Archive for October, 2011
The Eviction of OccupyWallStreet from Zuccotti Park
Will Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD manage to evict the #OWS protesters tomorrow? Drew Grant’s report for the New York Observer suggests maybe not:
After being told that they would have to “temporarily” vacate Zuccotti Park for sanitation reasons by Mayor Bloomberg, Occupy Wall Street responded to what one member is calling “an eviction notice.”
According to one of OWS’ Media team, a young man named Luke, there is “no way” that the protesters can comply with all the outlines set in Brookfield’s letter to the city, since OWS has been expressly forbidden from emptying the parks trash receptacles themselves; that the “cleaning” would include the removal of all tarps and sleeping bags, which the residents have been using to spend the night in the parks.
Looking At The iPod In 2003
The Dell DJ is slightly bigger than the iPod but claims a longer battery life. It was Dell that one investor held out as the rival with the greatest chance of success: ”No one markets as well as Dell does.”
It’s fascinating to read an article from eight years ago and feel that it was truly another era. Via the New York Times, Rob Walker’s piece “The Guts of a New Machine” examined the hype surrounding the cutting-edge devices known as portable mp3 players:
Two years ago this month, Apple Computer released a small, sleek-looking device it called the iPod. A digital music player, it weighed just 6.5 ounces and held about 1,000 songs. There were small MP3 players around at the time, and there were players that could hold a lot of music. But if the crucial equation is ”largest number of songs” divided by ‘’smallest physical space,” the iPod seemed…
Superman’s Biggest Fan Has Plastic Surgery To Resemble Superhero
When you already have the comics, the costumes, the movies and other paraphernalia, what’s left? Your body of course… the RealSelf blog has the details:
A man in the Philippines has had multiple cosmetic surgeries in order to look like Superman.
Reporter Marie Lozano of Bandila news Tweeted this picture earlier as a teaser to her upcoming story:
With the translating help of Maureen F. from our doctor advisory team, we’ve been able to suss out some of the details of this story. We’ll continue to update as we understand more.
According to the report, Superman wannabe Herbert Chavez, 35, has been going under the knife since 1995 to achieve his heroic appearance. So far…
Nascar-Style Uniforms For Congress
Food for thought — this certainly could simplify the process of decoding legislators’ allegiances:
GM Food Needs Mandatory Labels, Food Producers Tell FDA
Molly Peterson writes in Business Week:
Genetically engineered corn, soy and plant oil should be disclosed on mandatory food labels, a coalition of more than 350 producers, trade groups and consumers said in a petition to U.S. regulators.
The U.S. should require added disclosure even when a product containing a gene-altered organism is similar to foods that aren’t bioengineered, the groups said today in the petition to the Food and Drug Administration. Stonyfield Farm, the organic-yogurt maker owned by Danone SA, and Dean Foods Co.’s Horizon Organic are among the coalition members.
Petitioners, led by the Washington-based Center for Food Safety, want to reverse a 1992 Food and Drug Administration policy that doesn’t require different labeling. Gene-altered seeds are used for almost 90 percent of U.S.-grown corn, 94 percent of soy and 90 percent of cottonseed, an oil-producing plant, the coalition said.
“Consumers ought to have the right to choose whether to be buying…
Iranian Terror Plot: Why?
Iran Affairs is skeptical regarding Iran’s strange alleged plot to conduct a terrorist bombing and assassination on U.S. soil, announced by our Justice Department yesterday:
I’m sure you’ve heard about the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the US and bomb the Israeli embassy etc. which was supposedly “directed by factions of the Iranian government” (whatever that means.)
Simple question: Why? Suppose the alleged plot was successful – then what? Apart from risking a major diplomatic incident, what would Iran have to gain from doing any of this? Would Saudi Arabia or Israel simply disappear? Are the Iranians just crazy people who like to blow up places for no real gain?
There have been many such ‘terror plots’ foiled in the US – and the one thing they all had in common was that there was a government informant who was involved and even instigated the plot by recruiting some otherwise hapless…
Let’s Occupy CNN Anchor Erin Burnett’s Brain With Some Real Information (Video)
At about 1:30 in into this clip …
First U.S. State Capital Ever To File for Bankruptcy: Harrisburg, PA
America (in this case, Pennsylvania), Fuck YA! AFP via Google reports:
Pennsylvania’s state capital Harrisburg has declared bankruptcy, according to a court filing seen on Wednesday, raising the specter of a string of local defaults across the United States.
The city — whose finances have been ravaged by the costs of upgrading a once-mothballed trash incinerator — filed late Tuesday to seek protection from creditors. The city reportedly owes around $310 million.
According to the Bankruptcy Court filing, Harrisburg has between one and 49 creditors. It also reported a roughly equal amount of assets and liabilities, in the range of $100-500 million.
The state of Pennsylvania had tried to force Harrisburg to sell off those assets in order to pay bondholders, but the city council reportedly voted by a margin of four to three on Tuesday to opt for bankruptcy. The result is a rare, but not unexpected, US municipal bankruptcy amid a faltering economy.
Saddam Lookalike Nearly Kidnapped And Forced To Do Porn
Ever feel as though you’re trapped in a waking nightmare? An ordinary Egyptian man’s terrible saga, via Huffington Post:
An Egyptian man who looks like Saddam Hussein says a gang of Iraqi kidnappers tried to force him to act in a pornographic film.
After refusing a $330,000 offer to play Hussein in a sex tape — which was purportedly planned to be sold to the media as an authentic recording of the deceased Iraqi dictator — Mohamed Bishr told al-Ahram that three men in black suits attempted to abduct him as he walked to a cafe in Alexandria on Sunday.
