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Anna Martin
Sott.net 2014-05-22 16:29:00
When we pay attention to what is happening with the animals of the world, they can tell us a lot about our environment and predict changes that we, as mere humans, would normally not pick up on as quickly (or at all). Like the canaries that were once used to detect toxic gas in coal mines, animals are sensitive to things that humans are often oblivious to (before it's too late), and noticing those 'things' can sometimes mean the difference between life or death for large numbers of people. Besides having senses that humans lack, animals also inhabit places that we don't, like the oceans and the skies, places that border our living space and eventually impact it. So, what happens to them often happens to us a little later. Recently, I've noticed what seems to be a significant increase in odd animal behavior - particularly, very recently. I'll only talk about marine life here, though similar weirdness is affecting other animals and insects of the world. Let's begin with a few reports from the start of this month. Rare and unknown fish popping up everywhere. What in the world is going on with that? On May 1st, there was a report of a rare, nearly 7-foot-long, 100-pound Atlantic sturgeon found along the Connecticut River.
On May 3rd, shrimp fishermen caught a goblin shark off Key West, Florida. The Goblin Shark is a species thought to swim only in deep waters off Japan and the Gulf of Mexico. These strange creatures are so rarely seen that this was only the second known sighting in the area. The first ever sighting was 10 years earlier.
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Brandon Smith
Alt-Market.com 2014-05-21 02:41:00
On the surface, the economic atmosphere of the U.S. has appeared rather calm and uneventful. Stocks are up, employment isn't great but jobs aren't collapsing into the void (at least not openly), and the U.S. dollar seems to be going strong. Peel away the thin veneer, however, and a different financial horror show is revealed. U.S. stocks have enjoyed unprecedented crash protection due to a steady infusion of fiat money from the Federal Reserve known as quantitative easing. With the advent of the "taper", QE is now swiftly coming to a close (as is evident in the overall reduction in treasury market purchases), and is slated to end by this fall, if not sooner. Employment has been boosted only in statistical presentation, and not in reality. The Labor Department's creative accounting of job numbers omits numerous factors, the most important being the issue of long term unemployed. Millions of people who have been jobless for so long they no longer qualify for benefits are being removed from the rolls. This quiet catastrophe has the side bonus of making it appear as though unemployment is going down. U.S. Treasury bonds, and by extension the dollar, have also stayed afloat due to the river of stimulus being introduced by the Federal Reserve. That same river, through QE, is now drying up. | |
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RT
2014-05-16 15:49:00
United States President Barack Obama's commitment to net neutrality is being questioned after the Federal Communications Commission officials appointed on his watch voted Thursday to advance a plan believed by many to be a blow to the open internet. This week's three-two decision by the FCC to consider proposed rules regarding net neutrality isn't the final nail in the coffin of the open internet. Rather, the five-person panel agreed Thursday morning to open up for comments a proposal drafted by Chairman Thomas Wheeler that would set rules in place meant to address a federal appeals court'sdecision earlier this year that paved the way for the possibility of paid prioritization with regards to how Internet Service Providers, or ISPs, deliver web content to customers. As the panel weighs Wheeler's plan, the public now has 120 days to offer their own critique before another vote is held. In the meantime, though, Pres. Obama is likely to draw fire from critics on his own in light of previous statements he made pledging to preserve and protect the open internet. | |
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Seumas Milne
The Guardian 2014-05-22 11:04:00
Iraq may have been a blood-drenched disaster and Afghanistan a grinding military and political failure. But Libya was supposed to have been different. Nato's war to overthrow Colonel Gaddafi in 2011 was hailed as the liberal intervention that worked. The western powers might have had to twist the meaning of the UN resolution about protecting civilians, the city of Sirte might have been reduced to rubble, large-scale ethnic cleansing taken place and thousands of civilians killed. But it was all in a noble cause and achieved without Nato casualties. This wasn't Bush and Blair, after all, but Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy. The people were free, the dictator was dead, a mooted massacre had been averted - and all this without any obvious boots on the ground. Even last year the prime minister was still claiming it had all been worthwhile, promising to stand with Libyans "every step of the way". But three years after Nato declared victory, Libya is lurching once again towards civil war. Over the past few days, the CIA-linked General Hiftar launched his second coup attempt in three months, supposedly to save the country from "terrorists" and Islamists. On Sunday, his forces stormed the national parliament in Tripoli, after 80 people were killed in fighting in Benghazi two days earlier. Now Libya's chief of staff has called on Islamist militias to defend the government in advance of new elections. Since the country is overrun with militias far more powerful than its official forces, riven with multiple divisions and prey to constant external interference, the chances of avoiding full-blown conflict are shrinking fast. | |
Comment: If Hiftar was concerned about terrorists he'd be right to look at NATO as the source. But of course he is just an instrument of the same.
Also see: The Truthseeker: NATO false flags in Ukraine | |
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Link TV
YouTube 2011-01-11 13:14:00
An original investigative report by Earth Focus and UK's Ecologist Film Unit looks at the risks of natural gas development in the Marcellus Shale. From toxic chemicals in drinking water to unregulated interstate dumping of potentially radioactive waste that experts fear can contaminate water supplies in major population centers including New York City, are the health consequences worth the economic gains? Marcellus Shale contains enough natural gas to supply all US gas needs for 14 years. But as gas drilling takes place, using a process called hydraulic fracturing or "fracking," toxic chemicals and methane gas seep into drinking water. Now experts fear that unacceptable levels of radioactive Radium 226 in gas development waste. Fracking chemicals are linked to bone, liver and breast cancers, gastrointestinal, circulatory, respiratory, developmental as well as brain and nervous system disorders. Such chemicals are present in frack waste and may find their way into drinking water and air.
