Archive for September, 2011
Now You Can See Images From Someone Else’s Mind
The implications of this are mind-boggling – one has visions of the scientists being moved to Guantanamo Bay for some real life “testing.” Katie Moisse reports for ABC News:
California scientists have found a way to see through another person’s eyes.
Researchers from UC Berkeley were able to reconstruct YouTube videos from viewers’ brain activity — a feat that might one day offer a glimpse into our dreams, memories and even fantasies.
“This is a major leap toward reconstructing internal imagery,” said Jack Gallant, professor of psychology and coauthor of a study published today in Current Biology. “We are opening a window into the movies in our minds.”…
Towards Total Evolution
Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media
It might be odd to say and seemingly unconnected, but when I consider what’s happening on Wall Street, or the halls of government, or the streets of any number of cities across the world, I can’t help but think back to our missions to the moon in the 60’s.
We had a clear goal, a common purpose and yes, it was for the wrong reasons (beating the commies into the 21st century, global superiority, etc) but I like to believe that some piece of every human felt good about doing something so exceedingly evolutionary, so extraordinary, that for one brief second it woke us out of our day to day existence, shook the foundations of all our belief structures and told our collective subconscious “we can do more.”
Because we can. As Bucky Fuller pointed out, we have the technology and capability to feed, clothe, house and…
The Hidden Story Of The Up With People Singers
Failure Magazine examines the bizarre hidden story of “Up With People”, the gigantic 1970s singing ensemble which operated almost as a cult, performed at the Super Bowl and met with presidents and the Pope, and was quietly funded by corporations such as Exxon and Coca-Cola that were eager to put forward a youth-y alternative to authority-questioning counterculture:
Before there were yuppies, there were uppies—the term Up With People members use to refer to themselves. Most Americans over the age of 35 are vaguely familiar with Up With People, as its cast members have sung to more than 20 million people worldwide, and at the height of the ensemble’s fame it provided the halftime entertainment at four Super Bowls (1976, 1980, ’82, ’86). But many are unaware of the group’s cultish utopian ideology, its political connectedness, and how it was funded by corporate America, part of a deliberate propaganda effort to discredit liberal…
5,000 Years of Sustainability
While we currently venerate technology as the panacea for our catastrophic environmental ills, what if we could contextually approach and learn from sustainable civilizations that thrived in the distant reaches of North America’s past? Jude Isabella writes on Archeology:
A re-evaluation of evidence along North America’s western coast shows how its earliest inhabitants managed the sea’s resources stone walls serve as evidence that early peoples cultivated the intertidal zones to build clam gardens and fish traps
When the tide is out, the table is set. —Tlingit proverb
The tide is going out at Gibsons Beach, in the Strait of Georgia on Canada’s west coast. When the tide is low, it’s easy to spot rock walls in the intertidal zone, the area of shore land that’s exposed during low tide and hidden when the tide is in. A person can look at this beach for years and never understand that apparently random scatterings…
Marijuana Prevents PTSD In Rats
An Israeli study suggests that the best thing you can hand to one of our soldiers returning from a war zone is a joint. When administered within 24 hours of a traumatic experience, marijuana miraculously prevented post-traumatic stress disorder from later occurring (perhaps due to the drug’s temporary effects on receptors in the amygdala, the part of the brain that regulates stress and fear). AFP reports:
Marijuana administered in a timely fashion could block the development of post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms in rats, a new study conducted at Haifa University has found.
The study, which was conducted by researchers at the university’s psychology department and published in the Neuropsychopharmacology journal, found that rats which were treated with marijuana within 24 hours of a traumatic experience, successfully avoided any symptoms of PTSD.
“There is a critical ‘window of time’ after trauma, during which synthetic marijuana can help prevent symptoms similar to PTSD in rats,” said…
Occupy Wall Street: Civil War or Smokescreen?
Via Modern Mythology:
As many of you know by now, #occupywallstreet is going strong. Or, at least, a couple hundred more people are living on the NYC streets for the time being.
