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Andrés Perezalonso
Sott.net 2012-09-19 10:28:00
Recent global events give me the distinct impression that those at the top of the pyramid of political and economic power want to see as much trouble in the world as possible. Assuming that to be the case, I find it very strange and counter-intuitive. I mean, you would think that self-interested leaders would prefer to maintain a status quo that provides them with so many privileges and luxuries that the rest of us only dream of. For them to act in ways that appear to stimulate revolutions, economic collapse and regional or global wars is extraordinary, at least to me, because it jeopardizes their position. But maybe it's my fault for forgetting that most at the top think and feel very differently than "the 99%", and that they have trouble with emotions that come naturally to the rest of us. When you're motivated by thrill-seeking and a thirst for power that knows no bounds, empathy and aversion to conflict don't exactly play a part in your worldview. Granted, they have their own psychopathic standards, but, nevertheless, something about their schemes does not sit right with me. By now you are aware of the American-made trailer of a mysterious movie called The Innocence of Muslims that appeared on YouTube and depicted the prophet Muhammad as a murderous paedophile, and that is said to be the reason for recent riots and demonstrations across the Muslim world against the United States which resulted in the death, among others, of Chris Stevens, the US ambassador in Libya. Let us point out, first of all, that this simplistic explanation overlooks decades of imperialistic intervention of the US in the Middle East, either indirectly or directly through military involvement in Iraq, Libya and currently Syria; its support for dictators and regimes in the region notorious for the abuse of human rights, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia; and its demonization of Arabs and Muslims in general. It also ignores the very low economic and social standards of living that are common in the Middle East - and much of the world - that are a direct result of the US 'management' of its areas of influence. By sweeping all this history and social context under the rug, the Western audience is left to conclude that Muslims are irrational extremists. |
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Lizzie Phelan and Mostafa Afzalzadeh
The Liberated Zone 2012-08-31 17:03:00
Manufacturing Dissent is a documentary about the psychological-warfare by the media and political establishment of the west and their allies aimed at facilitating the US, European and Israeli agenda of getting rid of the current Syrian government. It demonstrates how the media has directly contributed to the bloodshed in Syria. The documentary de-constructs the main allegations those actors have presented, namely that the Syrian government was systematically repressing peaceful protests and that it has lost legitimacy. It shows how such claims are supported by scant evidence and are therefore little more than propaganda to serve the foreign policy interests of their countries. Manufacturing Dissent includes evidence of fake reports broadcasted/published by the likes of CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera and others and interviews with a cross section of the Syrian population including an actor, a craftsman, a journalist, a resident from Homs and an activist who have all been affected by the crisis. |
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Jim Quinn
The Burning Platform 2012-09-17 00:00:00
Is it just me, or are the signs of consumer collapse as clear as a Lowes parking lot on a Saturday afternoon? Sometimes I wonder if I'm just seeing the world through my pessimistic lens, skewing my point of view. My daily commute through West Philadelphia is not very enlightening, as the squalor, filth and lack of legal commerce remain consistent from year to year. This community is sustained by taxpayer subsidized low income housing, taxpayer subsidized food stamps, welfare payments, and illegal drug dealing. The dependency attitude, lifestyles of slothfulness and total lack of commerce has remained constant for decades in West Philly. It is on the weekends, cruising around a once thriving suburbia, where you perceive the persistent deterioration and decay of our debt fixated consumer spending based society. The last two weekends I've needed to travel the highways of Montgomery County, PA going to a family party and purchasing a garbage disposal for my sink at my local Lowes store. Montgomery County is the typical white upper middle class suburb, with tracts of McMansions dotting the landscape. The population of 800,000 is spread over a 500 square mile area. Over 81% of the population is white, with the 9% black population confined to the urban enclaves of Norristown and Pottstown. The median age is 38 and the median household income is $75,000, 50% above the national average. The employers are well diversified with an even distribution between education, health care, manufacturing, retail, professional services, finance and real estate. The median home price is $300,000, also 50% above the national average. The county leans Democrat, with Obama winning 60% of the vote in 2008. The 300,000 households were occupied by college educated white collar professionals. From a strictly demographic standpoint, Montgomery County appears to be a prosperous flourishing community where the residents are living lives of relative affluence. But, if you look closer and connect the dots, you see fissures in this façade of affluence that spread more expansively by the day. The cheap oil based, automobile dependent, mall centric, suburban sprawl, sanctuary of consumerism lifestyle is showing distinct signs of erosion. The clues are there for all to see and portend a bleak future for those mentally trapped in the delusions of a debt dependent suburban oasis of retail outlets, chain restaurants, office parks and enclaves of cookie cutter McMansions. An unsustainable paradigm can't be sustained. | |
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Comment: Please see: Social Harmony in Times of Global Dischord
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| Puppet Masters |
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Jana Winter
Fox News 2012-09-19 00:00:00
Federal law enforcement personnel and a congressional committee are anxiously awaiting an overdue inspector general's report that they believe may reveal the involvement of two White House advance team members in the Secret Service prostitution scandal in Colombia earlier this year. While much of the attention in the case has focused on the actions of Secret Service personnel, multiple law enforcement and congressional sources tell FoxNews.com that investigators also discovered two White House advance team members checked in prostitutes as overnight guests at a Cartagena hotel in the days before President Obama's April 13 visit. "Three U.S. delegation members that stayed at the Hilton brought prostitutes back as overnight guests. One of them was ours (Secret Service) and the other two were White House staffers," a high-ranking Secret Service official told FoxNews.com. "We knew very early that White House staffers were involved." Twelve of the 13 agents investigated for alleged misconduct in Cartagena stayed at another hotel, the El Caribe. Only one of those charged with misconduct had a room at the Hilton, where President Obama and the White House advance team also stayed. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in April, just days after Obama's visit, that there was no indication any White House advance team members were involved in the prostitution scandal. |
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Fars News Agency
2012-09-19 08:46:00
The Syrian Army forces discovered and seized a large cache of US-made weapons in Damascus after heavy clashes with armed groups, which led to the killing of over 100 terrorists. According to FNA dispatches from Syria, 100 terrorists were killed in heavy clashes with the Syrian security forces in Qoutah Sharqiyah district in the capital. As the Syrian Army forces were purging the city of terrorists, they discovered and seized a large cache of US-made weapons sent to the armed groups in Syria via certain neighboring and regional countries, our dispatches said. Other reports from different parts of Damascus and its outskirts said that the Syrian forces also killed 68 other terrorists in Hajar al-Aswad district and the Southern regions of the capital. Earlier reports this month also said that the weapons and military equipment recently discovered and seized by the Syrian Army in Idlib province displayed NATO's arms and logistic support for terrorists in Syria. | |
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Robert Parry
Consortium News 2012-09-18 09:14:00
Mitt Romney told supporters behind closed doors that he's disadvantaged because he was born to a rich white family, that he'd have a better chance to win if his dad were a Mexican. It's getting hard to decide if Romney is simply a country-club racist or delusional, writes Robert Parry. Mitt Romney has taken some heat for comments made at a Republican fundraiser disparaging "47 percent" of the American people as leaches who get government benefits and "believe that they are victims." But perhaps even more troubling was his claim that he would be better off politically if his father were Mexican. The comment suggests that the GOP presidential nominee has no idea the challenges faced in the United States by immigrants and people of color, compared to the advantages that he enjoyed being the son of a wealthy white auto executive who also had a successful career in politics, becoming governor of Michigan. Given Mitt Romney's limited intellect and his clumsy people skills, the odds are that he never would have made it very far in America if he had not been born into a family of prominence and privilege. |
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John Chan
World Socialist Web Site 2012-09-19 08:31:00
Sino-Japanese tensions are rapidly rising amid the largest anti-Japanese demonstrations in China since the two countries normalised relations in 1972. For the past four days, the Beijing regime has allowed protesters to rampage against Japanese-owned businesses, Japanese diplomatic offices and Japanese nationals. The anti-Japanese rallies were triggered by Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's provocative move last week to formally purchase the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku islands in the East China Sea from their private Japanese owner. Protests erupted in 52 Chinese cities last Saturday, and spread to 82 cities the next day. According to Hong Kong's Singtao Daily, hundreds of thousands of people joined the demonstrations, including 20,000 in Beijing, where protesters sought to storm the Japanese embassy and burnt Japanese flags. Police blocked the crowd outside the embassy, but allowed people to throw eggs, bottled water and tomatoes into the building. Participants shouted slogans such as "Japanese are dogs, let's hit them." |
