Archive for December, 2010
HIV Cured By Stem Cell Transplant
The first person ever successfully cured of HIV, thanks to the miracle of stem cells? Aidsmap reports:
Doctors who carried out a stem cell transplant on an HIV-infected man with leukaemia in 2007 say they now believe the man to have been cured of HIV infection as a result of the treatment, which introduced stem cells which happened to be resistant to HIV infection.
The man received bone marrow from a donor who had natural resistance to HIV infection; this was due to a genetic profile which led to the CCR5 co-receptor being absent from his cells. The most common variety of HIV uses CCR5 as its ‘docking station’, attaching to it in order to enter and infect CD4 cells, and people with this mutation are almost completely protected against infection.
The “Berlin patient,” Timothy Ray Brown, a US citizen who lives in Berlin, was interviewed this week by German news magazine Stern.
His course of treatment…
Predictions For 2011 – From 1931
Henry Ford
With thanks to disinformation reader JMD for sending us the link, the Abnormal Use blog reviews predictions for the future 80 years hence, made in 1931 by such luminaries of the time as Henry Ford and physician and Mayo Clinic co-founder W. J. Mayo:
…What did the great minds of 1931 predict the rapidly approaching 2011 would be like?
There is actually an answer to that question.
Way back on September 13, 1931, The New York Times, founded in 1851, decided to celebrate its 80th anniversary by asking a few of the day’s visionaries about their predictions of 2011 – 80 years in their future. Those assembled were big names for 1931: physician and Mayo Clinic co-founder W. J. Mayo, famed industrialist Henry Ford, anatomist and anthropologist Arthur Keith, physicist and Nobel laureate Arthur Compton, chemist Willis R. Whitney, physicist and Nobel laureate Robert Millikan, physicist and chemist Michael Pupin, and sociologist William F. Ogburn.…
Birther Faces Court Martial For Refusing Deployment Orders
If Obama isn’t a US-born citizen is he fit to act as Commander in Cheif? That’s the question that brought Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin to trial for refusing to report for duty. Lakin, and other “birthers,” question whether President Obama is a US-born citizen or not. He pleaed guilty to one of two charges against him, stating he believed his orders for deployment were illegal because he still questions that Obama has a US birth certificate. MSNBC reports:
An Army doctor who disobeyed orders to deploy to Afghanistan because he questions President Barack Obama’s citizenship pleaded guilty Tuesday to one of two charges against him.
Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin of Greeley, Colo., pleaded guilty in a military court to a charge that included not meeting with a superior when ordered to do so and not reporting to duty at Fort Campbell.
Lakin faces up to 18 months in prison and dismissal from the Army.…
Michael Moore: Why I’m Posting Bail Money for Julian Assange
Michael Moore writes on his blog:
Yesterday, in the Westminster Magistrates Court in London, the lawyers for WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange presented to the judge a document from me stating that I have put up $20,000 of my own money to help bail Mr. Assange out of jail.
Furthermore, I am publicly offering the assistance of my website, my servers, my domain names and anything else I can do to keep WikiLeaks alive and thriving as it continues its work to expose the crimes that were concocted in secret and carried out in our name and with our tax dollars.
We were taken to war in Iraq on a lie. Hundreds of thousands are now dead. Just imagine if the men who planned this war crime back in 2002 had had a WikiLeaks to deal with. They might not have been able to pull it off. The only reason they thought they could…
Voyager Near Solar System’s Edge
Well done NASA. Looking forward to seeing this intrepid vehicle again when it returns to us as V’Ger. Jonathan Amos writes on BBC News:
Voyager 1, the most distant spacecraft from Earth, has reached a new milestone in its quest to leave the Solar System.
Now 17.4bn km (10.8bn miles) from home, the veteran probe has detected a distinct change in the flow of particles that surround it. These particles, which emanate from the Sun, are no longer travelling outwards but are moving sideways.
It means Voyager must be very close to making the jump to interstellar space — the space between the stars.
Edward Stone, the Voyager project scientist, lauded the explorer and the fascinating science it continues to return 33 years after launch. “When Voyager was launched, the space age itself was only 20 years old, so there was no basis to know that spacecraft could last so long,” he told BBC…
Ambassador Richard Holbrooke’s Dying Words: ‘You’ve Got to Stop This War in Afghanistan’
Jason Ditz writes on Antiwar.com:
Family members are reporting that the late Richard Holbrooke, the US Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan who died yesterday following heart surgery, gave as his last words “you’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan.”
The dying words stand in stark contrast to Holbrooke’s living words, which were almost uniformly supportive of President Obama’s repeated escalations of the Afghan War. They’re also a major inconvenience to the president at a time when he’s trying to spin the ever worsening war as a runaway success.
