His son Rand’s campaign for Senate in Kentucky is going better than anyone could have expected — every Kentuckian I met at the National Tea Party Convention backed him — but Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is drawing three primary opponents for his own re-election bid. Ironically, all three are from the Tea Party movement, which, as reporter Tom Benning points out, would be hard to imagine without the energy stirred up by Paul’s 2008 presidential bid.

Tea Party associations aside, many of the challengers’ criticisms echo concerns of Paul’s past opponents: that he is too focused on his national ambitions; that his views are too extreme; that he doesn’t support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; that he votes “no” on everything, including federal aid for his district after Hurricane Ike.

“The word I keep hearing is ‘ineffective,’ ” said [challenger John] Gay, a school business administrator. “This district is not really being represented as it could be.”

The criticism is, to say the least, ironic. Almost nothing that Paul does cuts against the rhetoric of the Tea Party movement that is mentioned most in the press: responsible spending and adherence to the Constitution. But some of it does cut against the priorities of national security conservatives and partisan Republicans…

[continues at the Washington Independent]

Researchers in the US say they have made a crucial breakthrough towards achieving laser fusion and that they expect to generate the conditions for a sustained nuclear reaction by the end of the year.

These claims are backed up by the publication of the first science results from the National Ignition Facility (NIF) and among the highlights was a new world record for laser intensity.

[disinfo ed.: The National Ignition Facility, the world's largest laser system, located at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, was featured in the BBC broadcast "Horizon" hosted by physicist Brian Cox. Here is the NIF portion of the program, which was entitled "Can We Make A Star On Earth?"]

Four times over budget and five years behind schedule, the NIF project has been under pressure to deliver since it finally began its operations last March at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California. NIF’s main goal is to focus a number of lasers capable of generating 180 MJ of energy – more than 60 times more energetic than any machine in existence – onto a hollow sphere 2 mm in diameter made of beryllium.

By dumping all of this energy into a tiny volume, the aim is to try to squeeze together isotopes of deuterium and tritium contained inside the sphere. This could then spark “ignition”, which is the point at which the deuterium and tritium undergo sustained nuclear fusion that produces excess energy…

[continues at EnvironmentalResearchWeb]

Google Inc. is taking a swipe at Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. with a new feature that makes it easier for users of Gmail to view media and status updates shared online by their friends.

Google could announce the new Gmail feature as soon as this week, said people familiar with the matter. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment.

The change adds a module to the Gmail screen that will display a stream of updates from individuals a user chooses to connect with, said one of these people. It is a format popularized by Facebook and Twitter.

Yahoo Inc. added a similar feature to Yahoo Mail last year, allowing users to see whether friends have uploaded a photo to a site like Flickr, for example.

Google, too, is trying to get users to turn to Gmail as a place they can go to see what’s up with their friends. But whether users will want to blend sending email with browsing friends’ content is unclear.

Google has been trying to fashion Gmail into more than an email service for years. It currently lets users set an “away message”—which can be a link to a Web site—that their friends see when they message them.

The new stream will eventually include content that a user’s connections share through Google’s YouTube video site and Picasa photo service, according to one person familiar with the matter. But whether those features will be announced in the coming days remains unclear…

[continues at the Wall Street Journal]

Internet chatter had led to speculation that it might be an urban myth — nothing more than clever digital trickery spreading via the Web.

But our friend Bob Collins at Minnesota Public Radio assures us he’s seen it with his own eyes:

There is a billboard along I-35 near Wyoming, Minn., with a huge photo of former president George W. Bush and this question: “Miss Me Yet?”

Now, the push is on to find out who paid to have it put up.

Bob says there’s no readily apparent claim of ownership on the billboard, so he’s heading back to the scene to see if he can find out who’s behind the message. He’s also got some local politicos looking into it. He’ll keep us posted…

Describing “Immunity on demand, he writes “…there’s a good chance this system, or something like it, will actually be in place within decades!”

