Ralph Bernardo
Managing Editor, Disinformation
Digital Forensics Expert: Controversial Lee Harvey Oswald Photo is Not A Fake
MELANIE PLENDA writes in the Union Leader:
Kennedy conspiracy theorists appear to have one less bullet in their arsenal. Hany Farid, a computer science professor and expert in digital forensics at Dartmouth College, spent two months evaluating a photograph of John F. Kennedy shooter Lee Harvey Oswald.
“You can’t really authenticate a photo in all honesty,” Farid said of the image, which shows Oswald holding a Marxist newspaper and a rifle. “But I can say pretty definitively that the things that people thought made the photo a fake, well, those people are wrong. And it doesn’t make them stupid. I was wrong too. But that photo is not the proof they think it is.”
It’s long been the contention of conspiracy theorists that photos of Oswald were doctored as part of an elaborate…
Frankenstein Gets The Moody Teen Film He Deserves
The Twilighters are missing some classic movie monsters (from Saturday Night Live):
Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five
On the fascinating site Letters of Note:
In December of 1944, whilst behind enemy lines during the Rhineland Campaign, Private Kurt Vonnegut was captured by Wehrmacht troops and subsequently became a prisoner of war. A month later, Vonnegut and his fellow POWs reached a Dresden work camp where they were imprisoned in an underground slaughterhouse known by German soldiers as Schlachthof Fünf (Slaughterhouse Five). The next month — February — the subterranean nature of the prison saved their lives during the highly controversial and devastating bombing of Dresden, the aftermath of which Vonnegut and the remaining survivors helped to clear up.
Vonnegut released the book Slaughterhouse-Five in 1969.
Below is a letter he wrote to his family that May from a repatriation camp, in which he informs them of his capture and survival:
Interest on U.S. Debt: $4.8 Trillion
Jeanne Sahadi writes on CNNMoney.com:
Here’s a new way to think about the U.S. government’s epic borrowing: More than half of the $9 trillion in debt that Uncle Sam is expected to build up over the next decade will be interest.
More than half. In fact, $4.8 trillion.
If that’s hard to grasp, here’s another way to look at why that’s a problem.
In 2015 alone, the estimated interest due — $533 billion — is equal to a third of the federal income taxes expected to be paid that year, said Charles Konigsberg, chief budget counsel of the Concord Coalition, a deficit watchdog group.
More on CNNMoney.com
To The White House and Beyond: Palin/Beck 2012!
Forget what the Mayans say, magnetic pole reversal, or solar flares for 2012. If these two horsemen of the Apocalypse join forces to take the White House in 2012, the end is near…
Chris Good writes on the Atlantic:
Don’t rule it out, because apparently Palin wouldn’t either in an interview with Newsmax:
Palin initially chuckled when Newsmax broached the idea. But then she had some serious words of praise for the popular Fox personality.
“I can envision a couple of different combinations, if ever I were to be in a position to really even seriously consider running for anything in the future, and I’m not there yet,” Palin tells Newsmax. “But Glenn Beck I have great respect for. He’s a hoot. He gets his message across in such a clever way. And he’s…
Government Watchdog Can’t Verify Stimulus Job Stats
EAMON JAVERS writes on the Politico:
The chief federal oversight official for the stimulus program said in a letter Wednesday that he can’t certify whether the number of jobs “created or saved” by stimulus funds is accurate.
Recovery Board Chairman Earl Devaney was responding to a request for information by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. In a letter to Issa dated Nov. 17, Devaney wrote, “Your letter specifically asks if I am able to certify that the number of jobs reported as created/saved on Recovery.gov is accurate and auditable. No, I am not able to make this certification.”
The Obama administration claimed that it saved or created at least 1 million jobs this year. But errors in the stimulus job creation data…
Minnesota Dad Spoke Only Klingon to Child for Three Years
Yes, Mr. Worf. That does sound bonkers. Hart Van Denburg writes in Minneapolis / St. Paul City Pages:
Is this taking the whole Star Trek thing a teensie weensie bit too far? d’Armond Speers spoke only Klingon to his child for the first three years of its life.
