Archive for May, 2011
The Incredibly Tiny Christian Fundamentalist Universe
Maybe those 21 May 2011 “End of the World” folks were right, and only their tiny universe disappeared? Jim Walker writes on NoBeliefs.com:
Incredible as it may seem, many Christians today believe that a god created the universe approximately 6000 years ago. That means that everything in it, planets, stars, moons, comets, and even light itself, must have originated at the time (or after) the Great Creation.
Consider that no energy or matter in the universe can travel faster than the speed of light. If you take the speed-of-light back in time 6000 years to the point of the alleged Creation, you get a spherical radius of only around 6000 light-years. This means that a 12,000 diameter light-year bubble represents everything that could possibly happen or exist within the time range of Christian chronology. Consider that the entire Christian universe cannot measure larger than a single average galaxy in the known universe! The…
How A Human Virus Is Killing Endangered Gorillas
Photo: FlickreviewR (CC)
Alasdair Wilkins writes in io9:
There’s fewer than 800 Mountain Gorillas left in the entire world, and their survival depends in part on people willing to pay money to go see them. But all this human interaction is bringing gorillas into contact with dangerous diseases.
Although humans are most closely related to chimpanzees, gorillas rank a very respectable second, sharing about 98% of their DNA with us. The current zoological consensus is that there are two distinct species of gorillas, western and eastern, and these are further divided into two subspecies each.
While all the gorilla species are to some degree threatened, the population levels vary wildly. There are at least 100,000 Western Lowland Gorillas in the wild, and 4,000 in zoos, while fellow western subspecies, the rarely seen Cross River Gorilla, is thought to have a remaining population of just 280. As for the eastern subspecies, the Eastern Lowland Gorilla…
Iranian President Ahmadinejad Accuses The West of Weather Control
Reports Agence France-Presse via the Raw Story:
TEHRAN — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday accused Western countries of devising plans to “cause drought” in the Islamic republic, as he inaugurated a dam in a central province.
“Western countries have designed plans to cause drought in certain areas of the world, including Iran,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying in the central city of Arak in Markazi province.
“According to reports on climate, whose accuracy has been verified, European countries are using special equipment to force clouds to dump” their water on their continent, he said.
By doing so, “they prevent rain clouds from reaching regional countries, including Iran,” Ahmadinejad charged. Iran has experienced several droughts in recent years.
The End Of The World: It’s In The Numbers (Video)
Via Modern Mythology:
Or maybe some of us only wish it was…
Less than 50 Years of Oil Left, HSBC Warns
Recently John Collins Rudolf reported in the New York Times:
The world may have no more than half a century of oil left at current rates of consumption, while surging demand from the developing world threatens to create “very significant price rises” before substitutes like biofuels can serve as viable alternatives, the British bank HSBC warns in a new report.
“We’re confident that there are around 50 years of oil left,” Karen Ward, the bank’s senior global economist, said in an interview on CNBC.
The bank, the world’s second largest in assets, further cautioned that growth trends in developing countries like China could put as many as one billion more cars on the road by midcentury. “That’s tremendous pressure on oil to power all those resources,” Ms. Ward said.
Substitutes, such as biofuels and synthetic oil from coal, could fill the gap if conventional supplies fall short, but only if average oil prices exceed…
Every Six Hours, The NSA Gathers As Much Data As The Library of Congress Has
Dan Nosowitz writes on Popular Science:
The National Security Agency is, by nature, an extreme example of the e-hoarder. And as the governmental organization responsible for things like, say, gathering intelligence on such Persons of Interest as Osama bin Laden, that impulse makes sense–though once you hear the specifics, it still seems pretty incredible. In a story about the bin Laden mission, the NSA very casually dropped a number: Every six hours, the agency collects as much data as is stored in the entire Library of Congress.
That data includes transcripts of phone calls and in-house discussions, video and audio surveillance, and a massive amount of photography. “The volume of data they’re pulling in is huge,” said John V. Parachini, director of the Intelligence Policy Center at RAND. “One criticism we might make of our [intelligence] community is that we’re collection-obsessed — we pull in everything — and we don’t spend enough time or money to try and understand what do we have and how can we act upon it.”
German Insurer Munich Re Rewards Salesmen With Prostitutes
One of the biggest insurance companies in the world held a party for salesmen where they were rewarded with the services of prostitutes.
Munich Re is the world’s biggest re-insurer — in other words, the company acts as an insurance company for other insurance companies.
One of its divisions, Ergo, told the BBC that the party had taken place to reward salesmen in 2007. A spokesman said the people who organised it had since left.
The gathering was held at a thermal baths in the Hungarian capital Budapest as a reward to particularly successful salesmen.
And Now: The Homily from Brother Dimon … U.S. Debt Default Would Be A ‘Moral Disaster’
It’s 21st May: If you’re reading this, you’re in Hell; welfare Queen JP Morgan Chase’s CEO, Jamie Dimon provides today’s post-rapture homily via the AP/Huffington Post:
It would be a “moral disaster” if the United States were to default on its debts and become unable to pay its obligations, JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon said at an appearance in Colorado Thursday evening.
The U.S. is the financial linchpin of the world, and the economic effects of the U.S. defaulting could be “potentially catastrophic,” he said at a dinner for the University of Colorado Denver Business School.
“It will dwarf Lehman,” Dimon said, referring to the 2008 collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers, which contributed to the beginning of a global financial crisis.
Dimon’s comments came in response to a question about the federal deficit from moderator Tom Petrie, a vice chairman of Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Congress is debating raising the country’s…
The Hope Of Humanity
[disinfo ed.'s note: The following is an excerpt from Bryan Young's book of short stories, "Man Against the Future."]
