Archive for May, 2011
Ownership of TV Sets Falls in the United States For First Time in 20 Years
Good news? Brian Stelter writes in the New York Times:
For the first time in 20 years, the number of homes in the United States with television sets has dropped.
The Nielsen Company, which takes TV set ownership into account when it produces ratings, will tell television networks and advertisers on Tuesday that 96.7 percent of American households now own sets, down from 98.9 percent previously.
There are two reasons for the decline, according to Nielsen. One is poverty: some low-income households no longer own TV sets, most likely because they cannot afford new digital sets and antennas.
The other is technological wizardry: young people who have grown up with laptops in their hands instead of remote controls are opting not to buy TV sets when they graduate from college or enter the work force, at least not at first. Instead, they are subsisting on a diet of television shows and movies from the…
Because I Can: How This American Celebrates Osama Bin Laden’s Demise (Video)
Adrian Chen on Gawker got in touch with the video’s creator:
I made this video because I felt like it represented a feeling many Americans shared regarding the brave and daring actions of our service members who tenaciously and doggedly pursued Osama Bin Laden. I feel like it represents something in the collective consciousness of America at that particular moment in time. A cathartic release.
This Is Why Government Is Broken
Once again, it takes Jon Stewart and the Daily Show to feature people who actually have great ideas about how to improve governance and laws in the United States. Here Stewart takes time out from the Bin Laden story to talk to Philip K. Howard, the author of the classic bestseller The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America.
If you like what Howard has to say you can find out more about his “Start Over” campaign at the Common Good site. (Common Good is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization founded in 2002 with the mission of rebuilding reliable legal structures that will permit Americans to use their common sense.)
Osama Bin Laden’s Intended War On the U.S. Economy
- Note pre-9/11 (in red) and post-9/11 (in yellow) Debt.
This viewpoint from Ezra Klein in the Washington Post is one not discussed enough by the media and its pundits in our nearly decade-long “War on Terror” (except on a few occasions). Writes Klein in WashPo:
Did Osama bin Laden win? No. Did he succeed? Well, America is still standing, and he isn’t.
So why, when I called Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a counterterrorism expert who specializes in al-Qaeda, did he tell me that “bin Laden has been enormously successful”? There’s no caliphate. There’s no sweeping sharia law. Didn’t we win this one in a clean knockout?
Apparently not. Bin Laden, according to Gartenstein-Ross, had a strategy that we never bothered to understand, and thus that we never bothered to defend against. What he really wanted to do — and, more to the point, what he thought he could do — was bankrupt the United States of America. After…
Does A Low-Salt Diet Really Feed A Healthy Heart?
Has your doctor always told you that a low sodium diet will help keep your heart healthy? You may have to take that advice with a grain of salt. Gina Kolata at The New York Times reports:
A new study found that low-salt diets increase the risk of death from heart attacks and strokes and do not prevent high blood pressure, but the research’s limitations mean the debate over the effects of salt in the diet is far from over.
In fact, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention felt so strongly that the study was flawed that they criticized it in an interview, something they normally do not do.
Dr. Peter Briss, a medical director at the centers, said that the study was small; that its subjects were relatively young, with an average age of 40 at the start; and that with few cardiovascular events, it was hard to draw conclusions. And the…
Cambridgeshire Farm Seeks Online Farmers
What happens when Farmville becomes reality and not just a game? National Trust create MyFarm, an actual working farm that has 10,000 virtual farmers. BBC reports:
A National Trust farm is to be run by online subscribers voting on which crops to grow and livestock to rear.
For a £30 annual fee, 10,000 farm followers will help manage Wimpole Home Farm, in Cambridgeshire.
The National Trust says its MyFarm project aims to reconnect people with where their food comes from.
It was partly inspired by the online Facebook game Farmville and follows the example of Ebbsfleet Football Club which is run on a similar basis.
Decisions about the running of the team in Kent has been in the hands of MyFootballClub subscribers since 2008.
Capital Is The Real Of Our Lives
Via Adbusters’s Kick It Over project, philosopher Slavoj Zizek sums up the reality that the financial meltdown laid bare:
Although we always recognized the urgency of the problems, when we were fighting AIDS, hunger, water shortages, global warming, and so on, there always seemed to be time to reflect, to postpone decisions (recall how the main conclusion of the last meeting of world leaders in Bali, hailed as a success, was that they would meet again in two years to continue their talks…). But with the financial meltdown, the urgency to act was unconditional; sums of an unimaginable magnitude had to be found immediately. Saving endangered species, saving the starving children…all this can wait a little bit. The call to “save the banks!” by contrast, is an unconditional imperative which must be met with immediate action.
