After Jay-Z recorded "Glory" to welcome his new daughter into the world, I wondered what it would sound like if Republican voters made a song to welcome Mitt Romney as their now-inevitable nominee.

Hunters will go to great lengths to gain an edge over their prey. You never know where the margin between success and failure may lie, so you wake up extra early, say a prayer, spray bottled deer piss on your boots, and do whatever else you think might increase your odds. My schedule recently got more demanding thanks to a new baby. With less time to kill and another mouth to feed, I’ve had to step up my game.

Hunting can be physically demanding but, assuming that you’re prepared, it’s mostly mental. Staying sharp is how opportunities are created. I ordered a bottle of nootropic pills, in case it might help.

Nootropic (new-tro-pik) is the term for supplements, also known as smart drugs, that improve brain function. They can be…

Photo: Terry Miller

Adam Liptak describes the decline of the United States Constitution’s global popularity in the New York Times. (If the U.S. adopted Roger Copple’s Third Constitution might the American model become more popular?)

The Constitution has seen better days.

Sure, it is the nation’s founding document and sacred text. And it is the oldest written national constitution still in force anywhere in the world. But its influence is waning.

In 1987, on the Constitution’s bicentennial, Time magazine calculated that “of the 170 countries that exist today, more than 160 have written charters modeled directly or indirectly on the U.S. version.”

A quarter-century later, the picture looks very different. “The U.S. Constitution appears to be losing its appeal as a model for constitutional drafters elsewhere,” according to a new study by David S. Law of Washington University in St. Louis and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia.

The study, to be published in June in The New York University…

The Forgotten Man by Jon McNaughton

In front of the White House a man is sitting on a park bench in the throes of depression. He is surrounded by all 43 presidents. In the forefront, purposefully ignoring the depressed man is President Obama, whose right foot is stepping on the Constitution. James Madison is next to Obama, pleading with him to stop.

This tableau is called “The Forgotten Man”, a painting by Jon McNaughton, an artist who is known for his politically-charged work.

The painting, which uses objects such as discarded dollar bills as symbols and scraps of paper with individual constitutional amendments scrawled onto them, has been making the rounds across the Internet.

The painting was initially released in 2010 and has resurfaced, causing a stir when it appeared for a caption contest on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow’s blog.

The responses have ranged…

A day after losing a Nevada contest that exposed the limits of his appeal to Republicans, Ron Paul vowed to keep pressing ahead for the party's presidential nomination, saying his ideas were inspiring an intellectual revolution among young Americans. "I want to change the government, and I want to change it through the electoral process, but I also want to change the hearts and minds of people," the Texas congressman told George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "This Week." "That is where it really starts, and that is where we're making the progress."...

Warm sun, white beaches, and million-dollar mansions notwithstanding, Miami has captured the dubious distinction of being the most miserable city in the United States, according to a new poll.

Photo: UpstateNYer (CC)

The playground of the rich and famous is home to a crippling housing crisis, one of the highest crime rates in the country, and lengthy daily commutes for workers, all of which have propelled it to the No. 1 position in the Forbes.com list.

“Miami has sun and beautiful weather but other things make people miserable. You have this two-tier society: glitzy South Beach attracts celebrities, but the income inequality has skyrocketed in recent years,” explained Forbes Senior Editor Kurt Badenhausen.

The rankings are based on factors including jobless rates, violent crime, foreclosures, income…

Across the country, activists with ties to the Tea Party are railing against all sorts of local and state efforts to control sprawl and conserve energy. They brand government action for things like expanding public transportation routes and preserving open space as part of a United Nations-led conspiracy to deny property rights and herd citizens toward cities.

They are showing up at planning meetings to denounce bike lanes on public streets and smart meters on home appliances — efforts they equate to a big-government blueprint against individual rights.

“Down the road, this data will be used against you,” warned one speaker at a recent Roanoke County, Va., Board of Supervisors meeting who turned out with dozens of people opposed to the county’s paying…

Last September, scientists from the University of California, Berkeley announced that they had developed a method of visually reconstructing images from peoples’ minds, by analyzing their brain activity.

Much to the dismay of tinfoil hat-wearers everywhere, researchers from that same institution have now developed a somewhat similar system, that is able to reconstruct words that people have heard spoken to them. Instead of being used to violate our civil rights, however, the technology could instead allow the vocally-disabled to “speak.”

Epilepsy patients were enlisted for the study, who were already getting arrays of electrodes placed on the surface of their brains to identify the source of their seizures. The scientists used these electrodes to monitor the electrical activity in a region of their brains’ auditory system, known as the superior temporal gyrus (STG). From there, it was a matter of observing the…

A spoonful of sugar might make the medicine go down. But it also makes blood pressure and cholesterol go up, along with your risk for liver failure, obesity, heart disease and diabetes.

