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Richard Swander
Sott.net 2012-10-24 04:38:00
"The simplest explanation for some phenomenon is more likely to be accurate than more complicated explanations." Occam's razor For those of us keeping up-to-date in the alternative-news-a-sphere, political theatre has become increasingly predictable. Events occur, tragedies happen, 'evil' scapegoats are blamed, politicians say craftily scripted words and the media exalts them. Innocent victims suffer and the general 'herd' are delivered top-ups of fear to maintain their terror-anxiety levels and faith in Governments to protect them from non-existential threats. This process has played out time and time again, especially over the last decade in the wake of 9/11, and remains effective on an ill-informed populace that is unaware the FBI organizes almost all terror plots in the US. In the run-up to elections, terror-related popularity-boosting events are laid out for politicians to capitalise on. They are normally precise and clearly orchestrated. Take the recent case of the FBI foiling their own terror plot against the New York Fed. This is a classic tried and tested method of framing a patsy in order to perpetuate the myth of Islamic extremists for political gain. However, when a terror attack happens that causes confusion and finger-pointing amongst the political elite in the run-up to a presidential election, then clearly something is not quite 'optimal'. Five weeks after the assault on the US consulate in Benghazi resulted in the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, the way that the Obama administration, intelligence services and media have reacted has been somewhat perplexing. No elected official has yet to reveal with certainty who led the attack, and at times, both the White House and the US State Department have provided completely different explanations for the assumed motives of the attackers. What on earth is going on? | |
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| Puppet Masters |
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Tony Cartalucci
Global Research 2012-10-21 15:47:00
It was, starting at least in 2007, the goal of the US, Saudis, and Israelis to trigger a region wide sectarian war with which to overrun the governments of Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. This was documented in detail in Seymour Hersh's 2007 New Yorker article, "The Redirection" which was covered in depth in, "Syrian War: The Prequel". A recent bombing in Beirut, Lebanon left high ranking security chief Brigadier General Wissam al-Hassan dead. Al-Hassan is described as "anti-Syrian." Before Al-Hassan's death was announced, and literally as bodies were still being pulled from the wreckage caused by the bombing, politicians from Saad Hariri's faction began immediately blamingSyria for the attacks. Hariri himself also laid the blame on Syria, offering no other details or supporting evidence. Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran have all condemned the bombing and cite it as a provocation to start a greater sectarian war, from which none will benefit. Each in turn suspect Israel and the West, as greater sectarian tension is expected to result, playing into long documented attempts by US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia to trigger a sectarian war they hope will be the downfall of Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran. Suspicious op-eds in pro-Western "Lebanon Now" insist that Syria is responsible, and again without evidence, concludes that blaming Israel is inappropriate, and that the Wall Street-London militant beachhead is by far a lesser threat to Lebanon than what it calls "the most deadly virus" of President Bashar al-Assad's Syria. | |
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Fars News Agency
2012-10-24 09:51:00
The Vice-Speaker of the Israeli Knesset, Danny Danon, issued an open call for terrorist operations on the lives of Palestinian leaders. "Israel should assassinate the Hamas leaders to revive its deterrence power," Danon was quoted as saying by Felestin al-Yom news network on Wednesday. Also, in hostile remarks after the Zionist regime intensified air strikes against the Gaza Strip, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Wednesday threatened to launch another offensive on the coastal area. "If we need a ground operation, there will be a ground operation. We will do whatever necessary to stop the wave," Barak said. Zionist officials have repeatedly made bold calls for terrorist operations against Palestinians and the international community is shockingly mum about such a flagrant of international rules and Tel Aviv's bold acknowledgement of its terrorist nature. In 2009, the then Israeli Minister of Religious Affairs, Yitzhak Cohen, had similarly called for the assassination of Hamas leaders. Cohen, who resided in the Southern city of Ashkelon at the time, said it was time to "remove Hamas leaders Khaled Mashaal, Mahmoud Al-Zahar and Ismail Haniyeh". Cohen's call for the assassination of Hamas leaders later met action. Mashaal, Al-Zahar and Haniyeh are alive, but several other Palestinian leaders were killed in terrorist operations by the Israeli regime, mostly in the form of helicopter air raids on specific targets. | |
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Bryce Hoye
The Manitoban 2012-10-22 13:54:00
The myth of "pure evil" is a bad joke, resulting from and sustained by other unhelpful binaries: good and bad, right and wrong, normal and abnormal, and hot and cold. How bad? How wrong? How abnormal or cold? Science can speak to this question of degree and enrich our understanding of what "evil" might be. Specifically, the sciences of the mind have a variety of approaches to illuminate our understanding of natural phenomena like "evil" on a psychological and neurobiological level. Take, for instance, the psychopath. The term "evil" is popularly equated with psychopathy, and together they readily evoke thoughts of ruthless dictators - Pol Pot, Stalin, and Hitler - and sadistic serial killers - Jack the Ripper, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Gary Ridgeway (the "Green River Killer"). While this subsample of infamous and sensationalized historical figures represents only a very narrow and conventional portrait of what people casually refer to as "evil," psychopathology is generally understood as one of several other personality disorders that fall along a continuum of antisocial behaviours. | |
Comment: Far from being stigmatized, evil is protected by being mystified.
