Archive for October, 2011
Ralph Nader on the Two-Party Dictatorship, Anwar al-Awlaki, Occupy Wall Street (Video)
Via Media Roots:
Abby Martin of Media Roots talks to political activist and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader about Project Censored, the landscape of media censorship, the establishment co-opting of the tea party, the two party dictatorship in the US, Obama’s exacerbation of Bush era policies and the recent assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki:
A Post-Fossil Fuel World?
New Scientists reviews Robert Laughlin’s new book about the future of energy…
Starting with the premise that we’ll eventually stop using fossil fuels, Robert Laughlin imagines the energy sources of tomorrow
Robert Laughlin, a Nobel laureate for his work in quantum physics, starts his study of our energy futures with an absurd proposition — that it doesn’t matter much whether we burn all our coal and oil or leave it underground.
It’s a cop-out, of course. If we burn all the coal, we would probably burn too. But for the purposes of Powering the Future, it means “we don’t have to analyze contemporary energy struggles”. Instead, he moves swiftly on to imagine what a world that does not burn carbon might look like.
He likes nuclear best, and fast breeder reactors in particular, because they will extend the lifetime of available nuclear fuel to “about 20,000 years”. But he also has a soft spot for…
On Living As A Real-Life Psychopath
Wondering what it would be like to walk in Patrick Bateman’s shoes? From author Jon Ronson, a letter he received in response to The Psychopath Test, his much-talked-about book published a couple months ago, from a young psychopath (who felt no or guilt or emotion, but an overwhelming urge to prey on others). Can you empathize?
I just saw your interview on Australia’s ABC 7:30 report on ‘The Psychopath Test’ and wanted to share my experience. I hope that it can remain confidential for the time being, seeing as it is quite personal.
But, when I was 19 (I’m 26-27 now) I went into long-term therapy – for psychopathy.
My case was rather unusual in that I self-referred. The mental health agency had not had a walk-in of this kind before. In the lead up, I had found myself becoming overwhelmed with a predatorial instinct that I could not shake – I’d sit,…
Slavoj Zizek Speaks At Occupy Wall Street
A transcript of an inspiring speech by the Slovenian philosopher at Occupy Wall Street yesterday, via Impose Magazine:
In mid-April 2011, the Chinese government prohibited on TV, films, and novels all stories that contain alternate reality or time travel. This is a good sign for China. These people still dream about alternatives, so you have to prohibit this dreaming. Here, we don’t need a prohibition because the ruling system has even oppressed our capacity to dream. Look at the movies that we see all the time. It’s easy to imagine the end of the world. An asteroid destroying all life and so on. But you cannot imagine the end of capitalism.
They are saying we are all losers, but the true losers are down there on Wall Street. They were bailed out by billions of our money. We are called socialists, but here there is always socialism for the rich. They say…
The Incredible Krystle Cole Trip
Vice presents the wild trip of Krystle Cole as part of its Hamilton’s Pharmacopoeia series:
There is no facile synthesis of the events that transpired at the Wamego missile silo between October 1 and November 4, 2000. The available information is a viscous solution of truths, half-lies, three-quarter truths, and outright lies, the fractionation of which yields no pure product. The dramatis personae are many and varied. The chemicals in question often obscure and untested…
Living in Little Boxes
For years, it has been reported that standard homesizes (with the US being the glaring exception) are shrinking. How small is too small? And what is the relationship between liveable space, architecture, community, and sustainability? In this article from the Independent, RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) “slams” the (non) architectural standards of suburban house building.
Architects have criticised the “shameful shoe-box homes” being built in Britain today, saying many are too small for family life. Research by the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) found the floor area of the average new three-bedroom home in the UK is 88 sq m, some 8 sq m short of the recommended space.
One-bedroom properties, at an average of 46 sq m, are 4 sq m smaller than the recommended size, the Case For Space study found. This is the equivalent of a single bed, a bedside table and a dressing table with a…
The Non-Verbal Newspaper
In 1977, Swiss graphic designer Hans-Rudolf Lutz conducted an interesting experiment by stripping all language from a daily newspaper — I’d like to try this process with some contemporary publications:
This book consists of an inventory of all the non-verbal information contained in a daily newspaper. All of the words have been cut out of the Edmonton Journal of 16 August 1977 (the day on which Elvis Presley died). How do we ‘read’ pictures with no verbal context or information? What is the informative value of typographical structures and orders when stripped of meaning? The visual material in this publication provides a basis for the debate on these questions.