Sugar and other sweeteners are, in fact, so toxic to the human body that they should be regulated as strictly as alcohol by governments worldwide, according to a commentary in the current issue of the journal Nature by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

The researchers propose regulations such as taxing all foods and drinks that include added sugar, banning sales in or near schools and placing age limits on purchases.

Although the commentary might seem straight out of the Journal of Ideas That Will Never Fly, the researchers…

Photo: Leah Mark (CC)

If Al Franken can make it into Congress … From AP via ABC News:

Roseanne Barr said Thursday she’s running for the Green Party’s presidential nomination — and it’s no joke.

The actress-comedian said in a statement that she’s a longtime supporter of the party and looks forward to working with people who share her values. She said the two major parties aren’t serving the American people.

“The Democrats and Republicans have proven that they are servants — bought and paid for by the 1% — who are not doing what’s in the best interest of the American people,” Barr said. Occupy Wall Street protesters popularized the “We are the 99 percent” slogan in their fight against economic disparity and perceived corporate greed.

Barr has submitted paperwork to the Green Party for her candidacy. The party’s presidential nominee will be selected at a convention in Baltimore in July. Barr said she…

Scientists have known for decades that hidden under those impressive vistas at sites such as Death Valley and Yellowstone National Park are magma pools that under the right conditions can trigger explosive eruptions.

Now, new research is changing scientists’ understanding of the timing of those eruptions, and prompting them to call for greater monitoring of sites to help save lives when the next big volcano explodes.

Two recent papers highlight the shift. One looked at a Death Valley volcano thought to be 10,000 years old and found it last erupted just 800 years ago, and is still an eruption danger. The other found that large caldera volcanoes, such as the one under Crater Lake in Oregon, can recharge in a matter of decades, rather than the thousands of…

Every few years, parents find new reasons to worry about their teenagers. And while there is no question that some kids continue to experiment with sex and substance abuse, the latest data point to something perhaps more surprising: the current generation is, well, a bit boring when it comes to bad behavior.

By several noteworthy measures, today’s teenagers are growing increasingly conservative. While marijuana use has recently had an uptick, teenagers are smoking far less pot than their parents did at the same age. In 1980, about 60 percent of high-school seniors had tried marijuana and 9 percent smoked it daily. Among seniors today, according to the University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future survey, which has tracked teenage risk behaviors since 1975, 45.5 percent have tried the drug and 6.6 percent are…

Engineers at Sandia National Laboratories have invented a bullet that guides itself to the target. Sandia has wide expertise at miniature technology, and the bullet works like a tiny guided missile. The patented design doesn't shoot straight. Instead of a spiral rotation, the bullet twists and turns to guide itself towards a laser directed point. It can make up to thirty corrections per second while in the air...]]> Presumably the marketing pitch will be that you literally can’t miss. From KRQE:

Engineers at Sandia National Laboratories have invented a bullet that guides itself to the target. Sandia has wide expertise at miniature technology, and the bullet works like a tiny guided missile.

The patented design doesn’t shoot straight. Instead of a spiral rotation, the bullet twists and turns to guide itself towards a laser directed point. It can make up to thirty corrections per second while in the air.

Jim Jones, distinguished member of technical staff, and his team of engineers at Sandia Labs think the .50-caliber bullets would work well with military machine guns so soldiers could hit their mark faster and with precision…

[continues at KRQE]

]]> http://www.disinfo.com/2012/02/the-self-guided-bullet/feed/ 0 http://www.disinfo.com/2012/02/the-new-watchmen-comics/ http://www.disinfo.com/2012/02/the-new-watchmen-comics/#comments Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:02:31 +0000 majestic http://www.disinfo.com/?p=67554 Whose side do you take with respect to the new Before Watchmen prequels: Alan Moore (against) or Dave Gibbons (for)? From Wired:

Everything old at DC Comics is new again, again. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ canonical miniseries about superheroes and power — and their horrific abuses — is being predictably rebooted as a prequel franchise.

Just don’t call it a reboot, said Before Watchmen series editor and Wolverine and Swamp Thing co-creator Len Wein, who also served as Moore and Gibbons’ original Watchmen editor in the 1980s.

