Archive for June, 2011
UN Asks The World To Put An End To AIDS By 2020
With numerous research groups inching closer to a cure for AIDS, the United Nations asks that leaders throughout the world end the pandemic by 2020. While one of the largest problems in the spread of AIDS is the lack of knowledge about the disease and access to treatment in certain areas, there is also a lack of funding to facilities that are on a progressive path towards a cure, but are stopped because of finances. The Christian Post reports:
World leaders must do everything in their power to end the AIDS pandemic by 2020, the U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said at the U.N. Summit on AIDS in New York.
“Today, we gather to end AIDS,” Ban said as the United Nations General Assembly opened on Wednesday.
The three-day summit is being held as the world marks the 30th anniversary since HIV was first discovered. Ban told delegates gathered from across the world…
Australia’s ‘Kill A Camel’ To Cut Pollution Concept
Photo: Dan Searle (CC)
How can we curb the emission of greenhouse gases? Get rid of a bunch of camels, apparently. Via Physorg:
Australia is considering awarding carbon credits for killing feral camels as a way to tackle climate change.
The suggestion is included in Canberra’s “Carbon Farming Initiative”, a consultation paper by the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, seen Thursday.
Adelaide-based Northwest Carbon, a commercial company, proposed culling some 1.2 million wild camels that roam the Outback, the legacy of herds introduced to help early settlers in the 19th century.
Considered a pest due to the damage they do to vegetation, a camel produces, on average, a methane equivalent to one tonne of carbon dioxide a year, making them collectively one of Australia’s major emitters of greenhouse gases.
In its plan, Northwest said it would shoot them from helicopters or muster them and send them to an abattoir for either human or pet…
Margarita Island: Venezuela’s Party Prison
Suppose prison was fun? Venezuela’s San Antonio prison houses 2,000 convicts, including many foreigners from around the globe, mostly convicted on drug charges. They can do anything they want, except leave — there are pool halls, dance parties, swimming, drugs, guns, gender mixing and unlimited visitors. Crazy, yes, but is it any worse than what we have here? The New York Times reports:
Bikini-clad female visitors frolic under the Caribbean sun in an outdoor pool. Marijuana smoke flavors the air. Reggaetón booms from a club filled with grinding couples.
Prisoners barbecue meat while sipping whisky poolside. In some cells, equipped with air-conditioning and DirecTV satellite dishes, inmates relax with wives or girlfriends. (Venezuela, like other Latin American countries, allows conjugal visits.) The children of some inmates swim in one of the prison’s four pools.
Luis Gutiérrez, the warden at San Antonio prison, refused to discuss the prison he nominally oversees. Renowned on Margarita Island…
Scott Walker Has Painting Of Poor Children Removed From Wisconsin Governor’s Mansion
Other politicians can slash taxes for the rich while cutting funds for teachers and struggling families, but few can throw in some Mr. Burns-style symbolic nose-thumbing like the Wisconsin governor. Via Mother Jones:
Walker has made headlines again after he removed a painting (see right) depicting three Milwaukee children—one had been homeless, one from low-income family, and a third who had lost family members in a drunk-driving accident—from the Governor’s mansion.
The painting, hung over the mantel, was intended to remind state leaders of the people they represent. Scott Walker and his wife Tonette replaced it with a portrait of Old Abe, a Civil War-era bald eagle from Wisconsin.
Toxin From Genetically Modified Crops Detected In Canadians’ Blood
Until now, scientists and multinational corporations promoting GM crops have maintained that Bt toxin poses no danger to human health as the protein breaks down in the human gut. But the presence of this toxin in human blood shows that this does not happen.
Eating GM corn, soy, and potatoes is perfectly safe, provided you don’t mind having a powerful toxin swirling in your bloodstream. Oh, and your unborn baby’s bloodstream as well. So says a debbie-downer peer-reviewed Canadian study, India Today reports:
Fresh doubts have arisen about the safety of genetically modified crops, with a new study reporting presence of Bt toxin, used widely in GM crops, in human blood for the first time.