“Our best hope may be to cut out the middleman. Rather than merely hoping that the vaccine will indirectly lead to the antibody an individual needs, imagine if we could genetically engineer these antibodies and make them available as needed?”

After a month of wrangling, Argentine President Cristina Kirchner succeeded in sacking central bank President Martin Redrado last week. In his place she named Mercedes Marcó del Pont, a Yale-trained economist who has expressed the view that central bank autonomy ought to be limited.

The opposition howled at the news. Felipe Sola, former governor of Provincia de Buenos Aires, warned that the new bank president “is going to do what the executive decides and they are going to modify the bank charter to justify her doing what the executive tells her.”

Of course that would seem to be the point. Mr. Redrado was fired because he refused to turn over $6.6 billion in bank reserves to Mrs. Kirchner, who wants to pay foreign creditors but doesn’t want to use treasury revenues. Ms. Marcó del Pont, if she wants to keep her job, will follow the orders of the president.

Mrs. Kirchner is not the first politician to covet the wealth available from the monetary authority. Closer to home, there is Barack Obama, who didn’t back Ben Bernanke’s controversial second term as head of the Federal Reserve out of magnanimity. Mr. Bernanke kept his job because he has shown a willingness to finance Mr. Obama’s big-government agenda.

[Read more at WSJ]

Prosecutors at the human rights trial of former Liberian warlord Charles Taylor alleged Thursday that Christian televangelist Pat Robertson had lobbied the White House on Taylor’s behalf in return for a gold mining contract.

The controversial pastor and former Republican presidential contender met with then-President George W. Bush on Taylor’s behalf, prosecutors charged during cross-examination of Taylor in a Dutch courtroom, allegedly in return for a contract to mine gold in southeast Liberia — a contract they say that Taylor had no legal right to grant.

Lead Prosecutor Brenda Hollis questioned Taylor about how he may have skirted the Liberian legislature in order to get Robertson his gold mining contracts.

“Mr. Taylor, even the legislature in place in 1999 actually refused to ratify this agreement you had with Pat Robertson. Isn’t that correct?” asked Hollis.

Taylor answered: “There was contention about different issues, yes.”

And so you just went around the legislature. Isn’t that right, Mr. Taylor?

“I don’t know if we went around them. I would disagree with you,” replied Taylor.

[Read more at ABC News]

Ali G talks to religious wingnuts about their beliefs .. oddly, religious wingnuts don’t like talking about aspects of their own religion that offend them .. if their religion and its real-life applications are so offensive, why believe all that wingnuttery in the first place?

[Read more at ScienceBlogs]

Just three weeks ago, the United States Supreme Court ended a ban on corporate spending in political elections, drawing intense criticism for the ruling’s potential to erode the democratic process.

This week, a group that includes some of the wealthiest Republican CEOs on Wall Street have formed a group to take advantage of new fundraising possibilities for the GOP.

The Supreme Court ruling could potentially allow the group, called the American Action Network, to take unlimited contributions from corporations for use in political campaigns.

“This administration as well as Citizens United [the Supreme Court ruling] — when you combine the two the prospects for funding these types of efforts are greatly enhanced,” said Norm Coleman, one of the group’s organizers.

Coleman called the group an “action tank” or a “think-and-do tank.”

[Read more at The Raw Story]

As the executive director of NORML, the leading lobbying organization for pot smokers’ rights, Allen St. Pierre gets asked a lot of strange questions. But the one he’s been getting lately is, “What is that metal thing they use on Weeds?”

The answer is the Volcano Vaporizer, a smokeless inhalation device that has recently shown up on both the Showtime series and HBO’s Bored to Death, in which a sexy stoner played by Jenny Slate lures Jason Schwartzman into her bedroom to test one out. (“Just squeeze down on that nipple and suck in the vapors,” she coaches him.) It’s even used at the renowned Chicago restaurant Alinea, albeit unconventionally, to pipe aromas of nutmeg and coffee to diners as they eat dessert.

The Volcano is affectionately known as the “Mercedes Benz” of toking up.

