TV Presenter Gets Death Sentence for ‘Sorcery’
From CNN World:
Amnesty International is calling on Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah to stop the execution of a Lebanese man sentenced to death for “sorcery.”In a statement released Thursday, the international rights group condemned the verdict and demanded the immediate release of Ali Hussain Sibat, former host of a popular call-in show that aired on Sheherazade, a Beirut based satellite TV channel.
According to his lawyer, Sibat, who is 48 and has five children, would predict the future on his show and give out advice to his audience.
The attorney, May El Khansa, who is in Lebanon, tells CNN her client was arrested by Saudi Arabia’s religious police (known as the Mutawa’een) and charged with sorcery while visiting the country in May 2008. Sibat was in Saudi Arabia to perform the Islamic religious…
Houston Bus Driver Runs Red Light Into Train, Asks Right Afterward: “Was That Light Green?”
KTRK-TV Houston reports that future Darwin Award nominee, bus driver Debra Harrison, not only ran a red light right into a train … but right afterward said to the bus passengers, “was that light green?”
Nineteen people were hurt, and Harrison has been involved in five accidents in the last three years according to KTRK-TV Houston. Below is the raw footage of the “accident” below from the AP:
Your Life Will Some Day End; ACTA Will Live On
From Ars Technica:
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) isn’t just another secret treaty—it’s a way of life. If ACTA passes in anything like its current form, it will create an entirely new international secretariat to administer and extend the agreement.
Knowledge Ecology International got its hands on more of the leaked ACTA text this week, including a chapter on “Institutional Arrangements” that has not leaked before. The chapter makes clear that ACTA will be far more than a standard trade agreement; it appears to be nothing less than an attempt to make a new international institution that will handle some of the duties of groups like the WTO and WIPO.
Why bother? Well, from the perspective of countries like the US, the existing institutions have problems. For one, they feature a huge number…
Sceptic Challenges Guru to Kill Him Live on TV
From the Times Online:
When a famous tantric guru boasted on television that he could kill another man using only his mystical powers, most viewers either gasped in awe or merely nodded unquestioningly. Sanal Edamaruku’s response was different. “Go on then — kill me,” he said.
Mr Edamaruku had been invited to the same talk show as head of the Indian Rationalists’ Association — the country’s self-appointed sceptic-in-chief. At first the holy man, Pandit Surender Sharma, was reluctant, but eventually he agreed to perform a series of rituals designed to kill Mr Edamaruku live on television. Millions tuned in as the channel cancelled scheduled programming to continue broadcasting the showdown, which can still be viewed on YouTube.
First, the master chanted mantras, then he sprinkled water on his intended victim. He brandished a…
Game of Death: France’s Shocking TV Experiment (Video)
From Yahoo News:
Is a crusading French documentary maker striking a blow at the abusive powers of television — or simply taking reality TV to a new low of cynicism and bad taste? That’s the question viewers across France are asking in light of Christophe Nick’s new film Game of Death, which aired on French television Wednesday night. The documentary has generated a massive amount of attention — and naturally, courted controversy — because of the dilemma that faced contestants on a fake game show in the film: Would they allow themselves to be cajoled into delivering near-lethal electrical charges to fellow players, or rather follow their better instincts and refuse?
Game of Death is an adaptation of an infamous experiment conducted by a team led by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s. In order to test people’s obedience to authority figures, the scientists demanded that subjects administer increasingly strong electric shocks to other participants if they answered questions incorrectly. The people delivering the shocks, however, didn’t know that the charges were fake — the volunteers on the other end of the room were actors pretending to suffer agonizing pain. The point was to see how many people would continue following orders to mete out torture.
Their Own Worst Enemies: Why Scientists Are Losing The PR Wars
Sharon Begley writes on Newsweek:
It’s a safe bet that the millions of Americans who have recently changed their minds about global warming — deciding it isn’t happening, or isn’t due to human activities such as burning coal and oil, or isn’t a serious threat — didn’t just spend an intense few days poring over climate-change studies and decide, holy cow, the discretization of continuous equations in general circulation models is completely wrong!
Instead, the backlash (an 18-point rise since 2006 in the percentage who say the risk of climate change is exaggerated, Gallup found this month) has been stoked by scientists’ abysmal communication skills, plus some peculiarly American attitudes, both brought into play now by how critics have spun the “Climategate” e-mails to make it seem as if scientists have pulled a fast one.