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Bill Van Auken
World Socialist Web Site 2012-09-19 07:27:00
A steady escalation of so-called insider attacks has forced the Pentagon to indefinitely suspend all joint patrols and combat training with Afghan security forces, effectively upending Washington's strategy for maintaining US control over Afghanistan. ISAF, the NATO umbrella for the decade-old US-led occupation, announced on Tuesday that it was suspending joint operations below battalion level. The order was issued by Lt. Gen. James Terry, the second highest ranking US officer in Afghanistan. It reportedly came without any warning to British commanders and other NATO forces. The move follows a series of attacks on US-NATO troops over the weekend and comes amid mounting popular outrage against the United States triggered by a provocative anti-Muslim film posted on the Internet. Violent demonstrations that have swept the Middle East, North Africa and Asia have erupted in Afghanistan as well. |
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Russia Today
2012-09-16 05:17:00
The highly-trained female agents from Mossad, Israel's spy agency, leave their male compatriots in the dust. Five agents spoke about their "movie-style" lives for the first time, revealing a world dominated by deadly efficient femmes fatales. Israeli publication Lady Globes published an interview with the women, delving into a shadowy world where female wiles can be a significant advantage. "A man who wants to gain access to a forbidden area has less chance of being allowed in. A smiling woman has a bigger chance of success," Yael, a Mossad agent, tells Lady Globes. Efrat, another agent, said that operatives often use their femininity to get ahead because "any means is valid," while emphasizing that there are lengths that Mossad's female agents will not go to. "But even if we think that the way to advance the mission is to sleep with [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad's chief of staff, no one in the Mossad would allow us to do it. Women agents are not used for sexual purposes. We flirt, but the line is drawn at sex," Efrat told Lady Globes. The "chameleon women" speak in detail of their "movie-style" lives, where they are forced to keep their emotions under complete control at all times. |
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Yoav Zitun
Ynet 2012-09-19 05:11:00
Live-fire exercise meant to test readiness, fitness of a number of units specializing in offensive firepower; army says drill does not suggest change in alert level. Amid Israeli threats to attack Iran's nuclear installations and fears of a retaliatory strike by the Ayatollah regime in Tehran, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz ordered a number of units to conduct an unplanned exercise early Wednesday to test the army's readiness and alert level. Forces from the Central and Northern Commands, Air Force and other units are taking part in the drill. A large number of regular army and reserve soldiers received surprising telephone calls from their units overnight Wednesday, ordering them to attend the exercise. The IDF Spokesperson's Unit said Gantz wants to test the readiness and fitness of a number of units specializing in offensive firepower, particularly the Artillery Corps. During the exercise, which is simulating a surprise war in the Golan Heights, Central Command forces will be flown by choppers to the Golan Heights to take part in a live-fire drill in the afternoon. |
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Jen Rosenberg
If the creation of the state of Israel was akin to the ethnic cleansing
of the resident Palestinians, does the establishment of colonial
Australia amount to the same thing for the indigenous population?The Sydney Morning Herald 2012-09-19 05:07:00 This is the hypothesis put to Professor Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian who is no stranger to controversy and unpopular arguments, on his latest tour of Australia. "I think it's a very very fair comparison," he says. "Both societies are settler colonial societies, dispossessing the indigenous people." Professor Pappe has earned disfavour in Israel, where his credibility is questioned for his view that the Palestinians were forced from their land and did not give it up willingly in 1948 when the state of Israel was created as a homeland for Jews. He and other "new historians" cite evidence from Israeli and British documents declassified in the '80s as showing detailed planning to expel or repel 700,000 Palestinians, who have remained refugees from their homeland. The premise of Terra Nullius, in which European settlers viewed Australia as an unoccupied space, is similar to the idea that the Palestinians willingly gave up their land. |
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RT
2012-09-18 00:00:00
A lone appeals judge bowed down to the Obama administration late Monday and reauthorized the White House's ability to indefinitely detain American citizens without charge or due process. Last week, a federal judge ruled that an temporary injunction on section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 must be made permanent, essentially barring the White House from ever enforcing a clause in the NDAA that can let them put any US citizen behind bars indefinitely over mere allegations of terrorist associations. On Monday, the US Justice Department asked for an emergency stay on that order, and hours later US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Judge Raymond Lohier agreed to intervene and place a hold on the injunction. The stay will remain in effect until at least September 28, when a three-judge appeals court panel is expected to begin addressing the issue. On December 31, 2011, US President Barack Obama signed the NDAA into law, even though he insisted on accompanying that authorization with a statement explaining his hesitance to essentially eliminate habeas corpus for the American people. "The fact that I support this bill as a whole does not mean I agree with everything in it," President Obama wrote. "In particular, I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists." |
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Laura Payton
Debate on committee report starts today, bill heads to Senate nextCBC News 2012-09-18 01:31:00
A bill that would make it illegal to wear a mask during a violent demonstration is nearing its final hurdle in the House of Commons, with just two hours of debate left. Bill C-309 would make it a crime for people rioting or at an unlawful protest to conceal their identities. It's already illegal to wear a disguise when committing an indictable, or more serious, offence, which includes rioting. Unlawful protests, however, don't fall under that law because they're classified as a summary conviction, or less serious, offence. An unlawful assembly is a gathering that causes fear. It's up to city officials to decide what constitutes a riot. Last May, MPs on the House justice committee increased the penalty in the bill to 10 years for rioters who conceal their faces and five years for those at an unlawful protest. The maximum sentence for rioting is two years. |
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Madison Ruppert
Activist Post 2012-09-18 23:33:00
As I reported yesterday, the Obama administration snapped into action in their effort to overturn the decision of Judge Katherine Forrest which blocked the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (NDAA). In a disturbing yet not all too surprising move, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals quickly stepped in and gave Obama exactly what he wanted in striking down Judge Forrest's ruling that the White House claims is "dangerous" and a threat to national security. Judge Raymond Lohier granted an interim stay based on the emergency petition (PDF courtesy of Threat Level) filed by the Obama administration yesterday; and as you can see in the one page decision (PDF courtesy of Threat Level), the decision took less than 24 hours. One would think that a longer period of deliberation would be required to come to a decision allowing the Obama administration to continue to operate in direct conflict with the Constitution of the United States of America, but apparently that was not the case. I must wonder if that could have anything to do with the fact that Judge Raymond Lohier was nominated for the position by Barack Obama himself in 2010. After all, Obama said Lohier has "an unwavering commitment to fairness and judicial integrity," according to a White House press release. |
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| Society's Child |
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Makini Brice
Medical Daily 2012-09-19 16:10:00
In an ill-advised PR move, fast-food chain Kentucky Fried Chicken is taking a 14-year-old brain-damaged girl and her family back to court. The restaurant wants to get out of paying the family the $8.3 million it was ordered and for their legal bills to be covered. Monika Samaan's saga began seven years ago. In 2005, she and her family visited a local KFC restaurant near their home in Sydney, where Samaan had a KFC chicken twister. Samaan and her family became ill with salmonella poisoning but she was the only one who did not recover. Samaan's illness was so severe that she slipped into a coma and was hospitalized for several months. Seven years later, the disease has left Samaan unable to speak and confined to a wheelchair. In April, an Australian court ordered the chicken establishment to pay the family 8 million Australian dollars, or over $8.3 million in damages. As Supreme Court justice Stephen Rothman said in April, Samaan will not be able to have the normal life that it was believed that she would have. The family, who lives in a modest home in the Sydney suburb of Yagoona, says that Samaan's disability has already depleted their limited resources. Their lawyer said that they are finding it difficult to lift their daughter and care for her basic needs, as well as devote attention to their other children. |
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Christine Hsu
Medical Daily 2012-09-19 12:34:00
Imagine the horror a mother-of-three would feel if she found out that her late husband was actually her biological father. Valerie Spruill of Doylestown, Ohio, said that she only made the devastating discovery through a DNA test after her husband Percy had died, according to the Akron Beacon Journal. The 60-year-old woman who has three children and eight grandchildren says that she is now telling her story in an effort to find her other sibling from her father. "It needs to be told, because children need to know where they come from," she said, according to the Akron Beacon Journal. "And I know it hurts, because I have been devastated by this." Spruill had been raised by her grandparents from 3-months-old and at 9-year-old she found out that the man she thought was her father was actually her grandfather and that a woman named Christine, who had been identified as a "family friend," was actually her mother. Spruill said that it was revealed to her until later that her mother, who died in 1984, was of three "night ladies" who testified in a 1980 trial of Summit County Probate Judge James Barbuto who was convicted of sex charges. |
