Archive for April, 2011
The Real Housewives Of Wall Street
Matt Taibbi asks “Why is the Federal Reserve forking over $220 million in bailout money to the wives of two Morgan Stanley bigwigs?”, as ever in Rolling Stone:
America has two national budgets, one official, one unofficial. The official budget is public record and hotly debated: Money comes in as taxes and goes out as jet fighters, DEA agents, wheat subsidies and Medicare, plus pensions and bennies for that great untamed socialist menace called a unionized public-sector workforce that Republicans are always complaining about. According to popular legend, we’re broke and in so much debt that 40 years from now our granddaughters will still be hooking on weekends to pay the medical bills of this year’s retirees from the IRS, the SEC and the Department of Energy.
Most Americans know about that budget. What they don’t know is that there is another budget of roughly equal heft, traditionally maintained in complete secrecy.…
Police Warn Of Growing Teen ‘Vodka Tampon’ Use
Time to check in on the latest youth trends: teens (both girls and boys) are increasingly using liquor-soaked tampons as a novel and stealthy means of getting drunk. A number of Facebook pages have popped in honor of the practice, called “slimming”. Ah, kids with their crazy fads! The Local enlightens on the scourge every parent should be most worried about:
Police in southern Germany warned this week of a dangerous new form of alcohol abuse among teens – using tampons soaked in vodka to get drunk quickly and hide the smell. The practice poses grave health risks, they said.
In early March a 14-year-old girl collapsed during a street festival in Konstanz, apparently highly intoxicated from using a vodka tampon, the paper reported. Youth researchers have since found out that this form of alcohol abuse is trendy in the region.
The trend arose among teens in the United States, where it is known as…
Millions Of Dollars Found Buried In South Korean Garlic Field
A garlic storage in Changgilri, Uiseong County, Gyeongsangbuk-do, South Korea. Photo: Robert (CC)
Whoever says money doesn’t grow on trees was right. In South Korea it grows in garlic fields. BBC reports:
South Korean police have dug up a stash of 11bn won ($10m, £6.2m), most of it buried in a garlic field, reports say.
The money is believed to be the proceeds of an illegal internet gambling operation, for which one of two brothers is already in jail.
Their brother-in-law helped out by burying the cash, and then helped himself to some of it, police said.
When he then accused a landscaper of stealing a chunk of cash, police moved in and unearthed it, they said.
Television footage has shown police pulling out two dozen containers, each brimming with cash.
According to the police version of the story, the brother-in-law, a 52-year-old man identified only as Mr Lee, bought the garlic field in south-western Gimje.
His gambling…
Bolivia Grants Human Rights To Planet Earth
Laguna Suches Perú, Bolivia. Photo: Rojk (CC)
In a blur of where Governments begin and end, Mother Nature is granted rights just like humans. Sadly, she still can’t vote. Via Wired:
Bolivia is to pass a law — called la Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra (The Law of Mother Earth) – which will grant nature equal rights to humans.
The law — the first of its kind — aims to encourage a major shift in attitudes towards conservation and to reduce pollution and exploitation of natural resources. It sees a range of new rights established for nature including the right to life; the right to water and clean air; the right to repair livelihoods affected by human activities and the right to be free of pollution.
Bolivia is one of South America’s poorest countries and is seeing its rural communities suffer with failing crops due to climatic events such as floods and…
Why Are Penguins Losing Their Feathers?
Photo: Jeffrey Smith
Jennifer Viegas writes for Discovery News:
A new condition is causing many penguin chicks to lose their feathers, with some victims dying as a result of the mysterious problem, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). The condition, called “feather-loss disorder,” appears to have emerged recently and is now affecting penguin colonies on both sides of the South Atlantic.
“Feather-loss disorders are uncommon in most bird species, and we need to conduct further study to determine the cause of the disorder and if this is in fact spreading to other penguin species,” Dee Boersma was quoted as saying in a WCS press release. Boersma has conducted studies on Magellanic penguins for more than three decades.
“We need to learn how to stop the spread of feather-loss disorder,” she added, “as penguins already have problems with oil pollution and climate variation. It’s important to keep disease from being added to the list…
The Man Who Invented Iran’s Flying Saucer
Photo: FARS
Hank Mills reports for Pure Energy Systems News that nuclear engineer Mehran Tavakoli Keshe has came forward as being the developer of the technology being used in Iran’s new “flying saucer.” His technology is claimed to harness magnetism and gravity to allow travel throughout the solar system and beyond:
On March 16th, 2011, the hard-line Iranian news agency Fars issued a press release stating Iran had developed a flying saucer. The unmanned saucer named “Zohal” is stated to be equipped with an auto-pilot system, GPS, and an imaging system. It is claimed the craft can fly indoors and outside. Initially, the press release included a stock photo of a flying saucer that was obviously from an old SCIFI movie. This image was later replaced with a picture of what looks like an ordinary quadrocopter. Such an image would tend to indicate there is nothing exotic about the craft
Now, nuclear Engineer, Mehran Tavakoli Keshe, who…
‘First Orbit’ Celebrates Today’s 50th Anniversary Of Man In Space
Move over PBS: YouTube/Google funded this very cool and very free movie about the beginning of spaceflight, with today being exactly 50 years since Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space.
