Archive for June, 2011
The Legal War on WikiLeaks … and Freedom of Information (Video)
Dylan Ratigan speaks to David House about the WikiLeaks grand jury:
An Inside Look At Bonnaroo 2011
RFID chips, a privately-funded police state, cult recruiters, and enough soma to make Indra tap out. Is it just another music festival, or a dress rehearsal for dystopia? From a rigger’s diary at RockStarMartyr.net:
© Darin Seaman
It took nearly 24 hours of unbroken sleep to recover from my Bonnaroocleosis. Like other workers, performers, and festicle-goers in attendance, I’ve been hacking up silty brown lung-dumplings and blowing whole coal fields of black boogers into rolls of tissue.
The annual Bonnaroo dust storm could be a preview of the world after a nuclear cataclysm, where those so privileged will wring their desperate satisfaction from tingling chemicals, sun-seared flesh on display, and the pulsating rhythm of pleasure machines, leaving pathetic Plebeians to pick through the scraps.
Once again, I had a blast under the mushroom cloud.
Monday, June 6: Say “Moo” motherfucker
I’m late as usual to pick up Glen the Red, a fellow rigger who packed his camping gear and work tools hours…
Millie Brown: Puking Up Great Art
Is it disgusting? Is it genius? A metaphor for the artistic process or our consumerist society? I’m not sure how I feel about the art world’s vomit trend, but I’m not leaning too close to look at the paintings. AMY&PINK writes:
In the name of creation, the New York performance artist Millie Brown throws up in her latest project “Nexus vomiting” in all colors of the rainbow on white screens, while the opera singers Patricia Hammond and Zita Syme support her with an acoustic performances and mentally prepare her for the physical and psychological burden. So stylish and angelic only a few humans can vomit.
Why The World Isn’t As ‘Flat’ As Thomas Friedman Says…
Rana Foroohar writes in TIME:
Tis the season to be selfish. Right after the global financial crisis exploded in 2008, many economists fretted that countries looking to hold on to their share of a shrinking pie would become more self-interested and protectionist, plunging the planet into an even sharper downturn, just as happened in the 1930s after the Great Depression. Thanks to panic-fueled crisis management by policymakers, it didn’t happen. But after three years of pain and very little economic gain, it may be happening now.
The signs are everywhere. Europeans are in the middle of a potentially calamitous debt crisis, one that threatens not only the survival of the euro zone but the idea of the European Union itself: politicians are starting to talk about rolling back visa-free travel between countries. Meanwhile, OPEC is falling apart as the Saudis and the Iranians bicker over how to control the world’s energy spigots.…
Where In The World Do Exiled Leaders Flee?
France (where your neighbors don’t care about your personal vices), sunny Mexico, and despot-friendly Saudi Arabia are top destinations for fallen leaders on the lam. The most notable ex-dictator to live out their days in the United States was Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, who along with his cronies was given safe haven in Hawaii by Ronald Reagan. Created by GOOD Magazine, click through for full map and details:
With Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak now deposed and Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi struggling to hold on to his own seat, we wonder where former exiled leaders slip away to after being ousted.
New York Woman Commits Suicide By Black Mamba
A gruesomely appropriate suicide method for a woman who lived in the company of 75 snakes. Personally, my ideal pet death would be smothering under a puppy pile. The Daily Mail reports:
A woman is feared to have committed ’suicide by snake’ — Aleta Stacey is thought to have deliberately allowed herself to be bitten by a deadly black Mamba. The 56-year-old was found dead at the New York home she shares with 75 other snakes, most of them poisonous.
Friends and family believe Stacey deliberately allowed herself to be bitten. They said she was an experienced snake handler who knew the dangers of getting to close to the fast and venomous snake. They also pointed out that even after being bitten she failed to call the emergency services.
Venom from the black Mamba is lethal unless treated with antivenon. Victims usually die within 20 minutes of being bitten.
Officials removed 75 other snakes from…
Rabbinical Court Sentences Dog To Death By Stoning For Reincarnation
Reports Agence France-Presse via the Raw Story:
JERUSALEM — A Jerusalem rabbinical court condemned to death by stoning a dog it suspects is the reincarnation of a secular lawyer who insulted the court’s judges 20 years ago, Ynet website reported Friday.
