JacobSloan
Woman Hands Over Her Life Savings To Hypnosis Robbers
Be careful whom you talk to in the city streets, because something like this could happen. Anti-hypnosis sunglasses may be worn as a preventative measure. 93.9 MIA reports:
Boston’s Chinatown has been on edge since a 57-year-old woman claimed three women used hypnosis to get her to fork over $160,000 in life savings, police say.
The victim was food shopping April 15 when the women tapped her on the shoulder and began asking her questions. The victim says one of the suspects spoke and her henchwomen handed her a plastic bag. She was told to go home and meet them several hours later on Boston Common.
The victim filled the bag with a necklace, a jade bracelet, two gold rings, her passport and $160,000 in cash. She then went to the meeting spot and handed over the fortune. The incident has Chinatown on alert, with two similar shakedowns reported since then.
Mother Convicted Of Enslaving Her Children After Falling Under Fortune Teller’s Spell
Photo: Nrico (CC)
The few psychics I’ve visited here in New York have had disappointingly limited abilities, but this one seems pretty impressive. The Telegraph reports:
Within weeks of the meeting, Linda Clappison started locking her son and daughter, then aged 10 and six, in their rooms and assaulting them.
She fed them only sandwiches and took the light bulbs, toys and all mattresses and bedding from their rooms, leaving them needing hospital treatment for frostbite. Clappison, 46, of Keyingham Marsh, East Yorkshire, was found guilty of two child cruelty charges at Hull Crown Court last month.
She was jailed for 18 months concurrently or each charge. Judge Michael Mettyear, the Recorder of Hull, described the case as “tragic’’. He also praised the children, who gave evidence against their mother. The trial heard that the mother of four forced her two youngest children to work for gipsies as slaves after falling under the spell of…
Georgia To Open Prison Just For Veterans
From one system of ridgidly-imposed discipline and control to another … Russia Today reports:
Authorities in Muscogee County, Georgia say they’ve found a great way to let veterans of US wars share their experience with one another. It’ll just happen behind steel bars and under lock and key.
Officials from the Muscogee County Sheriff’s Office recently held a press conference to discuss once of the department’s newest endeavors and they believe that it is the first of its kind in the country. Tucked in a corner of the county jail in rural Georgia is a dormitory specifically reserved to house inmates that have fought for America.
There ought to be a place in our city that provides a facility where veterans can stay for a period of time while being treated, physically and mentally,” Ret. Col. Roy Plummer said, reports the local Ledger-Enquirer…
21st Century Folk Art: Foreclosure Quilts
Quilts often contain symbolic worlds reflecting aspects of the broader community or society. Artist Kathryn Clark creates “foreclosure quilts”, which are based on maps of cities, with holes representing foreclosed homes:
From 1999 to 2004, I worked for a private urban planning firm designing New Urbanist neighborhoods throughout the US. In 2007, as foreclosures began to occur I questioned my work. Did I add to this in some way? I was aware early on that these foreclosures were just the beginning of something bigger yet I felt alone when I mentioned it. Few agreed with me or seemed concerned.
It was important to me to present the whole story in a way that would captivate people’s attention and make a memorable statement. Making quilts seemed an ironic solution. Quilts act as a functional memory, an historical record of difficult times.
The quilt is pieced together using patterns of neighborhood blocks taken from RealtyTrac maps.…
Newly Found Mayan Calendar Goes Far Beyond 2012
Wikimedia Commons (CC)
World to end on December 21st, 5012? Brian Vastag writes in the Washington Post:
The ancient Mayans were masters of time, keepers of good calendars. And now we have one of their timekeepers’ workrooms to prove it.
In a striking find, archaeologists in Guatemala report the discovery of a small building whose walls display calendars that destroy any notion that the Mayans predicted the end of the world in 2012. This calendar spans some 7,000 years — heading much farther into the future than the supposed doomsday date.
The newly found calendars, which track the motion of the moon, Venus and Mars, provide an unprecedented glimpse into how these storied sky-gazers — who dominated Central America for nearly 1,000 years — kept such accurate track of months, seasons and years.
“What they’re trying to do is understand the large cycles of cosmic time,” said William Saturno, the Boston University archaeologist who led…
Pro-Marijuana TV Advertisements Run In Colorado
This coming fall, Colorado residents will vote on whether to legalize possession and cultivation of marijuana statewide, via the Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Act. The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol is running a series of television ads urging legalization — their first spot, in honor of Mother’s Day, encourages young adults to let their parents know that they prefer pot:
Whicker’s World On The Love Generation
In 1967, the BBC program Wicker’s World travelled to San Francisco to investigate the philosophy and lifestyle of what they dubbed “the Love Generation”, who were “cracking the smooth silhouette of American materialism”. Teen runaways, doing LSD in the woods, and confrontations with the square-minded are included in this vision of a time and place that resonates today:
Kellogg Brown & Root May Become Part Of Police Forces In Britain
In areas of the U.K., policing is being partially privatized for the first time ever, and Texas-based former Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root is on the short list of candidate companies, the Guardian reports. Does the public really want the kind of experience KBR brings?