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Barbara Ross
and
New York Daily News 2012-09-18 19:43:00
The owner of a small chain of Asian restaurants - two in Greenwich Village, of all places - canceled a same-sex wedding party after saying gay and feng shui don't go together, a lawsuit charges. Newlyweds Barrett Greene and Thomas Eng say the owner violated their civil rights. Greene, 50, is a plumbing contractor from upstate New York, and Eng, 38, is a Manhattan-based computer professional. They met on a cruise ship in 2004 and had a jet-setting romance before deciding to make it official with a wedding this summer. They decided to have a rehearsal dinner at Amber Village, and also have their big day catered by the Asian fusion joint at Sixth Ave. and 10th St. On March 23, Greene met with manager Tommy Ho to plan a rehearsal dinner for 40 and reception food for 200 guests, court papers say. Ho took a $750 deposit for the dinner, charging it to Greene's American Express card. Exactly a week later, Ho called to say the event might have to be moved to to Amber, a sister restaurant on Christopher St. - a short stroll from the birthplace of the gay pride movement. |
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Jack Moran
The Register-Guard 2012-09-19 13:31:00
Nine months after their teenage son died of an infection from a burst appendix, a Creswell couple who chose prayer over medical care for the boy admitted criminal responsibility for his death. Russel and Brandi Bellew each pleaded guilty on Tuesday in Lane County Circuit Court to charges of criminally negligent homicide, as part of an agreement with prosecutors. The Bellews - who are members of a church that generally believes in using prayer instead of modern medicine to treat illnesses - avoided jail in the plea deal, but will spend the next five years on probation. During that time, they will be required to contact a doctor whenever any of their six surviving children suffer from an ailment that causes them to miss school for more than one day. The Bellews were arrested in February after an autopsy revealed that 16-year-old Austin Sprout had died two months earlier from an infection that resulted from a ruptured appendix. The teen was Brandi Bellew's biological child and Russel Bellew's stepson. The exact cause of Sprout's death had not been publicly disclosed before Lane County prosecutor Erik Hasselman detailed the case in court on Tuesday. Sprout, who was a junior at Creswell High School, had been sick with a variety of cold- and flu-like symptoms for about 1½ weeks before he died, Hasselman said. "The family, through their reliance on faith, ended up praying for his recovery," Hasselman said. He added that the Bellews and their surviving children - who attend the General Assembly and the Church of the First Born in Pleasant Hill - told investigators that Sprout did not want a doctor to diagnose his illness. "It appeared that (Sprout) wanted to respect his faith and the manner in which he was brought up," Hasselman said. But under Oregon law, a person must be 18 or older to make decisions regarding his or her own medical care. |
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Paul Peachy
The Independent, UK 2012-09-18 13:24:00
An alleged people trafficker cut the chest of a vulnerable 14-year-old girl with a razor during a series of "juju" witchcraft rituals aimed at terrifying young recruits into silence before selling them into prostitution across Europe, a court heard yesterday. Osezua Osolase recruited and raped impoverished young Nigerian orphans and forced them to undergo West African rituals in which hair, nails and blood were removed to "cast a spell" over them and ensure their obedience, Canterbury Crown Court was told. Mr Osolase, a Nigerian living in Northfleet, Kent, told one of three young victims - who overheard him trying to sell her off for €70,000 - that he had been bringing girls into Britain for 15 years, the court heard. The 42-year-old then used a series of fake identities, addresses and falsified passports for the trafficked girls and escorted them on budget airlines to cities in Europe to work in the vice trade, said Ms Sarah Ellis, prosecuting. The court heard that Mr Osolase, posing as a man named Victor, picked up one homeless 16-year-old girl sleeping rough in Lagos and took her to a "place of witchcraft" in the city to establish his control over her. The teenager - who had been promised an education in Britain - was given a mixture consisting of what appeared to be blood and cloth and told to bathe in it and wrap the cloth around her. As "Victor" watched, a man cut hair from her armpits, some of her finger and toenails and took blood from her hand, said Ms Ellis. |
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tom
Just a few weeks ago, an FBI task force raided a home*
in Portland, Oregon very early in the morning. They broke down the
front door with a battering ram and threw in a stun grenade, which is
non-lethal but produces a very loud and disorienting noise and a
blinding bright light. The team locked down the building and secured the
sleepy, compliant occupants. The operation was one of several which
also occurred in Olympia, WA and Seattle, WA, involving some 60-80 officers.The Sound and Noise 2012-09-14 00:00:00 Just who were these dangerous criminals, these domestic terrorists whose threat level is so high that an FBI team with stun grenades, battering rams, and assault rifles needed to burst into their homes in the wee hours of the morning? Why, it's these two young folks, Leah-Lynn Plante:
and Matt Duran:
Reportedly, the FBI search warrant was for black clothing, paint, sticks, computers and cell phones, and 'anarchist materials or literature.' According to an FBI Domestic Terrorism guide published by greenisthenewred.com, "anarchists are criminals seeking an ideology to justify their actions," and are "not dedicated to a particular issue." Common meeting places are "college campuses, underground clubs, coffee houses/ internet cafes." The implication is that owning "anarchist" literature is enough to indicate to the FBI that one is a criminal - even if that person happens to be a student studying political thought. Or maybe particularly if you are a student - the FBI document states that anarchists are "educated persons of various backgrounds, often students." |
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Former Yale Student in Los Angeles Held on $1M Bail Over Death Threats to Children on ESPN's Website
The Washington Post
2012-09-19 11:47:00
California - A former Yale University student remained jailed on $1 million bail, an amount normally reserved for murder or other crimes that could result in life sentences, after authorities say he made online death threats to children. Eric Yee, a 21-year-old who recently withdrew from the Ivy League university, posted on ESPN's website that he was watching children and wouldn't mind killing them, Los Angeles County sheriff's officials said Tuesday. Yee was taken into custody Monday at his parents' home, which is on a street that overlooks two schools in Santa Clarita, Calif. Several guns were found there. Sheriff's Lt. Steve Low said Yee was arrested for investigation of making terrorist threats. Experts said the bail amount was very high for a person suspected of making terrorist threats. "To put it in perspective, $1 million is the presumptive bail for murder," said Hanni Fakhoury, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a former federal public defender who is not involved in the case. In comparison, the presumptive bail for making terrorist threats is $50,000 and it would take many specific circumstances to push it much higher, Fakhoury said. Sheriff's Deputy Josh Dubin told the Los Angeles Times that the department had requested "a bail enhancement because of the totality of the situation," but would not elaborate. |
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Daily Mail, UK
2012-09-19 00:00:00
Richard Koca Sr., 69, faces seven felony counts of sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust involving a pattern of abuse, according to an Arapahoe County Court case summary. The court record indicates the alleged abuse began in August 2009 and continued into 2012. Aurora police spokeswoman Sgt. Cassidee Carlson said Koca was arrested Saturday on a felony arrant for sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust for acts with a child he was supervising in Aurora. |
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David Boroff
New York Daily News 2012-09-19 01:04:00
The grisly detail emerged during the second week of the murder trial of David Viens, accused in the death of Dawn Viens in October 2009. A California chef told police he slow-cooked his wife's body for four days after accidentally killing her, the Los Angeles Times reported. The grisly detail emerged Tuesday during the second week of the murder trial of David Viens, accused in the death of 39-year-old Dawn Viens in October 2009. In two March 2011 interviews with authorities that were played for the jury on Tuesday, David Viens recounted how he caused the death of his wife and disposed of her remains. The interviews were conducted in a hospital because Viens had jumped off an 80-foot cliff when suspected by police in his wife's disappearance. |
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Lia Grainger
Shine From Yahoo! 2012-09-17 02:28:00
British model Elizabeth Hurley made her name flaunting her beautiful face and body, but now she's making headlines for promoting a line of children's bikinis that critics say would be more appropriate for her than for little girls. The suits in question are part of the Elizabeth Hurley Beach 2012 collection. One questionable design is the "Mini Cha Cha Bikini", a leopard print string bikini for kids under 8 that is modelled by a young girl who poses with her hands on her hips while gazing directly at the camera. In the 8 to 13 age range, the "Colette Bikini" is held together in the front by a metal ring and is described as being "great for girls who want to look grown up." The collection is available online worldwide, and it hasn't taken long for parenting groups to chastise Hurley -- who is a mom herself -- for the suits and the way they are being marketed. "The poses in the photographs bother me more than the clothing," says Doone Estey, a partner at Canada's Parenting Network -- an agency that offers parenting courses. "Kids this age should be playing, running, swimming and doing sports, not showing off their bodies." | |
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Deborah Blum
This summer, four young women set off on vacations in Southeast Asia.