Scientists are lousy communicators. They appeal to people’s heads, not their hearts or guts, argues Randy Olson, who left a professorship in marine biology to make science films. “Scientists think of themselves as guardians of truth,” he says. “Once they have spewed it out, they feel the burden is on the audience to understand it” and agree.
Gay Soldier Arrested After Chaining Himself to White House Fence
From the Raw Story:
A prominent gay rights advocate and soldier being discharged under the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy barring openly gay members of the military from serving openly was arrested after chaining himself to the fence of the White House Thursday.The Advocate notes:
Following a Human Rights Campaign rally for DADT repeal at Freedom Plaza in Washington, Choi and Pietrangelo led about 100 protesters to the White House, where the two then proceeded to handcuff themselves to the gates. Pietrangelo was discharged from the military under the gay ban, while Choi’s discharge is pending. Choi is the founder of Knights Out, a West Point alumni organization supporting LGBT soldiers.
United States Park Police spokesman Sgt. David Schlosser told The Advocate that both men were taken to Park Police’s Anacostia station for…
Sweat Lodge Deaths Caused by Heat Stroke
From UPI.com:
Three people who died in an Arizona sweat lodge in 2009 succumbed to heat stroke and hyperthermia, medical reports indicated.Kirby Brown, 38, of New York; James Shore, 40, of Wisconsin; and Lizbeth Neuman, 49, of Minnesota were guests along with about 60 others at motivational speaker James A. Ray’s retreat near Sedona when they became ill during a “Spiritual Warrior” session in the sweat lodge Oct. 8, 2009.
Brown and Shore died of heat stroke shortly after emergency medical technicians arrived on the scene, the Arizona Republic reported.
Neuman’s death a few days later was caused by “multisystem organ failure due to hyperthermia due to prolonged sweat lodge exposure,” the autopsy, released Tuesday, concluded.
Experts Say the U.S. Pays Too Much to Fight Cancer
Ellen Gibson writes on Bloomberg News via the Columbus Dispatch:
The rising cost of cancer research and care, which helped reduce death rates by 16 percent over 40 years, is straining the U.S. health system and needs to be restrained, commentators said in a special edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Cancer research has cost the U.S. government $100 billion since 1971 and the price of care, accounting for inflation, has more than doubled to $90 billion since 1990, according to six journal reports that raise key questions about the past and future success of the U.S. “War on Cancer,” announced by then-President Richard Nixon in 1971.
The reduced death rates result from anti-smoking campaigns, early disease detection and new drugs, which can cost individual patients as much as $100,000…
Texting From Beyond the Grave, On Your Headstone
Leave a message for your descendants 3,200 years from now?!? I guess you can assuming we don’t blow it all to hell, and our ape overloads are ruling the planet. This company has the same name as those language DVDs, but they are definitely thinking “long-term” … James Williams writes on Discovery News:
Generally a headstone conveys two very basic facts about the person interred below it — their name plus the two most important dates of their life. Thanks to some new technology, headstones can now convey much more that: a photo and note written by the deceased, delivered right to your phone.
The product is called RosettaStone and comes from a company called Objecs. If you were to purchase a RosettaStone, you’d receive what looks like a granite iPod with a few…
The Zeitgeist Movement: Envisioning A Sustainable Future
By Travis Walter Donovan for Huffington Post:
“It takes a different value system if you wish to change the world,” Jacque Fresco said to a sold out crowd of over 800 in New York City’s Upper West Side.
Though he may not need to convince these people, many his ardent followers, it will indeed take a restructuring of the mind for those unfamiliar with Fresco’s work to realistically accept the ideas he proposes of a new global society that has given up money and property in favor of a shared, sustainable, technology-driven community.
The caustic skepticism can already be heard, critics crying out with pointed fingers, decreeing communism, socialism, insanity! But as Fresco himself will tell you, communism is still just another system with banks and social stratification. The kind of world he…
Edge of Reason: The Lonely Reign of Benedict XVI
From the Independent:
The authoritarian leader of the world’s Catholics promised to restore the purity of his church. So why is it still plagued by scandal upon scandal? Peter Popham reports.
Of all the countries Pope Benedict XVI is visiting this year – including Malta, Portugal, Cyprus and Spain – Britain, which he visits in September, is the one in the greatest moral difficulty from his perspective: a citadel of wild-eyed relativism, beset by all the ills which the Sixties incubated and which the Catholic Church here, in the Vatican’s view, has done little to combat.