“If you live in Ohio, or if you’re a baby boomer who has no problem with cannabis, and you see them using that, you’re asking, ‘What’s going on?’” says Pierre. “There’s a veneer of sophistication to it. This is not your daddy’s bong.”

Indeed, the Vaporizer wouldn’t look out of place in the pages of the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog. With its sleek, brushed-aluminum chassis and digital temperature gauge, it could be mistaken for a device that steams milk. And, perhaps not incidentally, the $700 Volcano is growing in popularity with the cappuccino crowd — highly educated strivers who demand nothing but the best. “If you’re buying this, you are either an aficionado, or you are well-read in the best ways to deliver cannabis to your body as science currently tells us,” says Pierre. “Otherwise you’d have to have a lot of vanity to drop this much money.”

Read More: Daily Beast

FBI Director Robert Mueller wants ISPs to track “origin and destination information” about their customers’ browsing habits and store them for authorities’ use for two years, according to a CNET report.

That would mean monitoring the IP addresses, domains and exact websites users visit, and then storing that information for months. If officials who support this measure get their way, federal, state and local law enforcement would be able to access the information via search warrant or subpoena.

Access to exact URLs would require deep-packet inspection, which could be a violation of the Wiretap Act. The courts would end up having to make a ruling one way or the other if authorities try it.

The argument in favor is that the FBI has long been able to do this with telephone call information, but since so much telephone communication has been replaced by web activity, this would just be a preservation of existing powers. And those in favor insist that no actual content would be released to authorities — only points of contact. For example, authorities can see that a phone call was made from one number to another, but they don’t know what was said unless they wiretap.

Read More: Mashable

A puzzling object that seemed to be a comet flying inside the solar system’s asteroid belt is no comet at all, but the remains of a violent collision between two fossil rocks that populate the belt, astronomers say.

Captured in images by the Hubble Space Telescope, the crash of the asteroids provides scientists with their first opportunity to see clear evidence of the violent activity that has constantly churned the asteroid belt since its formation, probably when the planets themselves were forming about 4.5 billion years ago.

The object was first sighted in early January by astronomers at the Air Force LINEAR project telescope in New Mexico, who reported it as a comet that must have flown into the asteroid belt from the solar system’s outer reaches, as all comets do. It was the fifth presumed comet to be reported in the unlikely region, they said, and they gave it the code name P/2010 A2.

The main asteroid belt lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and the strange object was spotted there again later in the month by astronomers at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson.

David Jewitt, a leading expert on comets and asteroids at UCLA, was intrigued by the reports of a possible comet inside the asteroid belt where millions of rocky objects fly in orbit around the sun, constantly colliding and grinding each other down.

He quickly obtained time for the Hubble Space Telescope’s wide field camera to home in on the object, and the images showed a stony nucleus just beyond an X-shaped halo of rocky filaments and a long, streaming tail of dust and gravel.

Read More: SF Chronicle

A Christian group in Michigan has filed a lawsuit alleging that a package of hate crimes laws named after murder victim Matthew Shepard is an affront to their religious freedom.

Far from the intended purpose of severely punishing criminals who commit unspeakable acts against a persecuted minority group, the religious activists claim the laws are a guarded effort to “eradicate” their beliefs.

Filed by the Thomas More Law Center — which bills itself as the religious answer to the American Civil Liberties Union — the complaint claims that protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people “is an effort to eradicate religious beliefs opposing the homosexual agenda from the marketplace of ideas by demonizing, vilifying, and criminalizing such beliefs as a matter of federal law and policy.”

The suit was placed on behalf of American Family Association of Michigan president Gary Glenn, along with pastors Rene Ouellette, Levon Yuille and James Combs.

Read More: RAW Story

The Geneva-based laboratory would like to invite an astronomer from the Vatican Observatory to collaborate on studies concerning the origin of the universe, said Ugo Amaldi, a professor of medical physics and president of the TERA Foundation, which works closely with CERN in finding ways to apply atomic research in treating cancer.