From the psychopaths' perspective, it is we who inherited the 'bad brain'. As far as they're concerned, they're perfect and we're totally messed-up. And so, when we really get down to it, it's a matter of two different species, each with a spectrum of different sub-types distributed across two separate bell curves, each one completely alien to the other. | |
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Alexander C. Kaufman
Chicago Tribune 2012-10-24 13:38:00
Former newspaper tycoon Conrad Black attacked Rupert Murdoch on Tuesday, calling the News Corporation chairman a "psychopath" and comparing him to Joseph Stalin. The former owner of the Daily Telegraph in Britain and the Chicago Sun-Times, who spent 37 months in a U.S. prison for fraud, said the media magnate - a longtime business adversary - was an "astonishingly cold man." "He's a psychopath ... like Stalin, except that he doesn't kill people," Black told the Telegraph. "I'm not suggesting he's a homicidal psychopath - he just severs people out of his life like that. I have great admiration for what he's achieved but he's a terrible man." Canadian-born Black, who served in the House of Lords and became a British national in 1999, was in the United Kingdom promoting his memoirs on the BBC satirical show, "Have I Got News For You." That wasn't his first "psychopath" attack on Murdoch during his book tour. | |
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Ma'an News Agency
2012-10-24 00:00:00
Gaza City - Multiple Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip have killed four people and injured eight since late Tuesday, medics said. Israeli warplanes struck a target in Rafah early Wednesday, killing Muhammad al-Sheikh, 32, a member of the PRC's military wing the Nasser Saladin Brigades. One other person was also injured in the attack. Israel's army said it was targeting a launching squad which moments earlier had fired a rocket at southern Israel. At midnight, an airstrike on Beit Lahiya in Gaza's north killed Ismail al-Tille, a member of Hamas' al-Qassam Brigades, and injured three others, Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra told Ma'an. Another overnight strike in an area northwest of Beit Lahiya killed Loai Abed al-Hakeen Abu Jarad, 24, and Yousef Abu Jalhoum, al-Qidra said. One other person was seriously wounded. Israel's army said it targeted a squad in the northern Gaza Strip "during its final preparations to fire rockets towards southern Israel." | |
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Jennifer Loewenstein
Mondoweiss 2012-10-22 21:07:00
Last week the Associated Press reported: Israeli authorities blockading the Gaza Strip in 2008 went so far as to calculate how many calories would be needed to avert a humanitarian disaster in the impoverished Palestinian territory, according to a newly declassified military document... [Critics said] the document was new evidence that Israel used food as a pressure tactic to try to force Gaza's Hamas rulers from power...What bothers me are the number of parallels to this right here, throughout US history. We've used chemical, biological, and nuclear warfare against our alleged enemies, have had concentration camps for far more people than the Japanese; starved our enemies with "sanctions" while denying them medical care at the same time; and much worse -back well into the First World War and the Civil War. But people don't like to remember these things, whether they're about Iraq, Iran, Cuba, Vietnam, or Japan or against the enemies in our midst, like the Red Man - and god only knows how many others. Starving people through sanctions or sieges is, as Allen says, just a primitive form of biological warfare. In its early years, our beloved, exceptional Republic, used germ warfare by deliberately giving small-pox infected blankets to groups of Native Americans, often wiping out entire tribes - and then grabbing their land. The concentration camps we devised for them still exist in places like the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota, the Tohono O'odham desert outside Ajo, Arizona, or the dustlands of Oklahoma. Go back to the Crusades for examples of enforced starvation and creative torture such as the art of burning living people at the stake in the name of religion. | |
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Adam Goldman and Matt Apuz
Associated Press 2012-10-23 16:19:00