Indeed, President Obama has already released a statement praising Holbrooke and saying he deserves much of the credit for the “progress” in the disastrous conflict, and reiterated that “he understood” how important the war is. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also issued a statement on Holbrooke, and it too centered on how important the escalation of the war was.
Will Miley Cyrus Make Salvia The Next Big High?
Miley Cyrus has one-upped Michael Phelps’s infamous bong-smoking incident by filling hers with the psychedelic plant Salvia divinorum (see video below). Could Salvia become the next hot drug on campus in the U.S.? Comments especially welcome from anyone who has experience with the Magic Mint.
The Secret History of Rock ‘n’ Roll: Building a Mystery
Site editor’s note: The following is excerpted from The Secret History of Rock ’N’ Roll: The Mysterious Roots of Modern Music by Christopher Knowles (Viva Editions, October 2010). Used with permission.
I like to think of the history of rock & roll like the origin of Greek drama. That started out on the threshing floors during the crucial seasons, and was originally a band of acolytes dancing and singing. Then, one day, a possessed person jumped out of the crowd and started imitating a god.
—Jim Morrison
Most historians believe that the Mysteries began at the end of the Neolithic Age (also known as the New Stone Age, roughly 9000 to 4500 BCE), making them one of the earliest cultural developments known to humanity. Coinciding with the development of agriculture, the rituals were designed to appeal to the grain gods of the Underworld by acting out their myths, which celebrated the cycles of planting, growth and…
Entire Hemisphere of the Sun Erupts
Whoa – this is really starting to sound like some of the apocalyptic predictions about the end of the world in 2012! Just announced by NASA:
On August 1, 2010, an entire hemisphere of the sun erupted. Filaments of magnetism snapped and exploded, shock waves raced across the stellar surface, billion-ton clouds of hot gas billowed into space. Astronomers knew they had witnessed something big.
Locations of key events are labeled in this extreme ultraviolet image of the sun, obtained by the Solar Dynamics Observatory during the Great Eruption of August 1st. White lines trace the sun’s magnetic field. Credit:NASA / K Schrijver & A. Title.
It was so big, it may have shattered old ideas about solar activity.
“The August 1st event really opened our eyes,” says Karel Schrijver of Lockheed Martin’s Solar and Astrophysics Lab in Palo Alto, CA. “We see that solar storms can be global events, playing out on scales…
Watch A Blizzard Collapse the Roof of A Football Stadium (Video)
It was the Metrodome in Minneapolis, Minnesota where the Vikings were due to play this week. I guess even Mother Nature really wants Vikings quarterback Brett Favre (who’s been in the news for non-football reasons) to retire:
Spanish Researchers To Tag Human Embryos With Bar Codes
The ostensible reason is to avoid confusion during in vitro fertilization procedures. But just wait until they come up with a reason why all embryos need to be tagged. Fox News reports:
In futuristic movies like “Aliens 2″ and “12 Monkeys,” prisoners are bar coded for easy identification. But today’s reality is even wilder: Scientists have proposed bar-coding embryos.
Researchers from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona in Spain have just finished testing a method for imprinting microscopic bar codes on mouse embryos — a procedure they plan to test soon on humans. The venture is meant to avoid mismatches during in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer procedures. But privacy experts and children’s rights advocates were instantly concerned by the concept of “direct labeling” of embryos, calling for transparency in the process.
“An embryo is a human life, so we have to move forward with this very, very cautiously,” Pam Dixon, executive director for the World…
Daniel Pinchbeck’s Business Shamanism
Daniel Pinchbeck. Photo: Herwig Maurer (CC)
I wonder if this essay by Daniel Pinchbeck will, years hence, be looked upon as a seminal point in the transition of the “consciousness” movement, for lack of a better term, from an idealistic remove from the mainstream a la Burning Man (which of course is completely unsustainable despite it’s worthy goals), to a pragmatic vision of how to change the world. From his Reality Sandwich blog:
Now that the Evolver network and brand have established themselves to a certain extent, I want to look ahead to developments I hope to see in the near future, with this organization and other initiatives. For the next phase of development, I propose the term “business shamanism.” “Corporate alchemy” would be a viable alternative.
First, some context: As I write this, the ruling regime in our rotten republic of Obama-stan is seeking to ignore the pain of the sheeple and extend…
Harvey Pekar & Doug Rushkoff: How Life Got Incorporated
Two pop culture mainstays, comic book legend Harvey Pekar (RIP) and author/media theorist Doug Rushkoff collaborated on a graphic adaptation of Doug’s book Life Inc: How Corporatism Conquered the World, and How We Can Take It Back for SMITH Magazine as part of the Pekar Project. Part 2 has just been published by SMITH (sample panel below) and if you missed it, you might want to check out Part 1 first. Not to be forgotten, artist Sean Pryor.
