Archive for July, 2011
Anonymous Claims to Breach NATO Security
Via Fox News:
NATO is looking into claims that hackers have breached its security and accessed scads of material so confidential the hacker group itself deemed it “irresponsible” to publish them all, despite a series of international raids Tuesday designed to corral the hacking activity.
“NATO is aware that hacker group released what it claims to be NATO classified documents on the internet,” a NATO spokseman said in a statement. “NATO security experts are investigating these claims. We strongly condemn any leak of classified documents which could potentially endanger the security of NATO allies, armed forces and citizens.”
The group, which goes by the name “Anonymous,” claimed to be sitting on about 1 gigabyte of data. The hackers broadcast a link to a PDF file Thursday via Twitter, showing what appeared to be a document headed “NATO Restricted.”
The group’s actions have become intolerable, Steven Chabinsky, deputy assistant FBI director, said in an interview…
Pentagon to Lift U.S. Military’s Gay Ban
Viola Gienger reports on Bloomberg:
Top Pentagon officials will announce tomorrow their decision to certify lifting the ban on gays serving openly in the armed forces, two defense officials said.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are ready to certify that the armed forces are fully prepared for the change and that it won’t harm military readiness, said the officials who weren’t authorized to discuss the decision before the announcement.
President Barack Obama signed legislation into law in December that would repeal the prohibition, called “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” 60 days after the Defense Department drafts a plan for putting the new regulations in place and Obama and Pentagon officials certify that the shift wouldn’t harm recruitment, retention or readiness.
Obama is scheduled to meet with Panetta and Mullen tomorrow afternoon.
A Look at the Tea Party Version of Fiscal Responsibility
The public Tea Party message, we are told, is one of fiscal responsibility. That means paying your debts living within your means, not wildly spending what you don’t have and defaulting to your creditors but according to Benjamin Spillman in the the Las Vegas Review-Journal the walk is much different than talk for the Tea Party Nation:
Some Tennessee tea partiers are in hot water with a Las Vegas gambling resort that’s accusing them of skipping out on a big hotel bill.
On Monday Venetian Casino Resort, LLC., filed suit against Tea Party Nation Corporation of Franklin, Tenn., alleging the group owes $642,144 for canceling a conservative conclave last year. The event, which had been scheduled for July 14–18, 2010, was first postponed until October and ultimately canceled.
The Daily Caller reported at the time there was a lack of people willing to pay $399 for a weekend pass or $125 per day to…
Dooming Ourselves Deeper Into Debt
Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:
The showdown over the budget and the debt ceiling continues to drag on and Congress is still attempting to cut spending down to nothing but defense, tax breaks for the wealthy and their own salaries. While politicians continue to rail against taxes and spending and the media hypes the “gang of six”, it seems that we’re quietly moving past an interesting historical marker. Ten years ago, former President George W. Bush signed the first round of tax cuts and the Treasury Department began to borrow billions in order to pay for them.
Think Progress reports that on August 1, 2001, the AP ran a story on the Treasury announcing its intent to borrow $51 billion to cover the tax rebate checks handed out by the Bush Administration. In addition, the article highlighted the Democratic argument against the Bush tax cuts: “Democrats argued that President Bush’s $1.35 trillion…
Anti-Depressant Patients Are More Likely to Suffer Depression Relapse
Photo: Tom Varco (CC)
From ScienceDaily:
In a paper that is likely to ignite new controversy in the hotly debated field of depression and medication, evolutionary psychologist Paul Andrews concludes that patients who have used anti-depressant medications can be nearly twice as susceptible to future episodes of major depression.
Andrews, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, is the lead author of a new paper in the journal Frontiers of Psychology.
The meta-analysis suggests that people who have not been taking any medication are at a 25 per cent risk of relapse, compared to 42 per cent or higher for those who have taken and gone off an anti-depressant.
Andrews and his colleagues studied dozens of previously published studies to compare outcomes for patients who used anti-depressants compared to those who used placebos.
They analyzed research on subjects who started on medications and were switched to placebos, subjects who were administered placebos…
Calls to Assassinate the President is Protected Speech, Says 9th Circuit Court
Walter E. Bagdasarian.
Stephen C. Webster writes in the Raw Story:
A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that calling for someone to kill the President of the United States cannot be classified as a threat because standing law does not prohibit “predictions or exhortations” to violence.
