A 1.4-acre parcel of land in western Montana that was once owned by Unabomber Ted Kaczynski is on the market for $69,500.
The listing — by John Pistelak Realty of Lincoln — offers potential buyers a chance to own a piece of “infamous U.S. history.”
“This is a one of a kind property and is obviously very secluded,” the listing says. It doesn’t say who owns the property.
The forested land, which had been listed at $154,500, does not have electricity or running water. Photos posted with the online listing show tall trees, chain-link fences topped by barbed wire and a tree with “FBI” carved into it, though it’s not clear why. Pistelak said Friday he couldn’t immediately comment on the listing, and he didn’t return phone messages on Sunday.
How An RC Airplane Buzzed the Statue of Liberty, With No Arrests (Video)
The video speaks for itself:
Ted Turner Urges Global One-Child Policy
Via The Globe And Mail:
Climate change and population control can make for a politically explosive mix, as media mogul Ted Turner demonstrated Sunday when he urged world leaders to institute a global one-child policy to save the Earth’s environment.
Mr. Turner spoke at a luncheon where economist Brian O’Neill from the U.S.’s National Center for Atmospheric Research unveiled his study on the impact of demographic trends on future greenhouse gas emission, a little-discussed subject given its political sensitivity.
Mr. O’Neill’s study concluded that a rapidly rising global population is contributing to an acceleration of emission growth, and that widespread availability of family planning could reduce the amount of emissions reductions required in 2050 by as much as 30 per cent.
Mr. O’Neill acknowledged that discussion of climate change and population is a political minefield. The Roman Catholic Church has condemned any such connection, while developing countries resist rich-world prescriptions that they should limit…
First Privately Owned Spacecraft To Launch
SpaceX's Dragon capsule at headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
It sounds like the beginning of a Kurt Vonnegut novel, but the first privately owned spacecraft will make its attempt at breaking through the atmosphere and returning safely. If this trip proves successful, NASA will look towards private funding. The New York Daily News reports:
The future of the space travel will undergo a crucial test Tuesday when the first privately owned spaceship attempts a launch into orbit.
If it succeeds, SpaceX’s Dragon capsule will then try to reenter the atmosphere – also a first for a nongovernment-owned spacecraft.
The outcome of the launch will play a vital role in determining the direction of U.S. space travel as NASA looks to private companies to fill in the gap as the space shuttle program is put into mothballs next year.
“[It is] a huge thing, gigantic, historic,” TV science host Bill Nye told AOL News. “It may very well lead to everyday people having…
Fed Bailed Out McDonalds & GE – With Your Money
Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself. — Mark Twain
Craig Torres and Scot Lanman writing for Bloomberg:
The Federal Reserve’s emergency lending during the financial crisis spanned the global economy, from the largest U.S. financial firms to community banks, hedge funds and a fast-food company.
The Fed, in compliance with orders from Congress, today named recipients of $3.3 trillion in emergency aid. Among them were U.S. branches of overseas banks, including Switzerland’s UBS AG; corporations such as General Electric Co. and McDonald’s Corp.; and investors like Pacific Investment Management Co. and computer executive Michael Dell.
Lawmakers demanded disclosure, over the Fed’s initial objections, as U.S. central bankers pushed beyond their traditional role of backstopping banks to stem the worst financial panic since the Great Depression. The Fed posted the data on its website to comply with a provision in July’s Dodd- Frank law overhauling financial…
Julian Assange To Release Files On Guantanamo And BP If Arrested
With half the world chasing after him, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange tries to save himself by threatening to unlock an encrypted “doomsday file” of documents if detained. As reported by the New York Post (with readership seeming to favor Assange’s assassination):
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has circulated across the internet an encrypted “poison pill” cache of uncensored documents suspected to include files on BP and Guantanamo Bay. One of the files identified this weekend by The (London) Sunday Times — called the “insurance” file — has been downloaded from the WikiLeaks website by tens of thousands of supporters, from America to Australia.
Assange warns that any government that tries to curtail his activities risks triggering a new deluge of state and commercial secrets.
