Archive for May, 2011
Is Tony Kushner The New Helen Thomas?
Playwright Tony Kushner. Photos: Timothy Herrigan/Courtney Hamilton (CC)
Playwright Tony Kushner. Photos: Timothy Herrigan/Courtney Hamilton (CC)
Jewish Playwright has honorary degree restored by City University of New York after it had been stripped because he was labeled too critical of Israel.
First, it was Helen Thomas.
After the veteran White House correspondent spoke inelegantly once about her feelings about Israel—and apologized, but to no effect—she was blackballed at the instigation of strident Israeli supporters and her career achievement-standing journalism awards were stripped. She became persona non-grate with many media outlets joining in the denunciations of a colleague they honored for decades.
Many at the time suspected the wrath was especially severe because she is an Arab-American. Right-wing provocateur Ann Coulter even asked if “that Arab” should be allowed near the President.
Now a new flap driven by some of the same issues involves a Jewish Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and a leading academic institution in New York.
His name, Tony Kushner, best known for the…
Peace Corps Failed Volunteers When They Became Rape Victims
Peace Corps is in the business to help “countless individuals who want to build a better life for themselves, their children, and their communities.” But do they help their volunteers? Numerous cases have come forward about women who have been raped and threatened after being positioned in another country. In many cases, the organization knew about the assaults but ignored them stating that “those types of things happen.” The Raw Story reports:
A group of former volunteers who were raped while working with the Peace Corps told Congress Wednesday that serious changes need to be made to the organization.
The victims explained that in many cases, the way they were treated by the Peace Corps after reporting the assault was more traumatic than the rape itself.
“These women are alone in many cases, and they’re in rough parts of the world,” Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) told The New York Times prior to the hearing.
Jessica Smochek told…
The CIA Created Fake Drunken, Gay Osama Campfire Video
What a sitcom pilot it would have made. Via Parapolitical:
A post on the Washington Post’s defunct blog “Spy Talk” from May of 2010 detailed the CIA’s plans to produce fake Osama bin Laden videos.
Yesterday, the BBC reported on neighbors of the alleged Bin Laden compound in Abbottabad expressing skepticism as to the authenticity of videos released by the White House purporting to show Osama bin Laden watching television.
23,000 Defendants Sued In Biggest Illegal Downloading Case In History
Movie makers are suing thousands of individuals who downloaded and watched Sylvester Stallone’s latest film? Shouldn’t that read vice versa? Via Wired:
At least 23,000 file sharers soon will likely get notified they are being sued for downloading The Expendables in what has become the single largest illegal-BitTorrent-downloading case in U.S. history.
A federal judge in the case has agreed to allow the U.S. Copyright Group to subpoena internet service providers to find out the identity of everybody who had illegally downloaded the 2010 Sylvester Stallone flick — meaning the number of defendants is likely to dramatically increase as new purloiners are discovered.
All told, more than 140,000 BitTorrent downloaders are being targeted in dozens of lawsuits across the country, many of them for downloading B-rated movies and porn.
British Astronomers Warn World May End This Century
Top U.K. astronomers give civilization only a 50 percent chance of surviving to 2100, reports Scottish STV. To voice the obvious questions: How can anyone calculate the date of the apocalypse, really? And, what does the end of the world mean for the Royal Family?
The end of the world is nigh. That’s what top astronomers will claim during a debate to end the 2011 Edinburgh International Science Festival.
Lord Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, believes civilisation has only a 50 per cent chance of surviving to 2100 without suffering a man-made catastrophe. And the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, Professor John Brown, has an equally bleak outlook, fearing a random event from outer space is the most likely cause of our demise.
Despite having widely differing views, these two titans of astronomy between them offer global warming, over-population, terrorism, an asteroid falling to earth and a solar blast as potential reasons to panic.
…
If It’s Not Scottish It’s Crap: Scotland Toasts New Whisky-Powered Bioenergy Plant
Nuff said. More power to alternative energy efforts. Kirsty Scott reports in the Guardian:
It is the spirit that powers the Scottish economy, and now whisky is to be used to create electricity for homes in a new bioenergy venture involving some of Scotland’s best-known distilleries.
Contracts have recently been awarded for the construction of a biomass combined heat and power plant at Rothes in Speyside that by 2013 will use the by-products of the whisky-making process for energy production.
The Case Against Goldman Sachs
In his usual clear, profane manner, Matt Taibbi lays out why Goldman Sachs’s executives must face criminal charges as soon as possible. Via Rolling Stone:
America has been waiting for a case to bring against Wall Street. Here it is, and the evidence has been gift-wrapped and left at the doorstep of federal prosecutors, evidence that doesn’t leave much doubt: Goldman Sachs should stand trial.
To date, there has been only one successful prosecution of a financial big fish from the mortgage bubble, and that was Lee Farkas, a Florida lender who was just convicted on a smorgasbord of fraud charges and now faces life in prison. But Farkas, sadly, is just an exception proving the rule: Like Bernie Madoff, his comically excessive crime spree (which involved such lunacies as kiting checks to his own bank and selling loans that didn’t exist) was almost completely unconnected to the systematic corruption that led…
Why Wall Street Is Winning
Photo: RMajouji (CC)
A Hated Financial Center Is Bouncing Back. How Did They Do It?