Japanese Hair-Washing Robot For The Elderly
In the future, old people (and eventually young people) will be bathed, clothed, comforted and nurtured by “caring” robots. Reuters reports:
It may look like a glorified salon chair, but a new Japanese hair-washing robot replicates the dexterous touch of a human hand to care for the locks of the elderly and the infirm.
Its creators at electronics firm Panasonic say the machine features the latest robotic technology and could help replace human care-givers in this rapidly aging nation without degrading the quality of the service.
“Using robotic hand technology and 24 robotic fingers, this robot can wash the hair or handicapped in the way human hands do in order to help them have better daily lives,” said developer Tohru Nakamura.
Nakamura said Japan’s aging society supports a healthy market in care-giving robot technologies.
“We will develop more care-giving technologies for the elderly or handicapped in Japan and will export those technologies to other aging societies,…
Steve Jobs Said LSD ‘Was One Of The Most Important Things In His Life’
Most of the obituaries for Steve Jobs touched upon his creativity, vision, and “think different” thought process at the helm of Apple. Strange then to omit that fact that Jobs used LSD and proclaimed dropping acid to be “one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life.” (This is also the reason iPods come in so many colors.) Via the Fix:
But equally suggestive, is a quote from Steve Jobs to New York Times reporter John Markoff. Speaking about psychedelics, Jobs said, “Doing LSD was one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life.” He was hardly alone among computer scientists in his appreciation of hallucinogenics and their capacity to liberate human thought from the prison of the mind. Jobs even let drop that Microsoft’s Bill Gates would “be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once.” Apple’s…
The New (Northern) Police State
An appropriate post, considering today is Canadian Thanksgiving … Amir Alwani discusses the increasingly hostile politics of dissent and oppression in Canada; proving, we in the north, are not faring much better than our cousins in the South.
“I’m sick of people thinking politics is some sort of hobby, like we can just choose to decide it doesn’t have to do with our life, death, happiness and freedom. Looking at the mechanics that underlie our world is not something I do out of boredom. To me, it seems self-evident that we’re on this earth to learn. Learning and gaining experience seems to be what being human is all about. I don’t like reading words on a page/screen. I’d much rather create music or learn to paint but unfortunately, sometimes missing a week’s worth of news is like missing a month. Missing a month is often missing a year.
Few Canadians are aware of…
Mob War On Wall Street
Photo: Mrwho00tm (CC)
Who is behind the Wall Street protests?
The Republican minority leader, Eric Cantor, has searched up and down in his usual rigorous manner and found the culprit.
In his knee-jerk view, it’s President Obama. His latest crime: encouraging these “mobs.”
In one sentence, he blamed the President who in GOP conspiracy think, is to blame for everything, including bad weather. He also not so subtly conjures up the memory of the Mafia, New York’s perennial bad guys.
In one phrase, Obama stood accused of encouraging these…. pause for righteous indignation—MOBS!
Never mind that if you spend any time at Occupy Wall Street, you will encounter as many criticisms of the President’s policies—save the questions about his birth and “real Americaness”—as you would at a conclave of the Tea Party.
Only the criticism is different. In the latter world of make-believe, he is a hard line Socialist. In the former, he is, in effect, a…
Scientists Cast More Doubt On FBI’s Anthrax Story
Prof. Martin E. Hugh-Jones
The FBI’s story about Bruce Ivins being the sole perpetrator of the 2001 post-9/11 Anthrax attacks was never very convincing, to say the least. Now three brave scientists are contradicting the FBI’s all-too-convenient version of events publicly. The cynic in me worries for their health… Report from the New York Times:
A decade after wisps of anthrax sent through the mail killed 5 people, sickened 17 others and terrorized the nation, biologists and chemists still disagree on whether federal investigators got the right man and whether the F.B.I.’s long inquiry brushed aside important clues.
