Archive for April, 2011
Cop Arrests Man For Disagreeing With Him
(Forward to 1:25)
A Parksburg, West Virginia police officer flew into a rage after a passenger in a car he had pulled over suggested the driver was not responsible for a previous accident he was involved in. The cop apparently vehemently disagreed, and rather than express himself through voicing his disagreement, he decided instead to arrest the man and falsely charge him with obstruction of justice…
Reiki, Yoga, and Wellness
The Infinite and the Beyond — Podcast: Episode #020 — Reiki, Yoga, and Wellness
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In this episode we go on location to talk about Reiki and Yoga with Janet Watkins from Live in Joy Yoga and Wellness in Audubon, NJ. Janet shares with us some of her experiences and insights as a registered Yoga instructor and Reiki Master.
We learn about Russian healer, prophet, and monk Grigori Rasputin in A Corner in the Occult. Rasputin was the adviser to the Russian royal family during the turn of the 20th century which was an unusual position of power for someone who wasn’t born of Russian Nobility and it would be this position that would eventually lead to his elaborate and trial some death in 1916. He is often argued by some to have contributed greatly to the fall of the Romanov Dynasty in 1917, which was the last dynasty to rule…
Sirhan Sirhan Papers Claim Woman In Polka Dot Dress Controlled His Mind
Sirhan Sirhan
We know that the CIA was experimenting with mind control as part of the MK ULTRA program in the ’60s, so maybe this isn’t all that far-fetched. From the LA Times:
In a new court filing, the man who assassinated Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 said he was controlled by a mystery woman at the time of the killing.
In the papers, which were reviewed by the Associated Press, Sirhan Sirhan says he was led to the Ambassador Hotel with a gun by an unidentified woman in a polka-dot dress.
Last month, Sirhan’s lawyer tried to convince a parole board that his client was a brainwashed hit man when he gunned down Sen. Robert F. Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in 1968. The board refused to release Sirhan.
But The Times last month reported on handwritten notes purportedly from Sirhan, kept for 42 years by a Century City business executive, that…
St. Kitts & Nevis: Citizenship For Sale
St. Kitts & Nevis
The recent discussions of birth certificates and citizenship have rekindled my interest in living and working abroad, and, consequently, my frustration at just very how hard this is for the average person to accomplish. Each government jealousy guards its citizenship and work permits, even from friendly countries with whom it shares close cultural and economic ties. “I want to immerse myself in Europe’s culture and history,” I reflected, “not pop its cherry. Is there any country in the world which is even a little, you know…easy?” That’s how I learned about St. Kitts and Nevis.
If my coveted United Kingdom is an ice princess that does not deign to look down upon me from her ivory tower, St. Kitts and Nevis is her busty niece who is a sucker for men with flashy cars. St. Kitts and Nevis is a tiny English-speaking island state in the Caribbean; an independent Commonwealth realm…
Feds Sting Amish Farmer Selling Raw Milk Locally
Raw milk. Photo: Jgharston (CC)
Stephan Dinan writes for The Washington Times:
A yearlong sting operation, including aliases, a 5 a.m. surprise inspection and surreptitious purchases from an Amish farm in Pennsylvania, culminated in the federal government announcing this week that it has gone to court to stop Rainbow Acres Farm from selling its contraband to willing customers in the Washington area.
The product in question: unpasteurized milk.
It’s a battle that’s been going on behind the scenes for years, with natural foods advocates arguing that raw milk, as it’s also known, is healthier than the pasteurized product, while the Food and Drug Administration says raw milk can carry harmful bacteria such as salmonella, E. coli and listeria.
“It is the FDA’s position that raw milk should never be consumed,” said Tamara N. Ward, spokeswoman for the FDA, whose investigators have been looking into Rainbow Acres for months, and who finally last week filed a…
Low Energy Nuclear Reactions: 2.5 Million Watt-Hours From A Nickel?
Thomas Blakeslee writing at renewableenergyworld.com:
All existing nuclear plants, and the planned $13 billion ITER hot fusion project, are based on the “atoms for peace” idea of adapting military bomb technology to civilian use. The tens of billions in research dollars that have been spent have clouded the judgment of leaders in the nuclear science community causing irrational denial of the work being done at low energy levels.
The ITER platform in Cadarache, where construction began in 2010 on buildings and facilities. Photo: Altivue.
The disasters in Japan prove that these grandiose attempts to generate power from bomb technology are misguided.
The scientists that perform peer reviews and make up government advisory panels are all recipients of government largess. As a result, promising low energy nuclear work has been driven underground and forced to create its own journals and finance its own research.
Now, from Italy, comes the stunning news that Low Energy Nuclear Reactors (LENR) are,…
WikiLeaks: U.S. Government Pondered Raelian Human-Cloning Claims
Lady on bed adorned with Raëlian symbol.