Scientists from the University of Sherbrooke, Canada, have detected the insecticidal protein, Cry1Ab, circulating in the blood of pregnant as well as non-pregnant women. They have also detected the toxin in fetal blood, implying it could pass on to…
MoveOn Admits To Hacking Fox News
Fox News’ ticker outside the New York building was hacked into, replacing the scrolling news with an activist message describing the lies being told by conservative groups. MoveOn, a progressive advocacy group, claimed responsibility for the prank which they are now using to promote a broad anti-austerity campaign that launches June 23.
Even If You Are an Atheist, You Worship Something …
From the late great David Foster Wallace:
Because here’s something else that’s true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships.
The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some in-frangible set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.
If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth.
Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing,…
Aerotropolis: Will The Cities Of The Future Be Giant Airports?
The Utopianist discusses one (slightly hellish) idea of what the city of the future may look like — the ‘aerotropolis’, in which the airport is at the city’s geographic and economic core, and daily life increasingly resembles being inside an endlessly sprawling airport:
It’s a city that’s built around an airport, the bigger the better, with factories and/or traders, both dependent on air freight, close by, followed by a ring of malls and hotels, followed by a ring of residential neighborhoods. The airport isn’t an annoyance, located as far out of the way as possible, but the city’s heart, its raison d’être.
While the vision of a city based around an airport may seem novel, there are such aerotropolises already in existence, like Ecuador’s capital, Quito. We already have a few cities in the United States that roughly adhere to this model — Memphis, our nation’s major FedEx hub, and Seattle, the home…
Of Course I Take Pictures Of My Penis And Send Them To People
Congressman Anthony Weiner
Weinergate inspires a parody by John Kenney in the New Yorker:
Why wouldn’t I?
It’s my penis. And as a great man once said, it’s meant to be photographed. Though I have no idea who that great man was.
Where some people have photos of their families on their desks at work, I have photos of my penis. My penis on vacation in the Bahamas. My penis in Madrid, on a business trip, the Prado in the background (slightly out of focus). My penis receiving an award for Outstanding Employee of the Month.
At birthdays and holidays I like to send photographs of my penis to friends and family. My in-laws, Marge and Walter, say they always look forward to getting my penis Christmas card.
Someone asked me recently when I started taking pictures of my penis and sending them to people, and I honestly couldn’t remember. College, maybe? All I know is…
Video: Witness Filmed Miami Police Shooting, Hid Memory Card In Mouth To Save Footage
Pretty incredible — after Narces Benoit and his girlfriend witnessed a deadly police shooting, officers put guns to their heads and smashed their cellphones in an effort to destroy the video he had shot. However, Benoit had managed to slip the memory card out of his phone and kept it hidden in his mouth throughout the ordeal, even while interrogated, CNN reports. Footage below:
Young Children In South Africa Eaten By Giant Rats
A chilling urban legend from New York City comes terribly true on the opposite side of the globe, as three-foot rats run amok, feasting on human babies. The Daily Mail writes:
Giant rats as big as cats have killed and eaten two babies in separate attacks in South Africa’s squalid townships this week.
Lunathi Dwadwa, three, was killed as she slept in her parent’s shack outside Cape Town and another girl was killed in Soweto township near Johannesburg the same day. Bukiswa Dwadwa, 27, said: ‘I can’t forget how ugly my child looked after her eyes were ripped out. ‘She was eaten from her eyebrows to her cheeks, her other eye was hanging by a piece of flesh.’
Residents of South Africa’s impoverished townships say the giant rats grow up to three-foot long, including their tails, and have front teeth over an inch long. The suspects in the baby attacks are believed to be…
Unprecedented Solar Eruption
According to C. Alex Young, a solar astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, yesterday’s massive Coronal Mass Ejection on the Sun is “nothing we really have to worry about.” Try telling that to Lawrence E. Joseph, who in the disinformation documentary 2012: Science or Superstition, claims that there is a correlation between heightened solar storms and alarming meteorological and atmospheric changes on Earth.
Hmmm. Whatever the case it’s awe inspiring (see Young’s video below). He says that “the sun produced a quite spectacular prominence eruption that had a solar flare and high-energy particles associated with it, but I’ve just never seen material released like this before. It looks like somebody just kicked a giant clod of dirt into the air and then it fell back down.”
Gasoline Is Too Damn High (Video)
If you are driving, you shouldn’t be reading this. Here is Big Jim on Gasoline Is Too Damn High:
Gasoline is skyrocketing past $4 a gallon and Jimmy McMillan is outraged. How are Americans supposed to afford their rent if they can’t afford the gasoline to get to work? Watch Jimmy send a powerful message to the White House: GASOLINE IS TOO DAMN HIGH!