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Suzanne Goldenberg
The Guardian 2013-08-05 18:04:00
Two young children in Pennsylvania were banned from talking about fracking for the rest of their lives under a gag order imposed under a settlement reached by their parents with a leading oil and gas company. The sweeping gag order was imposed under a $750,000 settlement between the Hallowich family and Range Resources Corp, a leading oil and gas driller. It provoked outrage on Monday among environmental campaigners and free speech advocates. The settlement, reached in 2011 but unsealed only last week, barred the Hallowichs' son and daughter, who were then aged ten and seven, from ever discussing fracking or the Marcellus Shale, a leading producer in America's shale gas boom. | |
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Gregor Peter Schmitz
Spiegel.de 2014-01-15 14:42:00
The EU's reputation as a model of environmental responsibility may soon be history. The European Commission wants to forgo ambitious climate protection goals and pave the way for fracking -- jeopardizing Germany's touted energy revolution in the process. The climate between Brussels and Berlin is polluted, something European Commission officials attribute, among other things, to the "reckless" way German Chancellor Angela Merkel blocked stricter exhaust emissions during her re-election campaign to placate domestic automotive manufacturers like Daimler and BMW. This kind of blatant self-interest, officials complained at the time, is poisoning the climate. But now it seems that the climate is no longer of much importance to the European Commission, the EU's executive branch, either. Commission sources have long been hinting that the body intends to move away from ambitious climate protection goals. On Tuesday, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported as much. At the request of Commission President José Manuel Barroso, EU member states are no longer to receive specific guidelines for the development of renewable energy. The stated aim of increasing the share of green energy across the EU to up to 27 percent will hold. But how seriously countries tackle this project will no longer be regulated within the plan. As of 2020 at the latest -- when the current commitment to further increase the share of green energy expires -- climate protection in the EU will apparently be pursued on a voluntary basis. | |
Comment: Note that this decision was made BEFORE the Ukraine crisis blew up in their faces and they came up with the narrative that they had to press ahead with fracking the life out of everything in order to 'save Europe from Russia'.
The elites in the US and EU are simply greedy dwarves who would ruin their own homeland because they feel no normal bonds to anyone or anything but themselves and their profits. | |
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Dr Nafeez Ahmed
The Guardian 2014-01-21 12:13:00
From North America to Europe, the 'national security' apparatus is being bought off by Big Oil to rout peaceful activism Over the last year, a mass of shocking evidence has emerged on the close ties between Western government spy agencies and giant energy companies, and their mutual interests in criminalising anti-fracking activists. Activists tarred with the same brush In late 2013, official documents obtained under freedom of information showed thatCanada's domestic spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), had ramped up its surveillance of activists opposed to the Northern Gateway pipeline project on 'national security' grounds. The CSIS also routinely passed information about such groups to the project's corporate architect, Calgary-based energy company, Enbridge. The Northern Gateway is an $8 billion project to transport oil from the Alberta tar sands to the British Columbia coast, where it can be shipped to global markets. According to the documents a Canadian federal agency, the National Energy Board, worked with CSIS and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to coordinate with Enbridge, TransCanada, and other energy corporations in gathering intelligence on anti-fracking activists - despite senior police privately admitting they "could not detect a direct or specific criminal threat." Now it has emerged that former cabinet minister Chuck Strahl - the man appointed by Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper to head up the CSIS' civilian oversight panel, the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC) - has been lobbying for Enbridge since 2011. But that's not all. According to CBC News, only one member of Strahl's spy watchdog committee "has no ties to either the current government or the oil industry." For instance, SIRC member Denis Losier sits on the board of directors of Enbridge-subsidiary, Enbridge NB, while Yves Fortier, is a former board member of TransCanada, the company behind the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. | |
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Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge 2014-05-22 11:49:00
Before anyone suggests that all Russia is focusing on is China at any and all costs, consider that as we have been saying since 2012, perhaps just as important to Russia (and China) strategically is Iran which has already lashed out against the Petrodollar on numerous occasions in the past, not only for its vast oil reserves, but for its even more strategic location in the heart of the Persian Gulf. To be sure, the Eurasian crescent of Russia and China would be made all that much stronger if the two nations had a toehold on the Straits of Hormuz, and were able to shut traffic - either tanker or military, with the US Fifth Fleet located in Bahrain - into the Gulf at their bidding. Which is why it was not surprising that not even 24 hours after Russia and China announced the "holy grail" energy deal, that RIA reported Russia is already preparing to lock in the Tehran regime with a deal to build not one but 8 (!) more nuclear power plants in the country. | |
Comment: Until anything is signed this may merely constitute symbol politics, but what a diplomatic roar the Russian bear is sounding.