Here's what they had in common: They were all from North America; they
were all in their 20s; they were all pretty, bright, adventurous. And
one more commonality: They all died.Wired.com 2012-09-17 17:08:00 Two of these deaths occurred in June in Thailand, two in June in Vietnam. All four women were diagnosed with the symptoms of acute poisoning. And while some explanations have been offered by the authorities, these have been either vague, improbable (see my recent post on the deaths in Thailand) or opaque (see CNN's Friday story on the deaths in Vietnam). My favorite statement is one from the Thai police declaring that it could be "months before official results are revealed if ever." (Emphasis mine). If ever? What kind of a police response is that? Does it mean that investigators know something they don't want to tell? Or that they don't have a clue? It's no wonder that the rumor mills are spinning stories of murder, of a serial killer stalking female tourists in Southeast Asia, of a police cover-up to protect the valued tourist industry. The serial killer idea, of course, builds on earlier mysteries: the 2009 death of a Seattle woman, still unsolved today. The similar and also unexplained death of a 22-year-old woman from Norway the same year. An odd cluster of deaths in another Thai city during winter of last year, including a 23-year-old woman from New Zealand. The other theory circulating is that the police are covering up the careless use of insecticides by Asian hotels; an explanation denied, of course, by the hotel industry. It doesn't explain, of course, why most of these deaths involve females in their 20s. But there's some support for it from an independent investigation into the 2011 death of New Zealander Sarah Carter. |
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Paul Cheston
A woman was whipped with a walking stick during a brutal exorcism organised by members of her own family, a court heard.London Evening Standard 2012-09-18 02:21:00 Asma Hussain was also said to have been tied to a bed and covered with holy water after relatives became convinced she was possessed by a demon. Her husband Ahmed, 60, summoned the local Muslim preacher to carry out the ceremony and encouraged him to hit his wife harder, Snaresbrook crown court heard. Mrs Hussain's back was described as "one massive bruise" and she also suffered injuries to her face and hands. Ahmed Hussain, his son Mohammed, 28, daughter Salma, 22, daughter-in-law Halima Khatun, 28, and son-in-law Mohammed Azia, 21, are all on trial accused of false imprisonment and assault occasioning actual bodily harm. They are said to have believed "black magic" had been cast on their victim. "It appears that members of Asma Hussain's family believed that she was possessed by demons," said prosecutor Babatunde Alabi. "As a result of this belief, it is alleged they kept her captive in her own home, tying her to a bed in the living room. They also arranged for an imam to carry out an exorcism on her. "During the course of the exorcism, she was held down, had water poured all over her and was beaten with a cane." |
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Adrian Humphreys
National Post 2012-09-18 02:15:00
Historians are comparing it to the Taliban's destruction of massive Buddhist statues in Afghanistan: Ancient aboriginal pictograms and petroglyphs on an Albertan rock formation have been systematically destroyed by cultural vandals using a rock drill, acid and a power washer. The obliteration of the etchings on the Glenwood Erratic near Pincher Creek in southern Alberta was discovered last week, just as an historian was about to photograph and test the markings. "The site is part of the earliest heritage of Canada," said Michael Dawe, Curator of History at Red Deer Museum. "It looks like an ancient ceremonial/religious site at Glenwood, Alta., was deliberately destroyed. If true, this is a shocking and appalling incident." The carvings formed a large face on the top surface of the stone, facing the sky, and also included evidence of early syllabic writing, said Stanley Knowlton, head of interpretive services at Head Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, a Unesco World Heritage Site. "It is almost like someone wants to block this kind of research," said Mr. Knowlton, who discovered the destruction. The attack is a mystery, he said. "Why? Well, that's the big question. If you find out why, you might be able to find out who." He wonders if someone wants to destroy evidence suggesting the Blackfoot First Nations had a written language before European migration. The damage is the latest destruction of aboriginal pictograms and petroglyphs in Alberta, he said. |
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Vicki Smith
GoDanRiver.com 2012-09-18 17:59:00
Morgantown, West Virginia - Coal producer Alpha Natural Resources said Tuesday it was cutting production by 16 million tons and eliminating 1,200 jobs companywide, laying off 400 workers immediately by closing mines in Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The mine shutdowns start Tuesday, while the rest of the layoffs will be completed by the end of the first quarter after Alpha fulfills current sales obligations, Chief Executive Officer Kevin Crutchfield said. In all, the layoffs amount to nearly a tenth of Alpha's 13,000-person workforce. Alpha said it was closing four mines in West Virginia, three in Virginia and one in Pennsylvania. They are a mix of deep and surface mines, and all are non-union operations. Company spokesman Ted Pile said most of the displaced workers may eventually be rehired, either assigned to new jobs in other locations or replacing outside contractors. Only 150 workers in West Virginia and three in Pennsylvania will not have any other employment opportunities with the company, he said. Though some miners will stay on to seal the operations, most will either be reassigned or laid off immediately. Support positions will also be cut proportionally as Alpha reduces its operating regions from four to two, Crutchfield said, and two executives will retire Nov. 1. It wasn't immediately what other states would be affected by the still looming layoffs. |
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| Secret History |
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Abigail Tucker
Children playing near a hillside gravel mine found the first graves. One
ran home to tell his mother, who was skeptical at first - until the boy
produced a skull. Because this was Griswold, Connecticut, in 1990,
police initially thought the burials might be the work of a local serial
killer named Michael Ross, and they taped off the area as a crime
scene. But the brown, decaying bones turned out to be more than a
century old. The Connecticut state archaeologist, Nick Bellantoni, soon
determined that the hillside contained a colonial-era farm cemetery. New
England is full of such unmarked family plots, and the 29 burials were
typical of the 1700s and early 1800s: The dead, many of them children,
were laid to rest in thrifty Yankee style, in simple wood coffins,
without jewelry or even much clothing, their arms resting by their sides
or crossed over their chests.Smithsonian.com 2012-09-19 16:45:00 Except, that is, for Burial Number 4.
