Archive for May, 2011
Osama Bin Laden: Myths of Villainy and Deceit
Commentary on the subject of the week, on Modern Mythology:
This is how it works with terrorism, by definition. Our own psychology works against us. Fear, a popular tool of the Bush administration, was used to do a real disservice to their own “war on terror” by painting the picture of this guy hanging out in his underground bunker with Destro, Cobra Commander, and The Joker. (That is should they ever hope to win a “war on terror” — I assume they actually intend to “win” as much as the “war on drugs” could ever be won, as we meanwhile prop up the regimes that supply the materials).
Recent reports say Osama didn’t have a gun. But that’s almost beside the point, since the deed is done and it’s not likely we’re going to be seeing criminal investigations in the assassination of a figure like Osama Bin Laden. In the end he…
Casualties of War: The Most Depressive Toy Soldiers Ever
Created by Dorothy via Sad And Useless:
Says Dorothy:
The hell of war comes home. In July 2009 Colorado Springs Gazettea published a two-part series entitled “Casualties of War”. The articles focused on a single battalion based at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, who since returning from duty in Iraq had been involved in brawls, beatings, rapes, drunk driving, drug deals, domestic violence, shootings, stabbings, kidnapping and suicides. Returning soldiers were committing murder at a rate 20 times greater than other young American males. A separate investigation into the high suicide rate among veterans published in the New York Times in October 2010 revealed that three times as many California veterans and active service members were dying soon after returning home than those being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. We hear little about the personal hell soldiers live through after returning home.
Today’s Sermon Is From Douglas Rushkoff
Reverend Billy has declared Douglas Rushkoff to be a Saint of the Church of Earthalujah…
Coffee, Sex And Blowing Your Nose Increase Risk Of Stroke
Source: BBC News
Do you get the feeling that just being alive is dangerous to your health? James Gallagher reports on the latest insult to living for BBC News:
Coffee, sex and blowing your nose could increase the risk of a type of stroke, say researchers in the Netherlands.
The study on 250 patients identified eight risk factors linked to bleeding on the brain.
They all increase blood pressure which could result in blood vessels bursting, according to research published in the journal Stroke.
The Stroke Association said more research was needed to see if the triggers caused the rupture.
More than 150,000 people in the UK have a stroke each year with nearly 29,000 due to bleeding on the brain.
Bleeding can happen when a weakened blood vessel, known as a brain aneurysm, bursts. This can result in brain damage or death.
The researchers at the University Medical Center in Utrecht looked at 250 patients for three…
Osama Bin Laden Home Videos Released By Pentagon
Where’s Bob Saget? Via MSNBC:
Video footage taken from Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, shows the terrorist leader watching news coverage of himself on television.
The five U.S. government-selected clips offer the first public glimpse at bin Laden’s life behind the walls of his compound in suburban Pakistan. The videos include outtakes of his propaganda films and, taken together, portray him as someone obsessed with his own image and how he is portrayed to the world.
A senior intelligence officer described the information seized from the compound as “the single largest collection” of senior terrorist material ever, NBC News reported. The videos were seized by Navy SEALs after bin Laden was killed Monday.
The Cost of Keeping the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Going vs. Other ‘Human’ Affairs
Very interesting post from the MicroCosmologist blog:
So it looks like the Allen Telescope Array is falling onto the chopping block in this era of fiscal “emergency.” To me, this sounds a lot like the recent battle to defund NPR or PBS, in that the money they need to continue is just … chump change in the grand scheme of finances. They’re $2.5 million short, and for that, they’ll need to stop taking data and shut down the telescope array. It deeply bums me out to think that such a low value is placed on the quest to find other intelligence in our universe. When compared with so many other things that gladly get millions or billions of dollars, it’s maddening to see SETI so marginalized …
And to put things into perspective, I’ve whipped up this handy infographic, comparing how $2.5 million compares to so many other things that we absolutely must have, and will not hesitate to pay for:
Background info on the shutdown here.
