Archive for August, 2011
Tin Foil Hats Actually Enable Mind Control
Does fashioning a “helmet” out of aluminum foil to block government-beamed mind control waves actually work? MIT’s Ali Rahimi (at right) and several colleagues found that the foil magnifies, rather than blocks, radio waves, specifically at government-controlled frequencies — oops. There are great pictures of the “study” being conducted:
We evaluated the performance of three different helmet designs, commonly referred to as the Classical, the Fez, and the Centurion. The helmets were made of Reynolds aluminium foil. As per best practices, all three designs were constructed with the double layering technique described elsewhere.
A radio-frequency test signal sweeping the ranges from 10 Khz to 3 Ghz was generated using an omnidirectional antenna attached to the Agilent 8714ET’s signal generator.
The helmets amplify frequency bands that coincide with those allocated to the US government between 1.2 Ghz and 1.4 Ghz. According to the FCC, These bands are supposedly reserved for ”radio location” (ie, GPS), and…
Prehistoric Marine Reptile Fossil Found With Embryo Inside
It’s been a widely accepted fact that reptiles lay eggs. But did they always? New findings in a pleiosaurs’ fossil revealed that this marine reptile gave birth to live young. Via New Scientist:
Think less sea monsters, more doting parents: the long-necked plesiosaurs that roamed the seas during the dinosaur era gave birth to live young. They probably cared for their offspring and may even have lived in large social groups, like modern-day whales.
Plesiosaurs were reptiles, which as a group tend to lay eggs rather than giving birth. Other prehistoric marine reptiles were known to be exceptions to that rule, but until now fossil evidence that plesiosaurs did the same has been frustratingly elusive. “People have looked and looked,” says F. Robin O’Keefe of Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia.
Last year O’Keefe was called in to help prepare a fossil plesiosaur for display in the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Originally excavated…
Electronic Tattoo Has Medical, Gaming And Spy Uses
Photo: J. Rogers
BBC News reports:
An “electronic tattoo” could herald a revolution in the way patients are monitored and provide a breakthrough in computer gaming, say US scientists.
They used the device, which is thinner than a human hair, to monitor the heart and brain, according to a study in the journal Science.
The sensor attaches to human skin just like a temporary tattoo and can move, wrinkle and stretch without breaking.
Researchers hope it could replace bulky equipment currently used in hospitals.
A mass of cables, wires, gel-coated sticky pads and monitors are currently needed to keep track of a patient’s vital signs.
[Continues at BBC News]
Romney: ‘Corporations Are People, My Friend’
Mitt Romney. Photo: Jessica Rinaldi (CC)
Do not vote for this man! Via AP:
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, clearly irritated by a handful of hecklers amid supporters at the Iowa State Fair, insisted Thursday that “corporations are people,” a comment Democrats gleefully predicted would be a defining moment of his campaign.
Hours before he was to face most of his primary opponents in an Iowa debate, the former Massachusetts governor was outlining options for reining in the federal deficit and overhauling entitlement programs. He acknowledged that raising taxes on individuals was an option, but he said he opposed it.
That’s when about a dozen hecklers started shouting at him.
“Corporations! Corporations!” they said, seemingly suggesting that corporations should take the brunt of new taxes.
“Corporations are people, my friend,” Romney said with uncharacteristic pique…
[continues at AP]
Dylan Ratigan Blasts U.S. Political & Banking Ties and the Partisan Hacks’ Excuses (Video)
Britain Is Only ‘Four Meals Away From Anarchy’
[Site notice: Re-posting this now (originally posted 7/19/2011) due to a timely observation (of an older post) from Disinfo.com commenter SuddenlySpam.] A blast from the past for all you newshounds. Enjoy via the Times:
Modern civilisation may not be quite as safe as we thought. Britain’s security services have been privately warning their staff that western societies are just 48 hours from anarchy. MI5’s maxim is that society is “four meals away from anarchy”. In other words, the security agency believes that Britain could be quickly reduced to large-scale disorder, including looting and rioting in the event of a catastrophe that stops the supply of food.
The maxim will provoke debate over whether MI5 is over-egging the threat, partly to justify its rapidly growing budget. It also opens a wider question as to whether civilised societies could so quickly revert to primitive behaviour. MI5 — whose motto is “regnum defende”, defend the…
Tim’s Awesome (UFO Encounter) Show in Greenpoint, Brooklyn (Video)
Occam’s razor? Video shot by Tim Heidecker of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! fame:
Anti-Nanotechnology Terrorist Sect Strikes In Mexico
Extremists in Mexico are trying to save humanity from our own technology before it’s too late through mail-bomb attacks against researchers — some people just really do not like messing around with particles at the atomic level. Via Newser:
A radical group that opposes nanotechnology has has claimed responsibility for at least two bombing attacks on researchers in Mexico and it praises the “Unabomber,” whose mail-bombs killed three people and injured 23 in the United States.