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RT
2014-05-21 22:43:00
Mentally ill inmates locked up in a Miami, Florida prison are routinely tormented and abused for sport by a clique of correctional officers and staff, a former psychiatrist at the prison claims in a disturbing new report. George Mallinckrodt worked as a psychotherapist at the Dade Correctional Institution, a facility near Miami with a capacity of 1,563 inmates, from 2008 to 2011.During that time, he said, a 50-year-old convict named Darren Rainey was pushed into an enclosed shower and forced to endure a shower of scalding hot water for more than an hour, a torturous experience that ultimately killed him. The incident is just one example of brutality Mallinckrodt described to the Miami Herald, which has published extensive coverage of the allegations this week. Mallinckrodt wrote a letter to the paper claiming that officers "taunted, tormented, abused, beat and tortured chronically mentally inmates on a regular basis" with the goal of infuriating the prisoners so they would react violently, thus making it possible for the guards to then punish the prisoner. The antagonism has gone on past Mallinckrodt's time at the jail, he said, with a current employee informing him of Rainey's death, which occurred on June 23, 2012. | |
Comment: "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky | |
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Todd Pitman and Ian Mader
Washington Post 2014-05-22 10:28:00
Thailand's military seized power Thursday in a bloodless coup, dissolving the government, suspending the constitution and dispersing groups of protesters from both sides of the country's political divide who had gathered in Bangkok and raised fears of a violent showdown. The powerful army chief, Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha, announced the military takeover in a statement broadcast on national television. It was followed by additional announcements including a nationwide curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. and an order for 18 government officials - including the ousted prime minister - to report immediately to the country's new governing military commission. There was no immediate sign of soldiers patrolling central Bangkok, but troops dispersed the two protest sites where competing groups were camped out - one backing the now-ousted elected government and one that had struggled for seven months to unseat it. Although the military has insisted it wasn't taking sides, its ousting of the elected government met the key goal of the anti-government protesters. The pro-government "Red Shirt" supporters had earlier said they would not tolerate a coup, but there were no immediate signs of resistance or reports of violence. The military provided hundreds of buses to take the protesters home.
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RT
2014-05-22 09:49:00
With the China-Russia deal conducted outside the dollar system we see the beginning of the de-dollarization and de-Americanization of the world, former assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts told RT. RT: A number of Western businesspeople have boycotted the St. Petersburg economic forum. Are they going to lose out? Paul Craig Roberts: I think it is just a symbolic way of accommodating Washington. I don't think it means anything, I do not think the firms in Germany, for example, want to harm the relationships with Russia, nor do they want it in France. So I do not think it means much. What is much more significant is that the number of Asian countries that are coming to this forum, and energy deal signed by Russia and China, is an indication that the world will be moving away from American financial hegemony. This large energy deal will be conducted outside the dollar system, so here is the beginning of the de-dollarization, the beginning of the de-Americanization. This is an indication that the two large countries, Russia and China, are forming a strategic alliance because they are tired of being harassed and cut out of the Western mechanisms, they are tired of the threats. So they are moving in a new direction, and they will take much of the world with them. I do not think the European countries that have strong economic relations with Russia will want to lose those. This is a beginning of a turn from Russia toward the East. Previously Russia was focused on being accepted by the West, being accepted by the Americans. It waited for years to be allowed to join the WTO. I think this was a mistake on Russia's part because the West is not the rising part of the world. The rising part of the world is the East. | |
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Tony Cartalucci
Land Destroyer 2014-05-22 09:15:00
In 1944 a daring assassination attempt was made on Germany's Adolf Hitler. The plan was hatched not by Allied commanders, but amongst the ranks of the Germany army itself. In the immediate wake of the planned assassination, the Germany army was to take over cities across the country, arrest the Nazi leadership and disarm the various militant wings it assembled to protect its political machine. The order to be distributed upon Hitler's assassination concluded by stating: Any opposition against the military power of enforcement is to be broken ruthlessly.In this hour of highest danger for the Fatherland, unity of the Wehrmacht and the maintenance of full discipline is the uppermost requirement.Ultimately the operation was foiled and its conspirators executed for treason. In hindsight it is clear that such an operation would have stood a better chance of success if implemented before the Nazi Party gained such sweeping and deeply rooted power - a lesson to be learned by all students of history and all who oppose the accumulation and abuse of unwarranted influence. Today, with history's lessons in clear hindsight, and with the sacrifices of those like the brave German officers who attempted to end the Nazi scourge in 1944 in mind, we cannot afford nor tolerate delaying measures to stem the rise of the next totalitarian regime, be they Neo-Nazis, crypto-Maoists, sectarian extremists, or Khmer Rouge doppelgangers. In Thailand, it is the Royal Thai Army's turn to uproot a foreign-backed regime that has steadily eroded the checks and balances of Thai society and has persistently attempted to construct militant wings to grant its increasingly autocratic and abusive political machine sweeping impunity from the rule-of-law. The regime, led by billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra, has worked in concert with special interests on Wall Street for well over a decade, groomed specifically to upturn Thailand's political order and usher in client status that will allow the nation to be integrated into a united front Wall Street plans to use to encircle, contain, and eventually absorb China with. The regime of Thaksin Shinawatra is playing a role in hegemonic ambitions that eclipse even those of Adolf Hitler - and could potentially exact a toll in both human and economic costs that exceed those of World War 2 if war is triggered across Asia. | |
Comment: See also: The Thai military move that was not a coup
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Tony Cartalucci
Land Destroyer 2014-05-20 08:58:00
The Royal Thai Army (RTA) has announced that it is taking over responsibility for national security from the current regime's so-called "Centre for the Administration of Peace and Order" (CAPO). The move came after nearly six months of terrorism carried out by pro-regime militants the regime itself has failed categorically to either condemn or counter with its sweeping, self-granted security powers. As recently as last Thursday, an M79 grenade attack on anti-regime protesters left 3 dead and many more maimed, including an elderly woman who lost her eye. Additionally, stockpiles of weapons have been stumbled across by police, who in fact are loyal to the current regime. This indicates that so many weapons have been brought into Bangkok or readied elsewhere by the regime to carry out a concerted terrorist campaign, that their own police are stumbling over them by accident while on routine calls. | |
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Terence P. Jeffrey
CNS News 2014-05-20 18:50:00
The U.S. State Department on Monday declined to say if Martin Wani, a 20-month-old Christian boy imprisoned by the Islamist Sudanese government, is a U.S. citizen. "You don't know whether that little boy in prison is a U.S. citizen?" CNSNews.com asked State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki at the department's Monday press briefing. "I don't have any more details to share," Psaki said. | |
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Robert Frank
CNBC 2014-05-16 11:12:00
Economist Paul Krugman recently wrote that the multibillion-dollar salaries of top hedge fund managers proved that education plays little role in the growing wealth gap. The rich get rich, he said, because of the "runaway financial system" and investors making money from money. "Modern inequality isn't about graduates," Krugman wrote. "It's about oligarchs." But a new study offers a different view. Jonathan Wai, a research scientist at Duke University and part of the school's Talent Identification Program, looked at the world's billionaires and global elite. He found that billionaires are, as a group, very highly educated and have high cognitive abilities. About a third of the world's billionaires attended elite schools worldwide. Even among billionaires, the billionaires with higher wealth were more likely to have gone to a top college. "The average net worth of those that attended an elite school was significantly higher than those who did not," the report said. | |
Comment: This article is a perfect example of how psychopaths are being subtly glorified in the media. Psychopaths thrive in a corporate setting where the rapaciousness of the environment helps them maintain their facade. When supported by our psychopathic leaders, their domain of influence in our society is vast:
"The psychopathic personality who reaches senior positions or advanced management, attracts other similar personalities and that leads to the formation of psychopathic institutions. These institutions become incubators for these psychopathic qualities and so its impact on society is far more harmful and damaging. " The psychopathic personality See also: Psychopathy and the CEO: Top executives have four times the incidence of psychopathy as the rest of us Ponerology 101: Snakes in Suits | |
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Paul R.