“To me, a reboot is what DC is essentially doing with the New 52, which is changing costumes, origins, relationships, essentially looking at old characters through new eyes,” Wein said in an e-mail to Wired. “What we’re doing is filling in a lot of the blank spaces in a story that has already, to some degree, been told. There were still a lot of gaps in the histories of Watchmen‘s…

]]> Whose side do you take with respect to the new Before Watchmen prequels: Alan Moore (against) or Dave Gibbons (for)? From Wired:

Everything old at DC Comics is new again, again. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ canonical miniseries about superheroes and power — and their horrific abuses — is being predictably rebooted as a prequel franchise.

Just don’t call it a reboot, said Before Watchmen series editor and Wolverine and Swamp Thing co-creator Len Wein, who also served as Moore and Gibbons’ original Watchmen editor in the 1980s.

“To me, a reboot is what DC is essentially doing with the New 52, which is changing costumes, origins, relationships, essentially looking at old characters through new eyes,” Wein said in an e-mail to Wired. “What we’re doing is filling in a lot of the blank spaces in a story that has already, to some degree, been told. There were still a lot of gaps in the histories of Watchmen‘s characters, and events only mentioned in passing or touched on briefly in the original story. We’re filling in those gaps in the most creative and inventive ways we can.”

Those gaps, however, will have to be filled without the help of the outspoken and influential Moore, who told Wired.com in 2010 that DC Comics offered Watchmen back to him if he “would agree to some dopey prequels and sequels.”

“I don’t believe anyone at DC has spoken to Alan at all, which seems to be the way he prefers it.”
“So I just told them that if they said that 10 years ago, when I asked them for that, then yeah it might have worked,” Moore added. “Certainly, I don’t want it back under those kinds of terms. I don’t even have a copy of Watchmen in the house anymore.”

Gibbons has, however, given his stamp of approval to the sprawling project, which includes seven prequel miniseries based on Watchmen‘s violently unhinged superheroes, who alongside Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns rebooted the entire comics industry in the ’80s, and Hollywood film franchises shortly thereafter…

[continues at Wired]

]]> http://www.disinfo.com/2012/02/the-new-watchmen-comics/feed/ 0 http://www.disinfo.com/2012/02/the-mushroom-that-eats-plastic/ http://www.disinfo.com/2012/02/the-mushroom-that-eats-plastic/#comments Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:41:53 +0000 majestic http://www.disinfo.com/?p=67528 Is this the answer to the ever-growing plastic scourge on our planet? From co.exist:

The Amazon is home to more species than almost anywhere else on earth. One of them, carried home recently by a group from Yale University, appears to be quite happy eating plastic in airless landfills.

The group of students, part of Yale’s annual Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory with molecular biochemistry professor Scott Strobel, ventured to the jungles of Ecuador. The mission was to allow “students to experience the scientific inquiry process in a comprehensive and creative way.” The group searched for plants, and then cultured the microorganisms within the plant tissue. As it turns out, they brought back a fungus new to science with a voracious appetite for a global waste problem: polyurethane.

The common plastic is used for everything from garden hoses to shoes and truck seats. Once it gets into the trash stream, it persists for generations.…

]]> Is this the answer to the ever-growing plastic scourge on our planet? From co.exist:

The Amazon is home to more species than almost anywhere else on earth. One of them, carried home recently by a group from Yale University, appears to be quite happy eating plastic in airless landfills.

The group of students, part of Yale’s annual Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory with molecular biochemistry professor Scott Strobel, ventured to the jungles of Ecuador. The mission was to allow “students to experience the scientific inquiry process in a comprehensive and creative way.” The group searched for plants, and then cultured the microorganisms within the plant tissue. As it turns out, they brought back a fungus new to science with a voracious appetite for a global waste problem: polyurethane.

The common plastic is used for everything from garden hoses to shoes and truck seats. Once it gets into the trash stream, it persists for generations. Anyone alive today is assured that their old garden hoses and other polyurethane trash will still be here to greet his or her great, great grandchildren. Unless something eats it.

The fungi, Pestalotiopsis microspora, is the first anyone has found to survive on a steady diet of polyurethane alone and–even more surprising–do this in an anaerobic (oxygen-free) environment that is close to the condition at the bottom of a landfill…

[continues at co.exist]

]]> http://www.disinfo.com/2012/02/the-mushroom-that-eats-plastic/feed/ 0 http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/the-mother-of-all-herbicide-marketing-plans/ http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/the-mother-of-all-herbicide-marketing-plans/#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:34:29 +0000 majestic http://www.disinfo.com/?p=67451 Dow Agrosciences plans to double the trouble caused by Monsanto’s Roundup with a compelling marketing pitch to farmers. Tom Philpott reports for Mother Jones:

During the late December media lull, the USDA didn’t satisfy itself with green-lighting Monsanto’s useless, PR-centric “drought-tolerant” corn. It also prepped the way for approving a product from Monsanto’s rival Dow Agrosciences—one that industrial-scale corn farmers will likely find all too useful.