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Charles Choi
LiveScience 2012-09-19 16:01:00
An ancient cracked tooth repaired with a filling made of beeswax may be the earliest known example of therapeutic dentistry, researchers say. The tooth is 65 centuries old and was part of a man's jaw found more than 100 years ago in Slovenia. Definite evidence of ancient dentistry is rare. The oldest examples are 7,500- to 9,500-year-old molars found in Pakistan that had regularly shaped cavities with concentric ridges drilled into them. Other, more questionable finds include a 5,500-year-old artificial tooth from Egypt. Scientists reported online today (Sept. 19) in the journal PLoS ONE that they found the filling as they analyzed a 6,500-year-old lower jaw recovered from a cave near Trieste, Italy. The jaw, which once belonged to a 24- to 30-year-old man, included a left canine tooth possessing a vertical crack in its hard enamel and softer dentin layers. The severe wear and tear seen on the tooth was probably due to activities besides eating, the researchers said - for instance, men of the time might have used their teeth to soften leather or help make tools, and the women bit down on threads to hold them while weaving. The researchers found beeswax had been applied to the left canine at about the time of the man's death. |
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Marija Andric
Austrian experts are investigating a mysterious metal ball weighing fouCroatian Times 2012-09-19 15:57:00
r tonnes after it was dug up during work to build a road at Waizenkirchen at Grieskirchen in Upper Austria. The discovery has caused heated debate among locals with some saying it was a meteorite, others that it was a religious artefact. It has also attracted the attention of local UFO watchers who believe it may have been left by aliens. The owner of the lane had filed a claim for the ball with local police sparking an angry row with the man who spotted the object first while walking his dog - and who carved his name in the surface to prove he found it first. He has already said he wants to sell it to the highest bidder and said offers under a six figure sum will not be accepted. Meanwhile the local mayor has arranged for an expert witness to head over from Vienna to examine the ball that is already being hailed as the "historic find of the decade." Expert Josef Rabeder said he had ordered work on the road to be stopped while the historical significance of the find was evaluated. He said: "There is a lot of speculation going on - now we need to establish some facts and gather some hard evidence." |
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Talal Al-Khatib
Discovery News 2012-09-19 06:49:00
A piece of papyrus dating back to the fourth century mention a Biblical character that can't be found in scripture: the wife of Jesus Christ. Identified by Karen L. King, a historian at Harvard Divinity school, the scroll has the following passage written in Coptic, as reported by the New York Times: "Jesus said to them, 'My wife... she will be able to be my disciple." King cautioned that the fragment is not proof that Jesus was married, but is reflective of the debates early Christians had in the infancy of the church. After all, this wouldn't be the first time early Christian artifacts have contradicted history as written in the Bible.. As reported by Discovery News' Jennifer Viegas in March 2011, Oxford scholar Francesca Stavrakopoulou believes she found evidence that God had a wife based on an analysis of ancient texts, figurines and other artifacts. God's wife, Asherah, was a powerful fertility goddess, and worshiped alongside Yahweh, as God is known in Hebrew. Strict monotheism, however, gradually diminished Asherah's importance in the religion of the ancient Israelites. Changes to scripture itself can not only include omissions, but also additions as they're copied and translated from generation to generation. A project led by New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary catalogues hundreds of versions of the New Testament written in early Christendom to document changes that crept in over the years. Although many of the alterations they discover are trivial, some changes can be much more significant, as reported by the Times-Picayune. |
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Tia Ghose
LiveScience 2012-09-19 06:03:00
A Carthaginian burial site was not for child sacrifice but was instead a graveyard for babies and fetuses, researchers now say. A new study of the ancient North African site offers the latest volley in a debate over the primary purpose of the graveyard, long thought to be a place of sacred sacrifice. "It's all very great, cinematic stuff, but whether that was a constant daily activity ― I think our analysis contradicts that," said study co-author Jeffrey Schwartz of the University of Pittsburgh. The city-state of Carthage was founded in the ninth century B.C., when Queen Dido fled Phoenicia (along the eastern Mediterranean shore) for what is now Tunis, Tunisia. The empire became a powerhouse of the ancient world and fought several wars against the Romans. When archaeologists began excavating the ancient civilization last century, they found urns with the cremated remains of thousands of babies, young goats and lambs at a graveyard called the Tophet, which had been used from 700 to 300 B.C. At its peak, the Tophet may have been bigger than a football field and had nine levels of burials. Based on historical accounts, scientists believed Carthaginians sacrificed children at the Tophet before burying them there. For instance, the Bible describes child sacrifice to the deity Baal, worshipped by a civilization in Carthage. A Greek and a Roman historian both recount gory tales from this time period in which of priests slit the throats of babies and tossed them into fiery pits, Schwartz said. |
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Telegraph.co.uk
2012-09-19 09:32:00
Archaeologists launched a bid to uncover the site one of the most famous battles in Scottish history -- in the grounds of a police headquarters. Central Scotland Police's headquarters at Randolphfield, Stirling, is named after Sir Thomas Randolph, one of the commanders of Robert the Bruce's army at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. The first major skirmish of the two-day battle occurred on Sunday 23 June when Randolph routed around 300 English cavalry, who were attempting to relieve Stirling Castle. A pair of small standing stones near the entrance to the current police headquarters is believed to mark the site of the fighting, but until now there has been no other physical evidence. Stirling Council archaeologist Murray Cook said ground-penetrating radar would be used to locate the Roman road on which King Edward II's army marched on Stirling and the famous spike-filled pits that played a crucial role in the outcome. |
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| Science & Technology |
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ScienceDaily
2012-09-19 16:09:00
With the combined power of NASA's Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes as well as a cosmic magnification effect, a team of astronomers led by Wei Zheng of The Johns Hopkins University has spotted what could be the most distant galaxy ever detected. Light from the young galaxy captured by the orbiting observatories shone forth when the 13.7-billion-year-old universe was just 500 million years old. The far-off galaxy existed within an important era when the universe began to transit from the so-called "Dark Ages." During this period, the universe went from a dark, starless expanse to a recognizable cosmos full of galaxies. The discovery of the faint, small galaxy accordingly opens up a window into the deepest, remotest epochs of cosmic history. "This galaxy is the most distant object we have ever observed with high confidence," said Zheng, a principal research scientist in The Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins' Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and lead author of a paper appearing in Nature on Sept. 20. "Future work involving this galaxy -- as well as others like it that we hope to find -- will allow us to study the universe's earliest objects and how the Dark Ages ended." |
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Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience 2012-09-19 12:49:00
A 37-year project to compile a dictionary of an ancient Egyptian script used for daily communication has been completed, offering an unprecedented look at the words of ordinary ancient Egyptians. The Chicago Demotic Dictionary, so named because it was created by University of Chicago researchers, translates Demotic Egyptian, the tongue of common Egyptians from about 500 B.C. to A.D. 500. Demotic was used in everyday Egyptian documents and letters, said Janet Johnson, a University of Chicago Egyptologist. The researchers compiled the words in the dictionary from Demotic on stone carvings, papyrus and broken fragments of pottery. "Personal documents (letters, tax receipts, accounts, legal texts, etc.), administrative documents, and literary, scientific and religious texts were all written in Demotic and provide a wealth of information about the Egyptian-speaking population in Egypt," Johnson told LiveScience in an email. The language was a prominent one during Greek and Roman occupation of Egypt in this period. Along with hieroglyphs and Greek, Demotic is one of the three languages on the famous Rosetta Stone, which helped early Egyptologists first decipher the formal hieroglyphic script. |