Sott.net 2014-05-22 02:08:00
India's recent astonishing general election - the largest ever where a relatively obscure political party won a landslide victory - has left most of the country brimming with optimism about new prime minister elect, Narendra Modi, leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, 'Indian People's Party'). A recent Wall Street Journal article's speculation about Modi's character and potential impact is interesting: To admirers he is a Thatcherite reformer set to jolt India from the economic doldrums, while his opponents liken him to Putin or even Hitler. Indian election frontrunner Narendra Modi divides opinion like few other politicians.Leave it to the Wall Street Journal to come up with a grossly over-simplified and skewed news-bite. For starters, the conventional portrayal of Thatcher is as 'the Iron Lady who reformed the UK with an iron fist' - a mask for the fact that she was a brutal and callous psychopath that eviscerated the social welfare state and trade unions in the UK to facilitate the corporate takeover of British society.
As to whether Mr.Modi will turn out to be 'a Putin or Hitler', Western media scurrilously portrays Putin as a ruthless dictator, when in fact he has proven to be knowledgeable, shrewd and incorruptible. The actions match the words: Putin's government has already delivered half of its 2012 election promises. Putin's only 'crime' was to say 'no' to the US Empire builders and their NATO enforcers, and psychopaths really don't like to be told 'no'. Nevertheless, the 'Hitler' comparison suggests that alarm bells are ringing in Washington and Brussels over fears that Modi will deepen India's commitments to establishing that 'multipolar world' conceived by the Russians. Sites like Eurasia Review and others areproducing interesting analysis of the potential tectonic shifts in geopolitics that Modi's landslide election victory portends, but what I want to do here is introduce a Western audience to some general facts about Indian national politics and Modi's rise to power. | ||
Comment: Insightful Interview.
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| Society's Child |
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Michael Thomas
Exposing the Truth 2014-05-22 13:58:00
The profits of the porn industry in the United States alone is about $13.3 billion dollars. To put that in perspective, that's more than the NFL, NBA and MLB combined. The global market power of the porn industry is roughly $97 billion, incidentally, just in case 13.3 billion wasn't scary enough. To put that in perspective: the Dominican Republic has a GDP of $99 billion (according to the IMF). Keep in mind, this is based primarily on the registered pornography operations and estimations, excluding some or much of the gray-area online world. If this industry was a country, it'd be ranked about 36th in the world. Now, this industry is almost entirely unregulated. There are no unions. There are no oversight committees, no major industry watchdogs. There's no real government oversight whatsoever on a global basis. It is in many ways a free market. Although some sites report 66% as having sexually transmitted diseases within the pool of actors in the industry, this number is fictitious and disproved through data. Despite that, the fact remains that the incidence of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases is far higher than officially reported. Comment: WARNING: This article contains some graphic descriptions of sexual violence that may disturb some readers. | |
Comment: Psychopaths view their sexual partners as objects to be used, often abused, and discarded, regardless of age, health, or emotional well-being. Knowing that, it should be painfully obvious that the porn industry is psychopathic at its root. By engaging with such pathological sexuality through visual media, we basically train our brains to experience sex the way psychopaths do. We become a little more like them.
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British Columbia mother filmed pummelling woman on bus after alleged assault on baby, other children
Josh Visser
Nationalpost.com 2014-05-22 11:12:00
A B.C. mother was filmed pummelling another woman on a bus, after the woman allegedly boarded the bus without fare, swore loudly, and attacked the mother's kids when asked to watch her language. The incident began at about 10:20 a.m. Tuesday in Langley, B.C., when a female passenger began fighting with a bus driver over her non-payment of the bus fare. | |
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Voice of Russia
2014-05-22 10:01:00
Madrid's famous San Isidro had to be cancelled for the first time in 35 years after a bull skewered, trampled and gored three matadors. Half-tonne fighting bulls skewered or trampled all three matadors in an extraordinary upset at Madrid's prestigious Las Ventas bullring, forcing the entire spectacle to be cancelled. "Drama in Las Ventas" ran the front page headline of conservative daily ABC over a full-page photograph of a huge bull plunging its right horn into the side of the most seriously injured matador, David Mora, before he fell to the ground. Spanish media devoted broad coverage to the bloody turning of the tables in Las Ventas,reputed to be the most important bullring in the world. "The festival had to be suspended .. because of the gorings suffered by the three matadors," said a statement issued by the Las Ventas bullring. | |
Comment: Is this a little symbolic of what is happening in Spain where austerity measures and EU bully dictates have stampeded and gored the population into submission?