Look at the evidence: we have women vicars, openly gay Cabinet ministers, the minaret of a mosque looming over Regent’s Park. Multi-culturalism has supplanted Christianity as the religion of choice; hardly anyone goes to church any more;…
Privacy is Not Dead, Just Evolving
Tony Bradley reports on the future of privacy (or lack thereof) from SXSW, for PC World:
It’s a brave new world. Unfortunately–continuing the literary allusion–Big Brother is watching. As technology makes more information more accessible, it also threatens to expose information that is not intended to be shared. Privacy is a concept that is caught in the middle of the struggle.
Danah Boyd, a social media expert for Microsoft Research, presented a keynote speech at the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) festival in Austin spotlighting the fate of privacy. Boyd was clear that she does not feel privacy is dead. Contrary to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s claim, people do still care about privacy.
As one blog summed up her speech “Boyd says that privacy is not dead, but that a big part of our notion of…
Dutch Nurses Union: Care Does Not Include Sex
From Reuters:
A union representing Dutch nurses will launch a national campaign Friday against demands for sexual services by patients who claim it should be part of their standard care.
The union, NU’91, is calling the campaign “I Draw The Line Here,” with an advert that features a young woman covering her face with crossed hands.
The union said in a statement Thursday that the campaign follows a complaint it had received in the last week from a 24-year-old woman who said a 42-year-old disabled man asked her to provide sexual services as part of his care at home.
Scientology Escapee Breaks her Silence
From ScienceBlogs.com:
Raised as Scientologists, Christie King Collbran and her husband, Chris, were recruited as teenagers to work for the elite corps of staff members who keep the Church of Scientology running, known as the Sea Organization, or Sea Org.
They signed a contract for a billion years — in keeping with the church’s belief that Scientologists are immortal. They worked seven days a week, often on little sleep, for sporadic paychecks of $50 a week, at most.
Sitting Now Podcast Teases New TV Show
So we finally took the plunge — after a year of planning and debate and — and announced our new Sitting Now TV show. The show will initially be available on the site, and via online distros like iTunes, YouTube, and Vimeo, and then later will appear on a channel to be announced later in the year (confusing I know).
Anyway, check out this ‘teaser’ intro, and let us know what you think!
Emigrate to Iceland
From the Telegraph:
It’s described by the UN as the third best place to live in the world and the vagaries of economics make it more accessible than ever before to visitors and, their inevitable corollary, émigrés.
Sigga Groa Thorarinsdottir, marketing manager of UK and Ireland for the Icelandic Tourist Board, claims that the lower value of the krona has led to interest from Britons wishing to visit and settle in the previously expensive country.
According to statistics released by the board, Iceland experienced its highest ever visitor numbers in January and February this year. In January, 4,312 Britons visited the country compared with 3,865 for the same month in 2009. In February, there was a further rise of 25.6 per cent from February 2009, with an increase to 6,116 visitors. Overall in…
Why Are We Afraid to Tax the Super-Rich?
Talk about an elephant in the room… This article illuminates how the super-rich keep their wealth while you pay 30% to the tax man every week. They actually use the “American Dream” against us. Greed is the central motivator behind the Tea-Bagger movement and most current “Fair” Tax movements.
From Alternet:
Our nation is already deeply in debt. How can we possibly afford to invest in our infrastructure, renewable energy, health care, our schools — and create the millions of jobs that our unemployed desperately need?
We are told that we’re already living well beyond our means — that entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security will bankrupt us. Forget the solar panels, the smaller classes and the new jobs — we’ve got to cut back on government programs at all levels.
Meanwhile, the…
Genetically-Engineered Human Have Already Been Born
Here is another chapter from Russ Kick’s classic bite-size Disinformation book 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know, published in 2003.
For more on Russ Kick, check out his website, The Memory Hole.
_____________________________________
The earthshaking news appeared in the medical journal Human Reproduction under the impenetrable headline: “Mitochondria in Human Offspring Derived From Ooplasmic Transplantation.”
The media put the story in heavy rotation for one day, then forgot about it. We all forgot about it.
But the fact remains that the world is now populated by dozens of children who were genetically
engineered. It still sounds like science fiction, yet it’s true.