An Ampedstatus headline reports, “Full-Blown Civil War Erupts On Wall Street: As Reality Finally Hits The Financial Elite, They Start Turning On Each Other”,
“Finally, after trillions in fraudulent activity, trillions in bailouts, trillions in printed money, billions in political bribing and billions in bonuses, the criminal cartel members on Wall Street are beginning to get what they deserve. As the Eurozone is coming apart at the seams and as the US economy grinds to a halt, the financial elite are starting to turn on each other. The lawsuits are piling up fast. Here’s an extensive roundup:
As I reported last week:”Goliath On The Ropes, Big Banks Getting Hit Hard, It’s A “Bloodbath” As Wall Street’s Crimes Blow Up In Their Face”
Time to…
Louis C.K. on George Carlin (Video)
A future master praising a past (and always remembered) master:
Wild & Crazy Sci-Fi Abilities of Real-Life Plants
Via Blastr:
Plants don’t get enough respect as sci-fi monsters. Sure, Triffids will always rule, but sci-fi baddies tend to be mutants, zombies, vampires and other altered mammals. This is in ignorance of plants’ amazingly creepy special abilities. To prove it, we’ve dug up six plant skills that freak us out more than Godzilla.
Eating Rats: Okay, here’s the horrifying plot: You’re a missionary near the Philippine Archipelago. While doing your daily missioning or whatever, you wander up to the top of a mountain. Thirsty, you stumble upon what looks like an ornate birdbath filled with nectar. Leaning over to take a sip, you see a dead rat inside … and it’s slowly being digested by the plant.
This is Nepenthes attenboroughii, one of the most badass scary plants on Earth. See, while most pitcher plants stick to eating bugs, Nepenthes attenboroughii prefers to lure in birds and rats by looking as tasty…
Monsanto Corn Falls to Illinois Bugs
Tom Philpott writes in Mother Jones:
As the summer growing season draws to a close, 2011 is emerging as the year of the super-insect — the year pests officially developed resistance to Monsanto’s genetically engineered (ostensibly) bug-killing corn.
While the revelation has given rise to alarming headlines, neither Monsanto nor the EPA, which regulates pesticides and pesticide-infused crops, can credibly claim surprise. Scientists have been warning that the EPA’s rules for planting the crop were too lax to prevent resistance since before the agency approved the crop in 2003. And in 2008, research funded by Monsanto itself showed that resistance was an obvious danger.
And now those unheeded warnings are proving prescient. In late July, as I reported recently, scientists in Iowa documented the existence of corn rootworms (a ravenous pest that attacks the roots of corn plants) that can happily devour corn plants that were genetically tweaked specifically to kill them. Monsanto’s corn,…
Media Roots on the Left/Right Paradigm
Doug Mckenty from KZYX’s Thursday Morning Report conducts an hour interview with Bay Area artist and community activist Abby Martin of Media Roots, where she reports from “outside party lines”. They discuss the false left/right paradigm, the electability of non establishment candidates, the renaissance of citizen journalism, censorship in the corporate press and 9/11:
Troy Davis Executed in Georgia
Reports the AP via CBS News:
Georgia executed Troy Davis on Wednesday night for the murder of an off-duty police officer, a crime he denied committing right to the end as supporters around the world mourned and declared that an innocent man was put to death.
Defiant to the end, he told relatives of Mark MacPhail that his 1989 slaying was not his fault. “I did not have a gun,” he insisted. “For those about to take my life,” he told prison officials, “may God have mercy on your souls. May God bless your souls.”
Davis was declared dead at 11:08 ET. The lethal injection began about 15 minutes earlier, after the Supreme Court rejected an 11th-hour request for a stay. The court did not comment on its order, which came about four hours after it received the request and more than three hours after the planned execution time.
Though Davis’ attorneys said seven…
The Problem with Social Democracy
An interesting article that highlights some inconsistencies Center-Left parties have in implementing a social-democratic platform while effectively maintaining and strengthening capitalism … Via Socialist Worker:
With the electoral breakthrough of the NDP in the federal election, attention to the nature of social democracy has returned to the political agenda. What do socialists say about the NDP and social democracy today?
There are two main views about parliamentary — or electoral — democracy in the history of the socialist movement. The social democratic view sees the liberal democratic state as a neutral body that can be peopled by delegates of the right or the left. Marxists, however, have stressed the limitations of the liberal democratic state. This view dates back to Marx’s analysis stated simply in the Communist Manifesto.