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, “is an international and European (facility), and to have the Vatican Observatory send some or one of its young scientists will be something that is extremely important,” he said.

He made his comments during a Dec. 10 Vatican press conference launching the Italian-language version of “The Heavens Proclaim,” a book about the history of the Vatican and astronomy.

The head of the Vatican Observatory, Jesuit Father Jose Funes, said during the book presentation that he hopes Gabriele Gionti, a young Vatican astronomer who will be ordained in June, will be involved in the CERN collaboration.

Gionti has a doctorate in physics and specializes in quantum gravity, and he is finishing his theology studies at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences in Berkeley, Calif.

Father Funes told Catholic News Service that scientists at CERN are interested in “astroparticles — the first particles in the universe. And at the moment we don’t have anyone on our staff prepared to follow these studies. So maybe Gabriele Gionti has the background and the interest in collaborating on these topics.”…

[continues at the Catholic Spirit]

A 27-year-old Washington state soldier allegedly admitted Sunday to having held his daughter’s head in a bowl of water because she couldn’t recite the alphabet — “submerg[ing] her face three or four times until the water was lapping around her forehead and jawline.”

His girlfriend told police that the girl had been found in a closer with bruising on her back and scratch marks on her neck and throat.

Tabor was arrested after being seen in his neighborhood in a Tacoma suburb wearing a Kevlar helmet and threatening to break windows.

Fascinating story about the man who would not be messiah, in the New York Times:

Raj Patel’s desk sits in a dusty, cement-floored nook in his garage, just beyond a parked gray Prius, near the washer and dryer. They are humble surroundings for a god.

Followers of Share International, a New Age religious sect, claim Raj Patel is the messiah Maitreya. He denies the claim, but he cannot persuade them.

“It is absurd to be put in this position, when I’m just some bloke,” Mr. Patel said.

A native of London now living on Potrero Hill in San Francisco, Mr. Patel suddenly finds himself an unlikely object of worship, proclaimed the messiah Maitreya by followers of the New Age religious sect Share International.

He was raised as a Hindu and had never heard of the group. He has no desire for deification. But he may not have a choice.

Mr. Patel’s journey from ordinary person to unwilling lord is a case of having the wrong résumé at the wrong moment in history. For this is a time when human yearning to find a magical cure for the world’s woes can be harnessed to the digital age’s instant access to a vast treasure-trove of personal information.

I have known Mr. Patel for four years — he keeps an office down the hall from mine. He is charming, and as a graduate of Oxford, Cornell University and the London School of Economics, he is considered brilliant, although he is self-effacing. He readily admits to being imperfectly human.

People began to believe otherwise on Jan. 14 in London when Benjamin Creme, the leader of Share International, who is also known as the Master, proclaimed the arrival of Maitreya. The name of the deity has Buddhist roots, but in 1972, Mr. Creme prophesied the coming Maitreya as a messiah for all faiths called the World Teacher…

[continues in the New York Times]

Monsters and villains which have sent generations of Doctor Who fans fleeing for the safety of the back of the sofa will go under the hammer this month.

Costumes worn by Kylie Minogue and David Tennant and Billie Piper are also included in the sale at Bonhams.

Daleks and several Cybermen have avoided extermination to make it into the sale room.

Among the highlights are Minogue’s waitress costume worn when she played Astrid Perth in the 2007 special Voyage of the Damned. It is expected to fetch up to £3,000.

From the same special, 10th Doctor Tennant’s two-piece Paul Smith dinner suit is also valued at the same amount.

A jacket worn by Piper’s character, Rose Tyler, is expected to raise up to £700 while a pair of the character’s pyjamas and dressing gown could fetch £250…

[continues at the Guardian]

Minneapolis — A University of Minnesota study shows that consuming a lot of soft drinks appears to increase a person’s risk of pancreatic cancer.

The findings are based on the dietary habits of more than 60,000 Chinese people who were observed for 14 years.