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Joy Powell
Star Tribune 2014-05-22 04:02:00
Fox News anchor Gregg Jarrett was jailed Wednesday after being arrested in a bar atMinneapolis-St. Paul Airport. Jarrett, who is a weekend co-anchor on the FOX News Channel was arrested about 12:30 p.m. at Northern Lights Grill in the main terminal, said Patrick Hogan, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Airports Commission. Jarrett was released from custody shortly after 1:30 a.m. Thursday after a $300 bond was posted, according to Hennepin County Sheriff's Office records. The records show he's due in court on June 6. | |
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Amanda Marcotte
The Raw Story 2014-05-14 05:57:00
Oh high school graduation time. The kids are all excited and the parents are wavering between proud and anxious and everyone is so involved in the whole process that no one can spare a minute to pity the petty tyrants that infest every high school, who are losing yet another crop of kids to control and bully. These folks, who react poorly to their own waning youth by trying to suck the fun out of being young for teenagers, can be found both in administration and in the classrooms. Are they all people who work in public schools? No. But every public school has them. And every year, these petty tyrants watch another group of kids they've been able to push around for four years slide away from them. The pain it must cause them, waking up on graduation day and realizing that tomorrow, they have no more control. No more punishing them for having fun. No more enforcing of arbitrary dress codes. No more lectures about how they're rotting their brains with the smart phones and the hip-hop and the TV shows. But before that day comes, the petty tyrants will make one last power grab. They will try to make graduation as unfun as possible, and, of course, scour the earth looking for unauthorized pleasures taken by the students that can now be punished by yanking graduation away from them. You kids think you can just make your jokes and have your laughs, just because school is ending? The petty tyrants will show you who still holds the cards. Grandma will not be seeing you walk across the stage at graduation! How do you like them apples? | |
Comment: The hysterization of our school system, and society at large, starts to take on really bizarre forms. Petty tyrants indeed!
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Daryl Khan
Juvenile Justice 2014-05-19 20:51:00
New York - The 14-year-old boy sat on the stoop of the Hookah Shop in the Bronx, blood pouring from his chest and filling his lungs, and thought: This is what it's like to die. Moments before 11 o'clock Saturday night, the boy, Javier Payne, had been smashed through the store's plate glass window by a police officer who had stopped him after an altercation with a man on the street, witnesses said. The boy was bleeding critically and under arrest. When EMS paramedics arrived at the scene they found the color draining from Payne's face, his clothes soaked in blood and his hands cuffed behind his back. A witness described the police officers on the scene as "nonchalant" about the emergency unfolding in front of them. "He looked like a young man who was facing down his own mortality," said one city employee familiar with the incident. "This is a kid who was staring at his own doom. He looked like he was going to die. And if he didn't get help when he did, he would have." An argument ensued between the paramedics and police about removing the teenager's handcuffs so they could treat his injuries. Initially, the police refused, but eventually relented, witnesses said. One of the paramedics had to hold the boys chest wound closed while they rushed him to Jacobi Medical Center. Medical experts said it may have saved Payne's life. As he was wheeled into the emergency room Payne was shrieking: "They threw me through a glass window and now I'm going to die, I'm going to die." Initially, EMS did not rush to the scene because when the officers put the call over they did not indicate that there was a pediatric emergency, a source familiar with the incident said. Instead they used a protocol normally used for drunks. The office did not issue a "sheet" - an email to the police press corps detailing newsworthy events - on the incident. | |
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Hannah Ellis-Petersen
The Guardian 2014-05-20 17:47:00
Descriptions of Irish mezzo soprano Tara Erraught's weight condemned by leading opera figures The opera world has reacted with anger to the disparaging remarks made by several critics about the appearance of the female soprano star of this year's Glyndebourne festival opera, Der Rosenkavalier. Irish mezzo soprano Tara Erraught, who is the principal soloist in the Bavarian State opera ensemble, made her UK stage debut at the 80th anniversary season of the opera festival on Saturday, playing Octavian in Strauss's comic masquerade. But praise of Erraught's performance was overshadowed by descriptions of the singer's weight by leading critics, who labelled her variously as "unbelievable, unsightly and unappealing", (The Times) "dumpy" (The Independent) and with an "intractable physique" (The Daily Telegraph). Andrew Clark in the Financial Times added: "Tara Erraught's Octavian is a chubby bundle of puppy-fat." The Guardian described her as "stocky". Leading opera figures have now spoken of their disgust that the 27-year-old, who is a rising star, should be subject to such comments, with several prominent female singers jumping to Erraught's defence. Writing for the Guardian website, fellow mezzo soprano Jennifer Johnstone, asked: "How, then, have we arrived at a point where opera is no longer about singing but about the physiques and looks of the singers, specifically the female singers?" She continued: "Barely any mention of her voice, a gloriously rounded and well produced instrument, was made, and there was little comment on her musicianship, dramatic commitment or her ability to communicate to an audience and to move that audience to tears. Comment was also made about another female singer being 'stressed by motherhood'. I, for one, had thought we as a country had moved beyond the point where women were treated as second-class citizens, but clearly overt sexism is still rife, no matter what we are led to believe. "All singers need self confidence to perform, and so it is on this level that it is particularly cruel and irresponsible of this set of critics to be so completely disparaging of a singer's appearance." Jennifer Rivera, a world famous American mezzo soprano, also voiced her anger at the critics comments, which she condemned as demeaning the entire art form of opera. | |
Comment: So it is that even the arts become corrupted by ponerization, when the most important part of an art, in this case, the beauty of a highly-trained voice, is marginalized in favor of trifles by ignorant "authorities".