According to Ynet, the large dog made its way into the Monetary Affairs Court in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem, frightening judges and plaintiffs.
Despite attempts to drive the dog out of the court, the hound refused to leave the premises.
One of the sitting judges then recalled a curse the court had passed down upon a secular lawyer who had insulted the judges two decades previously.
Their preferred divine retribution was for the lawyer’s spirit to move into the body of a dog, an animal considered impure by traditional Judaism.
Six Million American Kids Have Food Allergies
Most parents I know agree that when they were kids, hardly anyone had food allergies. Now the kid who brings a PB&J sandwich to school might as well have sneaked in a dirty nuke. This report from Medpage Today confirms the explosion in food allergies, but doesn’t answer the obvious question: Why?
Food allergy in children is more common than previously thought, and often is associated with severe symptoms and multiple foods, a new survey found.
The prevalence of food allergy in children and adolescents younger than 18 was 8% (95% CI 7.6 to 8.3), according to Ruchi S. Gupta, MD, of Northwestern University in Chicago, and colleagues.
That percentage translates into almost six million children in the U.S., the researchers noted.
And among these allergic children, 38.7% had a history of severe reactions and 30.4% were allergic to more than one type of food, they reported online in Pediatrics.
Previous studies have suggested that the…
Terrorist ‘Pre-Crime’ Detector Has Been Field Tested in the U.S.
Hmm, do the results even matter or is this something we’ll see anyway in the near future? Sharon Weinberger wrote recently in Nature News:
Planning a sojourn in the northeastern United States? You could soon be taking part in a novel security programme that can supposedly ’sense’ whether you are planning to commit a crime.
Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST), a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) programme designed to spot people who are intending to commit a terrorist act, has in the past few months completed its first round of field tests at an undisclosed location in the northeast, Nature has learned.
Like a lie detector, FAST measures a variety of physiological indicators, ranging from heart rate to the steadiness of a person’s gaze, to judge a subject’s state of mind. But there are major differences from the polygraph. FAST relies on non-contact sensors, so it can measure indicators as someone walks…
Nearly One in Three American Children Live Without A Father
Via the Huffington Post:
The number of children living apart from their fathers has more than doubled in the last fifty years, from 11 percent in 1960 to 27 percent in 2010.
That’s one of the key findings from a new report on fatherhood in the United the States that was released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends project — just in time for Father’s Day.
The findings paint a grim picture of many fathers’ lack of involvement in their children’s lives, using data from over 10,000 people to determine the percentage of “absent” or “non-resident” fathers in America, which the report defines as those who do not live with their children.
A decline in marriage rates may be partially to blame. In 1960, 72 percent of the adult population was married; that share had dropped to 52 percent by 2008. Eighty seven percent of children ages 17 and younger were living with two married parents in 1960 compared with 64 percent in 2008.
According to the report’s co-author Gretchen Livingston, an increase in divorce rates over the last half-century may also play a role.
Salfate: Having Fun With Conspiracy Theories
One of the problems with American conspiracy theorists is that they’re mostly so damned serious that they’re just not as much fun to watch as their establisment counterparts (think Fox News), unless you find humor in an Alex Jones rant. Not so in Chile, where the TV host Salfate brings a smile to some serious questions about what’s going on in the world. Last week he covered the recent Bilderberg meeting in Switzerland, giving Jones a major shout out:
BBC Scotland Shows You Hitler’s Weather Forecast and a Strange Looking Rudolf Hess (Video)
Disinfo.com site note: New video link, thanks to commenters below.
One Quarter Of American Teens Drink Soda Every Day
For those of you wondering why America’s greatest threat is obesity, this is at least part of the answer, although the CDC is spinning it as good news. From AP via Yahoo News:
A new study shows one in four high school students drink soda every day — a sign fewer teens are downing the sugary drinks… That’s less than in the past. In the 1990s and early 2000s, more than three-quarters of teens were having a sugary drink each day, according to earlier research.