In a 2-1 decision, judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that California resident Walter E. Bagdasarian was engaging in free speech when he wrote that Obama “will have a 50 cal in the head soon,” then called on someone to “shoot the nig.”
Bagdasarian published his comments on a Yahoo finance website in the weeks leading up to the 2008 presidential election. He was arrested weeks later, after one of the other commenters reported a potential threat to the Secret Service. During a search of his residence, authorities discovered that he did indeed possess a .50 caliber rifle.
“These statements are particularly repugnant because they directly…
Billionaire Carves Name In Desert So Large It Can Be Seen From Space
Note: click on the image below to see on Google Maps. Harry Haydon writes in the Sun:
A desert sheikh has carved out a big name for himself — by having his moniker etched in capital letters visible from space. Workmen scoured “HAMAD” into the sand on the orders of Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Nahyan.
The name is two miles across — with letters a kilometre high. It is so huge that the “H”, the first “A” and part of the “M” have been made into waterways. The mega-rich sheikh, 63 — a member of the ruling family of Abu Dhabi — in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates — boasts a £14billion fortune that is second only to the Saudi king’s.
Preacher Protests The Midnight Harry Potter Screening
“You have stuff on your head, Jesus has stuff in his heart.” A bible-loving preacher, AKA comedian Paul Gale, ruffles feathers when he comes out to protest the deviance of the New York City midnight premier of Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Pt. 2. His voice sounds like a soft Southern wind:
Duck And Cover: The Citizen Kane Of PSAs
Few films, let alone ones running under ten minutes, have been as frequently referenced, reproduced and satirized as Duck and Cover, yet it is never regarded seriously. Conelrad gives this key piece of cinematic history the treatment it deserves:
We have spent the last two years thoroughly researching DUCK AND COVER’s production history as well as its initial public reception in 1952. Interviews were conducted with living participants involved in the making of the film as well as surviving family members of those key players who had passed away.
Just how did the term “Duck and Cover” become universal shorthand for the paranoid excesses of the Cold War and for every geo-political panic attack since? The film is, after all, the Citizen Kane of American civil defense motion pictures. Clips from this movie are used almost every time a news piece is produced on the 1950’s or the Cold War. It struck us…
Israel Will Attack Iran In The Fall
Robert Baer
Well it won’t be much of a surprise then, will it? The presenter and narrator of three disinformation documentary films (the two Cult of the Suicide Bomber films and Car Bomb), ex-CIA Middle East agent Bob Baer lets the cat out of the bag, as reported by Al Jazeera:
A longtime CIA officer who spent 21 years in the Middle East is predicting that Israel will bomb Iran in the fall, dragging the United States into another major war and endangering US military and civilian personnel (and other interests) throughout the Middle East and beyond.
Earlier this week, Robert Baer appeared on the provocative KPFK Los Angeles show Background Briefing, hosted by Ian Masters. It was there that he predicted that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is likely to ignite a war with Iran in the very near future.
Robert Baer has had a storied career, including a stint in Iraq in the 1990s…
Jesus Appears On Walmart Receipt In South Carolina
This is basically the essence of United States encapsulated in a single news story. CBS 21 reports:
An engaged couple in Anderson County says a shadowy image that turned up on a receipt from Walmart looks like the face of Jesus.
Jacob Simmons and his fiancee, Gentry Lee Sutherland, said they bought some pictures from Walmart on June 12. The following Wednesday, the couple had just come home from a church service when Simmons spotted the receipt on the floor of Sutherland’s apartment. He says the receipt had changed. “I was leaving the kitchen and I just looked on the floor, and it was like it was looking at me,” Simmons said.
A dark gray mark on the receipt seems to show two eyes, a nose and a mouth in a thickly bearded face. “Then the more you look at it, the more it looked like Jesus, and it was just shocking, breathtaking,” Simmons…
Monsanto Monster Weeds Spreading Fast
Michael J. Coren warns that Monsanto’s Roundup was supposed to make it easy for farmers to get rid of weeds, but it’s working on fewer and fewer plants, including some monsters that can grow three inches a day and destroy farm equipment, for Fast Company:
For decades, farmers had it relatively easy when it came to weeds infesting their soil: apply herbicides, wait for the weeds to die and grow more crops. Those salad days, alas, are coming to an end.