Do we need any further proof that Capital is the Real of our lives, a Real whose…
Majority of Teens Don’t Know Who Osama Bin Laden Is, Search Data Shows
I did wonder how many college kids in those crowds cheering Sunday night the news kept reporting extensively on, even remembered in detail the events of 9/11. One figures that any herd, regardless of its intent, will attract those without the lights on upstairs.
While this article focuses on people younger than most of those in the crowds (so I guess teens aren’t hearing about 9/11 from their parents or in school) … more surprising to me, is it seems like a good percentage of people, the college age (and even older!), were searching for “Who Is Osama Bin Laden” shortly after the president’s speech Sunday night. Chloe Albanesius writes on PC Mag:
As I watched the crowds outside the White House on Sunday night, it seemed like many were college students from nearby George Washington University, and I wondered what many of them remembered from 9/11, seeing as how they were…
President Obama Decides Not to Release Osama Bin Laden Death Photo
Via MSNBC:
President Barack Obama has decided not to release photographs of al-Qaid leader Osama bin Laden’s body, a senior administration official told NBC News on Wednesday.
The decision comes a day after CIA director Leon Panetta said that a photo proving the death of Osama bin Laden “would be presented to the public,” but the comment quickly drew a response from the White House saying no decision has yet been made.
“The bottom line is that, you know, we got bin Laden and I think we have to reveal to the rest of the world the fact that we were able to get him and kill him,” Panetta said in an interview with Nightly News.
Asked by Reuters on Tuesday about Panetta’s remarks, a White House spokesman said no decision had been made about releasing images of bin Laden dead.
The White House had earlier expressed concerns about making any death images of bin…
Mummified Body of Cult B-Movie Actress Found
This is creepy as well as tragic. Andrew Blankstein writes in the LA Times:
Vickers Yvette Vickers, an early Playboy playmate whose credits as a B-movie actress included such cult films as “Attack of the 50-Foot Woman” and “Attack of the Giant Leeches,” was found dead last week at her Benedict Canyon home. Her body appears to have gone undiscovered for months, police said.
Vickers, 82, had not been seen for a long time. A neighbor discovered her body in an upstairs room of her Westwanda Drive home on April 27. Its mummified state suggests she could have been dead for close to a year, police said.
The official cause of death will by determined by the Los Angeles county coroner’s office, but police said they saw no sign of foul play.
Vickers had lived in the 1920s-era stone and wood home for decades, and it served as the background for some of her…
Yeti Hand Returned To Remote Mt. Everest Monastery
Jimmy Stewart, a monastery hidden in the snow capped mountains of Nepal, and the disappearance of an unexplainable, hideous clawed hand. BBC News reports:
A pilot from New Zealand is in Nepal to return a replica of what some believe is the hand of a yeti to a remote monastery in the Everest region. Mike Allsop will fly from Kathmandu to Pangboche Monastery, which sits at 13,123ft.
The originals were stolen from the monastery in the 1990s. They first came to light in the 1950s when an expedition to find the mythical yeti came upon the monastery. Peter Byrne, the leader of the 1950s expedition to find the abominable snowman, said that the hand did not match the skeleton of a human or a primate.
Mr Byrne managed to take one of the bones from the hand out of Nepal to his friend, the Hollywood actor James Stewart, who was on holiday at the…
The Creepy World Of Adult Babies
National Geographic’s Taboo looks at phenomenon of people who choose to live their lives as “adult babies”. Is it a metaphor for the “nanny state” we live in? A retreat from the pressures of modern life? Or just the most disturbing subculture to ever emerge in history? (Scandinavian black metal can’t compete with adult infantilism.) Warning: this cannot be unseen.
Flashback: President Bush On Bin Laden: ‘I Really Just Don’t Spend That Much Time On Him’ (Video)
Alex Seitz-Wald writes on ThinkProgress:
… just six months after 9/11, Bush suggested in a press conference that Bin Laden was not a top priority for his administration. Asked whether Bush thought capturing Bin Laden was important, Bush scolded those who cared about Bin Laden for not “understand[ing] the scope of the mission” because Bin Laden was just “one person,” whom Bush said:
Who knows if he’s hiding in some cave or not. We haven’t heard from him in a long time. The idea of focusing on one person really indicates to me people don’t understand the scope of the mission. Terror is bigger than one person. He’s just a person who’s been marginalized. … I don’t know where he is. I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you.