The year was 2081 and so many of the social problems humans had faced over the last hundred years were still a pretty big problem. Most people were still poor, corporations still ran the government, and politicians were constantly caught with prostitutes of both sexes, living and dead. When politicians weren’t blowing each other’s personal lives completely out of proportion for political gain, they were starting wars with other countries. Sometimes, they would even start wars with people inside their own country, but those were usually ideological. Perhaps the biggest and worst change was that the polar ice caps had melted and much of the Mojave Desert was now prime beachfront property. That, and the air across the globe tasted like you were sucking on a tailpipe.
As pressing and horrible as those issues were, they really didn’t enter into the minds of John and Mildred Bates. They were working class and average in most ways. John worked a standard sixty hour work week and, to help make ends meet, Mildred picked up thirty-nine hours a week, part time, working at the deli counter at the local, national chain grocery emporium.
The Rise of ‘Sovereign Citizens’ (Video)
A slanted, but interesting story from CBS’ 60 Minutes:
This is a story about a group of Americans you’ve likely never heard of: they’re called “sovereign citizens.” Many don’t pay taxes, carry a driver’s license or hold a Social Security card. They have little regard for the police or the courts, and some have become violent.
The FBI lists them among the nation’s top domestic terror threats.
By some estimates, there are as many as 300,000 sovereign citizens in the U.S. And with the sluggish economy and mortgage mess, their ranks are growing.
Most Americans Now Favor Gay Marriage
Polling organization Gallup reports:
For the first time in Gallup’s tracking of the issue, a majority of Americans (53%) believe same-sex marriage should be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages. The increase since last year came exclusively among political independents and Democrats. Republicans’ views did not change.
[caption id="attachment_54274" align="alignnone" width="568" caption="Source: Gallup"][/caption]
These results are based on Gallup’s May 5-8 Values and Beliefs poll, which has tracked attitudes toward legalizing same-sex marriage each year since 2004…
‘The Weight’ From ‘Easy Rider’ (Video)
Kudos to those who suggested this route, and are on a new path:
Let’s Punk the Rapture
Fun idea from MLKSHK that Gizmodo is making a contest out of. Mat Honan writes on Gizmodo:
A lot of people think the Rapture is coming May 21. It’s not. But assuming your pets are okay, here’s a prank we’d like you to pull. We call it Rapture Bombing.
On May 21, get a bunch of your old clothes in full sets of pants, shirts, and shoes. Bonus points if you leave accessories like an old watch or sunglasses to go with them. Lay them out as if people have suddenly disappeared, leaving only the clothes behind. Be creative.
Take pictures. Post them on our Facebook page, or tweet them with the hashtag #rapturebomb.
We’ll run the best ones; our favorites will win prizes. (Don’t get too excited—we’re talkin’ iPhone cases and shit.) And if you make your local news? You’ll be Giz’s hero for the day.
Here are some more post-”Rapture” photos.
YouTube Launches ‘Town Hall’
Time to trade in your soap box for a viral video. The Raw Story reports:
YouTube on Wednesday launched a “Town Hall” website at which US congressional leaders address issues in brief videos and viewers get to show which positions they support.
Republicans monopolized top slots in a “leaderboard” at the online forum for debating topics from energy and debt to health care and Afghanistan.
However, rankings were shifting quickly at the freshly launched website designed to let top US politicians indirectly debate important issues and then have viewers vote for preferred positions.
While the people in the videos are identified, their party affiliations are not revealed until after a viewer has chosen a side.
“How would you vote if you focused purely on the ideas needed to make our country and our world a better place, rather than on the parties putting them forward?” Will Houghteling of YouTube News and Politics asked in a blog…
Guide To The End Of The World, From 5000 B.C. Into The Future
Pick A Year handily compiles, in timeline form, all end of days prognostications of note, for your doom-and-gloom needs:
The END has been with us for a very long, time and extends well into the future. Need I say that prophesy has, so far, failed? And that this is true as much for ’scientific’ prophesy (see 1962, 1975, 1976, 1989, 1992, 2002, 2005, 2008) as for the cultish kind?
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Genetically Induced Drought-Resistant Corn Could Feed Our Future
Photo: JLantzy
Could genetic modification be the only way to save our food during the drought-full future? The Scientific American reports:
Climate change has yet to diminish crop yields in the U.S. corn belt but scientists expect drought to become more common due to global warming in coming years. That could impact everything from the price of food to the price of fuel planet-wide. As a result, for the last several years agribusiness giants like Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta have been pursuing genetic modification to enable the corn plant to thrive even without enough rain. And now the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is considering approving a new corn hybrid genetically engineered to thrive on less water—the first time such a corn strain would be available.
“Working on something like drought is more complex than introducing a trait like insect resistance,” says plant breeder Bob Reiter, vice president of biotechnology at Monsanto, the company seeking approval…
The Gadgets We Never Heard Of
Did you know that the iPod is basically a ripoff of a German transistor radio from the 1950s? Via the Atlantic, selections from Bill Buxton’s collection of little-known gadgets (such as early touchscreen devices, the first robotic chess game, and a “mindblowing Casio watch from 1984″) which sadly are in the secret dustbin of history:
Russian Cannibal Who Ate Victim’s Liver Arrested
“He was always different,” says his mother. Moscow resident Nikolai Shadrin murdered and ate a stranger and scattered body parts in various locations across the city. When the police arrived at his apartment to arrest him, they found Shadrin eating his victim’s liver with potatoes. Also, he has a very sunny demeanor and says he can’t remember the whole episode because he was very drunk when it happened.