“The three men, who had guns hanging from their belts, forced me out of my car and shoved me into a van, hitting my head,” Bishr told the publication. For some reason, the abductors began arguing with each other and tossed him out of the vehicle, Bishr claims.
While plotting ways to destabilize Hussein before…
Seedbank Vaults In Case Of Mass Extinction
Via Wired, Dornith Doherty’s photographs offer a glimpse inside several of humanity’s vital seed-saving facilities, where samples of our planet’s flora are stored and protected in case of future mass extinction (be it due to climate change, nuclear war, astroid impact, or disease epidemic). Perhaps most stark is the Svalbard “Doomsday” Seed Vault, located on an island near the North Pole. One of these tiny outposts could someday be the savior of life on Earth:
Dornith Doherty’s documentary images of seed-saving facilities capture the logistics — and existential anxiety — behind the elaborate steps now in place to preserve the world’s crop diversity.
Once a traditional, year-to year practice by smallholding farmers to develop sturdy varietals, this simple act of putting seed aside has more and more become the concern of international affairs and corporate policy.
“Seed saving and its role in preserving biodiversity is of utmost importance. We are in an era…
Katrina vanden Heuvel & Danny Schechter Speak Out at Occupy Wall Street
Amy Goodman and Democracy Now give the voices of progressive protest an outlet. Note Danny holding up a placard for his disinformation documentary Plunder: The Crime of our Time, which really does seem more timely now than ever.
Spanish Blood Test Can Tell When You’ll Die. Maybe.
Three-dimensional molecular structure of a telomere (G-quadruplex). Credit: Giac83 (CC)
But do you really want to know? Giles Tremlett reports on the small Spanish biological research company at the center of claims that its blood test can predict the age you will die, for the Guardian:
As a taxi takes me across Madrid to the laboratories of Spain’s National Cancer Research Centre, I am fretting about the future. I am one of the first people in the world to provide a blood sample for a new test, which has been variously described as a predictor of how long I will live, a waste of time or a handy indicator of how well (or badly) my body is ageing. Today I get the results.
Some newspapers, to the dismay of the scientists involved, have gleefully announced that the test – which measures the telomeres (the protective caps on the ends of my chromosomes) –…
Marijuana Will Make You Sad (If You Are Prone To Be Depressed)?
Via Science Daily:
Young people who are genetically vulnerable to depression should be extra careful about using cannabis: smoking cannabis leads to an increased risk of developing depressive symptoms. This has emerged from research carried out by Roy Otten at the Behavioural Science Institute of Radboud University Nijmegen that is published in the online version of the scientific journal Addiction Biology. Two-thirds of the population have the gene variant that makes one sensitive to depression.
Many young people in the Netherlands use cannabis. Nearly 30% of 16-year-olds indicate that they have used cannabis on at least one occasion, and 12% that they have used it during the past month. Besides worse performances at school, the use of cannabis also increases the risk of developing schizophrenia and psychosis. Smoking hashish and weed were thought to increase the risk of depression but no conclusive evidence for this was available to date. Otten suspects that…
Amateur Rocket Launch Reaches 121,000 Feet (Video)
The U.S. government considers anyone who travels 264,000 feet above the ground as an astronaut. So, this rocket did pretty good. The video is more telling, quite the backyard project:
Led by Derek Deville, the rocketeers launched their custom-built 26 ft. (8 meter) Qu8k (pronounced “Quake”) rocket on September 30, 2011 from the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. It reached an altitude of 121,000 feet (36,880 meter) in 92 seconds, at speeds of 2,185 mph (3,516 km/h).
A Plan For A Post-Labor America
Because I share the concern that the Occupy Movement has no plan for change, I humbly present for consensus. . .
A PLAN FOR A POST-LABOR AMERICA
• Education reform. A popular misconception about the American ED-U-SYSTEM is that it is ‘broken.’ When in fact, it is quite good at what it was designed for; creating dependable laborers for Industry. Thanks to the schooling system, youth are trained very early in how they are expected to be useful in the “REAL WORLD.” The real purpose of public education consists of three courses: one in punctuality, one in obedience, and one in rote, repetitive work.
• Labor-based economy demands workers who show up on time, workers who will take orders from a management hierarchy without question and it demands men and women to slave away at machines or in offices. Rather than lament or ignore these facts we should look at this system as a necessary…
Wall Street and the Psychology of Power
James Curcio writes on Modern Mythology:
The Occupy Wall Street movement has taken aim at “the 1%,” but so far there has not been a great deal of consideration given to the culture or psychology of power.
Countering the charged, idealistic cry of the protesters comes the more cynical stance that “there will always be a 1%.” That, perhaps, it is human nature to claw our way to the “top of the pile,” to slay the sitting King and take the throne. Certainly, that is a model we see mirrored in the heroic myths of antiquity.
As a result of our nature, are we forever cursed to live out a narrative of master / slave, of fascist dictator, of oppressor and oppressed? Should we resign ourselves to the “grim meathook future” that seems the inevitable outcome of the myth of the Leviathan, supposing no agents of chaos destabilize the true obsession of fascism?…
UK Doctors Claim Gonorrhea Is ‘Drug Resistant’
The good ol’ days of penicillin …. Michelle Roberts reports for BBC News:
UK doctors are being told the antibiotic normally used to treat gonorrhoea is no longer effective because the sexually transmitted disease is now largely resistant to it. The Health Protection Agency says we may be heading to a point when the disease is incurable unless new treatments can be found.
For now, doctors must stop using the usual treatment cefixime and instead use two more powerful antibiotics. One is a pill and the other a jab.
The HPA say the change is necessary because of increasing resistance. Tests on samples taken from patients and grown in the laboratory showed reduced susceptibility to the usual antibiotic cefixime in nearly 20% of cases in 2010, compared with just 10% of cases in 2009.