On the Death of Osama and the Rise of the Magic Brooms
Mickey Fantasia Fountain, Disneyland Paris. (CC)
Via Aaron Dames: Observations on Nature and Humanity:
The end excuses any evil. — Sophocles, Electra
Read what’s presented to you the same way you would read Iraqi Propaganda. — Noam Chomsky, Imperial Ambitions
For the liberation of a people more is needed than economic policy, more than industry: if a people is to become free, it needs pride and willpower, defiance, hate, hate and once again hate. — Adolf Hitler, Munich speech, April 10, 1923
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. — Friedrich Nietzsche
Why do we kill people who kill people to show people that killing people is wrong? — From a bumper sticker
Jesus Christ would slap the shit of out you. — Another bumper sticker
This week President Obama visited the World Trade Center due to the death of Osama Bin…
Mass Arrests, Tear Gas, Sound Weapons Used Against Western Illinois University Students (Video)
TruBlood Is Real Now: Synthetic Blood Saves Australian Woman’s Life
If it’s good enough for a human body, must be good enough for vampires … Matt Buchanan writes on Gizmodo:
Hemoglobin-based oxygen carrier HBOC-201 is, in a word (or two), artificial blood — it delivers oxygen to your squishy organs. And, unlike real blood, it can be stored for years and doesn’t require matching blood types.
After years of working pretty well in clinical trials, it’s now saved a life for the first the time — it just brought back a woman whose car wreck was so brutal it left just a liter of blood in her body, and whose religion prevented her from receiving a real blood transfusion.
The future is here, and it’s synthetic blood and organs and tiny people grown in laboratories. Oh and maybe sexy, sexy vampires.
Edward H. Rulloff, Victorian New York’s Evil Genius
Edward H. Rulloff's brain on display at Cornell.
E. H. Freeman’s biography of the criminal-scholar Edward H. Rulloff is finally back in print. Victorian Gothic looks at his bizarre life and obsession with philology:
Visitors to Cornell University’s psychology department would be hard pressed to overlook the eight pickled brains, preserved in heavy glass jars, which are proudly showcased on the second floor of Uris Hall. A small sample of the 122 specimens in the university’s Wilder Brain Collection, each belongs to a notable scholar or learned individual whose think-meat was once deemed worthy of anatomical examination.
One of these brains, however, is not like the others. If the brain of Edward H. Rulloff, a.k.a. Professor Leurio, were able to come alive, glowing and pulsating as it issued angry, murderous commands to you from inside your head, it would.
Rulloff was a criminal genius who left no question of how he should like to be remembered.…
Samurai Sword-Wielding Bin Laden Hunter, Gary Faulkner, Demands Share of U.S. Reward
“I’m not greedy, but I sold everything I had and I put my life on the line.” Via Fox News:
DENVER, Colo.— A samurai sword-wielding American who waged his own personal quest to capture Usama bin Laden demanded Tuesday a share of the official $27 million reward following the terror chief’s death.
Gary Faulkner, a construction worker from Greeley, Colo., who came to international attention after being arrested in Pakistan last year, told ABC News he had served the Al Qaeda leader “up on a platter” for U.S. authorities.
“I had a major hand and play in this wonderful thing, getting him out of the mountains and down to the valleys … Someone had to get him out of there. That’s where I came in,” he said. “I scared the squirrel out of his hole, he popped his head up and he got capped.
“I’m proud of our boys, I’m very proud of our…
Media Roots Radio – Bin Laden’s Death: Government Propaganda, CIA Ties, Mindless Nationalism
Via Media Roots:
Robbie and Abby Martin of Media Roots cover Osama Bin Laden’s timely death in this edition of Media Roots Radio. They break apart the government and media propaganda, expose Bin Laden’s CIA ties, dissect his role as boogyman for the War on Terror and comment on the mindless nationalism and lack of critical thinking from fellow Americans following the news of his death.
West Virginia Man High On Bath Salts Kills Neighbor’s Goat
Some of you may recall our previous report on “Taking A Bath” with the bath salts “craze.” Well, they’re at it again. There’s really nothing to add to this story, it kind of sells itself. From the Charlston Gazette:
CHARLESTON, W.Va.— Police say an Alum Creek man high on bath salts killed his neighbor’s pygmy goat and that neighbors found him in his bedroom, dressed in a bra and panties, next to the dead animal, said Lt. Bryan Stover of the Kanawha County Sheriff’s Department.
Mark Thompson, 19, of Greenview Road, is charged with animal cruelty after police got a call from a woman who said he stole her goat at about 3:15 a.m. Monday, Stover said.
Thompson allegedly told police he was on bath salts for about three days.