The Power Of Clothing Labels To Shape Your Life
In another experiment, volunteers watched one of two videos of the same man being interviewed for a job. In one, his shirt had a logo; in the other, it did not. The logo led observers to rate the man as more suitable for the job, and even earned him a 9% higher salary recommendation.
In a society in which the populace is now referred to as “consumers” rather than “citizens”, we all know the power of branding. The Economist reports on a study showing just how far this effect goes — the cooperation, respect, and money which others will give you varies widely based on the logo that appears on your shirt:
Rob Nelissen and Marijn Meijers of Tilburg University in the Netherlands examined people’s reactions to [actors] who were wearing clothes made by Lacoste and Tommy Hilfiger, two well-known brands that sell what they are pleased to refer to as designer clothing.…
Jingoism for Dollars: How to Make a Quick Buck
Chuck Sudo writes at Chicagoist:
We shouldn’t be shocked that businesses and budding entrepreneurs use historic moments to parlay them into a little bit of scrilla. It’s the American Way. We stopped counting the number of knock off t-shirts printed to commemorate President Obama’s election, or Michael Jackson’s death two years ago, or Sears tying advertising to the recent tornadoes in the South, or the seemingly endless stream of “Never Forget” paraphernalia that still trickles from the 9/11 faucet and businesses that still hold Martin Luther King Day “white sales.” We’re not even shocked that a trove of merchandise and events capitalizing on the Osama bin Laden raid are already up and looking for someone’s discretionary income. We only question the taste of some of the endeavors.
The photo in this post comes from a Miami nightlife promoter who wasted no time in organizing a “Na na na, Hey Hey, Goodbye” party…
U.S. Gov’t Sues Deutsche Bank For More Than $1 Billion
The US Justice Department has sued Deutsche Bank for more than $1bn (£600m) for defrauding the government.
The complaint says Deutsche’s MortgageIT subsidiary lied in order to get Federal Housing Administration (FHA) insurance for its loans.
FHA rules say lenders must make sure the borrower will be able to repay the loan, but the Justice Department claims Deutsche did not do so.
A Deutsche spokesperson described the claims as “unreasonable and unfair”. “We intend to defend against the action vigorously,” she added.
The lawsuit is one of the first targeting mortgage lenders under the federal False Claims Act.
PR Industry Fills Vacuum Left by Shrinking Newsrooms
Vulture getting ready to strike a dying prey. Photo: Dmitri Markine (CC)
John Sullivan writes on ProPublica:
The Gulf oil spill was 2010’s biggest story, so when David Barstow walked into a Houston hotel for last December’s hearings on the disaster, he wasn’t surprised to see that the conference room was packed. Calling the hearing to order, Coast Guard Captain Hung Nguyen cautioned the throng, “We will continue to allow full media coverage as long as it does not interfere with the rights of the parties to a fair hearing and does not unduly distract from the solemnity, decorum, and dignity of the proceedings.” It’s a stock warning that every judge gives before an important trial, intended to protect witnesses from a hounding press. But Nguyen might have been worrying too much. Because as Barstow realized as he glanced across the crowd, most of the people busily scribbling notes in the room were…
Could Human Photosynthesis Power The Future?
Chlorophyll. Photo: Wilfredo R. Rodriguez H. (CC)
By Hank Mills for Pure Energy System News:
Dr. Arturo Solis Herrera has developed a technology that utilizes the properties of melanin – the animal analogue to chlorophyll. His melanin based (polihydroxyindol) photo-cell absorbs a broad spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, and converts it into electricity. He has also developed a pharmaceutical claimed to enhance human “photosynthesis” for increased health.
Plants utilize the green pigment chlorophyll to absorb energy from sunlight to breakdown carbon dioxide into sugars. This is well known, and taught in probably every elementary school across the world. What is not as well known, is that the dark colored pigment called melanin found in the skin of humans and other mammals can absorb various types of electromagnetic radiation. In fact, melanin appears capable of absorbing a much broader spectrum of such radiation than chlorophyll. This was proven when scientists noticed various fungi growing in…
