Archive for December, 2011
The Citigroup Plutonomy Memos: Bombshell Documents That Detail the Rule of the 1 Percent
Via Politicalgates:
“Are they real?” That’s the question people usually ask when they hear for the first time of the “Citigroup Plutonomy Memos.” The sad truth is: Yes, they are real, and instead of being discussed on mainstream media outlets all over America and beyond, Citigroup was surprisingly successful so far in suppressing these memos, using their lawyers to issue takedown-notices whenever these memos were being made available for download on the internet.
So what are we talking about? In 2005 and 2006, several analysts at Citigroup took a very, very close look at the economic inequalities within the USA and other countries and wrote two memos which were addressed to their very wealthy customers. If there is one group of people who need to know the truth about what is really going on within the society and the economy, minus the propaganda, then it’s businesspeople who have a lot of money to…
Two Icons, Two Deaths, Two Worlds: The Media Simplified Them Both
The world has said goodbye to two leaders who were worlds apart. One was a widely celebrated anti-communist, the other a widely despised communist. However, both the lives and thoughts of the Czech Republic’s Vaclav Havel, and North Korea’s Kim Jung-il were given short shrift.
The playwright turned President Havel who parlayed human rights activism into becoming Czechoslovakia‘s post-Communist President was a leader for the pro-democracy Charter 77 Movement, not just a Red-hating politician on a power trip.
Yet, the press praised him more for what he opposed than what he believed. The people who loved him adored him for both.
One report: “Thousands of silent mourners have accompanied the body of Vaclav Havel through central Prague as the Czech Republic began three days of national mourning for the icon of the Velvet Revolution.
About 10,000 mourners mostly in black, some carrying Czech or Slovak flags, joined a solemn procession taking the former president’s…
Mystery Craft Seen on U.S. Route 77 in Kansas
Via KSN TV:
COWLEY COUNTY, Kansas — Residents in Cowley County are still talking about a mystery craft, seen being towed down US 77 Monday.
Sitting inside Lindly’s Appliance Store, Kammi Root is used to seeing large machinery towed down US 77. But what she saw Monday afternoon is something she won’t soon forget. “There was this funny sphere that went through on this big trailer and my first thought was, ‘That looks like a UFO,’” said Root.
Fox News’ Visually Distorted Charts
FlowingData points out a recent graphic from a story on Fox News showing the unemployment rate changes under Obama. The numbers are presumably correct, but do not seem to correspond to the rise and fall of the visual, in which, for instance, 8.6 is a higher number than 8.8 or 8.9. Ah, the “Fox Chart” — what does it mean? Is it a work of postmodern art?
Vatican.xxx
Let’s hope the buyer intends to (further) blow the lid off sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. From Reuters:
The Vatican said on Wednesday an unknown buyer had snapped up the internet address vatican.xxx, a domain combining its name with an extension reserved for pornographic content.
“This domain is not available because it has been acquired by someone else, but not the Vatican,” Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said on Vatican radio.
It was not clear from his statement if the Vatican had tried to acquire the domain in order to prevent…
The Jesus Toaster Makes Food Miracles
Every believer has seen the videos of the Virgin Mary appearing in the form of a Cheeto or a linen stain and secretly hopes for an uncanny sign that will validate their faith — that’s why the Jesus Toaster is the perfect Christmas gift. Now anyone can have the rapturous joy of witnessing the Lord appear in their morning toast:
Mexico City’s 65-Story Inverted Skyscraper
The Earthscraper is a conceptual design for a see-through 82,000-square-foot inverted pyramid proposed to be built underneath Mexico City. With space already filled in the world’s major cities, will the future be about building downwards? Via Ecomagination:
Earthscraper may have burst the bounds of the architectural world because it has taken a truly new approach to escalating megacity problems like planning for population growth, curbing sprawl, preserving open space, and conserving energy and water.
The inverted pyramid’s next 10 stories are intended for retail space, followed by 10 stories of apartments. The structure’s deepest, tapering 35 floors are pegged for office space. The interior design concept also incorporates a system of gardens occurring roughly every 10 stories, to help generate fresh air.
The Flavor Map
Ever wonder why certain flavors work well in combination while others are just gross? Scientists Yong-Yeol Ahn, Sebastian E. Ahnert, James P. Bagrow and Albert-László Barabási published their findings in Nature:
Here we introduce a network-based approach to explore the impact of flavor compounds on ingredient combinations. Efforts by food chemists to identify the flavor compounds contained in most culinary ingredients allows us to link each ingredient to 51 flavor compounds on average. We build a bipartite network consisting of two different types of nodes: (i) 381 ingredients used in recipes throughout the world, and (ii) 1,021 flavor compounds that are known to contribute to the flavor of each of these ingredients…
The backbone of the flavor network. Source: Nature
[continues in in Nature]
Indonesia Rounds Up Punks For ‘Re-Education’
In the country’s most conservative region, authorities are rounding up young punks, removing their mohawks and piercings, and and shipping them off for military drills and manners lessons to ween them from their deviant ways. Suppose your punk rocker boyfriend/girlfriend got scooped up, sent off, and came back a square? The Guardian reports:
Police in Indonesia’s most conservative province have stripped away body piercings and shaved off mohicans from 65 youths detained at a punk-rock concert because of their perceived threat to Islamic values. After replacing their “disgusting” clothes, [a local police chief] handed each a toothbrush and barked: “Use it.”