Source: SMITH Magazine
Obama Signs School Lunch Law
Looks like there’s going to be a lot of pudding trades with kids who bring bagged lunch. USA Today’s The Oval reports:
In signing a new law today to improve the quality of school lunches, President Obama paid joking tribute to its most prominent supporter: first lady Michelle Obama.
“Not only am I very proud of the bill,” the president said, “but had I not been able to get this passed, I would be sleeping on the couch.”
Mrs. Obama, whose major issues include fighting childhood obesity, laughed and said, “let’s just say it got done, so we don’t have to go down that road.”
The Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, a $4.5 billion measure, provides more free school meals to the pool, and gives the government more power to decide what foods can offered in those meals, as well as in school vending machines and fundraisers during school hours.
[Continues at The Oval]
…
WikiRebels: The WikiLeaks Documentary (Video)
Could Swedish public service TV network SVT’s new documentary film about Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have been released at a more timely moment? It’s bang up to date and for anyone intrigued by Assange and co., essential viewing. Thanks to tipster Ken V, who correctly describes the film as “thorough and very informative.”
Falling Icicles Kill And Injure Record Numbers In St. Petersburg
This winter has marked to coldest for Russia in three decades, but that’s not the only record being set this season. Five people have been killed, and 150 injured, from falling icicles in St. Petersburg. The Telegraph reports:
Apartment block roofs have caved in under the weight of snow with water seeping into people’s homes and damaging books in the Russian National Library.
In recent days, a six-month old baby received serious injuries after a chunk of ice dropped on her pram, an eight-year old boy suffered serious spinal damage after an icicle struck his back, and at least two people hit by falling ice are now in hospital fighting for their lives.
But it is the unusually large number of people who have been struck by icicles that has caused the most concern.
[Continues at The Telegraph]
Marijuana Industry Gets Lobbying Muscle
McClatchy reports that a new trade group called the National Cannabis Industry Association will lobby in Washington on behalf of marijuana growers and sellers. Is this the arrival of a savior in the fight for legalization? Or an ominous sign of the coming corporatization of pot?
The cannabis industry has flexed its muscles in 15 states where it’s legal to smoke marijuana for medical purposes. Now the industry is ready to go to work in Washington.
A new trade group, called the National Cannabis Industry Association, is an attempt to bring together sellers, growers and manufacturers and to promote pot on Capitol Hill.
“Our intent is to be the go-to organization in Washington for this industry,” said Aaron Smith, the group’s executive director. For the past five years, Smith worked as the California director of the Marijuana Policy Project.
“Coming out of California and expanding into this national field is pretty exciting,” he said. “There’s…
U.S. Taxpayer-Funded Contractor Organizes Child Rape Parties In Afghanistan, WikiLeaks Reveals
DynCorp is a Texas-based military contractor whose freedom-building activities in Afghanistan are funded by our taxes. And what exactly is DynCorp doing in Afghanistan? Organizing parties at which prepubescent boys are available for purchase as sex slaves, according Wikileaks documents. Via Change.org:
Wikileaks recently released a cable from Afghanistan revealing U.S. government contractor DynCorp threw a party for Afghan security recruits featuring trafficked boys as the entertainment. Bacha bazi is the Afghan tradition of “boy play” where young boys are dressed up in women’s clothing, forced to dance for leering men, and then sold for sex to the highest bidder. Apparently this is the sort of “entertainment” funded by your tax dollars when DynCorp is in charge of security in Afghanistan.
DynCorp is a government contractor which has been providing training for Afghan security and police forces for several years. Though the company is about as transparent as a lead-coated rock, most…
Merry Christmas From Fox News… But No Other Holidays
Thanks to Tim Molloy at The Wrap for noticing yet another dig at Fox News Channel by the producers of The Simpsons:
Two weeks after “Simpsons” executive producer said the show would lay off Fox News for a while, the Fox News helicopter made another appearance on the show — this time with the words, “Merry Christmas from Fox News… but no other holidays.”
The copter flew over Springfield for the Nov. 21 episode with the slogan, “”Not Racist, But #1 With Racists,” and returned the next week with the slogan changed to “Unsuitable for Viewers Under 75.”
In an interview with TheWrap, Jean said the day after the copter’s second appearance that the show would leave Fox News alone for awhile. His comments came after a Fox News insider laughed off the jokes, saying at least “The Simpsons” was funny…
[continues at The Wrap]