A manifesto posted Tuesday on a radical website mentions at least five other Mexican researchers whose work it opposes, and lauded Theodore Kaczynski, who is serving a life sentence for bombs that targeted university professors and airline executives. It was issued in the name of a group whose title could be translated as “Individuals Tending Toward the Savage.”
Mexico State prosecutors’ spokesman Sonia Davila said authorities are investigating the authenticity of the manifesto, but said its description…
UK May Block Facebook And Twitter To Quell Riots
Following another night of disorder in a country beset by deep inequality, corruption in the halls of power, and scant opportunity for young adults, the conservative regime in Bahrain has threatened to cut off access to social networking websites until the unrest subsides. Oh sorry — this is the news from England. Via Raw Story:
In a move that calls to mind the start of the most serious unrest in nations across the Middle East over the last year, David Cameron, Britain’s prime minister, told Parliament Thursday that authorities may shut down social media websites like Facebook and Twitter, in hopes that it would return calm to their streets.
The remarks came one day after British authorities discussed turning off the messaging function on BlackBerry phones, which they suggested may remove a tool protesters and rioters were using.
“Everyone watching these horrific actions will be struck by how they were organized via social…
Systems Collapse When The Irrational Is Considered Rational
Photo: Agamisudo (CC)
Oh thank you, Wikipedia, for this definition:
“Irrationality is cognition, thinking, talking or acting without inclusion of rationality. It is more specifically described as an action or opinion given through inadequate reasoning, emotional distress, or cognitive deficiency. The term is used, usually pejoratively, to describe thinking and actions that are, or appear to be, less useful or more illogical than other more rational alternatives.”
And what about this one? Market Psychology? This term is defined in the Investopedia this way:
“The overall sentiment or feeling that the market is experiencing at any particular time. Greed, fear, expectations and circumstances are all factors that contribute to the group’s overall investing mentality of sentiment.”
Q: What do we have when we put the two together?
A: The current madness and market mayhem.
S&P’s downgrade is being blamed for the market panic even though all the business media expected a downgrade and initially minimized its potential impact. The ratings…
A Cancer Breakthrough
Photo: Dr. Carl June / Penn Medicine
Eryn Brown reports for the LA Times that in early results from a clinical trial, genetically engineered T cells eradicate leukemia cells and thrive. Two of three patients studied have been cancer-free for more than a year:
In a potential breakthrough in cancer research, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have genetically engineered patients’ T cells — a type of white blood cell — to attack cancer cells in advanced cases of a common type of leukemia.
Two of the three patients who received doses of the designer T cells in a clinical trial have remained cancer-free for more than a year, the researchers said.
Experts not connected with the trial said the feat was important because it suggested that T cells could be tweaked to kill a range of cancers, including ones of the blood, breast and colon.
“This is a huge accomplishment — huge,” said Dr. Lee…
U.S. Military Plane Can Fly London-Sydney In Less Than Hour
Hypersonic Technology Vehicle HTV-2 reentry (artist's impression)
Wow – so once this thing goes commercial you’ll only spend 5 hours having your “junk” scanned and probed at the airport and less than an hour in the air. Report from the Guardian:
By the time you finish reading this sentence, the Falcon HTV-2, the fastest plane ever built, could have flown 18 miles. It would get from London to Sydney in less than an hour, while withstanding temperatures of almost 2,000C, hotter than the melting point of steel.
At 3pm BST on Thursday , the US Defence Advance Research Projects Agency will launch the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 on the back of a rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. If all goes to plan, engineers will launch the Falcon HTV-2 to the edge of space, before detaching the plane and guiding it on a hypersonic flight that will reach speeds…
London Riot Fire Destroys Warehouse Containing 150 Indie Record Labels’ Inventory
A creative tragedy of immense proportions in London, as a fire has wiped out a massive distribution warehouse that housed the physical stock of most of the U.K.’s seminal independent music labels. Some of the labels will cease to exist, and some may have lost their entire back catalogs of vinyl. Via Pitchfork:
A Sony distribution warehouse in North London was burned to the ground around during the third night of riots in the UK, as the BBC reports. The 200,000 square-foot center housed the entire inventory of PIAS UK, the primary distribution hub for more than 150 independent labels.