Now, three scientists argue that distinctive chemicals found in the dried anthrax spores — including the unexpected presence of tin — point to a high degree of manufacturing skill, contrary to federal reassurances that the attack germs were unsophisticated. The scientists make their case in a coming issue of the Journal of Bioterrorism & Biodefense.
F.B.I.…
You Are Still Being Lied To: Howard Zinn’s “Columbus and Western Civilization”
The following is an excerpt of “Columbus and Western Civilization” written by Howard Zinn that appears in the Disinformation anthology You Are Still Being Lied To edited by Russ Kick.
Author’s Note: In the year 1992, the celebration of Columbus Day was different from previous ones in two ways. First, this was the quincentennial, 500 years after Columbus’ landing in this hemisphere. Second, it was a celebration challenged all over the country by people—many of them native Americans but also others—who had “discovered” a Columbus not worth celebrating, and who were rethinking the traditional glorification of “Western civilization.” I gave this talk at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in October 1991. It was published the following year by the Open Magazine Pamphlet Series with the title “Christopher Columbus & the Myth of Human Progress.”
George Orwell, who was a very wise man, wrote: “Who controls the past controls the future. And who controls the present controls the past.” In other words, those who dominate our society are in a position to write our histories. And if they can do that, they can decide our futures. That is why the telling of the Columbus story is important.
Let me make a confession. I knew very little about Columbus until about twelve years ago, when I began writing my book A People’s History of the United States. I had a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University—that is, I had the proper training of a historian, and what I knew about Columbus was pretty much what I had learned in elementary school.
Computer Virus Hits U.S. Drone Fleet
Amazing story broken by Noah Shachtman on WIRED’s Danger Room:
A computer virus has infected the cockpits of America’s Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilots’ every keystroke as they remotely fly missions over Afghanistan and other warzones.
The virus, first detected nearly two weeks ago by the military’s Host-Based Security System, has not prevented pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from flying their missions overseas. Nor have there been any confirmed incidents of classified information being lost or sent to an outside source. But the virus has resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creech’s computers, network security specialists say. And the infection underscores the ongoing security risks in what has become the U.S. military’s most important weapons system.
“We keep wiping it off, and it keeps coming back,” says a source familiar with the network infection, one of three that told Danger Room about the virus. “We think it’s benign.…
Did Jesus Die for Klingons Too?
Well, Klingons for Jesus has sided in on this, but for a more rigorous debate, Professor Christian Weidemann recently weighed in at a DARPA-sponsored event. (DARPA cares about these things?) Jeff Schapiro reported in the Christian Science Monitor:
One idea he presented was that humans were the only “sinners” out of God’s creation, and are therefore the only ones that require a savior, but he considered other possibilities as well.
“If there are extra-terrestrial intelligent beings at all, it is safe to assume that most of them are sinners too,” Weidemann said. “If so, did Jesus save them too? My position is no. If so, our position among intelligent beings in the universe would be very exceptional.”
If other life forms exist in our universe, he said, we should try to understand why Jesus chose to save those from Earth over other civilized life forms from other planets.
Did God reserve His grace solely for…
Where’s the Outrage? Secret Panel Can Put Americans on ‘Kill List’
Funny, how Obama supporters aren’t going batshit over this when this is the very sort of thing that got them worked up during the Bush administration … Mark Hosenball reported in Reuters:
American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.
There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.
The panel was behind the decision to add Awlaki, a U.S.-born militant preacher with alleged al Qaeda connections, to the target list. He was killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen late last month.
The role of the president…
9 Dying Occupations: Thanks To Technology
Michael B. Sauter writes on AOL:
Since textile workers in England were replaced by mechanized looms in the 19th century new technologies have been continuously taking the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of laborers. In the 20th century — the age of machinery, robotics, and computers — the United States has seen the loss of millions of factory jobs. Now, in the era of the Internet and further automation, a new generation of full-time workers is on the verge of losing their positions to technology. 24/7 Wall Street used information provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to identify the jobs that will lose the largest percentage of their current positions over the next decade.
Many jobs are in industries where technological advancement has already caused major reductions in the workforce. Now, further contraction is expected in those same industries as workers who were trained to oversee the machines are themselves replaced…