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Steve Lohr
Bits, New York Times 2012-09-18 06:00:00
Hany Farid, a professor at Dartmouth College, has built a career and a reputation as a leading researcher in digital image forensics. He has made software tools for a number of impressive projects in recent years. One was a pixel-sleuthing program to detect how much fashion photographs have been burnished with Adobe's Photoshop editing program to remove wrinkles and flab, while plumping up lips and breasts. Another was software for the automated detection of child pornography on the Web to help law enforcement agencies. Mr. Farid has worked with government agencies and companies, but these collaborations have typically been for individual projects. "Research is critical," Mr. Farid said. "But unless you put your ideas into a product, the impact is limited." Mr. Farid is hoping to broaden the reach of his work as co-founder and chief technology officer of a start-up company, Fourandsix Technologies, which is being announced on Tuesday. The company's president and other founder is Kevin Connor, who spent 15 years at Adobe. He was vice president of product management for Photoshop until last year, when he left to join Mr. Farid. At Adobe, Mr. Connor said, he was familiar with Mr. Farid's research, and Adobe engineers often cooperated with the Dartmouth scientist. But at a company whose key product has been transmuted into a verb - "to photoshop" - that means to doctor pictures, the technology to authenticate images was not a priority. |
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Steve Chaplin
Indiana University 2012-09-17 18:12:00
Pattern may be used in forensics to help determine where a particular bacterial strain originates. Biologists and informaticists at Indiana University have produced one of the most extensive pictures ever of mutation processes in the DNA sequence of an organism, elucidating important new evolutionary information about the molecular nature of mutations and how fast those heritable changes occur. By analyzing the exact genomic changes in the model prokaryote Escherichia coli that had undergone over 200,000 generations of growth in the absence of natural selective pressures, the team led by IU College of Arts and Sciences Department of Biology professor Patricia L. Foster found that spontaneous mutation rates in E. coli DNA were actually three times lower than previously thought. The new research, which appears today in early editions of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also notes that the mismatch repair proteins that survey newly replicated DNA and detect mistakes not only keep mutation rates low but may also maintain the balance of guanine-cytosine content to adenine-thymine content in the genome. Guanine-cytosine and adenine-thymine are the nitrogenous bases that bond between opposing DNA strands to form the rungs of the double helix ladder of DNA. |
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| Earth Changes |
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Nature
2012-09-19 00:00:00
As climate change proceeds - which the record summer melt of Arctic sea-ice suggests it is doing at a worrying pace - nations, communities and individual citizens may begin to seek compensation for losses and damage arising from global warming. Climate scientists should be prepared for their skills one day to be probed in court. Whether there is a legal basis for such claims, such as that brought against the energy company ExxonMobil by the remote Alaskan community of Kivalina, which is facing coastal erosion and flooding as the sea ice retreats, is far from certain, however. So lawyers, insurers and climate negotiators are watching with interest the emerging ability, arising from improvements in climate models, to calculate how anthropogenic global warming will change, or has changed, the probability and magnitude of extreme weather and other climate-related events. But to make this emerging science of 'climate attribution' fit to inform legal and societal decisions will require enormous research effort. Attribution is the attempt to deconstruct the causes of observable weather and to understand the physics of why extremes such as floods and heatwaves occur. This is important basic research. Extreme weather and changing weather patterns - the obvious manifestations of global climate change - do not simply reflect easily identifiable changes in Earth's energy balance such as a rise in atmospheric temperature. They usually have complex causes, involving anomalies in atmospheric circulation, levels of soil moisture and the like. Solid understanding of these factors is crucial if researchers are to improve the performance of, and confidence in, the climate models on which event attribution and longer-term climate projections depend. Event attribution is one of the proposed 'climate services' - seasonal climate prediction is another - that are intended to provide society with the information needed to manage the risks and costs associated with climate change. Advocates of climate services see them as a counterpart to the daily weather forecast. But without the computing capacity of a well-equipped national meteorological office, heavily model-dependent services such as event attribution and seasonal prediction are unlikely to be as reliable. |
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Message To Eagle
The problem with rivers around the world continues. A while back the Yangtze River in China turned red, and now there are reports of a river in Russia that has suddenly started to boil.2012-09-19 16:37:00 Hundreds of shocked residents that live in Yekaterinburg, Russia describe how a small river named Olkhovka that passes through the city unexpectedly turned into a stream of extremely hot water.
No one knew what caused the phenomenon, but the fact is that the river ecosystem was severely affected, causing the death of thousands of fish lying on the banks. "The water is really hot. The shore of the river is littered with dead fish," a Professor from a local university said. |
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| Fire in the Sky |
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UPI
2012-09-19 15:52:00
Sydney -- A huge meteor striking Earth 2.5 million years could have generated a massive tsunami and plunged the world into the Ice Ages, Australian researchers suggest. Scientists at the University of New South Wales say that because the meteor -- more than a mile across - crashed into deep water in the southern Pacific Ocean, most researchers have discounted its potential for catastrophic impacts on coastlines around the Pacific rim or its capacity to destabilize the entire planet's climate system. "This is the only known deep-ocean impact event on the planet and it's largely been forgotten because there's no obvious giant crater to investigate, as there would have been if it had hit a land mass," lead study author James Goff said in a university release Wednesday. Goff is co-director of UNSW's Australia-Pacific Tsunami Research Centre and Natural Hazards Research Laboratory. |
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Fox Van Allen
Tecca 2012-09-18 21:00:00
Call it the Soviet Union's most valuable cold war secret. This past weekend, Russia declassified the existence of what could very well be the richest diamond field in existence, located in the depths of a 62-mile diameter asteroid crater known as Popigai Astroblem in Siberia. The diamonds found in the Popigai Astroblem are known as "impact diamonds." They're created when a meteor strikes a graphite deposit, as happened there an estimated 35 million years ago. Impact diamonds are significantly harder than normal diamonds, and are best suited for industrial or scientific use. Given that diamonds can sell for $2,000 per karat with unusually large diamonds going for as much as $20 million, a discovery of "trillions of karats" could value this hole in the quadrillions of dollars. Of course, a diamond discovery of this magnitude is almost sure to have a serious downward impact in the per-karat price should full-scale mining operations ever begin. |
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Dennis Cox
Mark Boslough's super computer generated, comet airburst simulation is a
must see.In it we see the exploding comet detonating high in the
atmosphere, and becoming a supersonic down draft of thermal impact
plasma hotter than the surface of the sun. But watch the sequence
closely. And pay particular attention to the post impact updraft at the
center of the flow. And to the directions of flow of the airburst vortex
at the surface, as the impact plume develops at the center of the
vortex. You might want to replay it a few times.craterhunter.wordpress.com 2011-02-18 10:20:00