Dow has engineered a corn strain that withstands lashings of its herbicide, 2,4-D. The company’s pitch to farmers is simple: Your fields are becoming choked with weeds that have developed resistance to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. As soon as the USDA okays our product, all your problems will be solved.

At risk of sounding overly dramatic, the product seems to me to bring mainstream US agriculture to a crossroads. If Dow’s new corn makes it past the USDA and into farm fields, it will mark the beginning of…

]]> Dow Agrosciences plans to double the trouble caused by Monsanto’s Roundup with a compelling marketing pitch to farmers. Tom Philpott reports for Mother Jones:

During the late December media lull, the USDA didn’t satisfy itself with green-lighting Monsanto’s useless, PR-centric “drought-tolerant” corn. It also prepped the way for approving a product from Monsanto’s rival Dow Agrosciences—one that industrial-scale corn farmers will likely find all too useful.

Dow has engineered a corn strain that withstands lashings of its herbicide, 2,4-D. The company’s pitch to farmers is simple: Your fields are becoming choked with weeds that have developed resistance to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. As soon as the USDA okays our product, all your problems will be solved.

At risk of sounding overly dramatic, the product seems to me to bring mainstream US agriculture to a crossroads. If Dow’s new corn makes it past the USDA and into farm fields, it will mark the beginning of at least another decade of ramped-up chemical-intensive farming of a few chosen crops (corn, soy, cotton), beholden to a handful of large agrichemical firms working in cahoots to sell ever larger quantities of poisons, environment be damned. If it and other new herbicide-tolerant crops can somehow be stopped, farming in the US heartland can be pushed toward a model based on biodiversity over monocropping, farmer skill in place of brute chemicals, and healthy food instead of industrial commodities.

Yet Dow’s pitch will likely prove quite compelling. Introduced in 1996, Roundup Ready crops now account for 94 percent of the soybean crops and upwards of 70 percent for soy and cotton, USDA figures show. The technology cut a huge chunk of work out of farming, allowing farmers to cultivate ever more massive swathes of land with less labor.

When Roundup Ready crops hit the market in the mid-1990s, farmers started applying more and more Roundup per acre.: From Mortensen, at al, “Navigating a Critical Juncture for Sustainable Weed Management,” BioScience, Jan. 2012
But by the time farmers had structured their operations around Roundup Ready and its promise of effortless weed control, the technology had begun to fail…

[continues at Mother Jones]

]]> http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/the-mother-of-all-herbicide-marketing-plans/feed/ 0 http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/what-do-you-call-disgusting/ http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/what-do-you-call-disgusting/#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:38:22 +0000 majestic http://www.disinfo.com/?p=67434

photo: Sonya (cc)

Rachel Herz discusses the merits of eating the rotted bodily fluid of an ungulate as part of an excerpt from her new book, That’s Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion in the Wall Street Journal:

Nattō is a stringy, sticky, slimy, chunky fermented soybean dish that Japanese regularly eat for breakfast. It can be eaten straight up, but it is usually served cold over rice and seasoned with soy sauce, mustard or wasabi.

Aside from its alien texture, nattō suffers from another problem, at least for Westerners—odor. Nattō smells like the marriage of ammonia and a tire fire. Though this might not be the worst smell combination ever, it has zero food connotation for me, and I’ve never met a Westerner who can take a bite of nattō on the first attempt. What Japanese love, we find disgusting.

In the last several years there has been an explosion of research on disgust.…

]]>

photo: Sonya (cc)

Rachel Herz discusses the merits of eating the rotted bodily fluid of an ungulate as part of an excerpt from her new book, That’s Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion in the Wall Street Journal:

Nattō is a stringy, sticky, slimy, chunky fermented soybean dish that Japanese regularly eat for breakfast. It can be eaten straight up, but it is usually served cold over rice and seasoned with soy sauce, mustard or wasabi.

Aside from its alien texture, nattō suffers from another problem, at least for Westerners—odor. Nattō smells like the marriage of ammonia and a tire fire. Though this might not be the worst smell combination ever, it has zero food connotation for me, and I’ve never met a Westerner who can take a bite of nattō on the first attempt. What Japanese love, we find disgusting.

In the last several years there has been an explosion of research on disgust. Disgust is one of the six basic emotions—along with joy, surprise, anger, sadness and fear—but it is the only one that has to be learned, which suggests something about its complexity.