A paid informant for the New York Police Department's intelligence unit was under orders to "bait" Muslims into saying inflammatory things as he lived a double life, snapping pictures inside mosques and collecting the names of innocent people attending study groups on Islam, he told The Associated Press. Shamiur Rahman, a 19-year-old American of Bangladeshi descent who has now denounced his work as an informant, said police told him to embrace a strategy called "create and capture." He said it involved creating a conversation about jihad or terrorism, then capturing the response to send to the NYPD. For his work, he earned as much as $1,000 a month and goodwill from the police after a string of minor marijuana arrests. "We need you to pretend to be one of them," Rahman recalled the police telling him. "It's street theater." | |
Comment: When East Germany and Russia were eventually dismantled, Communism, ourtraditional enemy throughout the Cold War era, shed its adversarial face. This, of course, was bad news for the Military-Industrial-Complex, whose existence hinges on trillion-dollar profits derived from feeding and sustaining a perpetual war stance. A new 'enemy' was desperately needed to supplant the Russian bear. Voila! --- 9/11 was launched and the "Muslim terrorist" menace was born. The above article is an example of how this myth is kept alive, and how our masters have willingly managed to marginalize and vilify, en masse, a major world religion.
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| Society's Child |
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Yahoo News
2012-10-24 11:36:00
There is "clear intelligence" suggesting a historic paedophile ring may be linked to Downing Street and a former prime minister, MPs have been told. Labour MP Tom Watson alleged a member of a notorious group was connected to a former No 10 aide. He said: "The evidence file used to convict Peter Righton, if it still exists, contains clear intelligence of a widespread paedophile ring. "One of its members boasts of his links to a senior aide of a former prime minister, who says he could smuggle indecent images of children from abroad. | |
Comment: What British Prime Minister David Cameron really means is that he will do everything he can to try to put the lid back on... but is it too late? Is the cat already out of the bag? For more information on paedophile networks in high places, check out Dutroux Cover-up Protected Pedophile Networks.
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The Telegraph, UK
2012-10-24 07:55:00
Stephen Farrow, a homeless drifter accused of the murders of Rev John Suddards and retired teacher Betty Yates scored 31 out of 40 on a test to identify psychopaths and is '88 per cent anti-social' but is not insane, a court heard today. Dr Tim Rogers, a consultant forensic psychiatrist, told Bristol Crown Court that Stephen Farrow, 48, demonstrated many of the characteristics of a psychopath. Farrow has admitted killing the Reverend John Suddards, 59, at his vicarage in Thornbury, Glos., but denies murdering the vicar and pensioner Betty Yates, 77. He said it was not possible to be sure when Farrow was telling the truth and when he was lying. The psychiatrist said there are 20 traits of a psychopath - when each is given a score of up to two, Farrow scored 31 out of 40. But he said that after assessing Farrow on two separate occasions in recent months and reading compiled reports spanning several years, he passed the threshold of psychopathy. | |
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Anthony Sharwood
The Australian 2012-10-24 07:37:00
A leading Australian expert on emotional intelligence believes Lance Armstrong is a classic "corporate psychopath" who has hustled and bullied his way to the top his whole life. According to Sydney-based lecturer and author Chris Golis, the characteristics of a corporate psychopath are their charm, their lack of natural empathy, their ability to deceive and their view that life is a game with winners and losers - and that they are winners. "Typically they are manipulative, lack ethics, desire power and are very active players in corporate politics," Mr Golis explains. "They meet someone and they say, 'what's in it for me? How can I make money from this person?'" Mr Golis says well known examples of the character type in the corporate sphere include businessman Alan Bond and the late Sydney stockbroker Rene Rivkin. But he says top sportsmen often exhibit the characteristics too, and Lance Armstrong appears to fall smack bang into the category. | |
Comment: Golis clearly isn't a reliable source on psychopathy if he thinks they're capable of developing remorse.