Punk rockers have complained for months about harassment, but Saturday’s roundup at a concert attended by more than 100 people was by far the most dramatic. Dozens were loaded into vans and brought to a police detention centre in the hills, 30 miles from the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, for rehabilitation, training…
An App That You Play With Live Pigs
Provide some kicks for both yourself and a farm animal on a faraway continent. Treehugger writes:
In hopes of staving off boredom in human and swine alike, a team of Dutch designers have created Pig Chase — an app for interspecies entertainment that playfully pits iPad users against real-life pigs, who might otherwise only meet one another on a plate.
Since 2001, law has required pig farmers in the European Union to provide some form of entertainment to their livestock as a way of keeping them in good emotional health, which in turn helps curb aggression and anxiety. Often, toys and other materials are placed inside the sties for animals to interact with, but perhaps unsurprisingly, some farmers have found it quite difficult to turn their pigpens into playpens.
With that in mind, designers from Utrecht School of the Arts and Wageningen University in the Netherlands ventured to create new ways to make swine…
World Will End In Exactly One Year
Well … maybe. A couple of years ago I produced a documentary about the now infamous end-date of the Mayan Long Count Calendar, December 21, 2012. Today is the Winter Solstice, and exactly one year remains until the current cycle of the Long Count Calendar expires. What does that mean? We asked many experts and wannabe experts in the film and as a special Winter Solstice offer, we’re pleased to bring you the opportunity to see their answers for just $2.49 (3-Day Rental). Enjoy!
For more information on the film, the experts and the companion book by Alexandra Bruce, visit 2012SOS.com.
Gerald Celente’s Dire Predictions For 2012
Gerald Celente
Gerald Celente of Trends Research International has a habit of predicting nasty events before they happen. He just emailed us his selection of 12 things we’d rather not see in 2012:
One megatrend looms on the near horizon. And we forecast that when it strikes, it will be a shock felt around the world. Hyperbole it’s not! Our research has revealed that at the very highest levels of government this megatrend has been seriously discussed. Read on:
1. Economic Martial Law: Given the current economic and geopolitical conditions, the central banks and world governments already have plans in place to declare economic martial law … with the possibility of military martial law to follow.
2. Battlefield America: With a stroke of the Presidential pen, language was removed from an earlier version of the National Defense Authorization Act, granting the President authority to act as judge, jury and executioner. Citizens, welcome to “Battlefield America.”
3.…
Breaking Apart An iPhone’s Cost
It’s still shocking to see just how little of the profits from an item go towards those who made it. From a piece on the power of transnational corporations, via Reports from the Economic Front:
The production of the iPhone offers one of the best examples of the logic and operation of these transnational corporate controlled cross border production networks.
Not surprisingly, the division of profits, as shown below, reflects the overall hierarchy that structures this and other cross border production networks.
Kim Jong-il Looking at Things
it does exactly what it says: pictures of Kim Jong-il. looking at things.
This blog was born in a warm autumn night, 26th October 2010, for reasons unknown. Why is it so funny? i have no idea either.
Batman: Occupy Gotham
Don’t you love it when pop culture reflects real life? From the Wall Street Journal:
In addition to the morally ambiguous Catwoman and the enhanced strongman Bane, it appears the new Batman movie will tackle income inequality, according to the below trailer.
In the clip, a whispering Anne Hathaway (Catwoman) can be seen telling Bruce Wayne, Batman’s billionaire alter-ego: “There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne… when it hits, you’re all going to wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.”…
Naming Products Like Babies, And Babies Like Products
Slate on how branding names and baby names converged. Are our consumer products becoming our babies, and our babies becoming branded items?
We’ve started naming our kids like products—and our products like kids. Parents approach baby naming a lot like product branding. Whereas in the past, names were typically chosen with an eye toward personal significance (a baby was named after a grandparent, say), today’s parents increasingly focus on the public image projected by the name.
Now, as companies introduce technologies that function like people—Siri being the most extreme example to date—they suddenly find themselves with the same kinds of naming challenges as today’s parents-to-be. They have to consider the complex web of cultural meanings that each name carries. They have to ask, as parents do, “What kind of person are we creating, and what name represents that?”
It’s no coincidence, then, that brand names and baby names have begun to converge, as in…
There’s No Such Thing As Empty Space
There’s always something, says a Swedish study. Phenomenica reports:
Scientists claim to have produced particles of light out of vacuum, proving that space is not empty.
An international team says that its ingenious experiment in which tiny parcels of light, or photons, are produced out of empty space has confirmed that a vacuum contains quantum fluctuations of energy, the ‘Nature’ journal reported.
In fact, the scientists have demonstrated for the first time a strange phenomenon known as the dynamical Casimir effect, or DCE for short.
The DCE involves stimulating the vacuum to shed some of the myriad “virtual” particles that fleet in and out of existence, making them real and detectable. Moreover, the real photons produced by the DCE in their experiment collectively retain a peculiar quantum signature that ordinary light lacks.
The research, led by Chris Wilson of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, shows that a related dynamic effect can occur when such a…