The military papers on Guantanamo Bay, yet to be published, believed to have been supplied by Bradley Manning, who was arrested in May. Other documents that Assange is confirmed to possess…
Is Schizophrenia Caused By An ‘Insanity Virus’?
It’s a novel and chilling theory: we are all born with a brain-ravaging virus that invaded the human DNA millions of years ago. Our bodies work to contain it, but childhood infections such as the flu can allow HERV-W to become temporarily unleashed — the cause of schizophrenia and multiple sclerosis. Discovery reports:
Schizophrenia has long been blamed on bad genes or even bad parents. Wrong, says a growing group of psychiatrists. The real culprit, they claim, is a virus that lives entwined in every person’s DNA.
Schizophrenia is usually diagnosed between the ages of 15 and 25, but the person who becomes schizophrenic is sometimes recalled to have been different as a child or a toddler—more forgetful or shy or clumsy. Even more puzzling is the so-called birth-month effect: People born in winter or early spring are more likely than others to become schizophrenic later in life. It is a small increase,…
The Dangers of Fluoroquinolone Antibiotics
Many doctors dispense Quinolones–such as Levaquin, Cipro and Aveloxl–as if they were Pez these days. Cipro, for example, is useful against Anthrax, but some doctors have been known to prescribe it for possible infections that haven’t even shown up in tests.
But fluoroquinolones are now known to researchers to sometimes cause tendinopathy, neuropathy, and other serious adverse effects. They work by preventing bacterial DNA from duplicating, and it seems they might sometimes harm human DNA as well.
So why haven’t the manufacturers told doctors about these risks? And why hasn’t the FDA ordered them to?
‘Janeites’ Create Jane Austen 2.0
Arden Dale and Mary Pilon unveil an unlikely subculture for the Wall Street Journal:
Ben Kemper, 19, plans to wear a frock coat with cuffs to the annual Jane Austen birthday tea in Boise, Idaho, on Saturday.
The outfit will be “the whole shebang,” says Mr. Kemper, who hopes to scare up some yard work so he can pay for the new threads. He says his costume may include riding boots, a cane, gloves and a buttoned vest.
Mr. Kemper is among an unlikely set of fans of the long-dead Ms. Austen—young people…
Noah’s Ark Theme Park Coming To Rescue Kentucky
Image: Ark Encounter
We really need a “you can’t make this stuff up” tag for stories like this. The hope is that the Ark Encounter theme park will attract conservative Christians, ‘Intelligent Design’ believers and creationists from all across America, perhaps bailing out Kentucky from it’s flood of red ink. It may well work, but should the state be subsidizing what is clearly a religious venture? Laurie Goodstein reports for the New York Times:
Facing a rising tide of joblessness, the governor of Kentucky has found one solution: build an ark.
The state has promised generous tax incentives to a group of entrepreneurs who plan to construct a full-size replica of Noah’s ark, load it with animals and actors, and make it the centerpiece of a Bible-based tourist attraction called Ark Encounter.
Since Gov. Steven L. Beshear announced the plan on Wednesday, some constitutional experts have raised alarms over whether government backing for an enterprise…
The Power of the Internet: Hundreds of WikiLeaks Mirror Sites Are Now Live
As of late Sunday, over 200 WikiLeaks mirror sites have come online and several free speech and hacker activist groups have taken on the role of intermediaries for the endangered Swiss site.
The NY Times article is here and more information on how to support the site via Datacell available here.
It’s only a matter of time before any number of large organizations / governments make a move to cripple this site, which is only beginning to show how useful this new format of information dissemination can be.
FBI Says Barbie ‘Video Girl’ Doll Is Perfect For Kiddie Porn
Why give pedophiles the idea? From CNN:
The FBI is warning law agencies that the new Barbie “Video Girl” doll could be used as a tool by pedophiles to make child pornography.
In an alert entitled “Barbie ‘Video Girl’ a Possible Child Pornography Production Method,” the FBI said the doll has a built-in hidden camera in the chest and a small LCD screen for video display in her back…