Most children get their first lessons in disgust around the time that they are potty trained. After that, the triggers of disgust are quickly acquired from the responses and rules of parents, peers and, most importantly, the wider culture. One of the best places to look for the vast differences in what is or is not considered disgusting in different parts of the globe is food, especially distinctive foods, like every culture’s favorite fermented dish.

Take cheese, considered by Westerners to be anything from a comfort food to a luxurious delicacy. A good taleggio, Gorgonzola or Brie might be described as sweaty or slimy. Cheese also has its fair share of aromatic obstacles and, depending on the circumstances, may be confused with vomit, stinky feet or a garbage spill. Many Asians regard all cheese, from processed American slices to Stilton, as utterly disgusting—the equivalent of cow excrement.

Given that cheese can be described as the rotted bodily fluid of an ungulate, that’s not far off…

[continues in the Wall Street Journal]

]]> http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/what-do-you-call-disgusting/feed/ 0 http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/vote-rocky/ http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/vote-rocky/#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:00:18 +0000 majestic http://www.disinfo.com/?p=67454 Vote Rocky, running on the Justice Party platform. Interviewed here by CNN: ]]> Ross C. “Rocky” Anderson wants Americans to Vote Rocky, running on the Justice Party platform. Interviewed here by CNN:

]]> http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/vote-rocky/feed/ 0 http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-the-teenage-mind/ http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-the-teenage-mind/#comments Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:06:44 +0000 majestic http://www.disinfo.com/?p=67398 Children today reach puberty earlier and adulthood later. The result: A lot of teenage weirdness. Alison Gopnik on how we might readjust adolescence, for the Wall Street Journal:

"What was he thinking?" It's the familiar cry of bewildered parents trying to understand why their teenagers act the way they do. How does the boy who can thoughtfully explain the reasons never to drink and drive end up in a drunken crash? Why does the girl who knows all about birth control find herself pregnant by a boy she doesn't even like? What happened to the gifted, imaginative child who excelled through high school but then dropped out of college, drifted from job to job and now lives in his parents' basement? Adolescence has always been troubled, but for reasons that are somewhat mysterious, puberty is now kicking in at an earlier and earlier age. A leading theory points to changes in energy balance as children eat more and move less. At the same time, first with the industrial revolution and then even more dramatically with the information revolution, children have come to take on adult roles later and later ...

]]> Children today reach puberty earlier and adulthood later. The result: A lot of teenage weirdness. Alison Gopnik on how we might readjust adolescence, for the Wall Street Journal:

“What was he thinking?” It’s the familiar cry of bewildered parents trying to understand why their teenagers act the way they do.

How does the boy who can thoughtfully explain the reasons never to drink and drive end up in a drunken crash? Why does the girl who knows all about birth control find herself pregnant by a boy she doesn’t even like? What happened to the gifted, imaginative child who excelled through high school but then dropped out of college, drifted from job to job and now lives in his parents’ basement?

Adolescence has always been troubled, but for reasons that are somewhat mysterious, puberty is now kicking in at an earlier and earlier age. A leading theory points to changes in energy balance as children eat more and move less.

At the same time, first with the industrial revolution and then even more dramatically with the information revolution, children have come to take on adult roles later and later. Five hundred years ago, Shakespeare knew that the emotionally intense combination of teenage sexuality and peer-induced risk could be tragic—witness “Romeo and Juliet.” But, on the other hand, if not for fate, 13-year-old Juliet would have become a wife and mother within a year or two.

Our Juliets (as parents longing for grandchildren will recognize with a sigh) may experience the tumult of love for 20 years before they settle down into motherhood. And our Romeos may be poetic lunatics under the influence of Queen Mab until they are well into graduate school…

[continues in the Wall Street Journal]

]]> http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-the-teenage-mind/feed/ 0 http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/anonymous-reveals-the-arcane-legal-trick-behind-acta/ http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/anonymous-reveals-the-arcane-legal-trick-behind-acta/#comments Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:58:32 +0000 majestic http://www.disinfo.com/?p=67394

"Greetings, world. We are Anonymous. We are here to reveal to you an arcane legal trick, which will be used to take away your freedom starting in June 2012...]]> Anonymous exposes the nefarious goals of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Thanks to Christopher Neitzert for the tip.

“Greetings, world. We are Anonymous.

We are here to reveal to you an arcane legal trick, which will be used to take away your freedom starting in June 2012.

Your governments have been secretly negotiating the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement or ACTA as it is known.

The title is misleading.

The true goal of ACTA is to crush the internet, as we know it, and to take away your freedom.