Two years ago as financial reform was put on the U.S. Congressional agenda, a skeptical Senator, Dick Durbin of Illinois, spoke of the power of the banks over the country’s legislative process.
“They run the place,” he said matter of factly.
The comment was then treated as a sidebar in the few newspapers that carried it, perhaps because it hinted at how interests, not ideology, dictate what happens on Capitol Hill.
The remark about a shadowy power structure far more important than all the partisan in-fighting that dominates the news is worth recalling as a way of explaining how little has been done to rain in Wall Street in the years since its crash virtually wrecked the global economy.
It is also worth realizing that the people who “run the place” usually do so in ways that rarely get high profile…
Ten Years From Now, Facebook Will Be Your Bank
“Why is its important to have a Facebook profile? They are going to start using that to determine what your credit worthiness is.”
The tin-foil-hatted nuts at BusinessWeek explain how and why Facebook will become the largest bank in the United States. (Perhaps most disturbing is the thought of a universal currency called ‘the zuckerberg’.)
Becoming a financial powerhouse would help Facebook avoid the fate of many once-popular networks. AOL, Friendster, Second Life, and MySpace all dreamed of growing forever, too. To survive, Facebook must become more than glorified e-mail. Sharing photos and gossip with friends might make Facebook hard to leave. But upload your checking account and Facebook may just be forever.
Nongamers may have missed Facebook’s clever foray into the world of “virtual currency,” where Facebook Credits cost 10 cents each and can be exchanged for game points or cartoony gifts. Those dimes are adding up—the U.S. market for virtual goods will…
Atomic Gardens: Mutant Plants In The Suburbs
Pruned talks to Paige Johnson about the strange story of atomic gardening, a post-war phenomenon in which plants were irradiated in the hopes of producing beneficial mutations. It’s a largely forgotten, surreal slice of 1950s culture, with housewives hosting atomic peanut dinner parties and attending Radioactivity Jubilees:
After WWII, there was a concerted effort to find ‘peaceful’ uses for atomic energy. One of the ideas was to bombard plants with radiation and produce lots of mutations, some of which, it was hoped, would lead to plants that bore more heavily or were disease or cold-resistant or just had unusual colors. The experiments were mostly conducted in giant gamma gardens on the grounds of national laboratories in the US but also in Europe and countries of the former USSR.
These efforts utimately reached far into the world outside the laboratory grounds in several ways: in plant varieties based on mutated stocks that were—and still…
Mainstream Media Calls For Indictment Of Assange, For Competing With Them
Partial Objects notes the rank hypocrisy as the Wall Street Journal unveils “Safe House”, its new WikiLeaks-lite website. (Whistle-blowers, submit your juicy classified documents and emails!) Of course, the WSJ may report tipsters to law enforcement and “third parties”:
The WSJ calls for Assange to be indicted, elaborating on the difference between him and regular media (they use the NYT as their counterexample).
Yet the WSJ also announces the start of their new site, Safe House:
Documents and databases: They’re key to modern journalism. But they’re almost always hidden behind locked doors, especially when they detail wrongdoing such as fraud, abuse, pollution, insider trading, and other harms. That’s why we need your help. If you have newsworthy contracts, correspondence, emails, financial records or databases from companies, government agencies or non-profits, you can send them to us using the SafeHouse service.
The easy criticism is that the Journal, i.e. Murdoch, is being hypocritical. But no good deed goes…
The Plague Returns!
Man with bubonic plague.
I thought that the plague had been eradicated in the Old World of Europe centuries ago. Shows how much I know – it’s back, in New Mexico of all places. Phillip Caulfield reports for the Daily News:
A 58-year-old man in New Mexico was recently treated for bubonic plague, the first case of the disease formerly known as “Black Death” to surface in 2011.
Health officials in Santa Fe said the unidentified man spent a week in the hospital after suffering high fever, intense pain in his stomach and groin and swollen lymph nodes.
He was treated and released, but officials would not say when.
The results of blood tests released Thursday confirmed the man had bubonic plague, officials said.
Doctors said the man was most likely bitten by a flea carrying the plague bacteria, the most common method of transmission to humans.
Rat-borne fleas can carry the bacterium, and humans can also…
Depressed People Make Better Decisions Than Happy Ones
Via LiveScience:
Depression might not be all bad, new research finds. People with major depressive disorder do better on a decision-making task than people without the disease.
Depression is a psychiatric condition defined by consistently low mood, low self-esteem and loss of interest in normally enjoyable activities. About 20 percent of people worldwide suffer from major depressive disorder, the clinical name, at some point during their lifetime.
This is the first time a positive cognitive effect has been seen in people with major depressive disorder. The researchers suggest that these patients process information more systematically and analytically than their chipper counterparts. They might unconsciously put more effort into their decisions because they desire control of their environment.