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Daily Mail, UK
2012-10-24 00:00:00
A stunning race attack alleged by a 20-year-old Louisiana woman appears to be a fabrication as police revealed she set herself on fire. Sharmeka Moffitt, who is black, claimed she was doused in lighter fluid and then severely burned by three men wearing white hooded sweatshirts while walking through a park on Sunday night. She also told police that the men wrote 'KKK' on her car. However, police in Shreveport revealed on Tuesday that they found Ms Moffitt's DNA on the can of lighter fluid used to burn her and her fingerprints on the cigarette lighter that was used to start the fire. Investigators also believe she was the one who wrote 'KKK' on her car. It is not known why she self-immolated or reported that her injuries were the work of apparent white supremacists, police said. Ms Moffitt remains in critical condition at the hospital, with burns on 60 percent of her body. Her family issued a statement apologizing for the turn of events. 'Our family is devastated to learn the circumstances surrounding our daughter's injuries. While this was not the resolution we had expected, it's a resolution,' they said. | |
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Common Dreams
Another victory for Montana, "ground zero" for the battle against Citizens United2012-10-23 22:59:00
In the latest battle in Montana's war against Citizens United, the Supreme Court refused to block a Montana law "limiting campaign contributions to candidates for state office, leaving the caps in place at least through the November general election," reportsReuters. On Tuesday afternoon, the high court upheld a ruling - handed down earlier this month - by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of appeals that temporarily reinstated Montana's right to regulate campaign contributions. Previously, a lower court had struck down the restrictions labeling them "unconstitutional." According to the Associated Press: Montana law caps contributions by individuals and political committees at $630 for gubernatorial candidates, $310 for other statewide offices and at $160 for all other public offices. Total limits for political parties are $22,600 for governor, $8,150 for other statewide candidates, $1,300 for state senators and $800 for all other public offices. Donations by political action committees to candidates for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives are capped at $2,650 and $1,600 respectively. | |
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| Secret History |
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Tia Ghose
LiveScience 2012-10-24 07:18:00
A 5,500-year-old tomb possibly belonging to a Stone Age chieftain has been unearthed at a megalithic monument in the shape of a ship called the Ale's Stenar (Ale's Stones). The tomb, in Sweden, was likely robbed of stones to build the Viking-era ship monument. "We found traces - mostly imprints - of large boulders," said lead archaeologist Bengst Söderberg of the Swedish National Heritage Board. "So my conviction is that some of the stones at least, they are standing on the ship setting." Perched on a seaside cliff in the village of Kåseberga stands the Ales Stenar, also calledAle's Stones, 59 massive boulders arranged in the 220-foot (67-meter)-long outline of a ship. Most researchers believe the 1,400-year-old ship structure is a burial monumentbuilt toward the end of Sweden's Iron Age. Local legend has it that the mythic King Ale lies beneath the site. The Ales Stenar megaliths, some of which weigh as much as 4,000 pounds (1,800 kilograms), have distinctive cut marks similar to ones found at Stone Age sites. So researchers wondered whether the stones were stolen from an even older monument, Söderberg told LiveScience. [See Photos of Ale's Stones & Tomb] | |
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Guy Walters
Daily Mail 2012-10-23 17:32:00
The Sahara is cold at night, and for the young soldiers waiting to go into battle, it felt perishing. Many, such as those in the Durham Brigade, were only wearing shirts, shorts and flimsy pullovers, and shivered while they clutched their rifles. Nearby were soldiers from an Australian battalion, one of whom, a Private Crawford, took pity on a youthful-looking private in the Durhams, and gave him his sweater. Two hours later, an enormous barrage started up from the British guns, the like of which had not been seen since World War I. The soldiers, many now trembling more from fear than cold, advanced into what swiftly became a terrifying and chaotic inferno. | |
Comment: The authors seem to be doing damage control to keep the meme going that some wars are justified, even those fought only for the sake of political expediency. In the psychopathic mindset any collateral damage, including the deaths of thousands, are insignificant in their quest for power and domination. They cannot allow anyone - even historians - to question this.
The purpose of winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan and elsewhere isn't to win the hearts and minds of the locals 'over there', who know full well that the invading forces of occupation are the enemy. The purpose is to win over hearts and minds in the West for continued support of a war whose true purpose is to channel revolutionary discontent at home to somewhere far, far away where it can be safely disposed of. It's the same with all wars really. It has certainly proven to be the case with certainly modern wars where there is never a 'casus belli' (just cause for the war) and where both sides are funded by the same sources.Take this sentence, for example: | |
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Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery News 2012-10-23 14:16:00
The world's oldest undeciphered writing system is close to being cracked thanks to a new technology and online crowdsourcing, Oxford University researchers have announced. Called proto-Elamite, the writing has its roots in what is now Iran and dates from 3,200 to 3,000 B.C. So far, the 5,000-year-old writing has defied any effort to decode its symbols impressed on clay tablets. Now a high-tech imaging device developed at the Universities of Oxford and Southampton in England might provide the necessary insight to crack the code once and for all. Comprising a dome with 76 lights and a camera positioned at the top of the dome, the Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) is able to capture extremely high quality images of ancient documents. As the object is placed in the center of the dome, 76 photos are taken each with one of the 76 lights individually lit. The 76 images are then joined in post-processing so that researcher can move the light across the surface of the digital image and use the difference between light and shadow to highlight never before seen details. "The quality of the images captured is incredible. I have spent the last ten years trying to decipher the proto-Elamite writing system and, with this new technology, I think we are finally on the point of making a breakthrough," Jacob Dahl, from Oxford University's Oriental Studies Faculty, said. | |
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| Science & Technology |
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Shane McGlaun
DailyTech 2012-10-24 13:21:00
Missile uses microwaves to destroy electronics Boeing has announced the first ever test of a new missile system known as Champ. Champ stands for Counter-electronics High-powered Advanced Missile Project. The goal of the project is to create a missile that can defeat any electronic target with little or no collateral damage. The missile test was conducted on October 16 at 10:32 AM at the Utah Test and Training Range. The Champ missile was launched, and as it approached its first target, it fired a burst of High Power Microwaves into a two-story building built on the test range. Inside the building were rows of personal computers and electrical systems that were turned on to help gauge the effects that the missile would have on the electronic equipment. According to Boeing, seconds after the missile passed over its target the PC monitors went dark as Champ knocked out computer and electrical systems in the target building. | |
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Charles Q. Choi
OurAmazingPlanet 2012-10-24 08:52:00
Earth's magnetic field reversed extremely rapidly soon after modern humans first arrived in Europe, completely flip-flopping in less than a thousand years, new research suggests. These findings, detailed Oct. 15 in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters,could shed light on how and why magnetic field reversals happen, and how they leave Earth vulnerable to solar and space radiation, the study scientists said. Earth's metal core acts like a giant magnet that emanates a magnetic field with two poles, north and south. These two magnetic poles very roughly match where the planet's geographic north and south poles lie, which mark the axis on which Earth spins. "The Earth's magnetic field is a highly dynamic feature," said researcher Norbert Nowaczyk, a paleomagnetist at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences. "Its intensity pulsates between values 50 percent higher than today, or 90 to 95 percent lower than today." In addition, every several hundred thousand years, Earth's magnetic field reverses - a compass that would have pointed north would instead aim south. These flips are captured by magnetically sensitive minerals in cooling lava that are literally set in stone pointing to where the poles were at that particular moment in Earth's history. | |
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Jesse Emspak
LiveScience 2012-10-24 12:01:00
Efforts to develop a working gene therapy for certain inherited diseases have reached a milestone with a new method for altering a human egg cell. If the technique, which was unveiled by Oregon Health & Science University and involves transplanting mitochondrial DNA, is ever approved for use in patients, a child's genetic makeup could be altered to cure certain genetic diseases before the baby is even born. Even so, the researchers say the treatment wouldn't likely be approved for testing in humans for a while. The gene-tweaking technique, which is detailed online today (Oct. 24) in the journalNature, is designed to treat diseases caused by genetic mutations in the cells' energy-making structures called mitochondria, said lead researcher Shoukhrat Mitalipov of OHSU School of Medicine. Mitochondrial diseases can lead to diabetes, degeneration of nerves, or blindness, so the diseases themselves are often mistaken for other problems. Once the disease is identified, various supportive therapies are available, but generally there is no cure because the disease is caused by genetic mutations that are locked in. | |
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| Earth Changes |
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Rudy Ruitenberg
Bloomberg 2012-10-24 13:50:00
Locusts will probably spread to North Africa in coming weeks as swarms form in Chad and are about to gather in Mali and Niger after summer rains, the United Nations' Food & Agriculture Organization said. The FAO has alerted Algeria, Morocco, Libya and Mauritania to prepare for the arrival of desert locust swarms, the Rome- based agency wrote in an e-mailed statement today. The conflict in Mali, which has asked for international military assistance to help it deal with an Islamist occupation of the country's northern region, makes it unlikely all locust infestations there will be found and treated, the FAO said. "Prevailing winds and historical precedents make it likely the swarms, once formed, will fly to Algeria, Libya, southern Morocco and northwestern Mauritania," Keith Cressman, the FAO's senior locust forecasting officer, was cited as saying in the statement. "Once there, they could damage pastures and subsistence rain-fed crops." | |
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Tuoi Tre
Tuoitrenews.com 2012-10-23 03:18:00
An earthquake, the strongest since 1957, occurred last night in Quang Nam Province's Bac Tra My District, where the Song Tranh 2 Hydropower Plant is located, panicking thousands of local residents. A series of tremors measuring 4.6 on the Richter scale broke out in the district at 9:42 pm Monday and lasted for about three seconds, said Le Van Tuan, chief of the district People's Committee's Secretariat. Thousands of locals rushed out of their houses in panic after they heard loud blasts and felt the ground shaking, houses' walls cracking, and things inside the houses falling, Tuan said. "Many items on a table in my house fell down to the floor and my children cried and screamed when hearing explosions that sounded like the sounds of bombings," he said. | |
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Anthony Watts
Watts Up With That 2012-10-23 00:00:00
Oxygen's ups and downs in the early atmosphere and ocean UC Riverside-led research team finds evidence for a dramatic rise in early oxygen about 2.3 billion years ago followed, more surprisingly, by an equally impressive fall Riverside, California - Most researchers imagine the initial oxygenation of the ocean and atmosphere to have been something like a staircase, but with steps only going up. The first step, so the story goes, occurred around 2.4 billion years ago, and this, the so-called Great Oxidation Event, has obvious implications for the origins and evolution of the first forms of eukaryotic life. The second big step in this assumed irreversible rise occurred almost two billion years later, coinciding with the first appearances and earliest diversification of animals. Now a team led by geochemists at the University of California, Riverside challenges the simple notion of an up-only trend for early oxygen and provides the first compelling direct evidence for a major drop in oxygen after the first rise. "Our group is among a subset of scientists who imagine that oxygen, once it began to accumulate in the ocean-atmosphere system, may have ultimately risen to very high levels about 2.3-2.2 billion years ago, perhaps even to concentrations close to what we see today," said Timothy Lyons, a professor of biogeochemistry and the principal investigator of the project. "But unlike the posited irreversible rise favored by many, our new data point convincingly to an equally impressive, and still not well understood, fall in oxygen about 200 million years later." | |
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Anthony Watts
Watts Up With That 2012-10-23 00:00:00
On Tuesday, October 23, PBS's "Frontline" program will broadcast a special titled "Climate of Doubt." It promises to go "inside the organizations" that helped turn the tide of public opinion, and then of elected officials, away from excessive concern over the possible threat of man-made global warming. The Heartland Institute is likely to be a central figure in this program as we welcomed "Frontline" producer Catherine Upin and her crew to our Seventh International Conference on Climate Change in Chicago in May. Heartland Institute Senior Fellow James M. Taylor also gave a three-hour interview to the film crew in August. Earlier this year, The Economist called Heartland "the world's most prominent think tank promoting skepticism about man-made climate change." We hope the program is accurate and fair, but past experience both with PBS and other mainstream media outlets leads us to predict it will be neither.Several Heartland staff will be watching the program and commenting live via Twitterand on our blog, Somewhat Reasonable. | |
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US Geological Survey
2012-10-23 20:38:00
Event Time 2012-10-24 00:45:36 UTC 2012-10-23 18:45:36 UTC-06:00 at epicenter Location 10.118°N 85.348°W depth=39.5km (24.5mi) Nearby Cities 10km (6mi) NE of Hojancha, Costa Rica 11km (7mi) ESE of Nicoya, Costa Rica 30km (19mi) ESE of Santa Cruz, Costa Rica 44km (27mi) SW of Canas, Costa Rica 140km (87mi) W of San Jose, Costa Rica Technical Details | |
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| Fire in the Sky |
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| Health & Wellness |
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Gretchen Reynolds
New York Times 2012-04-18 15:32:00
The value of mental-training games may be speculative, as Dan Hurley writes in his article on the quest to make ourselves smarter, but there is another, easy-to-achieve, scientifically proven way to make yourself smarter. Go for a walk or a swim. For more than a decade, neuroscientists and physiologists have been gathering evidence of the beneficial relationship between exercise and brainpower. But the newest findings make it clear that this isn't just a relationship; it is the relationship. Using sophisticated technologies to examine the workings of individual neurons - and the makeup of brain matter itself - scientists in just the past few months have discovered that exercise appears to build a brain that resists physical shrinkage and enhance cognitive flexibility. Exercise, the latest neuroscience suggests, does more to bolster thinking than thinking does. The most persuasive evidence comes from several new studies of lab animals living in busy, exciting cages. It has long been known that so-called "enriched" environments - homes filled with toys and engaging, novel tasks - lead to improvements in the brainpower of lab animals. In most instances, such environmental enrichment also includes a running wheel, because mice and rats generally enjoy running. Until recently, there was little research done to tease out the particular effects of running versus those of playing with new toys or engaging the mind in other ways that don't increase the heart rate. | |
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Makini Brice
Medical Daily 2012-10-24 11:17:00
Researchers warn that chemicals in cosmetics, plastics, and household cleaners could be causing women to go through menopause early. Researchers from the Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri looked at data from 5,708 women who had been participants in the United States National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Women who had been exposed to high amounts of certain chemicals were likely to undergo menopause as much as two years early - a change from 51 years old, the average age for the onset of menopause in the United States, to 49 years old. But, as study author Natalia Grindler explained at the American Society of Reproductive Medicine's conference held in San Diego, some women began menopause as much as 15 years older. That could place the start of menopause for some women as early as their mid-thirties. The culprits are phthalates. Researchers analyzed the blood or urine levels of the substance, and found that women with high levels of phthalates were more likely to undergo menopause early than their peers. Early menopause has been linked with increased rates for bone loss, brain hemorrhages, heart problems, and strokes. | |
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Elizabeth Renter
Natural Society 2012-10-24 14:44:00
On World Mental Health Day (October 10), the World Health Organization (WHO) let it be known that more than 350 million people worldwide suffer from depression. But, they say, a stigma is still attached to the condition, leading people to keep their struggles quiet rather than reaching out for help. The WHO says the stigma must be dropped so that depressed individuals can have access to treatment, including therapy and Big Pharma medications. There is no doubt that many people are depressed and there is little doubt that these people need help. Depression, after all, can lead to serious health conditions and can drive some people to suicide. The stigmas associated with depression certainly don't help anyone. But pushing pharmaceuticals as the most viable treatment method is a travesty, particularly when it comes from a body as esteemed and large as the WHO. | |
Comment: The World Health Organization (WHO) with the help of Big Pharma is eager to push pharmaceuticals as the most viable treatment method for depression:
Excerpts from Robert Whitaker's Anatomy of an Epidemic: Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America:
Big Pharma's Latest Shady Ploy to Sell Depression Drugs That People May Not Need | |
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John Phillip
Natural News 2012-10-22 21:12:00