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| Secret History |
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Rabindra Nath Choudhury
The Asian Age 2014-05-22 17:17:00
Remnants of a burnt ancient city, believed to be dating back to 2nd century BC, have been found in an archaeological site in Tarighat, nearly 30 km from here. The "gutted settlement" reminds one the famed Roman city of Pompeii that got buried under 13-20 feet of ash and pumice in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. The remains of the charred city have been found around 20 feet below Tarighat archaeological site which came into national focus when excavation had brought to surface a 2,500-year-old urban centre in 2013. "It is a stunning discovery. Our excavation, which began last year, has reached 35 feet deep now. The excavation has so far yielded remains of various settlements that had come up at the site from sixth century AD to second century BC. | |
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NASA book explores how archaeology could contribute to understanding Extra-terrestrial Communication
April Holloway
Ancient Origins 2014-05-21 15:08:00
A new book released by NASA as part of the official NASA History Series examines the contributions that archaeology and anthropology can make to contemporary SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) research. The authors draw analogies between deciphering the language and symbology of long-lost civilizations and decoding messages that may arrive from 'other worldly' origins. The new book titled 'Archaeology, Anthropology and Interstellar Communication', edited by Douglas A Vakoch, Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute, is a collection of chapters by different authors who explore latest research regarding the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. In the opening introduction, Vakoch sets out how the field of archaeology can contribute to this search: Anthropologist Ben Finney and historian Jerry Bentley draw a comparison between the decoding of ancient scripts, including Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphics, and how we may be able to understand and possibly communicate with an extraterrestrial civilization, particularly through the 'universal language' of mathematics and astronomy. For example, when scholars began decoding ancient Mayan hieroglyphs, their earliest successes were in recognizing the basic numbering system used by the Maya, as well as their calendar systems, which were based on the visible motions of the Moon and Sun. | |
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| Science & Technology |
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ScienceDaily
2014-05-22 14:38:00
Our sun may seem pretty impressive: 330,000 times as massive as Earth, it accounts for 99.86 percent of the Solar System's total mass; it generates about 400 trillion trillion watts of power per second; and it has a surface temperature of about 10,000 degrees Celsius. Yet for a star, it's a lightweight. The real cosmic behemoths are Wolf-Rayet stars, which are more than 20 times as massive as the Sun and at least five times as hot. Because these stars are relatively rare and often obscured, scientists don't know much about how they form, live and die. But this is changing, thanks to an innovative sky survey called the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF), which uses resources at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) and Energy Sciences Network (ESnet), both located at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), to expose fleeting cosmic events such as supernovae. For the first time ever, scientists have direct confirmation that a Wolf-Rayet star -- sitting 360 million light years away in the Bootes constellation -- died in a violent explosion known as a Type IIb supernova. Using the iPTF pipeline, researchers at Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science led by Avishay Gal-Yam caught supernova SN 2013cu within hours of its explosion. They then triggered ground- and space-based telescopes to observe the event approximately 5.7 hours and 15 hours after it self-destructed. These observations are providing valuable insights into the life and death of the progenitor Wolf-Rayet. | |
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Bob King
Universe Today 2014-05-22 14:13:00
A supergiant star exploded 23.5 million years ago in one of the largest and brightest nearby galaxies. This spring we finally got the news. In April, the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope (KAIT) as part of the Lick Observatory Supernova Search, photographed a faint "new star" very close to the bright core of M106, a 9th magnitude galaxy in Canes Venatici the Hunting Dogs. | |
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Becky Oskin
Live Science 2014-05-22 13:00:00
Models of how the Earth's mantle works may need to change, thanks to two new studies that recreate the extreme conditions just above the planet's core. The deep mantle, a region that lies 416 to 1,800 miles (670 to 2,900 kilometers) below the Earth's surface, is impossible to reach and hard to "see" clearly with seismic signals. The little scientists do know about the mantle comes from earthquake waves, which speed up and slow down as they travel through different rock layers inside the Earth. The deepest part of the mantle has weird blobs and seismic slow zones that have long puzzled scientists. Both new studies offer possible explanations for the strange seismic behavior. In the studies, researchers mimicked conditions inside the deep mantle with experiments in the laboratory. Teams working independently on different continents shot lasers at tiny specks of rock squeezed between diamond anvils. One team concluded that scientists had been wrong about the form that a certain rock takes in the deep mantle, which accounts for about half of Earth's volume. The other team found evidence for small amounts of Earth's most common surface rock, basalt, pooling in liquid form at the core-mantle boundary. The findings are published today (May 22) in the journal Science. "These results are a new step forward in reproducing in the laboratory what is occurring in the very deep mantle," said Denis Andrault, lead author of one of the studies and a scientist at Blaise Pascal University in France. | |
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Reed Albergotti
The Wall Street Journal 2014-05-21 23:03:00
Facebook's mobile app just grew a keen sense of hearing. Starting Wednesday, the app has the ability to recognize music and television shows playing in the vicinity of users. The feature is designed to make it easier for users to share. When users begin to write a post, the Facebook app will offer to include information about music or shows playing in the background. "We want to help people tell better stories," said Aryeh Selekman, the product manager who led the development of the feature. "I hope there are people who love the feature and post more." If Facebook users share more about themselves, that can boost the value of ads targeted at some of its 1.28 billion users. The audio-recognition feature works similar to the app Shazam, which also can identify music and television programming using the built-in microphones in mobile phones. | |
Comment: Yeah, we are sure that Facebook will hold your privacy sacred and this will not be abused or hacked by the NSA... One wonders though, is there any way for non-Facebook users to know that they are being eavesdropped upon?