No injuries were reported in the blaze, but all inventory is feared lost. XL/Beggars, Warp, Rough Trade, Domino, 4AD, Sub Pop, Secretly Canadian, Jagjaguwar, Drag City, Thrill Jockey, FatCat, Kompakt, Mute, Ninja Tune, Vice, and Soul Jazz are among those affected.
Pandas Raised By People In Panda Suits
Via ShortList, the story of a panda born into captivity in China that lives surrounded by humans in realistic panda costumes. It’s enough to make one wonder, have I lived my life surrounded by superior beings in human suits?
A captive born panda who has never seen a human face has celebrated his 1st birthday at Wolong Panda wild training base in China.
To prevent him from getting used to humans, since his birth staff have only ever approached him while wearing completely inconspicuous panda suits and have observed him and his mother from afar. As such they are hoping that he will adapt to life in the wild.
Since his birth Tao Tao has been learning all the behaviors pandas need in the wild, such as walking, climbing trees and looking for food. Tao Tao now weighs 25kg and is displaying wild panda habits, such as climbing trees and looking for food…
The Trouble With Too Much Democracy
Is America’s bigger problem the economic decline or it’s political decay? Andrew Potter writes in Axis of Logic:
The most telling moment of the recent standoff over talks to raise the American government’s debt ceiling came on July 22, when President Barack Obama called a press conference to announce that House Speaker John Boehner had backed out of the negotiations. “I’ve been left at the altar twice now,” Obama pouted. In case the image of the President as a jilted lover was not clear to everyone watching, he added that he had spent the previous day waiting for Boehner to return his phone calls.
The whole affair has left a lot of Americans in a state of bipartisan disgust, with citizens from all points on the political compass cursing out their elected representatives. Yet it doesn’t seem to have occurred to many people that there is something structurally flawed with a system…
NASA: Building Blocks Of DNA Come From Space
Will Mormonism’s creation theory of the seed of humanity arriving on Earth from a distant planet turn out to be proved totally true? Geekosystem writes:
NASA researchers studying meteorites have found that they contain several of the components needed to make DNA on Earth. The discovery provides support for the idea that the building blocks for DNA were likely created in space, and carried to Earth on objects, like meteorites, that crashed into the planet’s surface. According to the theory, the ready-made DNA parts could have then assembled under Earth’s early conditions to create the first DNA.
The researchers, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, found adenine and guanine — two of the nucleobases needed to make DNA (the other two are thymine and cytosine, which were not found) — on meteorite samples. Additionally, the samples showed the presence of three molecules that are similar to nucleobases, but do not have a biological role…
Austerity And The UK Riots
Are the riots that have engulfed North London and elsewhere linked to the recent slashing of funds for education, social services, and youth centers? The London Review of Books blog says, duh, yes:
Anyone who says the riots don’t have anything to do with the cuts should have a read of ‘Austerity and Anarchy: Budget Cuts and Social Unrest in Europe 1919-2009’, a discussion paper issued under the auspices of the Centre for Economic Policy Research’s international macroeconomics programme and currently doing the rounds on Twitter, which looks at the relationship between budget cuts and civil unrest across Europe since the end of the First World War:
The results show a clear positive correlation between fiscal retrenchment and instability. We test if the relationship simply reflects economic downturns, and conclude that this is not the key factor.
So much for ‘criminality pure and simple’.
SETI Is Back!
Good news for those hoping to find aliens, reported by Deborah Netburn for the LA Times:
Citizens of the world: You are awesome. This week the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute announced that it had raised more than $200,000 from a crowd-sourced fundraising effort that launched this spring. The money, which came from just over 2,000 people who want to keep the search for alien life alive, will help the institute put its Allen Telescope Array back online.
“We are so grateful to our donors,” said Tom Pierson, who co-founded the SETI Institute with Jill Tarter (the inspiration for Jodie Foster’s character in “Contact”). “We believe we will be back on the air in September.”
On the Setistars website, where the call for donations was originally placed, large red type proclaims: “Thank You for Your Support to Resume the Search!”
The Allen Telescope Array, or ATA, is a series of 42 linked radio-telescope dishes funded by a $30-million…
The Twitter Stripper Photo From UK Riots
This photo has been making waves since it was uploaded to Twitter, supposedly depicting a man stripping off his clothes under the threat of violence from the man at right during the recent civil disturbances in Britain (this scene reportedly from Birmingham).
Is it what it seems or is it intentionally misleading in a clumsy attempt to spark race-related violence?