We and other good people of this Earth have been pointing out a major problem with ACTA. The text of the agreement is extremely vague and can be interpreted in many ways. If read one way, ACTA does not endanger your freedom. If read another way, ACTA is the worst thing that has ever happened and will be used to take away your freedom and to crush the internet as we know it.

Supporters of ACTA are saying that each country, which ratifies ACTA, will choose their own interpretation. This is the biggest lie ever told.

Just like any other international agreement ACTA must be interpreted according to the Vienna Convention of 1969.

Article 32 of the Vienna Convention says that if any part of a treaty is ambiguous it must be interpreted based on documents produced during the drafting and negotiations phase of the agreement. For Acta these documents are classified and have never been made available to the public through official sources. Such secrecy has never surrounded any other global treaty in modern times.

In essence the true meaning of ACTA is being kept secret even from the governments who sign it.

Our friends at Wikileaks have obtained a small portion of these secret documents and their content is chilling. When all major governments of the world have signed and ratified ACTA, the secret documents will be gradually made public and the true meaning of ACTA will be revealed to the nations of the world.

Article 27 of the Vienna Convention says that all international treaties take precedence over any internal laws. The secret parts of ACTA will take precedence over any national laws. Governments will have no choice. Citizens will have no choice. The internet, as we know it, will end.

The last major obstacle in ACTA’s path is the European Parliament. In June 2012 the European Parliament will have its final vote on ACTA. If they vote to ratify ACTA, the world, as we know it, will end. Your freedoms will gradually disappear. Your internet will be gradually turned into a controlled, censored channel where you can only view content produced by a handful of companies.

ACTA is a declaration of war against every man, woman, and child on this planet.

If you are a politician, and you defend ACTA, you are guilty of treason of the highest degree and we will deal with you as such.

We will defeat ACTA.
We will not be silenced.
We will take to the streets.
We will take back our governments.
We are Anonymous.
We are legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect us.”

]]> http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/anonymous-reveals-the-arcane-legal-trick-behind-acta/feed/ 0 http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/why-ritalin-is-wrong/ http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/why-ritalin-is-wrong/#comments Sun, 29 Jan 2012 17:39:58 +0000 majestic http://www.disinfo.com/?p=67362 L. Alan Sroufe, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development explains the failings of Ritalin in the New York Times:

Three million children in this country take drugs for problems in focusing. Toward the end of last year, many of their parents were deeply alarmed because there was a shortage of drugs like Ritalin and Adderall that they considered absolutely essential to their children’s functioning.

But are these drugs really helping children? Should we really keep expanding the number of prescriptions filled?

In 30 years there has been a twentyfold increase in the consumption of drugs for attention-deficit disorder.

As a psychologist who has been studying the development of troubled children for more than 40 years, I believe we should be asking why we rely so heavily on these drugs.

Attention-deficit drugs increase concentration in the short term, which is why they work so well for college students cramming…

]]> L. Alan Sroufe, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development explains the failings of Ritalin in the New York Times:

Three million children in this country take drugs for problems in focusing. Toward the end of last year, many of their parents were deeply alarmed because there was a shortage of drugs like Ritalin and Adderall that they considered absolutely essential to their children’s functioning.

But are these drugs really helping children? Should we really keep expanding the number of prescriptions filled?

In 30 years there has been a twentyfold increase in the consumption of drugs for attention-deficit disorder.

As a psychologist who has been studying the development of troubled children for more than 40 years, I believe we should be asking why we rely so heavily on these drugs.

Attention-deficit drugs increase concentration in the short term, which is why they work so well for college students cramming for exams. But when given to children over long periods of time, they neither improve school achievement nor reduce behavior problems. The drugs can also have serious side effects, including stunting growth.

Sadly, few physicians and parents seem to be aware of what we have been learning about the lack of effectiveness of these drugs.

What gets publicized are short-term results and studies on brain differences among children. Indeed, there are a number of incontrovertible facts that seem at first glance to support medication. It is because of this partial foundation in reality that the problem with the current approach to treating children has been so difficult to see…

[continues in the New York Times]

]]> http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/why-ritalin-is-wrong/feed/ 0 http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/twitter-censorship-outrage/ http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/twitter-censorship-outrage/#comments Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:49:00 +0000 majestic http://www.disinfo.com/?p=67316 Talk about cat amongst pigeons: Twitter’s announcement that it will enable country-specific censorship has the twittersphere in uproar. From Al Jazeera:

In an announcement on its official blog, the micro-blogging service Twitter has said it will enable country-specific censorship of content on the site.

True to the form of the medium, the service was immediately abuzz with questions, criticisms and conspiracies about Thursday’s announcement.