When police entered the house they found fresh blood near the front door of the bedroom and in Thompson’s bedroom to the right of the front…
U.S. Congressman To File Marijuana Legalization Bill This Year
Philip Smith writes on Stop The Drug War:
America is on the cusp of majority support for marijuana legalization, but legalization is not inevitable and it’s up to activists and the multi-billion-dollar marijuana industry to start throwing their weight around to make it happen, US Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) told an overflow crowd during the keynote address at NORML’s 40th annual conference…
“I am optimistic that we will reach a day when America has the smart, sensible marijuana policy that we deserve,” Polis told an attentive audience. “But it could go either way. We could return to the dark ages of repression, or we could be on the eve of a new era of marijuana legalization. Your efforts will help determine which route this country takes and the legacy of this generation of activists on what marijuana policy looks like. Together we can accomplish this,” he told the crowd.
Polis said that he…
Beware Of The Real Men In Black
For decades – or perhaps even for centuries, some firmly believe – the infamous Men in Black have been elusive, predatory, fear-inducing figures that have hovered with disturbing regularity upon the enigmatic fringes of the subject of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), coldly nurturing, and carefully weaving, their very own unique brand of horror and intimidation of a definitively other-world variety.
The preferred tools of terror of the MIB are outright menace, far less than thinly-veiled threats, and overwhelming, emotionless intimidation. And they are relentless when it comes to following their one and only agenda – that is, to forever silence witnesses to, and investigators of, UFO encounters. Unfortunately, it has to be admitted, they have been highly successful in achieving their unsettling goal, too. Indeed, and without any shadow of doubt whatsoever, the long and winding history of UFO studies is absolutely littered with fraught, frightened and emotionally-shattered figures that have…
Reuters Publishes Photos of Raid on Osama Bin Laden’s Abbottabad Compound
There are no photos of Osama Bin Laden (yet…). Note the photos are graphic. Via Reuters:
Photographs acquired by Reuters and taken about an hour after the U.S. assault on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad in Pakistan show three dead men lying in pools of blood, but no weapons.
The photos, taken by a Pakistani security official who entered the compound after the early morning raid on Monday, show two men dressed in traditional Pakistani garb and one in a t-shirt, with blood streaming from their ears, noses and mouths. (More at Reuters)
Jane Corwin For Congress Website
A lesson for the up-and-coming politician: register your domain names — if not, someone will go ahead and make a website for you. That appears to be the case with Jane Corwin, a New York Republican campaigning to replace resigned Craigslist Congressman Christopher Lee. The partial screenshot below is a sample of the brilliance that awaits at JaneCorwin.org.
Insects Recover Lost ‘Wings’
Female Buffalo Treehopper (Stictocephala bisonia) boring a hole into a branch for laying eggs. Photo: Quartl (CC)
Is evolution backtracking? Physorg reports:
The extravagant headgear of small bugs called treehoppers are in fact wing-like appendages that grew back 200 million years after evolution had supposedly cast them aside, according to a study published Thursday in Nature.
That’s probably shocking news if you are an entomologist, and challenges some very basic ideas about what makes an insect an insect, the researchers said. The thorax of all insects is by definition divided into three segments, each with a pair of legs.
In most orders, there are also two pairs of wings, one on the middle segment of the thorax and another at the rear. Other orders such as flies and mosquitoes have only one set of wings, at the rear, and a few — most ants, for example — have no wings at all.
But no insects today…
California Grandmother Sells Thousands Of Homemade Suicide Kits
Hero or monster? Apparently, constructing suicide kits is the new knitting. San Diego’s KGTV reports:
A 91-year-old East County grandmother is getting national attention for making suicide kits. The woman started making the kits after watching her husband die a slow, painful death from colon cancer.
“I’m doing what I can to improve the world,” she told 10News. “There’s a lot of heartache and difficulty here.” Charlotte makes the kits — which cost buyers $60 — by taking large plastic bags and sewing soft elastic bands around the opening. There is a slot in the bag for a plastic tube carrying helium gas to be inserted. Helium — when inhaled in its pure form — is deadly. Kit users are responsible for securing their own helium gas.
“If heaven is so wonderful, you know you’d naturally want to go there, wouldn’t you?” said Charlotte. Charlotte said her sales were nearly $100,000 last year. That’s…