You can download the movie or watch it on YouTube.
From the official First Orbit site:
April 12th 1961 – Yuri Gagarin is about to see what no other person has seen in the history of
humanity – the Earth from space…
Why Do We Keep Falling For O’Keefe’s Smear Jobs?
James O'Keefe. Photo courtesy of biggovernment.com
Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery write in Mother Jones:
To the list of journalism’s greatest disgraces, let us now add James O’Keefe. O’Keefe calls himself an investigative reporter, though as far as we can tell the only group of journalists he has anything in common with are habitual fabricators like Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass, and Janet Cooke.
But that’s not the scandal we’re talking about. The real scandal is that—even though by the time he posted a “sting” of a top NPR fundraiser, O’Keefe was notorious for creating deceptive video smear jobs (ACORN? Hello?)—the media repeated the allegations uncritically. Let’s review.
O’Keefe’s “scoop” debuted March 8 on the conservative Daily Caller. Edited down from a 2-hour conversation, the 12-minute clip purports to show NPR head fundraiser Ron Schiller wooing fake prospective donors who claimed to be part of a group with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. To curry favor,…
The Newest Kindle Has Mandatory Ads
Is this the free market at work – or a horrible preview of things to come?
Amazon just announced a new $114 Kindle Wireless Reading Device — $25 cheaper than any other model — but it comes with a big catch.
It’s the Kindle “with special offers,” showing sophisticated advertisements in the screensavers, along with shopping discounts which display at the bottom of the screen.
Praying To A Tree Trunk: Will The Tree Trunk Help?
One of the main things people pray for is peace. But there have already been trillions upon trillions of prayers for peace through the years, yet peace remains as elusive as mercury, as groups and factions and nations persist in warring viciously with each other, the violence continuing unabated.
Wouldn’t one think that people would finally come to the realization that either there’s no one up there listening to their prayers for peace, or if there is, he doesn’t have the power to stop the violence, or if he does, he has no desire to do so? That they may just as well be praying to a tree trunk?
I’ve been told there is some religious sect in the Himalayan Mountains that has been praying for peace, twenty-four hours a day in shifts, for more than five hundred years. Nuns of the Franciscan Sisters in La Crosse, Wisconsin, have been praying for…
Japanese Nuclear Crisis Upgraded to Chernobyl Level
From the Wall Street Journal:
The Japanese government raised its assessment of the monthlong crisis at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to the highest severity level by international standards—a rating only conferred so far upon the Chernobyl accident.
Japan’s nuclear regulators said the plant has likely released so much radiation into the environment that it must boost the accident’s severity rating on the International Nuclear Event scale to a 7 from 5 currently. That is the same level reached by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the former Soviet Union, which struck almost exactly 25 years ago, on April 26, 1986.
“Based on the cumulative data we’ve gathered, we can finally give an estimate of total radioactive materials emitted,” Hidehiko Nishiyama, spokesman for Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said at a press conference Tuesday.
China Tells U.S. to Quit As Human Rights Judge
Chris Buckley reports for Reuters:
The United States is beset by violence, racism and torture and has no authority to condemn other governments’ human rights problems, China said on Sunday, countering U.S. criticism of Beijing’s crackdown.
The row between Beijing and Washington over human rights has intensified since China’s ruling Communist Party extended its clampdown on dissidents and rights activists, a move which has sparked an outcry from Washington and other Western governments.
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is the most prominent of the activists to be detained by police or held in secretive custody in the latest crackdown.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday she was “deeply concerned” about it, and cited “negative trends” including Ai’s detention.
Adding Air to Chocolate Bars to Increase Profits
What would Willy Wonka think? Tom Mulier reports in Bloomberg:
The recipe for chocolate bars is fairly standard: cocoa, cocoa butter or other oils, sweeteners, and perhaps some nuts or a fruity filling. Now, with prices for cocoa, sugar, and other commodities soaring, candy makers are finding a simple ingredient — air — can help pump up profits.
Nestlé is making a big push for its aerated chocolate brand, Aero, Barry Callebaut is adding more air to fillings, and Cadbury last year launched a new version of its aerated Wispa bars after reintroducing the brand in 2007.