The CDC reported the figures Thursday, based on a national survey last year of more than 11,000 high school students. They appear in one of the federal agency’s publications, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Consumption of sugary drinks is considered a big public health problem, and has been linked to the U.S. explosion in childhood obesity. One study of Massachusetts schoolchildren found that for each additional sweet drink…
Would You Eat Edible RFID Tags That Describe Your Food?
Bulgarian soup. Photo: Biso (CC)
Jesse Emspak writes in New Scientist:
For tracking, radio frequency identification (RFID) chips are the greatest thing since sliced bread. But what if the RFID chip was actually in the sliced bread?
A student at the Royal College of Art in London, Hannes Harms, has come up with a design for an edible RFID chip, part of a system he calls NutriSmart. The chip could send information about the food you eat to a personal computer or, conceivably, a mobile phone via a Bluetooth connection.
The idea is that it could send nutritional data and ingredients for people who have allergies, or calorie-counting for those on diets, or maybe even telling your fridge when the food has gone off. It could even be used to market organic food, with a chip holding data about the origin of that tuna steak you just bought.
The idea still raises a lot of…
New Apple Technology Stops iPhones From Filming Live Events
F@ck you, Apple (had to get that out of my system). Fox News reports:
CUPERTINO, Calif. — Fans at concerts and sports games may soon be stopped from using their iPhones to film the action —as a result of new technology being considered by Apple, The Times of London reported Thursday.
The California company has plans to build a system that will sense when a person is trying to film a live event using a cell phone and automatically switch off their camera.
A patent application filed by Apple, and obtained by the Times, reveals how the software would work. If a person were to hold up their iPhone, the device would trigger the attention of infra-red sensors installed at the venue. These sensors would then instruct the iPhone to disable its camera.
Apple declined to comment.
John Abarr, Former Ku Klux Klansman, Running For Congress in Montana To ‘Save The White Race’
Christine Roberts writes in the New York Daily News:
A former organizer for the Ku Klux Klan announced Wednesday that he will run as a Republican for Montana’s U.S. House seat.
John Abarr, 41, says he wants to run in response to the election of the America’s first black President in effort to “save the white race.”
“I am running to draw attention to the fact that white people are becoming a minority and losing our political power and way of life,” he said.
Abarr is running on a platform of legalizing marijuana, increasing mental health programs, keeping abortion legal and abolishing the death penalty.
Madame Restell: The Wickedest Woman in New York
Madame Restell was a flamboyant 19th century abortionist whom history remembers as ”the wickedest woman in New York” —but had she been? Victorian Gothic takes a critical look:
The cover of The New York Illustrated Times for February 23rd, 1878 depicts the arrest of the notorious abortionist Ann Lohman, alias “Madame Restell,” by the moral crusader Anthony Comstock. Flanked by reporters and deputies, the statuesque crime-fighter is pictured with a search warrant in hand, which he reads to the lady villain in the attitude of a holy messenger, banishing evil by its sacred words. Comfortably situated amongst the opulent furnishings of her Fifth Avenue mansion, Madame Restell wears a cool, appraising expression, as if to say “Ah, Comstock, my nemesis—I have been expecting you.” Her right hand is clenched into a fist, which overlaps the womb of a veiled woman who weeps with shame in the background.
Dubbed the “wickedest woman in New…
Alex Jones On WWIII (Video)
Apply as many grains of salt as you see fit (personally I think he makes many good points, but WWIII? I’d be surprised), but here is Alex’s predictions on the impending WWIII:
The Secret History of Iraq’s Invisible War
Noah Shachtman writes in Wired’s Danger Room:
In the early years of the Iraq war, the U.S. military developed a technology so secret that soldiers would refuse to acknowledge its existence, and reporters mentioning the gear were promptly escorted out of the country. That equipment – a radio-frequency jammer – was upgraded several times, and eventually robbed the Iraq insurgency of its most potent weapon, the remote-controlled bomb. But the dark veil surrounding the jammers remained largely intact, even after the Pentagon bought more than 50,000 units at a cost of over $17 billion.
Recently, however, I received an unusual offer from ITT, the defense contractor which made the vast majority of those 50,000 jammers. Company executives were ready to discuss the jammer – its evolution, and its capabilities. They were finally able to retell the largely-hidden battles for the electromagnetic spectrum that raged, invisibly, as the insurgencies carried on. They were…