The study found a nearly two-fold increase in the risk of pancreatic cancer among people who consumed at least two carbonated, sugar-sweetened beverages per week compared to those who did not consume soft drinks.

U of M Researcher Mark Pereira said people who drink soda release a jolt of insulin into their pancreas, which may overwhelm the organ.

“They’re pretty much all sugar, stimulate a lot of blood glucose, blood sugar and then insulin,” Pereira said. “And as we know, the consumption of soft drinks in our society is very common and the portion sizes are unfortunately very large; so lots of sugar, lots of insulin.”…

[continues at Minnesota Public Radio News]

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We are proud to bring you an interview with Henry Lincoln, author of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and subject of the Disinformation Company documentary Origins of the Da Vinci Code.

Henry’s work was the basis for Dan Brown’s famous novel, as well as numerous other works in the genre.  We discuss the mystery surrounding the town of Rennes-le-Chateau, and even talk about Henry’s early work, including writing the second series of Dr. Who!

Disinformation Podcast T-shirts available here!

We’ve built a brand new website with mobile integration for this 50 episode series about the occult, conspiracy theories, and other bizarre undercurrents of the human psyche.

While you are there, make sure to take a look at Raymond’s Ultimate Conspiracy Video List.

The list contains nearly 100 full length films, many of which are sources for episodes of Out There Radio.

Researchers have discovered how old and damaged mother cells are able to produce healthy new daughter cells, a process which has been a mystery to scientists until now. The ground-breaking research was partly funded by the EU and is published in the journal Cell.

The team’s results revealed how yeast cells use a conveyor belt mechanism to offload damaged proteins into the mother cells before dividing into new cells, a process known as mitosis.

‘This ensures that the daughter cell is born without age-related damage,’ said lead researcher Professor Thomas Nyström from the department of cell and molecular biology at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Professor Nyström’s research team has published many previous studies of cell ageing, but the new research is the key piece of the jigsaw puzzle.

The research was carried out as part of two EU-funded projects, MIMAGE (’Role of mitochondria in conserved mechanisms of ageing’) funded with EUR 7.4 million, and PROTEOMAGE (’Functional analysis of evolutionarily conserved mechanisms of ageing on advanced proteome analysis’), funded with EUR 10.7 million under the ‘Life sciences, genomics and biotechnology for health’ Thematic area of the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6).

The research shows how daughter cells use conveyor-belt-like structures to transport the damaged proteins back to the mother cells, thereby allowing the new young cells to be ‘born’ young and healthy.

‘Previously it was believed that these structures allowed only one-way traffic of proteins and organelles from mother cell to daughter cell,’ said Professor Nyström. ‘We can now show that damaged proteins are transported in the opposite direction. In principle, this means that the daughter cell uses the mother cell as a dustbin for all the rubbish resulting from the ageing process, ensuring that the newly formed cell is born without age-related damage.’ …

[continues at Cordis News]

A mound strewn with dinosaur bones is seen October 2009 in Zhucheng, in northeast China’s Shandong province. Paleontologists in China have uncovered more than 3,000 dinosaur footprints, state media reported, in an area said to be the world’s largest grouping of fossilised bones belonging to the ancient animals.

Archaeologists in China have uncovered more than 3,000 dinosaur footprints, state media reported, in an area said to be the world’s largest grouping of fossilised bones belonging to the ancient animals.

The footprints, believed to be more than 100 million years old, were discovered after a three-month excavation at a gully in Zhucheng in the eastern province of Shandong, the Xinhua news agency reported.
The prints range from 10 to 80 centimetres (four to 32 inches) in length, and belonged to at least six different kinds of dinosaurs, including tyrannosaurs, the report said Saturday.

Wang Haijun, a senior engineer at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the prints faced the same direction, Xinhua said.

This indicated a possible migration or a panic escape by plant-eating dinosaurs after an attack by predators, Wang added.

Archeologists have found dinosaur fossils at some 30 sites in Zhucheng, known as “dinosaur city.”…