Contemporary social democratic parties, like the NDP or the Labour Party in the UK, keep a close eye on every aspect of parliamentary practice. Social…
Project Censored Speaks About Media Censorship & 9/11 (Video)
Peter Phillips from Project Censored speaks about media censorship and 9/11 at Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater’s film festival on 9/8/11:
Philippines To Outlaw Planking
Is this the first case of government repression to stamp out a meme? First they came for the plankers, then the owl-ers and cone-ers. From the Washington Post:
There’s some serious weight being thrown against planking, and it’s happening in the Philippines, where Quezon City representative Winston Castelo has filed a bill called the “Anti-Planking Act of 2011.”
Castelo proposed the act following a nationwide transport strike Monday over high oil prices. During the strike, a small group of people went planking at a busy roundabout in Manila to halt traffic.
In a statement, Castelo said that “unbelieving bus drivers and law enforcement authorities might just ram through these warm and living bodies rolled out on highways.”
The Manila Police District backed up Castelo, saying they planned to “break up” any future planking sessions and detain those involved.
The Men Who Crashed The World
In a fantastic new series called Meltdown, Al Jazeera looks at the people and machinations around the globe that were behind the financial collapse of 2008, beginning with the assertion that for a brief period, Henry Paulson “was the de facto president of the United States.”
Texas GOP Representative Declares ‘War On Birth Control’
The Texas Republican Party is engaged in a far-reaching and sustained “war on birth control”. No, that’s not the teaser from a Planned Parenthood press release — it’s the pronouncement of (aptly named) state legislator Wayne Christian. Creepiest war ever. Via Think Progress:
When The Texas Tribune asked state Rep. Wayne Christian (R-Nacogdoches), a supporter of the family planning cuts, if this was a war on birth control, he said “yes.”
“Well of course this is a war on birth control and abortions and everything, that’s what family planning is supposed to be about,” Christian said.
While disturbing, Christian’s honesty is a refreshing change from Republicans’ more common defense that cuts to women’s health care will save money. As NPR notes, the state estimates that 300,000 women will lose access to family planning services because of these cuts, resulting in roughly 20,000 additional unplanned births. “Texas already spends $1.3 billion on teen pregnancies…
British Inventor Claims Generator ‘Breaks The Laws Of Physics’
Via This Is Somerset:
A Wells inventor has put together a machine that he claims is the first step in creating free energy from perpetual motion. He says it produces more power than it consumes. But the patent office will not register the design — because if it works, it breaks the laws of physics. The machine, largely created out of leftover bicycle parts and a windscreen-washer motor uses high-powered magnets and a series of flywheels to apparently create energy from gravity.
Police Continue Crackdown on Wall Street, Facebook Users Allege Censorship
#OCCUPYWALLSTREET
For the breaking developments on this ongoing citizens action, please check the main hashtag for this peaceful demonstration here: http://twitter.com/#!/OccupyWallStNYC
Reports are coming in fast and furious from NYC Disinfonauts about the breakup of the ongoing actions in downtown Manhattan today. Numerous advocacy and citizens’ action groups came together beginning on Saturday to protest the ongoing consolidation of wealth from citizens to corporations, using the backdrop of the financial district to attempt to gain the attention of the national and international news media, located a scant 40 blocks north fo their efforts, but the media blackout continues.
Taken from the Adbusters / OWS website Occupy Wall Street:
Three hundred spent the night, several hundred reinforcements arrived the next day and as we write this, the encampment is digging in for a long-term stay. Now, it is crucial for everyone from all over the world to flock to the encampment. Call in to work sick,…
Around The World In One Minute Space Video
A time-lapse taken from the front of the International Space Station as it orbits our planet at night. This movie begins over the Pacific Ocean and continues over North and South America before entering daylight near Antarctica.
Visible cities, countries and landmarks include (in order) Vancouver Island, Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Phoenix. Multiple cities in Texas, New Mexico and Mexico. Mexico City, the Gulf of Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, El Salvador, Lightning in the Pacific Ocean, Guatemala, Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Lake Titicaca, and the Amazon. Also visible is the earths ionosphere (thin yellow line), a satellite (55sec) and the stars of our galaxy.