In a bid to show the service can still be used for dissent, some users have called for a boycott on Saturday, organised around the hashtag #TwitterBlackout.

In a Forbes article highly circulated on the micro-blogging site early Friday, Mark Gibbs wrote that San Francisco, California-based Twitter was committing “social suicide” with the censorship announcement.

Gibbs’ article raised fears of an algorithm incapable of understanding the sarcasm that permeate the 140-character blasts comprising the service’s contents.

That “computer-driven” filtering for the up to 9,000 tweets per second the service produced last year…

]]> Talk about cat amongst pigeons: Twitter’s announcement that it will enable country-specific censorship has the twittersphere in uproar. From Al Jazeera:

In an announcement on its official blog, the micro-blogging service Twitter has said it will enable country-specific censorship of content on the site.

True to the form of the medium, the service was immediately abuzz with questions, criticisms and conspiracies about Thursday’s announcement.

In a bid to show the service can still be used for dissent, some users have called for a boycott on Saturday, organised around the hashtag #TwitterBlackout.

In a Forbes article highly circulated on the micro-blogging site early Friday, Mark Gibbs wrote that San Francisco, California-based Twitter was committing “social suicide” with the censorship announcement.

Gibbs’ article raised fears of an algorithm incapable of understanding the sarcasm that permeate the 140-character blasts comprising the service’s contents.

That “computer-driven” filtering for the up to 9,000 tweets per second the service produced last year could not possibly take context and tone into consideration.

Whereas Gibbs said the announcement equated to Twitter having “dug their own grave”, Alex Howard, a DC-based correspondent for Radar, a blog about emerging technologies, said “the fact that Twitter says they will transparently show the rest of the world what’s being censored is actually quite interesting, even innovative”.

A departure

Howard, who has little doubt the service will implement the country-specific censorship, said: “I don’t think this system was introduced to be symbolic.”

He says the proposal laid out in the blog post entitled “Tweets still must flow” could be a departure even from a similar practice by the search company, Google.

“Google makes raw data available of government requests for information but not the information itself,” Howard said.

Twitter will probably follow this model while also in the process “highlighting the contents of tweets that governments are seeking to block and even regions it’s happening in”, he said.

Similary, Jillian York, director of international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, does not doubt the proposal amounts to censorship, but says it is the “best middle road” for a company looking to expand globally…

[continues at Al Jazeera]

]]> http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/twitter-censorship-outrage/feed/ 0 http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/silk-road-the-website-with-every-illegal-drug-imaginable-for-sale-is-hiring/ http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/silk-road-the-website-with-every-illegal-drug-imaginable-for-sale-is-hiring/#comments Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:25:47 +0000 majestic http://www.disinfo.com/?p=67249 Adrianne Jeffries notes that Silk Road is one hot startup, for BetaBeat:

No publicity is bad publicity: Silk Road, the illicit online marketplace that came to light after Gawker’s Adrian Chen announced you could buy any drug imaginable there with Bitcoins, has been booming after increased awareness due to a rash of alarmist press coverage.

Drugs! Anonymous currencies! Hackers! Our children! But gradually Silk Road, and to a lesser degree Bitcoin, faded from the stage, largely because most people couldn’t understand how to use them. Silk Road can only be accessed using the anonymous network Tor, and you should probably know a thing or two about encryption before you buy anything.

But as we learned via a few Bitcoining Betabeat readers, Silk Road is doing really well—well enough to expand its anonymous team. “Silk Road is currently hiring a database expert and a customer support team member,” writes one reader. “On top of the ordinary ‘describe…

]]> Adrianne Jeffries notes that Silk Road is one hot startup, for BetaBeat:

No publicity is bad publicity: Silk Road, the illicit online marketplace that came to light after Gawker’s Adrian Chen announced you could buy any drug imaginable there with Bitcoins, has been booming after increased awareness due to a rash of alarmist press coverage.

Drugs! Anonymous currencies! Hackers! Our children! But gradually Silk Road, and to a lesser degree Bitcoin, faded from the stage, largely because most people couldn’t understand how to use them. Silk Road can only be accessed using the anonymous network Tor, and you should probably know a thing or two about encryption before you buy anything.