A new series of studies released by Weed Science this month finds at least 21 weed species have become resistant to the popular herbicide glyphosate (sold as Monsanto’s Roundup), and a growing number survive multiple herbicides, so-called “super-weeds.” The same selection pressure creating bacteria resistant to multiple antibiotics is leading to the rapid evolution of plants that survive modern herbicides. If the trend continues, yields could drop and food costs climb as weeds…
China’s Fake Apple Stores
Fascinatingly, in is now common in China to find counterfeit branches of the Apple store.
Then again, what makes any Apple store “real” when the point is to use psychology to sell an intangible “brand”? And how can you tell a real Apple store from a fraudulent one? Paradoxically, real Apple stores never say “Apple store”. The Consumerist reports:
An American blogger living in the middle of China was amazed to stumble across a fake Apple store in her town. It was a complete counterfeit of a real Apple store, designed to look like the real thing. It had signage, and employees walking around in the iconic blue shirts with those lanyard nametags. It had the big long wooden tables with Apple products on them and the typical Apple store winding staircase. But certain details were off.
None of the employee nametags had their names on it. They just said “staff.” And Apple never writes…
How Buzz Aldrin Answers Moon Landing Conspiracy Theorists (Video)
42 years ago today Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon, and Buzz doesn’t enjoy anyone saying otherwise:
Here’s more on what got Buzz so worked up.
Youth In Revolt In Puerto Rico
Wondering why American citizens aren’t up in arms in the streets, à la Spain, Egypt, Greece, and elsewhere? Well, they are, just not on the mainland.
Al Jazeera’s always-intriguing Fault Lines visits the island to look at the massive protests as the government imposes big cuts in education and social services, rending Puerto Rico a guinea pig in a harsh conservative “fiscal experiment”:
‘Air-Conditioned’ Clothes Keep Japan Cool
With temperatures rising the last thing you’d want to do is put on a jacket, but Japan’s ‘air-conditioned’ coats have built-in fans to keep you cool. Via France24:
As jackets go it looks far from fashionable, but its Japanese maker cannot meet sky-rocketing demand for “air conditioned” coats with built-in fans.
Kuchofuku Co. Ltd — whose name literally means “air-conditioned clothing” — has seen orders soar amid power shortages in Japan after the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
As parts of the nation sweat out an uncomfortable summer shackled by restrictions on electricity use, demand has grown for goods that provide guilt-free respite from the unrelenting summer heat.
Two electric fans in the jacket can be controlled to draw air in at different speeds, giving the garment a puffed-up look. But this has not deterred those happy to be cool rather than “hot” when it comes to fashion.
Cryptozoology Meeting In London
Can the search for monsters and mystery creatures please become a reputable branch of science? Scientific American has a report on a meeting of experts who take the matter very seriously. Maybe they can investigate my mother-in-law (*slide whistle*):
The meeting was chaired by Henry Gee. Henry explained how the discovery of Homo floresiensis led him to take seriously the idea that “perhaps stories of other human-like creatures might be founded on grains of truth” (Gee 2004).
Dr. Michael Woodley showed how species discovery curves for large marine animals generally seem to match the numbers of undiscovered species purported to exist on the basis of circumstantial accounts. In discussing several key ‘Cadborosaurus’ and long-necked seal accounts, Michael also explained how – since most cryptozoological claims are published in the ‘grey literature’ – they escape evaluation, even when this is deserved or even required.
If cryptozoology is imagined as the investigation of ‘target’ animals whose existence…
Rupert Murdoch Optical Illusion
Via The World’s Best Ever, while being grilled by Britain’s Parliament yesterday, the News Corp. head was revealed in him true form thanks to an extremely unfortunate background:
President Obama Endorses ‘Respect For Marriage’ Act
It’s not often that the White House endorses a bill before it goes through the Senate or House, but President Obama did just that when he endorsed the Respect for Marriage Act today. With same-sex marraiges becoming legal in more and more states, this bill is a step towards equal taxation and social security survivor benefits, since there are “more than 1,000 federal rights and responsibilities gays and lesbians do not have access to because of DOMA.” From Joe Mirabella at Change.org:
Today President Obama endorsed the Respect for Marriage Act, a bill that would strike down DOMA and give legally married gays and lesbians the same federal rights and responsibilities as married straight couples.
Shin Inouye, a spokesperson for the White House, told Change.org, “The President has long called for a legislative repeal of the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act,” which continues to have a real impact on the lives of…