The finding conflicts with other research suggesting depressed people are worse at mental tasks, because they get distracted by thoughts of their problems. Previous studies have shown they perform better when asked not to think about their…
Department of Justice Asks for More Data from Apple and Other Smartphones
Today the United States Department of Justice took an alarming stance on the subject of data collection during a Senate hearing on mobile privacy. Rather than chastise Apple, Google, and other smart phone manufacturers over their data collection practices, the DOJ felt it was a better idea to encourage MORE data collection. Kashmir Hill writes on Forbes:
During a Congressional hearing today about how much privacy you deserve when it comes to your smartphone, senators made clear that they were uncomfortable with the sensitive location and personal data that iPhone and Android phones are collecting and to whom that data gets passed along.
During one panel, the senators grilled Google and Apple. During another, they had representatives from the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission give the government perspective on data collection via mobile devices. While Jessica Rich of the FTC hinted that her organization would be investigating Apple soon,…
Osama Is Dead, But Congress Wants a Wider War…
For all of you who chanted “USA! USA!” the night of the night of 1/2 May, if you are truly patriotic, you’ll ask what the hell is going on NOW. Spencer Ackerman writes in WIRED’s Danger Room:
Osama bin Laden is dead. 9/11 was ten years ago. So it’s not the most obvious time for a key congressional panel to expand the war on terrorism.
But that’s exactly what a section of the fiscal 2012 defense bill proposes to do. The so-called “Chairman’s Mark” of the bill, currently before the House Armed Services Committee, wants to update the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, to reflect that the al-Qaida of the present day is way different than the organization that attacked the U.S. on 9/11.
While the original Authorization tethered the war to those directly or indirectly responsible for 9/11, the new language authorizes “an armed conflict with al-Qaida, the Taliban, and associated…
The Pirate Bay: ‘The Battle of Internets is About to Begin’
Ernesto writes on TorrentFreak:
Talks on implementing a Europe-wide firewall to censor and block ‘illicit’ websites has caused concern among many Internet users in recent weeks, and today one of the targeted sites has joined the discussion. Quoting one of Churchill’s most famous speeches, The Pirate Bay team is rallying the public to defend the free Internet and end the threat posed by the entertainment industries’ copyright lobby.
In February, a secret meeting of the European Union’s Law Enforcement Work Party (LEWP) resulted in a worrying proposal.
To deal with illicit sites on the Internet, the group suggested the adoption of a China-like firewall to block websites deemed ‘inappropriate’. The controversial proposal immediately met resistance from various sides, including ISPs who would be tasked with maintaining the blocklist. The copyright lobby on the other hand welcomes the initiative which they’ve been suggesting for years.
One of the sites that has a fair share of experience…
Morgellons: A Hidden Epidemic Or Mass Hysteria?
Is Morgellons disease from out of this world or all in our heads? Will Storr from the Guardian writes:
It all started in August 2007, on a family holiday in New England. Paul had been watching Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix with his wife and two sons, and he had started to itch. His legs, his arms, his torso – it was everywhere. It must be fleas in the seat, he decided.
But the 55-year-old IT executive from Birmingham has been itching ever since, and the mystery of what is wrong with him has only deepened. When Paul rubbed his fingertips over the pimples that dotted his skin, he felt spines. Weird, alien things, like splinters. Then, in 2008, his wife was soothing his back with surgical spirit when the cotton swab she was using gathered a curious blue-black haze from his skin. Paul went out, bought a £40 microscope…
Is Semen An Antidepressant?
Human sperm stained for semen quality testing in the clinical laboratory. Photo: Bobjgalindo (CC)
Jennifer Abbasi writes in Popular Science:
Back in 2002, psychologists at the State University of New York at Albany published a study in the Archives of Sexual Behavior looking at the potential role of semen in alleviating depression in women. The researchers presented evidence supporting an earlier hypothesis that the hormones in semen have a mood-boosting effect on women. For any woman who has had sex — and enjoyed it — this may not come as a huge surprise.
Cut to this past February. Lazar Greenfield, the incoming president of the American College of Surgeons (ACS), wrote a short Valentine’s Day-themed editorial about mating in Surgery News. In it, he discussed the sex lives of fruit flies, rotifers and humans. He cited the SUNY Albany study before concluding: “So there’s a deeper bond between men and women than St.…
National Emergency Alert System To Launch In NYC & DC
Photo: Alton (CC).
The national emergency alert system will now be sending the public text messages during disasters. The Wall Street Journal reports:
After more than five years of planning, a national emergency alert system that will send messages to cell phones during disasters is set to launch in New York City and Washington by the end of year.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said Monday the Commercial Mobile Alert System, which will be formally announced at a meeting in New York on Tuesday, will direct emergency messages to cell phones in case of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other serious emergencies.
The alert plan was approved by Congress in 2006 under the Warning Alert and Response Network Act.
Reaching people in the midst of disasters such as the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks or Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when cell phone networks were overwhelmed or otherwise out of service, has been an…