But as we learned via a few Bitcoining Betabeat readers, Silk Road is doing really well—well enough to expand its anonymous team. “Silk Road is currently hiring a database expert and a customer support team member,” writes one reader. “On top of the ordinary ‘describe your background and expertise’ and ‘why do you want to join us’ questions, they’re asking for the applicant’s drug of choice.”…

[continues at BetaBeat]

]]> http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/silk-road-the-website-with-every-illegal-drug-imaginable-for-sale-is-hiring/feed/ 0 http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/low-iq-conservative-beliefs-linked-to-prejudice-racism/ http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/low-iq-conservative-beliefs-linked-to-prejudice-racism/#comments Fri, 27 Jan 2012 11:22:03 +0000 majestic http://www.disinfo.com/?p=67197 It took a team of crack scientists to reach this shocking conclusion, reported at Live Science via Yahoo News:

There’s no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.

The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario.

Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.

“Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood,” he said.

Controversy ahead
The findings combine three hot-button topics.

“They’ve pulled off the trifecta of controversial…

]]> It took a team of crack scientists to reach this shocking conclusion, reported at Live Science via Yahoo News:

There’s no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.

The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario.

Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.

“Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood,” he said.

Controversy ahead
The findings combine three hot-button topics.

“They’ve pulled off the trifecta of controversial topics,” said Brian Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia who was not involved in the study. “When one selects intelligence, political ideology and racism and looks at any of the relationships between those three variables, it’s bound to upset somebody.”

Polling data and social and political science research do show that prejudice is more common in those who hold right-wing ideals that those of other political persuasions, Nosek told LiveScience…

[continues at at Live Science via Yahoo News]

]]> http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/low-iq-conservative-beliefs-linked-to-prejudice-racism/feed/ 0 http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/lets-be-clear-ron-paul-fucking-sucks-here-are-20-reasons-why/ http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/lets-be-clear-ron-paul-fucking-sucks-here-are-20-reasons-why/#comments Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:48:53 +0000 majestic http://www.disinfo.com/?p=67158 Before admirers of Representative Paul go crazy, I didn’t write this post (or the headline) and I don’t endorse it (neither does disinformation), but I am interested in your well argued debate as to whether or not the little red umbrella author is right about any (or all?) of his points:

Every single one of the candidates currently running for the Republican nomination is a walking disaster. But one of them, Texas congressman Ron Paul, seems to be getting a disturbing amount of support from liberals. Mostly that’s because his nut-job libertarian views happen to not sound so nutty on a handful of issues. He wants to end the War on Drugs. He is against the death penalty. He would not support a constitutional ban on gay marriage. He was opposed to the War in Iraq and wants to end all American military intervention abroad. All of that sounds pretty good to…

]]> Before admirers of Representative Paul go crazy, I didn’t write this post (or the headline) and I don’t endorse it (neither does disinformation), but I am interested in your well argued debate as to whether or not the little red umbrella author is right about any (or all?) of his points:

Every single one of the candidates currently running for the Republican nomination is a walking disaster. But one of them, Texas congressman Ron Paul, seems to be getting a disturbing amount of support from liberals. Mostly that’s because his nut-job libertarian views happen to not sound so nutty on a handful of issues. He wants to end the War on Drugs. He is against the death penalty. He would not support a constitutional ban on gay marriage. He was opposed to the War in Iraq and wants to end all American military intervention abroad. All of that sounds pretty good to us left-wing types — downright refreshing coming from a Republican. Some progressives have claimed they’d rather vote for him than for Obama. Even Occupiers have sung his praises.

But if you’re a liberal who supports Ron Paul, you either haven’t been paying enough attention or you’re out of your fucking mind.

Here are 20 reasons why:

1. He wants to repeal the Civil Rights Act. That’s the 1964 law that made segregation illegal and outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex or national origin. Paul claims it infringes on people’s freedom. If a restaurant or hotel wants to ban African-Americans, he believes they should be allowed to. As he put it in a speech to Congress: “the forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty.”

2. He’s also against the Americans With Disabilities Act. That’s the 1990 bill passed by the first President Bush, which followed up the Civil Rights Act by making it illegal to discriminate against someone because of a disability. Paul wants it gone, too.

3. He is against public health care. You know how you think Americans are crazy because they can’t do any better on universal health care than the watered down bill Obama got through? Well, President Ron Paul would do much, much worse. He thinks that in an entirely private system, poor people would have all of their needs taken care of by charitable doctors who would be willing to work for free. Ron Paul, by the way, is a medical doctor.

4. He wants to dissolve the public education system. He promises to eliminate the Department of Education entirely and leave the question of whether to offer any public education at all up to local governments. He calls public education “socialist” (which we actually agree with, but he, unlike us, doesn’t think that’s a good thing) and says, “I preach home schooling and private schooling.”…

[continues at the little red umbrella]

]]> http://www.disinfo.com/2012/01/lets-be-clear-ron-paul-fucking-sucks-here-are-20-reasons-why/feed/ 0