Below are documents leaked from the U.S. Consulate in Montreal, via WikiLeaks:
¶1. SUMMARY: THE FOLLOWING IS SOME BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON
THE MONTREAL-BASED RAELIAN GROUP, WHOSE MEMBER DR. BRIGITTE
BOISSELIER ANNOUNCED AT A DECEMBER 27 PRESS CONFERENCE IN
HOLLYWOOD, FLORIDA THE BIRTH OF THE FIRST CLONED HUMAN
BEING, A 7 POUND BABY GIRL NICKNAMED EVE. AND ITS TWO MAIN
FIGURES LEADER CLAUDE VORILHON, BETTER KNOWN AS RAEL, AND
DR. BOISSELIER. ONE LIKELY RESULT OF THE BOISSELIER
ANNOUNCEMENT IS THAT CANADA’S PENDING LEGISLATION TO BAN
HUMAN CLONING COULD CONTAIN STRICTER RESTRICTIONS. END
SUMMARY.
¶2. THE RAELIAN MOVEMENT WAS FOUNDED BY FRENCHMAN CLAUDE
VORILHON, A FORMER SPORTS JOURNALIST, FAILED SINGER, RADIO
COMMENTATOR AND AVID STOCK CAR RACER. VORILHON CLAIMS TO
HAVE BEEN CONCEIVED ON DECEMBER 25, 1945, BY A FRENCH MOTHER
AND AN ALIEN FATHER. SPECIALISTS SAY HE WAS BORN IN VICHY,
FRANCE IN 1946. VORILHON WHO USES THE NAME RAEL (GOD’S
LIGHT) (PRONOUNCED RA-EL IN FRENCH (RHYMES WITH KAL-EL AND
JOR-EL)) SAYS HE…
Invasion Of The Shell Crushing Crabs
Yet another sign that things in nature just ain’t right, from Science Daily:
It’s like a scene out of a sci-fi movie — thousands, possibly millions, of king crabs are marching through icy, deep-sea waters and up the Antarctic slope.
Photo: Butterfly voyages (CC)
“They are coming from the deep, somewhere between 6,000 to 9,000 feet down,” said James McClintock, Ph.D., University of Alabama at Birmingham Endowed Professor of Polar and Marine Biology.
Shell-crushing crabs haven’t been in Antarctica, Earth’s southernmost continent, for hundreds or thousands, if not millions, of years, McClintock said. “They have trouble regulating magnesium ions in their body fluids and get kind of drunk at low temperatures.”
But something has changed, and these crustaceans are poised to move by the droves up the slope and onto the shelf that surrounds Antarctica. McClintock and other marine researchers interested in the continent are sounding alarms because the vulnerable ecosystem could be wiped out,…
Last Typewriter Factory in the World Closes
The last company manufacturing manual typewriters has finally shut its doors!
It was based in Mumbai, India, and in the 1990s “the company was selling 50,000 models each year,” reports this technology site, but “That had dropped to around 10,000 by the mid-2000s, and last year the company sold less than 1,000 typewriters. According to the company’s general manager Milind Dukle the only people now buying manual typewriters are ‘the defense agencies, courts and government offices.’”
“With manual typewriters no longer being produced, I think it’s fair to say we’re now a world where computers rule supreme.”
Bullet Lodged In Man’s Brain For 23 Years
Myles Burke writes for The Telegraph:
Doctors have finally discovered why Wang Tianqing has been suffering from epilepsy for more than two decades.
A two-centimetre rusted bullet, embedded in the head of a farmer for 23 years, has been removed at a local hospital…
Why Conspiracy Theories Die Hard
[Disclaimer: By posting this article I do not mean to advocate the mainstream view that conspiracies are impossible. Both evidence and logic suggest to me that not only do some exist, but most are small and banal, and thus common. Nonetheless, this article describes one reason we should not swallow any old conspiracy theory just because its purported villain is someone we don't identify with, but instead regularly question "the truth" as we believe we "know" it. Of course that includes those who don't believe in conspiracies.]
From CNN:
Recent polls have found that as much as 15% to 20% of the public, including about 30% to 45% of Republicans, falsely believe that President Barack Obama was not born in this country. Will Wednesday’s release of Obama’s long-form birth certificate put an end to the birther myth?The odds aren’t good. The problem is that people can be extremely resistant to unwelcome factual information. In…
World Bank: MMORPG Gold Farming Is A 3 Billion-Dollar Industry
Via BoingBoing:
A research arm of the World Bank has produced a comprehensive report on the size of the grey-market virtual world economy in developing countries — gold farming, power-levelling, object making and so on — and arrived at a staggering $3 billion turnover in 2009. They go on to recommend that poor countries be provided with network access and computers so this economy can be built up — a slightly weird idea, given how hostile most game companies are to this sort of thing…
Artificial Telepathy: A Non-Lethal Weapon?
Do you hear voices in your head? MindTech Sweden describes the dangers of “artificial telepathy”:
The experience of “Artificial Telepathy” is really not that extraordinary. It’s as simple as receiving a cell-phone call in one’s head.