In the past four years, cocoa prices have more than doubled amid poor harvests and growing demand. On Feb. 22, cocoa hit $3,608 a metric ton, a level it hadn’t reached in three decades. The price of sugar, the additive candy makers have often looked to when cocoa prices soar, is also on the rise as…
Flexible Screen Nears Commercial Release
Photo: RDECOM (CC)
Plastic screens that can be rolled up like a newspaper and not crack may be sold in stores soon, introducing new possibilities for laptops and smartphones. William D’Urso reports in the Arizona Republic:
A plastic screen that rolls up and doesn’t crack when you drop it may sound like science fiction, but the Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University is investing millions to liberate electronic devices from the constraints of rigid glass.
And reality could come sooner than you think. The project was initiated by the U.S. Army in cooperation with a number of companies, including Boeing and Hewlett-Packard, to expedite the development of the technology.
“Flexible … black-and-white screens for e-readers are very close to commercialization,” said Nick Colaneri, Flexible Display Center director. Black-and-white screens are less complicated to create, and he estimates flexible screens capable of rolling up and displaying color images are three to five years away.
Manufacturers…
Thousands Of Tourists’ Photographs, Combined Into One
Framing sites of mass tourism in our viewfinders, we create photographic souvenirs that are integral to the touristic experience. These products, coined “photograph-trophies” by Susan Sontag, separate our leisurely pleasures from the real everyday experiences of work and life.
Artist Corinne Vionnet begins with the most recognizable of images and creates something unearthly and unsettling — from Flickr and personal blogs, she culls thousands of tourists’ snapshots of a well-known landmark (such as the Taj Majal, below) and overlaps them into single composite, revealing the collective “tourists’ gaze” produced by the absurd behavior of millions of people endlessly taking the same photograph over and over. Via My Modern Met:
France’s Burqa Ban Takes Effect With Two Women Already Arrested
CNN reports:
Paris (CNN) – French police arrested two veiled women protesting the country’s law banning face-hiding Islamic burqas and niqabs Monday, just hours after the legislation took effect.
The arrests outside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris were not for wearing the prohibited garments…
Ohio Bans Liquefication Of The Dead
What is the simplest, cheapest, and most environmentally friendly option for dealing with a cadaver? Easy: turn it into a coffee-colored liquid which “can safely be poured down the drain.” Ohio has ordered a funeral parlor to cease liquefying corpses, however, though there is no law against it, Associated Press reports:
An Ohio funeral home that is the first in the nation to use a cremation alternative that dissolves bodies with lye and heat has effectively been blocked from using the procedure by state regulators.
Edwards Funeral Service in Columbus is the only U.S. funeral business offering the procedure called alkaline hydrolysis to the public, according to Jessica Koth, a spokeswoman for the National Funeral Directors Association. The process is touted by proponents as being better for the environment than cremation. While funeral homes in other states are moving toward the method, Edwards’ owner, Jeff Edwards, told the Columbus Dispatch that he has used…
United States Becomes Sweden’s Third-World Outsourcing Destination
“It’s ironic that IKEA looks on the U.S. and Danville the way that most people in the U.S. look at Mexico,” Street said.
When a large multinational corporation is looking to cut costs, what does it do? Send jobs overseas to a less modernized country — one where salaries are a fraction of those at home and the law provides few rights or protections for workers — and watch the profits roll in. We are speaking, of course, of Sweden’s IKEA, and Virginia, USA. Is this our economic future? Current reports:
Here we are, folks. Sweden’s third-world sweatshop. IKEA takes advantage of the destruction to our economy caused by outsourcing jobs by outsourcing their own jobs to the U.S. — and paying less than the workers in Sweden get ($8 in the U.S., $19 + better benefits in Sweden, for making the same products), about 50% of what the median income is in…
Atheist Publishes Secular Bible
Now that I think about it, it’s amazing that it took so long. Jessica Ravitz reports on A.C. Grayling’s The Good Book: A Humanist Bible for CNN:
The question arose early in British academic A.C. Grayling’s career: What if those ancient compilers who’d made Bibles, the collected religious texts that were translated, edited, arranged and published en masse, had focused instead on assembling the non-religious teachings of civilization’s greatest thinkers?
What if the book that billions have turned to for ethical guidance wasn’t tied to commandments from God or any one particular tradition but instead included the writings of Aristotle, the reflections of Confucius, the poetry of Baudelaire? What would that book look like, and what would it mean?
Decades after he started asking such questions, what Grayling calls “a lifetime’s work” has hit bookshelves. “The Good Book: A Humanist Bible,” subtitled “A Secular Bible” in the United Kingdom, was published this month. Grayling…