The old way of imagining of those things was to think of it as a point explosion high in the atmosphere. And it's still popular in the press to pretend the atmosphere dissipates the blast. As you can see, it doesn't. Using super computers has allowed them to retain the downward momentum. So we can see the impact vortex hit the ground as a supersonic blast hotter than the surface of the sun. It would be naive to a fault to think such energies can be dissipated without significant planetary scarring, or ablative geomorphology. |
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| Health & Wellness |
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ScienceDaily
Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have
taken one of the first detailed looks into how Alzheimer's disease
disrupts coordination among several of the brain's networks. The
results, reported in The Journal of Neuroscience, include some of the earliest assessments of Alzheimer's effects on networks that are active when the brain is at rest.2012-09-19 15:47:00 "Until now, most research into Alzheimer's effects on brain networks has either focused on the networks that become active during a mental task, or the default mode network, the primary network that activates when a person is daydreaming or letting the mind wander," says senior author Beau Ances, MD, assistant professor of neurology. "There are, however, a number of additional networks besides the default mode network that become active when the brain is idling and could tell us important things about Alzheimer's effects." Ances and his colleagues analyzed brain scans of 559 subjects. Some of these subjects were cognitively normal, while others were in the early stages of very mild to mild Alzheimer's disease. Scientists found that all of the networks they studied eventually became impaired during the initial stages of Alzheimer's. |
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ScienceDaily
Scientists at Charité -- Universitätsmedizin Berlin have succeeded in
coming closer to determining the risk of relapse in detoxified
alcohol-dependent patients. Using an imaging process (magnetic resonance
tomography) it was shown that particular regions in the brain
demonstrate structural as well as functional abnormalities in relapsed
alcohol-dependent patients. Study findings are published in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry.2012-09-19 15:32:00 In the study conducted under the direction of Prof. Andreas Heinz, director of the Charité Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, scientists examined a group of 46 detoxified alcohol-dependent patients, in addition to a large control group. Structural imaging showed anatomical properties of brain substance, and the examination of functional signals in the brain were measured in reaction to alcohol-associated stimuli. After three months, patients were reexamined for eventual relapses; 30 study participants relapsed and 16 continued to be abstinent. It was proven that relapse patients had increased loss of grey matter in particular regions of the forebrain. This section of the brain is known to be associated primarily with behavioral regulation and emotional control. Furthermore, measurement of functional brain responses in reaction to alcohol-associated stimuli showed that different brain regions were activated in relapsed patients than in patients who remained abstinent. These measurements show that sections of the brain in relapse patients were active that are associated primarily with directing attention to certain stimuli. In contrast, the abstinent patients demonstrated an activation of brain areas that are (among other functions) associated with processing of stimuli inducing aversion (aversive stimuli) or that are particularly important (salient stimuli). |
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Sayer Ji
GreenMedInfo 2012-09-19 09:30:00
In an alarming new study published in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, researchers from The Committee for Research & Independent Information on Genetic Engineering (CRIIGEN) reported on the results of a 2 year feeding study in rats given either NK603 Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize, cultivated with or without Roundup, and Roundup alone, at levels permitted in drinking water and GM crops in the United States. The authors of the study pointed out that currently, no regulatory authority requires mandatory chronic animal feeding studies to be performed for edible GMOs and formulated pesticides, and the only 90 day feeding trials were conducted by the biotech industry. This study, therefore, was performed in light of this need, and the results were an unprecedented confirmation of the cancer-causing effects of GM food and agrichemicals, reported as follows: |
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Youtube
2011-03-26 18:41:00 Comment: The following is a compilation of videos by Dr Gregory Ellis CNS, PhD, shining light on the misconceptions and disinformation regarding our cholesterol levels and the prescription of statin drugs; the process of glycation and what it causes to our bodies; plus the much promoted "need" for dietary fiber. More information on Dr Ellis' work can be found at his website, byebyecarbs.com. Glycation is one of the most important nutritional discoveries in the last century that deals with health. In this video, Dr. Ellis begins to discuss what glycation is and how people suffer from it daily and may not even know it because everyone is undergoing the glycation process:
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Comment: Our research and experience shows that most humans thrive on a diet with close to zero carbs, lots of saturated fats and a moderate protein intake.
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Dr. Carol Everson
Scientists at the Medical College of Wisconsin, in a team led by Carol
Everson, Ph.D., professor of neurology, cell biology, neurobiology and
anatomy, have discovered abnormalities in bone and bone marrow in rats
undergoing chronic lack of sleep. They discovered abnormalities in serum
markers of bone metabolism in sleep-deprived rats, which led them to
conduct direct measurements of bone parameters; this time in rats
experiencing recurrent sleep restriction during a large portion of their
young adulthood.Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine 2012-09-18 04:35:00 The results show a dramatic imbalance between bone apposition and reabsorption, marked by an arrest in bone formation without reduced absorption. Furthermore, fat in the red marrow is greatly diminished and platelet-generating cells are doubled in number, indicating changes to marrow plasticity. "If the same processes are evoked in humans," said Dr. Everson, "the potential medical implications are far-reaching and may include poor repair of microdamage from activities of daily living, introduction of osteoporotic processes, and changes to progenitor cells that may affect disease predisposition and disease resistance." |
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Marco Torres
PreventDisease.com 2012-09-18 02:46:00
Neurosurgeon and researcher Dr. Leif Salford has conducted many studies on radio frequency radiation and its effects on the brain. Dr. Salford called the potential implications of some of his research "terrifying." Some of the most concerning conclusions result from the fact that the weakest exposure levels to wireless radiation caused the greatest effect in causing the blood brain barrier to leak. Since he began his line of research in 1988, Dr. Leif Salford and his colleagues at Lund University Hospital in Sweden has exposed over 1,600 experimental animals to low-level radiation. Their results were consistent and worrisome: radiation, including that from cell phones, caused the blood-brain barrier--the brain's first line of defense against infections and toxic chemicals--to leak. Researchers in 13 other laboratories in 6 different countries had reported the same effect, but no one had proven whether it would lead to any damage in the long term. In a study published June 2003 in Environmental Health Perspectives, Salford's team repeated the experiment on 32 additional animals, but this time waited eight weeks before sacrificing them and examining their brains. In those animals that had been exposed to a cell phone, up to two percent of the neurons in all areas of the brain were shrunken and degenerated. Salford, chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery at his institution, called the potential implications "terrifying." "We have good reason to believe," he said, "that what happens in rats' brains also happens in humans." Referring to today's teenagers, the study's authors wrote that "a whole generation of users may suffer negative effects, perhaps as early as in middle age." |
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Justin Smith
An estimated 40 million people take a statin to lower their cholesterol
levels. These are one of the most widely prescribed medications in
history and, of course, one of the most profitable.GreenMedInfo 2012-09-18 09:45:00 We are led to believe that the benefits associated with statins far outweigh any risks. However, when it comes to primary prevention (accounting for around 75 percent of all the people who take a statin), no clinical trial has been able to conclusively show any net benefit. This is one of the issues discussed in the documentary film STATIN NATION: The Great Cholesterol Cover Up.