For Those Sharks About To Swim, AC/DC Loves You … (Video)
What can I say, true believers, it is science. Daniel Fraser reports on ABC News:
Eyre Peninsula’s Matt Waller has added another tip to the ‘don’t get eaten’ handbook with his discovery that Great White’s are much less aggressive when listening to AC/DC: particularly ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’.
A South Australian charter boat operator has made a fascinating discovery whilst conducting research into what kinds of music affect the behaviour of Great White Sharks.
The U.S. Owes $62 Trillion in Financial Promises
Dennis Cauchon writes in USA Today:
The federal government’s financial condition deteriorated rapidly last year, far beyond the $1.5 trillion in new debt taken on to finance the budget deficit, a USA TODAY analysis shows.
The government added $5.3 trillion in new financial obligations in 2010, largely for retirement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. That brings to a record $61.6 trillion the total of financial promises not paid for.
This gap between spending commitments and revenue last year equals more than one-third of the nation’s gross domestic product.
Medicare alone took on $1.8 trillion in new liabilities, more than the record deficit prompting heated debate between Congress and the White House over lifting the debt ceiling.
French Media Ban The Mention Of Specific Social Networks On Air
In an attempt to reduce the amount of ‘free publicity’ given to social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, the French have banned any mention of specific sites in their TV and radio broadcasts. One of the reasons for this ban is to allow a fair platform for smaller networking companies in the future. BBC News reports:
French TV and radio presenters have been banned from mentioning social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter on air.
The country’s broadcasting watchdog has ruled that doing so would break guidelines on advertising.
Stations can still talk about services without naming them, it said.
The French government is seen by many internet watchers as overly keen to regulate in relation to new media and the web.
In a ruling, published online, the Conseil Superieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA), said: “Referring viewers or listeners to the page of the social network without mentioning it has the character of information.
[Continues at…
Waxy Monkey Frog Skin Could Treat Cancer
Photo: Alexander Maier (CC)
Belfast Telegraph reports:
A little-known frog from South America could hold the key to lifesaving treatments for up to 70 devastating medical conditions, Northern Ireland researchers have found.
Scientists from Queen’s University in Belfast have discovered the poetically-named Waxy Monkey Frog could be used in the fight against cancer.
They also found that the Giant Fire-bellied Toad, native to China and Vietnam, has the potential to treat an array of diseases including diabetes and stroke.
It will bring hope to the 8,500 people in Northern Ireland diagnosed with cancer each year and more than 3,500 people here who are told each year they have diabetes.
The Queen’s boffins stumbled upon the amazing breakthrough – which could revolutionise the treatment of billions of patients around the globe – purely by accident.
[Continues at Belfast Telegraph]
Amateur Astronomer Claims ‘Bio Station Alpha’ Is Proof Of Life, Or Past Life on Mars … (Video)
Via News.Au.com:
An American armchair astronomer claims he has found evidence of, well, something on Mars. David Martines’ YouTube video is heading for viral status after he uploaded a flyby of Google Earth’s Mars explorer zooming in on a white, cylindrical shaped object.
He’s calling it “Bio Station Alpha, because I’m just assuming that something lives in it or has lived in it”.
“It’s very unusual in that it’s quite large, it’s over 700 feet long and 150 feet wide, it looks like it’s a cylinder or made up of cylinders,” he says, “It could be a power station or it could be a biological containment or it could be a glorified garage — hope it’s not a weapon. Whoever put it up there had a purpose I’m sure. I couldn’t imagine what the purpose was. I couldn’t imagine why anybody would want to live on Mars.”
Bernie Sanders Reveals The Top Corporate Tax Avoiders
Why is Congress giving tax cuts and refunds to America’s wealthiest corporations, whilst welfare families, low-income and middle class communities, teachers, children and the elderly are being asked to sacrifice basic rights and access to resources like education and medicaid?
Did you get your tax refund? These companies certainly did. On the Senate floor, Bernie Sanders tears into the ten worst corporate tax avoiders, including Bank of America, Exxon Mobil, Citibank, and Goldman Sachs. The numbers are simply staggering.