Indeed, most of the technology involved is exactly identical to that of cell-phone technology. Satellites link the sender and the receiver. A computer “multiplexer” routes the voice signal of the sender through microwave towers to a very specifically defined location or cell. The “receiver” is located and tracked with pinpoint accuracy, to within a few feet of actual location. But the receiver is not a cell phone. It’s a human brain.
Out of nowhere, a voice suddenly blooms in the mind of the target. The human skull has no “firewall” and therefore cannot shut the voice out. The receiver can hear the sender’s verbal thoughts. The sender, in turn, can hear all of the target’s thoughts, exactly as…
Rent Your Own Country: Liechtenstein Available At $70,000 Per Night
At least when people say that our government is for sale, it’s meant metaphorically. Wired UK writes:
For a cool $70,000 a night (for a minimum of two nights), you can hire the tiny country of Liechtenstein, which measures around 61.7 square miles and has just 35,000 inhabitants. According to the profile on Airbnb, Liechtenstein can accommodate between 450 and 900 people, has 500+ bedrooms and 500+ bathrooms. The cancellation policy is classified as “Super Strict”.
[This] follows last year’s attempt by Snoop Dogg to rent Liechtenstein to shoot a music video. He was rebuffed because his management did not give enough prior warning.
ExxonMobil Makes $11B Quarterly Profit
Exxon apologizes for sticking it to us at the gas pumps last quarter. The disgusting part? Exxon feels that their company “doesn’t even make that much money selling gasoline.” AP reports:
Exxon made almost $11 billion and practically apologized for it.Sensing public outrage over gasoline prices that have topped $4 in some states, the company struck a defensive posture Thursday after posting some of its best quarterly financial results ever.
Exxon said it had no control over high oil prices. It said it’s one of the biggest taxpayers in the United States. It cast federal subsidies as “legitimate tax provisions” that keep jobs at home, and cast itself as a victim of Washington scapegoating.
“They feel they have to demonize our industry,” said Ken Cohen, Exxon’s vice president for public affairs.
What’s more, the company argued, it doesn’t even make that much money selling gasoline.
Exxon’s profit of $10.65 billion for the first quarter was its highest since…
The Peace Movement Didn’t Just Disappear
Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:
Earlier this week, Fox News reporter John Stossel asked a question that often pops up from the right wing media on a slow news day: “where did all the anti-war protestors go?” Stossel suggested anti-war protestors were really just “anti-President Bush,” citing a study by “two college professors,” with no reference to where the study came from. He called the drop off in attendance at rallies from this mysterious study “amazing” (the mystery study he quotes says after Obama was elected president, attendance went from thousands to hundreds) and said that “protestors have remained silent over Libya.”
The study Stossel references was authored by two social scientists, Michael Heaney of the University of Michigan and Fabio Rojas of the University of Indiana. Research was conducted at various anti-war rallies in the U.S. from 2007 to 2009. Heaney and Rojas have been following the anti-war movement since the…
How Ayn Rand Ruined My Childhood
In keeping with the Ayn Rand ruins everything meme in honor of the release of Atlas Shrugged: The Movie, enjoy a blackly amusing recollection of what can happen when your Rand-obsessed parent attempts to raise you by the dictates of Objectivist philosophy. (Big mistake!) Alyssa Bereznak writes in Salon:
It was odd growing up in an objectivist house. My father reserved long weekends to attend Ayn Rand Institute conferences held in Orange County, California. He would return with a tan and a pile of new reading material for my brother and me. While other kids my age were going to Bible study, I took evening classes from the institute via phone. (I half-listened while clicking through lolcat photos.)
“We were wondering if you would petition to be emancipated,” he said in his lawyer voice. “What does that mean?” I asked, picking at the mauve paint on my hands. I later discovered that for…
Noam Chomsky: Is The World Too Big To Fail?
In a talk given in Amsterdam, Noam Chomsky weighs in on revolutionary unrest in the Middle East and the United States’ unsustainable foreign policy and domestic power structure. Via the Huffington Post:
Support for democracy is the province of ideologists and propagandists. In the real world, elite dislike of democracy is the norm. The evidence is overwhelming that democracy is supported insofar as it contributes to social and economic objectives, a conclusion reluctantly conceded by the more serious scholarship.
Elections have become a charade, run by the public relations industry. After his 2008 victory, Obama won an award from the industry for the best marketing campaign of the year. Executives were euphoric. In the business press they explained that they had been marketing candidates like other commodities since Ronald Reagan, but 2008 was their greatest achievement and would change the style in corporate boardrooms. The 2012 election is expected to cost $2…
Life Inside Store Displays
In advertising and window displays, companies invite us to step into a lifestyle which we may access by purchasing their products. Suppose someone took the message too literally? While visiting IKEA with friends, photographer Christian Gideon created a series of pictures in which all facets of daily home life were simulated within the store’s famed mock interiors. The results are hilarious and poignant (with lots of bro bonding). Via My Modern Metropolis:
