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Anonymous
Sott.net 2013-10-30 17:51:00
In about 1999 I was asked to analyze the data of pregnant women with respect to smoking for a major health insurance company. They were running a campaign to get pregnant women to stop smoking and they expected to find interesting data to support their case. I used to teach college courses covering the topic. The text books said that smoking causes underweight premature babies. Because of this babies of smoking mothers are more likely to have birth defects. With alcohol, two drinks a day was considered safe, but with tobacco, there was no safe threshold. I thought this was rather strange. You smoke one cigarette while pregnant and you are more likely to have birth defects? Even for a hard core health fanatic that is difficult to believe. Here is what was found in the data. Babies of smoking mothers average weight was 3232 grams (7.1 lbs.). Babies of non-smoking mothers averaged 3398 grams (7.5 lbs.). That is about a half pound difference and it is statistically significant. Seven pounds is a good healthy birth weight that does not set off any alarms. Babies are considered underweight if they are less than 2270 grams (5 lbs.). 4.5% of smoking mothers babies were underweight and 3.3% of non-smoking mothers babies were underweight. This difference is not significant. There is no indication here of a health risk from smoking based on weight. | |
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Glenn Greenwald
The Guardian 2013-10-25 20:22:00
With General Alexander calling for NSA reporting to be halted, US and UK credibility as guardians of press freedom is crushed The most under-discussed aspect of the NSA story has long been its international scope. That all changed this week as both Germany and France exploded with anger over new revelations about pervasive NSA surveillance on their population and democratically elected leaders. As was true for Brazil previously, reports about surveillance aimed at leaders are receiving most of the media attention, but what really originally drove the story there were revelations that the NSA is bulk-spying on millions and millions of innocent citizens in all of those nations. The favorite cry of US government apologists - - everyone spies! - falls impotent in the face of this sort of ubiquitous, suspicionless spying that is the sole province of the US and its four English-speaking surveillance allies (the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). | |
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| Puppet Masters |
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Warren L. Dean Jr.
In 1984, Ronald Reagan reminded the country why it should give him a second term in office. His campaign ran an ad with the simple message: "It's morning in America again." The president, so criticized by the left for embracing the good old days of America's heritage, brought the country a period of peace, prosperity, stability and dignity that Americans can only dream about today. In short, the ad was right on.The Washington Times 2013-10-30 17:01:00 Things have changed. If an ad agency had to sum up the mood of the country, and be honest about it, it might come up with this pitch: "It's Halloween in America today." Washington has made this one of the scariest times in history, especially for younger generations of Americans.
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Comment: Indeed, Freedom is not serving your government, being told what to do and being forced to comply with laws enacted by pathological politicians. This is actually a slavery and this is the gift we leave to our children and future generations, who will have to deal with it sooner or later. Happy Halloween!
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Elizabeth Dwoskin
The end could be near for cookies, the tiny pieces of code that marketers deploy on Web browsers to track people's online movements, serve targeted advertising and amass valuable user profiles. In the past month, Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. have said they are developing systems to plug into and control this river of data in ways that bypass the more than a thousand software companies that place cookies on websites.The Wall Street Journal 2013-10-28 18:50:00
The moves could radically shift the balance of power in the $120 billion global digital advertising industry - and have ad technology companies scrambling to figure out their next play. "There is a Battle Royal brewing," says Scott Meyer, chief executive of Evidon Inc., a company that helps businesses keep track of the cookies on their websites. "Whoever controls access to all that data can charge rent for it - and has a tremendous advantage going forward." The Silicon Valley trio, which produce browsers, email services and operating systems used by billions across many devices, are positioned to potentially learn far more about people's activities than cookies ever could. Today, a diverse ecosystem of companies places cookies on websites to track people through browsers; now the giants see an opportunity to get into tracking themselves. | |
Comment: Say goodbye to the good old cookies and welcome to the world of pervasive invigilation, where your EVERY virtual or physical move is tracked and recorded by the giant Internet corporations and sold for profit to advertisers.
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Press TV
2013-10-30 05:45:00
The United States poses the biggest nuclear threat to the world, former US Marine Ken O'Keefe tells Press TV in an interview. "There is clearly no bigger threat to the safety and security of this world than the United States of America," O'Keefe said on Wednesday.He said the threat came from the US "unaccounted" nuclear weapons, adding, "The first nation that needs to disarm is the United States, but they're not going to do so willingly." | |
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Bill Gertz
FreeBeacon 2013-10-30 17:12:00
Russian strategic forces carried out a large-scale surprise military drill on Wednesday, launching four nuclear missiles that were closely monitored by U.S. intelligence agencies, U.S. officials said. The drill began around 9:00 am ET and included the test launch of two land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and two submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). The test firings were unusual because of the number of missiles fired at one time, said officials who discussed some details of the drill on condition of anonymity. State Department spokeswoman Alexandra F. Bell confirmed the tests and said the long-range missile firings were "conducted consistent with the requirements of the New START Treaty." At the Pentagon, spokeswoman Cynthia O. Smith said: "With regard to Russia's recent testing of its strategic forces missiles, the United States received the proper notifications prior to the launches." Other officials said the tests were notified in advance to the U.S. government as required by a 1988 U.S.-Soviet agreement requiring advance notification of ICBM and SLBM launches. The agreement requires notifying the Nuclear Risk Reduction Center, run by the Pentagon, of the impending launches within four days of their launch. | |
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Barton Gellman , Ashkan Soltani
Documents reveal vast scale of security agency's ability to get around strict legal proceduresThe Independent 2013-10-30 10:17:00
The US National Security Agency (NSA), in collaboration with the UK government's listening station GCHQ, has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centres around the world, according to interviews with knowledgeable officials and documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. By tapping those links, the agency can collect at will from among hundreds of millions of user accounts. The NSA does not keep everything it collects, but it keeps a lot. According to a top-secret document dated 9 January 2013, NSA's acquisitions directorate sends millions of records every day from Yahoo and Google internal networks to data warehouses at the agency's Fort Meade headquarters. In the preceding 30 days, the report said, field collectors had processed and sent back 181,280,466 new records, ranging from "metadata", which indicates who sent or received emails and when, to content such as text, audio and video. | |
Comment: Anyone still surprised that this is happening? No? Perhaps that is the idea: to push us to a point in which the Big Brother Society is normalized and internalized.
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Andrew Rettman
EUobserver.com 2013-10-11 14:45:00
Brussels - Belgium's Standing Intelligence Agencies Review Committee has in a fresh report out on Tuesday (11 January) revealed details of a 2003 EU bugging scandal and named Israeli secret services as a potential culprit. The report, completed in late 2010, is available on the committee's website in Flemish and French. Committee member Peter de Smet on Tuesday told EUobserver the report says that two people suspected of planting listening devices in the EU member states' headquarters, the Justus Lipsius building, when it was constructed back in the mid-1990s had been trained by the Israeli telecommunications company Comverse, which has known links to the Mossad, the Israeli spy agency. The report does not name any country other than Israel as the potential guilty party in its findings. "There is no hard evidence [that the Mossad carried out the operation]," Mr De Smet explained. "But it was really state-of-the-art listening equipment that was placed back in 1993 or 1994 and there were not many countries that had the means at this time. It could be Israel, it could be Russia, it could be England or it could be the US - there you have really the four countries possible, but it will never blow up who did these things. It will remain a game inside the intelligence services." | |
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Brent McCluskey
Before It's News 2013-10-29 10:06:00
Former Vice President Dick Cheney sat down with Bill O'Reilly to discuss whether the trillions of dollars of debt and tens of thousands of causalities amongst the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were really worth the cost. In the completely amiable segment, the two men faced off. Cheney insisted the Bush administration had a clear and precise plan for their successors, but that the Obama administration just wasn't adhering to them, Mediate reported. It seemed the point O'Reilly was truly concerned about though was whether the extreme cost, both of life and monetarily, of the two wars could really justify the end result, if that could even be quantified. | |
Comment: Don't know whether it's worth it, Dick? If you were equipped with a conscience like a normal human being there wouldn't be a single doubt in your mind. Too bad for the rest of the world that you don't.
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Ken O'Keefe
Lee Kaplan provides a classic example of the propagandists methods, divert, make personal attacks, revert to tired historical myths like America liberated Europe in World War II so as to imply the massive crimes during WWII and since do not matter. I hope to be in a debate with Lee many more times as he provides one gift after another in terms of providing material that exposes the shallow, baseless foundation of lies that our global system of tyranny is built upon. Enjoy these dinosaurs while they are still around because their days of utility in a world waking up are clearly numbered.Youtube 2013-10-24 22:12:00 |
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| Society's Child |
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RT.com
2013-10-31 15:30:00
The US food stamp system is to be reduced by $5 billion starting in November. The average benefit will shrink and the overall number of people receiving it will diminish by millions. The CEO of America's largest food bank says the cuts will end in riots. "Riots always begin typically the same way: when people cannot afford to eat food," Margaret Purvis, president and CEO of the Food bank for New York City, told online news and entertainment site Salon.com | |
Comment: War must go, while those less fortunate, considered by the psychopaths in power as expandable, are left to starve.
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Anne Sewell
Digital Journal 2013-10-30 03:38:00
Vaud - Just when you thought the whole horse meat scandal was over, two Swiss restaurants have been caught using horse meat instead of beef in their steak tartare dishes. The scandal was uncovered by "A Bon Entendeur", a consumer affairs program aired on Tuesday by the French language Swiss broadcaster, RTS. Both restaurants are in the canton of Jura and the consumer affairs program tested 15 of the raw meat meals from restaurants in western Switzerland. A chemist who analyzed the phoney steak tartare said, "One can properly talk of obvious and blatant deceit." However, there is not just deceit involved in the incident, as apparently only four meals tested were found to be free of elevated levels of bacteria. Bearing in mind that the meat in the dish is served raw, one can only imagine the dangers. In restaurants in the canton of Vaud, two plates of steak tartare were found to be particularly infected, and exceeded the acceptable levels for bacteria many times over. | |
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Anne Sewell
Digital Journal 2013-10-30 06:30:00
A Bavarian taxi driver found €250,000 on the back seat of his taxi on Monday. He then tracked down the elderly couple who had left it behind and would not accept a finder's reward from them. Thomas Güntner is a taxi driver in Würzburg, Bavaria. As reported in Die Welt (German language), he had picked up an elderly couple at the bank and shortly after he drove them home, he noticed a cloth bag sitting on the back seat of his car. On peeking inside the cloth bag, he was shocked to find €250,000 in €500 notes. He told the media on Tuesday, "I was totally perplexed and surprised, that people could carry around so much cash and then forget it." He added that keeping the money just wasn't an option, as he knew that "it would probably be the downfall of the old couple." BR.de reported (in German) that around 30 minutes after discovering the cash, he arrived at the couple's house, cash in hand. The woman met Güntner at the door, with tears in her eyes, so grateful to the man. | |
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MintPress
2013-10-30 13:17:00
Despite complaints of asthma and studies proving groundwater contamination, most residents next to frac sand mines don't have any protection from industrial toxins. The hydraulic fracturing movement has already taken off in the U.S., expanding an industry that requires the mining of silica sand, the drilling of oil and natural gas wells and the storage of toxic fracking wastewater. Yet in the midst of the boom, Americans are still not sure how the expanding industry is impacting their health. Scientific data is still in the collection phase, and independent tests don't bode well for those living in the midst of the boom. Now, years after the industry has been introduced, Minnesota is considering air quality mining to detect whether the silica sand mining industry is presenting a threat to area residents' health. States like Minnesota and Wisconsin have become targets of the fracking industry, as they possess deposits of silica sand, a component of the fracking process. To frack a well, a combination of chemicals, silica sand and water is shot deep into the earth to break up and access oil and gas deposits. The "frac sand" mining industry has created concern among those living in communities that have recently been turned into mining boom towns, as the impact of silica sand particles on local residents' health is unknown. What is known, however, is that silica sand causes silicosis. For those working in the mines, strict regulations are imposed - yet for those living next door, there are none. While mining has been occurring for a few years, Minnesota is still in the planning phases for its first air quality monitoring studies. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is proposing erecting an air quality monitoring system on the roof of a community center - one that would not only monitor silica sand particle presence, but also air pollution caused by the increased diesel truck traffic. The move in Minnesota is similar to those carried out in traditional fracking states. Studies conducted on groundwater in Pennsylvania have emerged this year, exposing contamination years after the industry was given a key to the state's resources. | |
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Rich Ferguson
We set up this prank downtown San Luis Obispo with a real body wand, hidden microphones and cameras. The goal was to see how far we could take this scanning and if people would let us! To our surprise, most people didn't put up much of a fight and went along with the person ahead of them in line... which was our plant that we actual scanned again and again. People along the sidelines were freaking out as well and not sure how to intervene. Of course, once the gag was pushed to the limit, we all let the customer know it was a prank and and it was all love, hugs, high fives and laughs! 100% loved to be involved... but it does make you think!YouTube 2013-10-27 22:02:00 NO! The last guy in the outtakes was NOT A PLANT. He was certainly a funny character who popped up on the radar that afternoon for sure. "Isn't America free?" Awesome.
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Sarah Boseley,
The Guardian 2013-10-30 05:00:00
UK is failing its children, women and young people on a grand scale, says Marmot report on links between inequality and health Women and children in the UK would have longer and healthier lives if they lived in Cyprus, Italy or Spain, and Britain is facing "a public health timebomb", according to a study by an expert on inequality and health. Sir Michael Marmot, who is known worldwide for his work on the social determinants of health, says much of the rest of Europe takes better care of its families. Life expectancy for women and death rates among the under-fives are worse in the UK, where there is also more child poverty. The public health time bomb Marmot describes is caused by the large number of so-called Neets - young adults who are not in education, employment or training. Women in the UK can expect to live to 83, but those born in a number of other European countries will live to a riper old age: in Germany and Cyprus, their life expectancy is 84, while in Italy, France and Spain it is 85. | |
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Nafeez Ahmed
The Guardian 2013-10-25 06:01:00
Celebrity comedian's critics miss the point on urgent need for 'revolution' to avert planetary extinction - yet question is still how During his Wednesday night interview with Jeremy Paxman on BBC Newsnight, comedian and actor Russell Brand said what no politician or pundit would ever dare say: that without dramatic, fundamental change, the prevailing political and economic system is broken, and hell-bent on planetary-level destruction: "The planet is being destroyed. We are creating an underclass and exploiting poor people all over the world. And the legitimate problems of the people are not being addressed by our political powers."Yesterday, Brand published an extended essay in the New Statesman fleshing out in detail his case for a "revolution" - not just a political and economic transformation, but one fundamentally rooted in a shift in consciousness toward a new way of thinking. | |
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The Independent
2013-10-25 00:00:00
It emerged this week that Tesco discarded 20,000 tonnes of food in the first six months of 2013 - but not everyone is horrified. Jo Barrow, a 21-year-old student at York University and one of a growing band of 'bin raiders', reveals the appeal of rifling through supermarket refuse It's 2am on a bitterly cold winter night, and my friends and I are nervously looking over our shoulders in an exposed supermarket forecourt. As certain as we'll ever be that we're alone, one of us clambers over the fence that protects the back lot and disappears on the other side. We pause, nervously silent, listening for footsteps. There's a click and a squeak; our friend opens the gate and we slip in. We pull on our gloves and head to the bins by the shop. We try the first one: locked. The second is locked too. We head to the third, breath held, and pull at the lid. It's stacked high with casually discarded food: pâtés, grapes, bacon, bars of chocolate, curries - it was all there, if a little the worse for wear and, legally speaking, unfit for human consumption. We unfurl some bin liners and, quite literally, dive in. My friends and I have been living off bin food for more than two years. We're students, so the quick and easy access to seemingly limitless and varied free food is too good an opportunity to pass up - and it's changed our lives. Somehow, with no time, barely any cooking ability and little money, we've been feeding ourselves better than we'd ever have been able to if we'd stuck to the usual student staples of eggs and bread-with-stuff. | |
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RT.com
2013-10-26 18:27:00
Revelations from a Fukushima cleanup worker-turned-whistleblower have exposed the plant's chaotic system of subcontractors, their alleged mafia connections and the super-exploitation of indigent workers doing this dangerous work. The allegations, contained in an investigative report by Reuters, have also exposed deeply-rooted problems within Japan's nuclear industry as a whole. In the report, detailing the everyday realities of workers at the stricken facility, Reuters interviewed an estimated 80 casual workers and managers. The most common complaint voiced was the cleanup effort's utter dependence on subcontractors - which it is alleged endangered not just workers' rights, but also their lives. Tetsuya Hayashi, a 41-tyear-old construction worker by trade, applied for a job at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, after he suspected that the plant was in deeper trouble than it was willing to admit. The $150 billion cleanup effort, which is expected to last several decades into the future, has already required up to 50,000, mostly casual workers. However, Hayashi only lasted two weeks on the job, as it became apparent that the vast network of subcontractors involved in the cleanup efforts could not care less for his rights (or his health), while Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), the plant's operator, was doing little except giving subcontractors a slap on the wrist. Hired to monitor the exposure to radiation of plant workers leaving the job during the summer of 2012, Hayashi was assigned to the most bio-hazardous sector and given a protective anti-radiation suit. However, even with the suit on, we exceeded his safe annual radiation quota in less than an hour. The subcontractor who hired Hayashi was not following nuclear safety rules, according to exposure guidelines by the International Atomic Energy Agency, Reuters reported. | |
Comment: See also: Fukushima's Nuclear Mafia
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BBC News
2013-10-16 10:35:00
The number of people relying on food banks to survive has tripled over the last year, according to new figures. The Trussell Trust, which runs 400 food banks across the UK, said it handed out supplies to more than 350,000 people between April and September this year. A third of those being helped were children, and a third needed food following a delay in the payment of benefits. A cross-party group of MPs has been set up to investigate the surge in demand. The Labour MP Frank Field, appointed by David Cameron as the government's poverty advisor, will head up the committee along with Conservative Laura Sandys. | |
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| Secret History |
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| Science & Technology |
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Tom Hughes
University of North Carolina Health Care 2013-10-29 14:11:00
Non-publication is more common among industry-funded trials, study finds. A new analysis of 585 large, randomized clinical trials registered with ClinicalTrials.govfinds that 29 percent have not been published in scientific journals. In addition, nearly 78 percent of the unpublished trials had no results available on the website, either. As a result, nearly 300,000 people who were enrolled in the 171 unpublished trials "were exposed to the risks of trial participation without the societal benefits which accompany the dissemination of trial results," said Christopher W. Jones, MD, a former resident physician at University of North Carolina School of Medicine who is now an attending physician at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University in Camden, N.J. and lead author of the study published in the Oct. 29, 2013 issue of the British Medical Journal. Non-publication of clinical trials has been a controversial issue in recent years. In particular, industry-funded clinical trials - such as those paid for by pharmaceutical companies - have come under fire on allegations that such trials are often not published when the results are not favorable to the drug or other product being tested. | |
Comment: If you needed any additional proof that we are being lied to by the Big Pharma, look no further. We swim in the ocean of lies and pay for it with our own health and with the health of our loved ones. How many more, seemingly insignificant "revelations" similar to this one it will take before people will start paying attention and stop following the advice of those who don't have out best interests at heart?
Read the following article to understand the depth of Big Pharma's deception: The myth of smoking during pregnancy being harmful | |
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Mariette Le Roux
Agence France-Presse 2013-10-30 00:00:00
Paris - Scientists said Wednesday they had found evidence that SARS-like coronaviruses can jump straight from a type of Chinese bat to humans without the need for an intermediary animal "host". The find has "enormous implications" for public health control, with potentially pandemic viruses present, right now, in bats in China that could cause another outbreak, said the authors of the study published in the journal Nature. "Even worse, we don't know how lethal these viruses would be if such an outbreak erupted," co-author Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based research group, said in a statement. | |
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Deborah Netburn
Los Angeles Times 2013-10-28 15:25:00
Even the United Nations is taking the threat of asteroids hitting our planet seriously. Last week, the U.N. General Assembly approved measures to coordinate detection and response to asteroid strikes that could level cities and possibly destroy our civilization. Specifically, the agency voted to create an International Asteroid Warning Network made up of scientists, observatories and space agencies around the planet to share information about newly discovered asteroids and how likely they are to impact Earth. The group will also work with disaster relief organizations to help them determine the best response to an asteroid impact like the one that rattled the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in February. The U.N. will also set up a space mission planning advisory group to look into how humans might deflect an asteroid heading our way -- the best options, the costs and the technologies needed. The results of that study will be shared with space agencies throughout the world. The General Assembly also agreed that the existing U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space would monitor threats from asteroids and help plan and authorize a deflection campaign if necessary. | |
Comment: Given the current state of the world, humans voting on pooling resources to deflect asteroids is like ants voting to prevent the boulders rolling down the hill from hitting their colony. And these UN diplomats might even realise this on some level. They can say all the things they want, vote endlessly on measures everyone should take, but at this point it's far too late. Practical, physical technologies should have already been developed, tested and worked out.
But no! Instead they had wars to fight and money to make... to hell with protecting and advancing the welfare of mankind. | |
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| Earth Changes |
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Kristina Pydynowski
Typhoon Krosa is unleashing its fury on the Philippines' northern Luzon Island, then will begin its journey toward Vietnam on Friday. Typhoon Krosa will then spend Thursday night tracking along the far northern coast of Luzon. Damaging wind gusts in excess of 100 kph (60 mph) are expected across northern Luzon, well north of the capital city of Manila and other highly populated areas. The heaviest rainfall will also be north of Manila.AccuWeather.com 2013-10-31 14:56:00 According to Accuweather.com Meteorologist Eric Wanenchak, "125-250 mm (5-10 inches) of rainfall is expected across northern Luzon through Friday as Krosa passes over the area from east to west." This amount of rainfall will produce flooding problems and potential mudslides.
Some rain associated with Krosa will also spread over eastern Taiwan through Friday, threatening to hinder earthquake cleanup efforts. While the interaction with Luzon will cause some weakening, Krosa will still be a typhoon when it reaches the South China Sea on Friday. Krosa will then remain over open water through the weekend, tracking as if it is heading toward Hong Kong through Saturday before curving to the southwest away from mainland China by Sunday | |
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RedOrbit
2013-10-31 12:24:00
Parts of eastern North America, northern South America, southern Europe, the Middle East and several other parts of the world will be able to experience a unique type of solar eclipse this Sunday, November 3. The event is known as a hybrid solar eclipse, and according to Deborah Byrd and Bruce McClure of EarthSky, this type of event "appears fleetingly as an annular - or ring eclipse - at its start and becomes a brief total eclipse later on." However, many parts of the world will see a partial eclipse sometime between sunrise and sunset. Byrd and McClure report that the eclipse will be visible to those living in far-eastern North America, the Caribbean, northern South America, southern Greenland, the Atlantic Ocean, southern Europe, Africa, Madagascar and the Middle East. Proper protection will be necessary when observing the event to avoid potential injury or blindness. Provided skies are clear enough, a partial solar eclipse will be visible in eastern North America beginning at sunrise on Sunday. From that location, as well as the Caribbean and the northwestern tip of South America, the eclipse will appear as an extremely shallow and shrinking partial solar eclipse, the EarthSky writers said. | |
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Daily Mail UK
A monstrous Halloween storm will inflict torrential rains, howling winds and booming thunderstorms from Texas to the Midwest and as far as the Northeast, forecasters have predicted. It will mean wet and windy celebrations for trick-or-treaters across the U.S., with as many as 42 million people battling thunderstorms across cities including Nashville, Houston, Cincinnati and Indianapolis.2013-10-31 12:20:00
The thunderstorms could be capable of dropping several inches of rain in just a few hours, sparking flash flooding from eastern Texas into the lower Mississippi Valley, Accuweatherreported. High winds could also down trees and power lines across the eastern Great Lakes into the upper Ohio Valley into the Northeast, the Weather Channel warned. Forecasters warned residents against going near downed power lines as they could be live and dangerous. 'Damaging winds and some tornadoes will be possible with what should be a complex and potentially messy storm,' the Storm Prediction Center predicted, USA Today reported. | |
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Source
2013-10-31 12:03:00
Event Time 2013-10-31 12:02:09 UTC 2013-10-31 20:02:09 UTC+08:00 at epicenter Location 23.591°N 121.443°E depth=12.0km (7.5mi) Nearby Cities 45km (28mi) SSW of Hualian, Taiwan 63km (39mi) SE of Buli, Taiwan 72km (45mi) ESE of Lugu, Taiwan 87km (54mi) ESE of Nantou, Taiwan 761km (473mi) ENE of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Technical Details | |
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Judy Oehling
Q13Fox 2013-10-30 22:20:00
This photo of a strange-looking fish was taken by Mark Harrison of The Seattle Times, a day after the creature was pulled up from Seattle's Elliott Bay, off Harbor Island. According to the Times, a Muckleshoot tribal fisherman, Todd LaClair, had his gill net in the waters off Seattle. "I was fishing at about 100 feet deep, and as I pulled in the net I could feel that it was big," LaClair told the Times. "When it first came up, it startled me and looked like something that came from Mars." He said he later discovered it was a giant sunfish - a mola - that he estimated at about 350 pounds. The mystery is why it was in Elliott Bay. Sunfish are native to tropical and temperate waters and feed mostly on jellyfish. To read the entire Seattle Times article, click here. | |
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| Fire in the Sky |
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Source
2013-10-31 09:50:00
A fireball in the sky above the Pacific Northwest led dozens of people to report sightings to the American Meteor Society on Wednesday. The FOX 12 newsroom started receiving reports of a bright light flashing across the sky around 6 a.m. Wednesday. AMS experts said it appears the decent-sized meteor entered the Earth's atmosphere in Washington state, traveled in an east-to-west direction and landed in the Pacific Ocean. "It went from one horizon to the other, never fading," said one witness. A report out of Tigard said it "traveled east to west across the entire visible sky - very long." Another witness, out of Gladstone, described it as "the longest lasting shooting star I've ever seen." There were also reported sightings in British Columbia, Alberta, Montana and Washington. Because of cloud cover in the Seattle area, there were very few reported sightings there. Experts at OMSI say a fireball is another term for a very bright meteor, generally brighter than magnitude -4, which is about the same magnitude of the planet Venus in the morning or evening sky. | |
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| Health & Wellness |
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Catherine J. Frompovich
Thomas Verstraeten, MD, in 1999 regarding ethylmercury from thimerosal in vaccines.Activist Post 2013-10-29 11:00:00 The truth shall set you free. - John 8:32
Finally! After all these years of denial and damage, the truth about ethylmercury in the form of Thimerosal (49.6%) in vaccines has been revealed to a member of the U.S. Congress as a result of oversight requests that were sent to the U.S. Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) and shared with one of the foremost research groups regarding mercury in drugs, CoMeD, whose website is www.mercury-freedrugs.com. When one clicks on CoMeD's webpage Documents, the very first document posting is "CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) annual conference abstract submission for the EIS conference in April 2000, discovered in August of 2013 in a CDC response to a Congressional Request by an office in the U.S. House of Representatives - the abstract submission is titled, 'Increased risk of developmental neurological impairment after high exposure to Thimerosal-containing vaccine in the first month of life'" wherein this absolutely stunning information that federal health agencies conspired to keep from mainstream health information/knowledge about vaccines, and mercury in vaccines, in particular: Conclusion: This analysis suggests that high exposure to ethyl mercury from thimerosal-containing vaccines in the first month of life increases the risk of subsequent development of neurologic development impairment, but not of neurologic degenerative or renal impairment. Further confirmatory studies are needed. [1] [CJF emphasis added] [which apparently led to the Simpsonwood Meeting that I talk about in my book Vaccination Voodoo.] | |
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Waking Times
2013-10-30 10:40:00
Here is an excellent collection of scientific papers finding adverse biological effects or damage to health from Wi-Fi signals, Wi-Fi-enabled devices or Wi-Fi frequencies (2.4 or 5 GHz), complied by campaign group WiFi In Schools. The papers listed are only those where exposures were 16V/m or below. Someone using a Wi-Fi-enabled tablet computer can be exposed to electromagnetic fields up to 16V/m. Papers are in alphabetical order. A file of first pages, for printing, can be found here. If you feel like sending a copy of this collection to the local schools in your area, you can search for them here and either print out this article to post or email the link. Wi-Fi papers 1. Atasoy H.I. et al., 2013. Immunohistopathologic demonstration of deleterious effects on growing rat testes of radiofrequency waves emitted from conventional Wi-Fi devices.Journal of Pediatric Urology 9(2): 223-229. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ 2. Avendaño C. et al., 2012. Use of laptop computers connected to internet through Wi-Fi decreases human sperm motility and increases sperm DNA fragmentation. Fertility and Sterility 97(1): 39-45. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ 3. Avendaño C. et al., 2010. Laptop expositions affect motility and induce DNA fragmentation in human spermatozoa in vitro by a non-thermal effect: a preliminary report. American Society for Reproductive Medicine 66th Annual Meeting: O-249http://wifiinschools.org.uk/ | |
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malan
Digital Journal 2007-01-30 01:20:00
A new mother says she will literally never be able to hold her newborn baby after the Orlando hospital where she gave birth performed a life-altering surgery that left her a multiple amputee. "They amputated both her arms and legs and will not explain why..." At this time the woman claims that the hospital will not tell her why they removed both of her arms and legs during childbirth. Complaints have been filed against the hospital, Orlando Regional Healthcare Systems, because it allegedly said it would not tell her exactly what happened. The hospital maintains the woman wants to know information that would violate other patients' rights. The event happened over 8 months ago. Claudia Mejia, the mother of the newborn child and victim of the surgery, was transported to Orlando Regional Medical Center in Orlando where her arms and legs were amputated. After the surgeries she was told she had streptococcus, a flesh eating bacteria, and toxic shock syndrome, but no further explanation was given. The hospital claims that if she wants to find out exactly what happened, she would have to sue them. "I want to know what happened. I went to deliver my baby and I came out like this," Mejia told the media. "I woke up from surgery and I had no arms and no legs. No one told me anything. My arms and legs were just gone." Her husband Tim Edwards, a devoted man, said he's sticking with her. "I love her, so I'll always stick with her and take it a day at a time myself." Her attorney, Judy Hyman, wrote the hospital a letter saying, according to the Florida statute, "The Patients Right To Know About Adverse Medical Incidents Act," the hospital must give her the records. The hospital's response? "Ms. Mejia's request may require legal resolution." It is being considered that Mrs. Mejia caught the skin eating disease streptococcus while in the hospital, contracting it from another patient or someone on her floor who already had the disease. | |
Comment: There appears to be more to this story than is reported hereL
The woman claimed that the hospital would not tell her why they removed both of her arms and legs during childbirth. From this report we read: From this site we read: Eventually, in 2009 the woman "got small settlement": While it appears that there is more to the story than the woman simply going in to a hospital to give birth and coming out with no arms or legs, there does seem to be some indication of malpractice in that she was awarded considerable compensation. | |
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Sarah Boseley
The Guardian 2013-10-25 00:00:00
Products ranging from Kit Kats to breadsticks to belVita will contain less fat, but sugar levels will stay the same Kit Kats and Oreos will become healthier, the government will say on Saturday, announcing that the companies which make them have signed up to a "responsibility pledge" to cut the saturated fat the products contain. But the sugar levels in them will stay the same. Days after the British Medical Journal ran an opinion piece from a cardiologist asserting that sugar and not saturated fat was the leading cause in the rise in heart disease and diabetes, the government announced the latest in its series of public health pledges with food manufacturers and supermarkets. This will, ministers said, remove the equivalent of one and a half Olympic-sized swimming pools full of saturated fat from the national diet. | |
Comment: So instead of paying attention to the latest research on saturated fat, the idiotic government decides to encourage food producers to lower saturated fats which are a necessary component of a healthy diet, and ignore the excessive amounts of sugar in processed foods which is the real culprit in numerous diseases.
Sugar: The Bitter Truth 146 reasons why sugar destroys your health Sugar Should Be Regulated As Toxin, Researchers Say Saturated Fat is Good for You Higher saturated fat intakes found to be associated with a reduced risk of dying from cardiovascular disease Get Saturated: Four Reasons Saturated Fat is Healthy | |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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Piercarlo Valdesolo
Scientific American 2013-10-31 10:47:00
How a belief in "pure evil" shapes people's thinking Justice Antonin Scalia and Keyser Soze agree: the greatest trick the devil could ever pull is convincing the world he didn't exist. Fortunately for them, the devil does not seem to be effectively executing this plan. Some 70 percent of Americans, according to a 2007 Gallup Poll, believe in his existence. This personification of evil has implications beyond the supernatural, influencing how we think about what it means for people to be "pure evil." And as we prepare to playfully celebrate the wicked and depraved on Halloween night, it's worth pausing to reflect on some of the psychological and behavioral consequences of these beliefs. Evil has been defined as taking pleasure in the intentional inflicting of harm on innocent others, and ever since World War II social psychologists have been fascinated by the topic. Many of the formative thinkers in the field - Kurt Lewin, Stanley Milgram , Solomon Asch - were inspired by their experiences with, and observations of, what appeared to most people at the time to be the indisputable incarnation of pure evil. But what many saw as a clear demonstration of unredeemable and deep-seated malice, these researchers interpreted as more, in the words of Hannah Arendt, banal. From Milgram's famous studies of obedience to Zimbardo's prison study, psychologists have argued for the roots of evil actions in quite ordinary psychological causes. This grounding of evil in ordinary, as opposed to extraordinary, phenomena have led some to describe the notion of "pure evil" as a myth. A misguided understanding of human nature deriving both from specific socio-cultural traditions as well as a general tendency to understand others' behavior as a product solely of their essence, their soul, as opposed to a more complicated combination of environmental and individual forces. | |
Comment: For more information on the "ordinary psychological causes" see
Moral Endo-skeletons and Exo-skeletons: A Perspective on America's Cultural Divide and Current Crisis Political Ponerology: A Science on The Nature of Evil adjusted for Political Purposes | |
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Linda Rodriguez McRobbie
Smithsonian.com 2013-10-30 22:43:00
In February, 1891, the first few advertisements started appearing in papers: Ouija, the Wonderful Talking Board, boomed a Pittsburgh toy and novelty shop, describing a magical device that answered questions "about the past, present and future with marvelous accuracy" and promised "never-failing amusement and recreation for all the classes," a link "between the known and unknown, the material and immaterial." Another advertisement in a New York newspaper declared it "interesting and mysterious" and testified, "as Proven at Patent Office before it was allowed. Price, $1.50." This mysterious talking board was basically what's sold in board game aisles today: A flat board with the letters of the alphabet arrayed in two semi-circles above the numbers 0 through 9; the words "yes" and "no" in the uppermost corners, "goodbye" at the bottom; accompanied by a "planchette," a teardrop-shaped device, usually with a small window in the body, used to maneuver about the board. The idea was that two or more people would sit around the board, place their finger tips on the planchette, pose a question, and watch, dumbfounded, as the planchette moved from letter to letter, spelling out the answers seemingly of its own accord. The biggest difference is in the materials; the board is now usually cardboard, rather than wood, and the planchette is plastic. Though truth in advertising is hard to come by, especially in products from the 19th century, the Ouija board was "interesting and mysterious"; it actually had been "proven" to work at the Patent Office before its patent was allowed to proceed; and today, even psychologists believe that it may offer a link between the known and the unknown. The real history of the Ouija board is just about as mysterious as how the "game" works. Ouija historian Robert Murch has been researching the story of the board since 1992; when he started his research, he says, no one really knew anything about its origins, which struck him as odd: "For such an iconic thing that strikes both fear and wonder in American culture, how can no one know where it came from?" | |
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Helen Thomson
New Scientist 2013-10-16 00:01:00
One moment you are alive. The next you are dead. A few hours later and you are alive again. Pharmacologists have discovered a mechanism that triggers Cotard's syndrome - the mysterious condition that leaves people feeling like they, or parts of their body, no longer exist. With the ability to switch the so-called walking corpse syndrome on and off comes the prospect of new insights into how conscious experiences are constructed. Acyclovir - also known by the brand name Zovirax - is a common drug used to treat cold sores and other herpes infections. It usually has no harmful side effects. However, about 1 per cent of people who take the drug orally or intravenously experience some psychiatric side effects, including Cotard's. These occur mainly in people who have renal failure. | |
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| High Strangeness |
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| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
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Rob Williams
The Independent 2013-10-30 09:31:00
Ghosts, ghouls and all manner of paranormal activity reside on our spooky isles. So, where should you visit if you to want to see a ghostly apparition? It's that time of year again, when the ghosts, ghouls and assorted paranormal beasties and fiends rise up to menace us. But where should you visit if you're daring enough to want to see a ghostly apparition? While researching this list of 20 of Britain's spookiest and most haunted places one name repeatedly appeared. The Village of Pluckley, Kent. Pluckley, though it may sound charming, has a fearsome reputation for being the most haunted village in Britain, indeed it was recognised as such in the 1989 Guinness Book of World Records. The village, in the Ashford district of Kent and close to the North Downs, reportedly has between 12 and 16 ghosts, including 'The Screaming Man', whose howls of agony are heard in the area of the village Brickworks and are reputed to come from the spirit of a man killed after a wall of clay fell on him. | |
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Goal
Eleven men dressed in identical black robes were present in the stands to the surprise of bewildered fans at the Allianz Arena.2013-10-27 10:00:00 A group of mysterious figures caused a stir in the crowd at Bayern Munich's clash with Hertha Berlin at the Allianz Arena on Saturday. The 11 unknown men, each dressed in black robes and sitting in a line, were spotted making strange synchronized gestures during the league match, which Bayern won 3-2.
Situated six rows from the pitch just beside the halfway line in the stand opposite the broadcasting gantry, the group was also seen by TV viewers all across the world. | |
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