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| Earth Changes |
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The Telegraph, UK
2014-05-22 16:39:00
Andrew Ballard and his father were fishing at Platte Bay, Lake Michigan, when they noticed some clouds in the distance. As the Ballards watched, the clouds came closer, and lower to the water. Despite their misgivings, curiosity got the better of them, and they hung around to see what would happen. As the fog rolled in, the winds picked up and the temperature dropped significantly, but not before Andrew got this great footage of the phenomenon.
Source: Storyful / YouTube / Andrew Ballard | ||
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Harvard School of Public Health
2014-05-09 10:31:00
Two widely used neonicotinoids - a class of insecticide - appear to significantly harm honey bee colonies over the winter, particularly during colder winters, according to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). The study replicated a 2012 finding from the same research group that found a link between low doses of imidacloprid and Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), in which bees abandon their hives over the winter and eventually die. The new study also found that low doses of a second neonicotinoid, clothianidin, had the same negative effect. Further, although other studies have suggested that CCD-related mortality in honey bee colonies may come from bees' reduced resistance to mites or parasites as a result of exposure to pesticides, the new study found that bees in the hives exhibiting CCD had almost identical levels of pathogen infestation as a group of control hives, most of which survived the winter. This finding suggests that the neonicotinoids are causing some other kind of biological mechanism in bees that in turn leads to CCD. The study appears online May 9, 2014 in the Bulletin of Insectology. | |
Comment: Silent Hives: Colony Collapse Disorder and Pesticides:
A Last (Chemical) Gasp for Bees? Scientists Untangle Multiple Causes of Bee Colony Disorder Honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder Finally Explained: Too Many Chemicals Harvard Study Links Pesticides to Colony Collapse Disorder in Bees Colony Collapse: Do Massive Bee Die-Offs Mean an End to Our Food System as We Know it? | |
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Desy Nurhayati
The Jakarta Post 2014-05-17 14:44:00
A beached whale died on Mengiat Beach in front of the Ayodya Resort in Nusa Dua earlier this month, adding to the number of whales and dolphins that have suffered a similar fate in Bali. Found in a state of decay by a lifeguard, the dead sperm whale was 10.2 meters long and weighed 3 tons. According to the Nusa Dua Reef Foundation (NDRF), Nusa Dua was no stranger to incidents of beached marine mammals because the southern coast of the island sat along a migratory route for several species. "This is the sixth case of beached whales or dolphins in Nusa Dua since 2003," said Pariama Hutasoit, founder of NDRF. She said that the first of those cases was a Gervais' beaked whale beached in front of the Grand Hyatt resort in 2003. In 2010, there were three separate incidents of beached Pigmy killer whales. The next case occurred in 2012, when a rough-toothed dolphin was found in front of The Laguna Resort and Spa. The recent beached sperm whale is the fourth to have died on Bali's shore in the last 10 years. According to data from the Bali Network of Stranded Sea Mammals, the first occurred in Nusa Penida in 2005, and was followed by similar cases in Batubelig in North Kuta in 2009 and on Gilimanuk Beach in 2010. | |
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Tara Lohan
Fracking West Virginia 2013-08-26 12:51:00
Residents in industry-friendly West Virginia share their experiences, photos and videos.
Ed Wade's property straddles the Wetzel and Marsh county lines in rural West Virginia and it has a conventional gas well on it. "You could cover the whole [well] pad with three pickups," said Wade. And West Virginia has lots of conventional wells - more than 50,000 at last count. West Virginians are so well acquainted with gas drilling that when companies began using high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing in 2006 to access areas of the Marcellus Shale that underlie the state, most residents and regulators were unprepared for the massive footprint of the operations and the impact on their communities. When it comes to a conventional well and a Marcellus well, "There is no comparison, none whatsoever," said Wade, who works with the Wetzel County Action Group. "You live in the country for a reason and it just takes that and turns it upside down. You know how they preach all the time that natural gas burns cleaner than coal; well, it may burn cleaner than coal, but it's a hell of a lot dirtier to extract."
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Comment: Coming to a valley near you soon...
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A small dead Humpback whale washed up in Pillar Point Harbor in Half Moon Bay Wednesday afternoon. The whale is now beached at Surfers Beach near an RV park, according to a deputy at the harbor. Large crowds gathered Wednesday evening to marvel at the massive dead marine mammal that was reported to be around 30 feet long. Marine biologists will investigate what caused the whale to die while authorities decide how to get rid of the dead animal. Twitter user @carolsuestories snapped a picture of the bloated carcass shortly before 7 p.m. Wednesday. | |
Comment: See also: Dead beached whale found at Point Loma Cove, California
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The carcass was first spotted near the San Diego Bay's mouth Saturday The carcass of a 40-foot whale that washed up at San Diego's Point Loma Cove earlier this week is set to be hauled away from the rocky shoreline by authorities Wednesday and disposed of in the ocean. According to Lee Swanson of the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department, the towing attempt is expected to begin around 4 p.m. and will be spearheaded by The Marine Conservation Science Institute (MCSI) and San Diego lifeguards. Swanson said the plan will involve lifeguards towing the whale about a half-mile offshore, and then transferring the tow to a MCSI boat waiting to take the reins. The boat will then take the carcass out to sea to properly dispose of the whale, a process that could take several days. It is unclear if MCSI members will sink the whale or leave it to float at sea. The MCSI has a permit to remove and dispose of marine mammals, Swanson said.