Klingon? Not Spanish, French, Mandarin? Not some gutteral genuflecting concoction from the deepest recesses of Borneo? Klingon? You heard it right. (And if you don’t know about the Klingon Empire, look it up.)
“I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language,” Speers told the Minnesota Daily. “He was definitely starting to learn it.”
And get this, Speers says he isn’t really a huge Star Trek fan.
H1N1 Is a Plot to Kill Baby Boomers, Argues Conspiracy Theorist
Nice find. Annalee Newitz writes on io9.com:
A new day, a new H1N1 conspiracy theory! But this one is special. Ken Welch says on his blog, before treating us to an extremely detailed analysis:
We’ve recently learned the secret behind the Swine Flu Vaccine that is being pushed so strongly on the public. While the vaccine may make you sick, its real purpose is to greatly increase the fast-kill mechanism of the pandemic still to come. Worse yet, the vaccine is being used to target specific groups of people who are simply not welcome in our brave new world.
In the USA these include Blacks, American Indians, and Baby Boomers.
Read the whole thing from Ken Welch.
Supercrocs Ate Dinosaurs, Ruled the Sahara
Sounds like a bad B-Movie (oh look it actually is a B-movie). Fun stuff. Christine Dell’Amore writes on National Geographic:
A “saber-toothed cat in armor” and a pancake-shaped predator are among the strange crocodile cousins whose bones have been found beneath the windswept dunes of the Sahara, archaeologists say.
The diverse menagerie of reptiles ruled Gondwana — a landmass that later broke up into the southern continents— about a hundred million years ago, during the Cretaceous period.
“There’s an entire croc world brewing in Africa that we really had only an inkling about before,” said Paul Sereno, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago and leader of a new study.
“We knew about SuperCroc, the titan of all crocs, but we didn’t have quite an idea of what existed in the shadows of the…
The Secret War Against Afghanistan’s Space Invaders
If only it was like a video game…
Lauren Davis writes on io9.com:
Adam Richardson has added pixelated alien invaders to actual war photos from Iraq and Afghanistan. And when the Space Invaders descend on a war zone, they find that they have more to contend with more than laser cannons.
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— Ralph Bernardo, Managing Editor, Disinformation
Colby The Christian Robot Wants Your Soul
Great find. A Christian “robot” — the jokes write themselves. Meredith Woerner on io9.com:
This is Colby, the Christian robot. Fast forward to 3:40 when his robot army tries to transform the bullying kid into another Christian robot, singing, “We are all robots, you must be a robot too.” [ via Everything Is Terrible]
Side Note: Apparently I need to point out that this is an edited version of the show, thought you could tell that from the cuts but now it’s all out in the open, it’s edited. But they still want to turn that kid into a robot.
On CNBC, Strategist Says Dollar Will be ‘Utterly Destroyed’; We Are Moving Toward ‘New World Order’
Wow, this was on CNBC:
The dollar will get “utterly destroyed” and become “virtually worthless”, said Damon Vickers, chief investment officer of Nine Points Capital Partners.
“We don’t have resources. Neither does a lot of Asia to be quite frank,” Vickers said on CNBC’s Asia Squawk Box. “Countries that have resources — the Brazils, the Canadas, Australia — their currencies are doing well.” Vickers noted that their stock markets have done the best year-to-date.
“They have stuff. They’ve got resources. They export real things. The United States exports ‘promises’ and ‘pretty paper’,” he added.
Due to the huge wage disparities between the United States and emerging markets like China, Vickers said that may resolve itself in some type of a global currency crisis.
“If the global currency crisis unfolds, then inevitably you get an alignment of a global world government. A new global currency and a new world order, so we may be moving towards that,” he said.
Vickers added that this is the time where investors should be making money when the trend is developing. “Oil looks higher, gold looks higher, currencies look weaker.”