A US Pentagon contractor that was involved in building Guantánamo Bay is on a shortlist of private consortiums bidding for a £1.5bn contract to run key policing services in the West Midlands and Surrey.
The Texas-based Kellogg Brown & Root, which was sold off by the controversial Halliburton corporation in 2007, is part of a consortium which has made it to the final shortlist for a contract that will see large-scale involvement of the private sector in British policing for the first time.
White Supremacists Arrested At Paramilitary Compound Near Disney World
Reports Barbara Liston on Reuters via Yahoo! News:
Ten alleged members of a white supremacist group training near Orlando and Disney World for a “race war” have been rounded up in a series of arrests.
“The American Front is a military-styled, anti-Semitic, white supremacist, skinhead organization and is known as a domestic terrorist organization,” the arrest affidavit said.
The group’s alleged local ringleader, Marcus Faella, had been “planning and preparing the AF for what he believes to be an inevitable race war” and had stated “his intent … to kill Jews, immigrants and other minorities.” Faella operated a heavily fortified training center, where he regularly conducted firearms, explosives and tactical training for AF members and other neo-Nazi groups, was protected by two pit bull dogs, a barbed-wire fence and three military-style trenches.
Powdered Baby Flesh Pills Being Smuggled Out Of China
Eating baby flesh concentrate in pill form is sort of a dark version of the current U.S. yuppie trend of consuming the placenta for nutritional purposes after giving birth. Will this be China’s next big export? Via the BBC:
The Korea Customs Service said it had found almost 17,500 of the capsules being smuggled into the country from China since August 2011. The powdered flesh, which officials said came from dead babies and foetuses, is reportedly thought by some to cure disease and boost stamina.
Capsules were being dyed or switched into boxes of other drugs in a bid to disguise them. Some of the capsules were found in travellers’ luggage and some in the post, customs officials said.
The Birth Of Surveillance Video Filmmaking
A trailer for the 2007 film Faceless, which includes Tilda Swinton in its cast and is comprised only of CCTV camera footage. The United Kingdom’s Data Protection Act allows people to access stored information on themselves, including surveillance video. Director and star Manu Luksch has explained that as a filmmaker, she realized it was pointless to bring her own camera since she and the other actors were already being filmed all of the time:
FACELESS was produced under the rules of the ‘Manifesto for CCTV Filmmakers’. The manifesto states, amongst other things, that additional cameras are not permitted at filming locations, as the omnipresent existing video surveillance (CCTV) is already in operation.
SAGE: A New State-Corporate Nexus In U.S. Democracy Manipulation
New Left Project on a new model of propaganda creation and dissemination:
The increasingly close relationship between Google and the US “democracy promotion” apparatus recently took a new turn with the launch of a new, private, non-profit organization designed to manipulate democratic movements in (initially) four nations: Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan and Russia.
Strengthening America’s Global Engagement (SAGE) marks the latest permutation of the long-established nexus of US foreign policy and the interests of capital. It represents a new blueprint for US “strategic communication” which promises to create a new arm for US propaganda.
The plan, released late last month, is remarkably candid. Describing SAGE as “primarily…a grant-making organization”, it promises to “leverage the power of the private sector – where the bulk of American ingenuity, creativity, technological innovation and resources rest – to strengthen communications with foreign publics, in support of U.S. national interests.”
Has A California Treasure Hunter Found Osama’s Body?
The most shocking discovery to come this year? An ideal plotline for Weekend at Bernie’s 3? Or all of the above? The Week on the most sought-after treasure on Earth, Osama bin Laden’s corpse:
Last spring, days after a team of Navy SEALs shot and killed Osama bin Laden, helicoptered his body to a Navy warship, then dumped it somewhere in the Arabian Sea, California undersea treasure hunter Bill Warren decided to go find it.
A year later, Warren [claims] that he’s nailed down the spot where the Navy heaved the body overboard, and will mount an expedition this summer to drag bin Laden’s corpse up from its watery grave, photograph it, and take DNA samples. Warren says he discerned the location from satellite images shared by a Pentagon source. The images purportedly show exactly where the body was thrown overboard last May. Of course, Warren won’t divulge the location, but [says] that…
Dotsies: Language Of The Future?
Dotsies is a minimal, dot-based alternate version of the Latin alphabet. Why have we not evolved past using a 3,000-year-old character system?
Since latin letters (a, b, c, etc.) are optimized to be written by hand, they take up a lot of unnecessary space. Your eyes have to move at a frantic pace from left to right to read. Get more screen space! Save paper!