The fear of losing the ability to think, remember and reason strikes fear in the minds of millions of aging adults around the world. Cognitive impairment leads to a decline in quality of life and is often the first sign of the most insidious form of dementia, Alzheimer's disease. Researchers have been slowly uncovering many of the mysteries of cognitive decline in an attempt to find a way to prevent or even treat this condition before it takes control of the mind and can advance to wreak havoc in the life of the individual, caregivers and family members. A number of recent studies have demonstrated that lifestyle factors can have a strong influence in the development and progression of cognitive decline. Diet, chemicals used around the house and in cosmetics as well as environmental pollutants have been implicated in promoting cognitive dysfunction as they alter brain chemistry and electrical signaling in the brain. Researchers from the Mayo Clinic, publishing the result of a study in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease explain how people 70 and older who eat food high in carbohydrates have nearly four times the risk of developing mild cognitive impairment, and the danger is also present with a diet heavy in sugar. Those who consume a lot of protein and fat relative to carbohydrates are less likely to become cognitively impaired, the study found. | |
Comment: The connection between a diet high in sugar and carbs and an increased risk of cognitive impairment, such as Alzheimer's, is discussed in the following articles:
The Sugar and Alzheimer's Connection Research links Diabetes to Alzheimer's The Toxic Triad: How Big Food, Big Farming, and Big Pharma Spread Obesity, Diabetes, and Chronic Disease Across the Globe To learn more about Diet as a solution for cognitive diseases such as Alzheimer's, based on research and experience, read the forum thread Ketogenic Diet - Path To Transformation? Solve Your Health Issues with a Ketogenic Diet Ketogenic Diet Reduces Symptoms of Alzheimer's | |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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ScienceDaily
Wouldn't it be amazing if our bodies prepared us for futur2012-10-23 19:57:00
e events that could be very important to us, even if there's no clue about what those events will be? Presentiment without any external clues may, in fact, exist, according to new Northwestern University research that analyzes the results of 26 studies published between 1978 and 2010. Researchers already know that our subconscious minds sometimes know more than our conscious minds. Physiological measures of subconscious arousal, for instance, tend to show up before conscious awareness that a deck of cards is stacked against us. "What hasn't been clear is whether humans have the ability to predict future important events even without any clues as to what might happen," said Julia Mossbridge, lead author of the study and research associate in the Visual Perception, Cognition and Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern. A person playing a video game at work while wearing headphones, for example, can't hear when his or her boss is coming around the corner. | |
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Charles Choi
LiveScience 2012-10-23 18:01:00
Some people may actually see sounds, say researchers who found this odd ability is possible when the parts of the brain devoted to vision are small. These findings points to a clever strategy the brain might use when vision is unreliable, investigators added. Scientists took a closer look at the sound-induced flash illusion. When a single flash is followed by two bleeps, people sometimes also see two illusory consecutive flashes. Past experiments revealed there are strong differences between individuals when it comes to how prone they are to this illusion. "Some would experience it almost every time a flash was accompanied by two bleeps, others would almost never see the second flash," said researcher Benjamin de Haas, a neuroscientist at University College London. These differences suggested to de Haas and his colleagues that maybe variations inbrain anatomy were behind who saw the illusion and who did not. To find out, the researchers analyzed the brains of 29 volunteers with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and tested them with flashes and bleeps. | |
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| High Strangeness |
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WYMT-TV
2012-10-23 22:19:00
An object spotted in the sky by several people across Pike County last week has still not been identified. One local astronomer captured pictures and video of it through his telescope. No one seems to know. "It wasn't anything I recognized. Definitely not an airplane, and I've never seen a helicopter that looked like that," said Allen Epling. Sightings of the object have been reported in Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee, but it has yet to be identified. Epling says even with his background in astronomy, it is unlike anything he has ever seen. "Looked like two fluorescent bulbs, side by side, parallel, shining very brightly. It would get so bright they would seem to merge, and you could see it very clearly with the naked eye. Then it would dim down almost invisible," he said. Even stranger, the object barely moved. It hovered in the same area for more than two hours. |