If we look at the history of primary prevention clinical trials involving statins, we find that none of the major trials were able to demonstrate a significant reduction in the number of deaths from all causes. The AFCAPS, ASCOT, CARDS, PROSPER and WOSCOPS clinical trials all failed to show a statistically significant reduction in all cause mortality. This data for deaths from all causes is, of course, important because it is the only measure we can use to determine if the statin is going to extend life expectancy or not. Whilst some statin clinical trials have shown a very slight reduction in cardiac events, this has always been counter-acted by deaths from other causes. The net result being that people did not live any longer after taking the statin. |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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ScienceDaily
2012-09-19 16:02:00
Remember the telephone game where people take turns whispering a message into the ear of the next person in line? By the time the last person speaks it out loud, the message has radically changed. It's been altered with each retelling. Turns out your memory is a lot like the telephone game, according to a new Northwestern Medicine study. Every time you remember an event from the past, your brain networks change in ways that can alter the later recall of the event. Thus, the next time you remember it, you might recall not the original event but what you remembered the previous time. The Northwestern study is the first to show this. "A memory is not simply an image produced by time traveling back to the original event -- it can be an image that is somewhat distorted because of the prior times you remembered it," said Donna Bridge, a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and lead author of the paper on the study recently published in the Journal of Neuroscience. "Your memory of an event can grow less precise even to the point of being totally false with each retrieval." |
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Cass R. Sunstein
The New York Times 2012-09-17 13:50:00
It is well known that when like-minded people get together, they tend to end up thinking a more extreme version of what they thought before they started to talk. The same kind of echo-chamber effect can happen as people get news from various media. Liberals viewing MSNBC or reading left-of-center blogs may well end up embracing liberal talking points even more firmly; conservative fans of Fox News may well react in similar fashion on the right. The result can be a situation in which beliefs do not merely harden but migrate toward the extreme ends of the political spectrum. As current events in the Middle East demonstrate, discussions among like-minded people can ultimately produce violence. The remedy for easing such polarization, here and abroad, may seem straightforward: provide balanced information to people of all sides. Surely, we might speculate, such information will correct falsehoods and promote mutual understanding. This, of course, has been a hope of countless dedicated journalists and public officials. Unfortunately, evidence suggests that balanced presentations - in which competing arguments or positions are laid out side by side - may not help. At least when people begin with firmly held convictions, such an approach is likely to increase polarization rather than reduce it. Indeed, that's what a number of academic studies done over the last three decades have found. Such studies typically proceed in three stages. First, the experimenters assemble a group of people who have clear views on some controversial issue (such as capital punishment or sexual orientation). Second, the study subjects are provided with plausible arguments on both sides of the issue. And finally, the researchers test how attitudes have shifted as a result of exposure to balanced presentations. |
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Emily Sohn
Discovery News 2012-09-19 12:00:00
Without thinking, people act with more generosity than if they take some time to weigh the logic of their behavior. Contrary to popular and pessimistic thought, the discovery suggests that, by default, our gut instincts lead us to be more helpful than selfish. That may explain why door-knocking and phone solicitations, which demand immediate responses, tend to bring in bigger donations than statistics-laden e-mail messages or direct mail, which puts people in a rational frame of mind and allows them to think for a while before deciding whether to give. Likewise, people who commit heroic acts -- like the man who jumped onto New York City subway tracks in front of an oncoming train to save a young man having a seizure five years ago -- often make split-second decisions to do the altruistic thing. "If you look at testimony of a lot of people like that describing their decisions, you can see they are heavily weighted towards intuitive thinking," said David Rand, a behavior scientist at Yale who conducted the new study while at Harvard. "People say, 'I didn't think about it. I just did it.'" In a 2011 best-selling book called Thinking, Fast and Slow, Nobel-Prize winning economist Daniel Kahneman argued that a lot of decision-making comes out of a tension between two types of brain processes. On the one hand, we have quick and intuitive thoughts, which are often emotional. The other mode is slower, allowing for more controlled and calculated thinking. Until now, Rand said, researchers had yet to combine the two kinds of thought processes in a way that explained how people actually behaved. |
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Charles Choi
LiveScience 2012-09-19 12:01:00
The genetic differences between normal and abnormal human brains may be determined one day from a "brain atlas" scientists are refining. The scientists have compiled high-resolution maps of genetic activity in the adult human brain based on the complete brains of two men as well as a hemisphere from a third man's brain, all of the tissue healthy when the men died. The researchers are making their data freely accessible online to aid in studies of normal and abnormal human brain function. "By themselves these data do not hold all of the answers for understanding how the brain works or what are the genetic underpinnings of disease," researcher Ed Lein, a neuroscientist at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, told LiveScience. "However, we hope they serve as a catalyst in human brain research for understanding the brain's complex chemistry and cellular makeup, what goes awry in disease, and how best to design and test treatments for disease." Identifying where and when genes are active or expressed within the brain is a titanic endeavor. In fact, ever since the human genome was completely sequenced nearly a decade ago, researchers have strived to identify what exactly each gene might do, with great interest focused on any genes related to the brain. The main challenge when it comes to understanding the human brain is the fact that it is the most powerful computer known. It consists of approximately 100 billion neurons with roughly 1 quadrillion (1 million billion) connections wiring these cells together, and each connection or synapse typically fires about 10 times per second. |
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B.J. Almond
Rice University 2012-09-18 04:58:00
Contrary to the prevailing theories that music and language are cognitively separate or that music is a byproduct of language, theorists at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music and the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) advocate that music underlies the ability to acquire language. "Spoken language is a special type of music," said Anthony Brandt, co-author of a theory paper published online this month in the journal Frontiers in Cognitive Auditory Neuroscience. "Language is typically viewed as fundamental to human intelligence, and music is often treated as being dependent on or derived from language. But from a developmental perspective, we argue that music comes first and language arises from music." Brandt, associate professor of composition and theory at the Shepherd School, co-authored the paper with Shepherd School graduate student Molly Gebrian and L. Robert Slevc, UMCP assistant professor of psychology and director of the Language and Music Cognition Lab. "Infants listen first to sounds of language and only later to its meaning," Brandt said. He noted that newborns' extensive abilities in different aspects of speech perception depend on the discrimination of the sounds of language - "the most musical aspects of speech." |
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Brigham Young University
Research shows how to improve group discussions & decisions.2012-09-18 04:44:00 New experiments in group decision making show that having a seat at the table is very different than having a voice. Scholars at Brigham Young University and Princeton examined whether women speak less than men when a group collaborates to solve a problem. In most groups that they studied, the time that women spoke was significantly less than their proportional representation - amounting to less than 75 percent of the time that men spoke. The new study is published by the top academic journal in political science, American Political Science Review. "Women have something unique and important to add to the group, and that's being lost at least under some circumstances," said Chris Karpowitz, the lead study author and a political scientist at BYU. |
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Julie Rhodes
By studying how birds master songs used in courtship, scientists at Duke
University have found that regions of the brain involved in planning
and controlling complex vocal sequences may also be necessary for
memorizing sounds that serve as models for vocal imitation.Duke University Medical Center 2012-09-17 17:51:00 In a paper appearing in the September 2012 issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, researchers at Duke and Harvard universities observed the imitative vocal learning habits of male zebra finches to pinpoint which circuits in the birds' brains are necessary for learning their songs. Knowing which brain circuits are involved in learning by imitation could have broader implications for diagnosing and treating human developmental disorders, the researchers said. The finding shows that the same circuitry used for vocal control also participates in auditory learning, raising the possibility that vocal circuits in our own brain also help encode auditory experience important to speech and language learning. "Birds learn their songs early in life by listening to and memorizing the song of their parent or other adult bird tutor, in a process similar to how humans learn to speak," said Todd Roberts, Ph.D., the study's first author and postdoctoral associate in neurobiology at Duke University. "They shape their vocalizations to match or copy the tutor's song." |
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The Siberian Times
A Moscow scientist is calling for a new scientific expedition to solve
the mystery of a huge 'monster' claimed to be living in remote Lake
Labynkyr in Siberia.2012-09-18 14:42:00
Known as 'Russia's Loch Ness Monster', the accounts of the creature in Yakutia predate the Scottish claims yet in many ways are similar. Intriguingly, too, there are theories that Labynkyr - which has unusual cracks on its 60 to 80 metre deep floor - is connected by underwater channels to another lake, Vorota, where monster sightings have also been recorded, including by respected Soviet geologist Viktor Tverdokhlebov, an academician not given to hyperbole. Associate Professor of Biogeography Lyudmila Emeliyanova revealed to The Siberian Times that on her own scientific mission to Labynkyr she recorded 'several seriously big underwater objects' with sonar readings. She is not the only researcher to have done so. 'It was our fourth or fifth day at the lake when our echo sounding device registered a huge object in the water under our boat,' she said. 'The object was very dense, of homogeneous structure, surely not a fish nor a shoal of fish, and it was above the bottom. I was very surprised but not scared and not shocked, after all we did not see this animal, we only registered a strange object in the water. But I can clearly say - at the moment, as a scientist, I cannot offer you any explanation of what this object might be.' |
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| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
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The Onion
2012-09-19 07:18:00
Salt Lake City - Seeking to limit the fallout from a videotaped speech in which he asserts 47 percent of Americans "pay no taxes" and do not take "personal responsibility and care for their lives," Mitt Romney hastily called a press conference today to apologize personally to the "150 million starving, filthy beggars [he] might have offended." Saying that he deeply regretted his choice of words at a private $50,000-a-plate fundraising function in May - during which he argued "[his] job is not to worry" about the lower-earning half of the nation's populace - Romney personally appealed to the country's "dirt-caked garbage pickers and toothless street urchins" for forgiveness. "First and foremost, I would like to offer a heartfelt apology to all the whores, junkies, bums, and grime-covered derelicts out there who make up nearly half our nation," a visibly contrite and solemn Romney said outside a campaign stop at a local high school. "Let me assure you that I in no way meant to offend any of the putrid-smelling, barefoot masses out there. My campaign is not about dividing this nation, but about bringing all sides together - the rich, elegant members of the upper class, as well as the 47 percent who are covered in flies and eat directly from back-alley dumpsters." |