It’s easier than you think. There are only 26 letters. It takes only about 20 minutes at memorize.com/dotsies to get them into your short term memory. Each letter has five dots that are on or off (black or white). You’ll be very slow at first, but will noticeably speed up over time. As you progress, words start to look like shapes.
Blending War And Virtual Reality: Harun Farocki’s “Immersion”
Metropolis Magazine on artist Harun Farocki’s Immersion: a video exploration of the connection between virtual reality and the military:
Eighteen years after the first Gulf War, computer-generated game technology is not only employed on the battlefield, but also used for recruiting, training prior to combat zone deployment, and now psychological care for for troops suffering battlefield trauma upon their return. It is the beginning, the middle and the end of the violence of war.
Filming for Immersion took place at Fort Louis, near Seattle, during a demonstration for therapists of Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy, which consists of subjecting traumatized soldiers to the conditions of war once again, in a virtual reality.
Britain To Install Missiles In Apartment Complexes For London Olympics
More 2012 Olympics dystopianism as a dense East London neighborhood will be turned into a military base, in the name of pole-vaulting. Robert Booth writes in the Guardian:
The Bow Quarter complex of more than 700 apartments is the first of a handful of housing developments close to the Olympic Park chosen by military planners to host high velocity rockets aimed at preventing an airborne terrorist attack on this summer’s Games.
Ministry of Defence officials will this week inform a number of other residents that their homes have been selected to become part of London’s military lockdown. The missile units will be installed and armed with dummy rockets in time for a national Olympic security exercise starting on Wednesday. The test of the government’s £1bn security plans will see RAF Typhoon fast jets and military helicopters operating above London and the home counties.
“It is rather surreal,” said Nathan Lewis, a software developer…
Happy National Day Of Reason
Did you know that yesterday was the National Day of Reason? Despite rain, several thousand nonbelievers gathered for a pro-reason rally on the National Mall. California Rep. Pete Stark, the lone openly atheist member of Congress, had this to say:
“The National Day of Reason celebrates the application of reason and the positive impact it has had on humanity. It is also an opportunity to reaffirm the Constitutional separation of religion and government.
Our nation faces many problems—bringing our troops home from Afghanistan, creating jobs, educating our children, and protecting our safety net from irresponsible cuts. We will solve these issues through the application of reason. We must also protect women’s reproductive choices, the integrity of scientific research, and our public education system from those who would hide behind religious dogma to undermine them.”
What Is It Like Spending 40 Years In Solitary Confinement?
Photo: Elians (CC)
Imagine having to go through this. Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox have lived 40 straight years in windowless boxes in Louisiana’s worst jail, as political prisoners. Via the Guardian:
They’ve spent 23 hours of each day in the last 40 years in a 9ft-by-6ft cell. Now, human rights groups intensify calls for their release.
First imprisoned [for robbery] in 1967, Herman Wallace came together with Albert Woodfox and a third man, Robert King, to form a Black Panther chapter inside the prison, hoping to organize African American inmates against the brutal treatment they endured. Angola was reputed to be the worst jail in America, whose 5,000 inmates were still racially segregated and where violence and sexual slavery were rampant.
Then on April 17, 1972, a prison guard was murdered during in one of the wings. The Angola 3 were immediately accused of the murder, and placed that same day in solitary.…
Astronauts On Mars Would Risk DNA Damage
Sad news for hopes of future visits to the red planet — anyone who journeys to Mars could come back with their DNA adversely altered, Russian scientists warn. Mars Daily explains:
Future astronauts working on the Red Planet’s surface risk general changes in health at the DNA level because of increased radiation exposure, a prominent Russian academic said on Monday.
“According to our estimates, researchers on the surface of Mars can expect a number of adverse factors, such as cardiac arrhythmia, sensory impairments, changes at the DNA level, and demineralization of bone tissue,” Anatoly Grigoryev, the deputy head of Russia’s Academy of Sciences, told at a presentation at the International Symposium on the results of ground-based experiment Mars-500.
The unique Moscow-based Mars-500 experiment was completed on November 4. It attempted to recreate at least some of the conditions of a flight to the Red Planet by locking six men away in a mock spacecraft.
…
Mass Dolphin Deaths In Peru A Mystery
Earth’s most intelligent species is dying off in droves. Report from the International Business Times:
Around 877 carcasses of dolphins and porpoises were found on Peruvian beaches in two and half months. Peruvian officials and environmentalists are trying to unravel the mystery behind the phenomenon.
No concrete reasons have been figured out yet but authorities believe that it could possibly be a viral infection that may have killed the dolphins in huge numbers. Environmental groups in the country blame the sound waves generated from oil exploration work carried out by Houston-based BPZ Energy Company between February 8 and April 8 off Northern Peru.
Mass dolphin deaths have been reported globally in recent years, raising concerns about the survival of the species.