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| Fire in the Sky |
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Ellie Zolfagharifard
Daily Mail 2014-05-21 14:14:00
* Maps produced using the space agency's Asgard program which tracks an estimated 4,000-5,000 meteoroids a day * Every day, more than 40 tonnes of meteoroids hit our planet, with larger chunks of comet debris becoming fireballs * The blue map tracks their position in the skies over our planet with the main showers highlighted in white circles * A second radar map looks at meteoroid speed. The red regions indicate a speed of 7.5 miles/s (12km/s), the green from 26 miles/s (42km/s) and the blue from 41 miles/s (66km/s) Every day, more than 40 tonnes of meteoroids hit our atmosphere. Many are tiny specks of comet dust that crumble harmlessly in Earth's atmosphere, producing a slow drizzle of meteors in the night sky. Bigger chunks of asteroid and comet debris create dozens of nightly fireballs around the planet - and now, these real-time maps mean you'll never have to miss one again. Nasa's meteoroid visualisations are produced using the space agency's Asgard software program which tracks an estimated 4,000-5,000 meteoroids a day. The blue map follows their position in the sky using the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR). The main showers are highlighted with circles and listed by their International Astronomical Union name.
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| Health & Wellness |
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Shane LaChance
Sott.net 2014-05-22 12:17:00
The CDC has shocked parents and many of the countries child welfare experts with it's release of a disturbing report showing the high number of very young children being prescribed mind-altering drugs. The report states that some 10,000 toddlers across the US are being diagnosed and medicated with psychotropic drugs like Ritalin and Adderall. "It's absolutely shocking, and it shouldn't be happening," said Anita Zervigon-Hakes, a mental health consultant for children from the Carter Center. "People are just feeling around in the dark. We obviously don't have our act together for little children." In interviews with the New York Times and NBC, Dr. Lawrence H. Diller, a behavioral pediatrician in California, thought the news was outrageous: According to Diller the U.S. uses 70 percent of the world's Adderall and Ritalin even though we only make up 4 percent of the word's population.
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Tucked into an environment bill signed into law by Gov. Mark Dayton on Friday was a measure banning triclosan, a controversial antibacterial agent found in a wide array of consumer products. Minnesota is the first state to ban triclosan, which is currently being reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration. The ban, which was approved by the Legislature with broad bipartisan support, has drawn the ire of the D.C.- based American Cleaning Institute. ACI spokesman Brian Sansoni argues research on triclosan hasn't shown that the agent has any negative health impact on humans. "For members of the public who want to choose these products, they should certainly be able to have access to them," Sansoni tells us. "This particular chemical has been in use for over 40 years, primarily in health care and then in the consumer space, and it has been safely used. We use it to wash our hands and in other applications too, and it continues to be safely used, and it's been more researched than just about any other ingredient that's used in consumer products." | |
Comment: Read more about the growing concerns of antibacterial products with triclosan:
The Dangers of Triclosan: A Common Anti-Bacterial Ingredient Scientists: Chemical in antibacterial hand soaps poses health risks Freaky Clean: Chemical in antibacterial soap weakens muscle function Why You Don't Want to Use Antibacterial Soap Anymore Triclosan May Be Harmful to Health, Says FDA | |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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Charles Q. Choi
Live Science 2014-05-22 07:08:00
The brain circuits that respond to faces and sex appear to activate abnormally in pedophiles when they look at children's faces, scientists say. These new findings could lead to novel ways to diagnose pedophiles, and could shed light on the evolutionary roots of sex, the researchers added. In the animal kingdom, there may be a number of mechanisms preventing adults from attempting sex with children. For example, "pheromones emitted by child mice inhibit sexual behavior of adult male mice," said lead study author Jorge Ponseti, a sex researcher at Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel in Germany. "If scientists inhibited these pheromones in the child mice, adult male mice started to mate with these babies." | |
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| High Strangeness |
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Jeff Skrzypek
WPTV 2014-05-20 16:04:00
Suburban West Palm Beach - The Federal Aviation Administration has investigated a suburban West Palm Beach home after a metal object reportedly came crashing through the roof of a home into a bathroom and determined the object is not from an airplane. The piece of metal that smashed through the home of Bill Hardy is about the size of a brick and weighs nearly 10 pounds. Hardy said when it made impact, it sounded like an explosion. "I first you know that a pipe or something had burst, but then I saw that," said Hardy. Sitting on a bed of cracked tiles was the chunk of metal with what appeared to be bolt holes. Hardy thinks it dropped in from the sky, however the FAA has ruled that is not the case. | |
Comment: More stories of falling metallic objects over the years.
Mystery continues in North Carolina: Roof hole not from plane part Strange object falls from the sky at high speed in Minnesota "Amazing" explanation! Object that fell from sky not a meteorite. It's just a piece of scrap iron dropped out of the sky. US: Officials At Loss To Explain Falling Metal US: Falling metal did not come from airplane: FAA says US: Mysterious Debris Crashes Through Plymouth Warehouse Roof | |
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| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
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Todd Van Luling
The Huffington Post 2014-05-21 12:49:00
If you've ever wanted to be a real-life Lara Croft or Indiana Jones, there are a few places you can start looking today. With so many legends of lost riches out there, it's easy to think that treasure could be found just about anywhere. Consult a treasure seeking forum for just a few moments and you'll realize that even right now, sweet loot may be hiding somewhere just a short trip away. It's impossible to know if a treasure legend is true until the riches are actually found, but below is a roundup of lost riches that actually seem worth hunting for. Continue on, treasure seekers, as the potential greatest finds of a generation are just below. | |
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Waterford Whisper News
2014-05-21 11:10:00
RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin came back at comments made by Prince Charles earlier likening him to Hitler, stating that the monarch was behaving like Joffrey fromGame Of Thrones. Mr. Putin launched the scathing attack on the prince after he was reported to have told a woman how his Crimean actions were no different to the Nazi leaders in world war two. "Who is this inbred to liken me to such a man." said the Russian leader earlier. "Isn't his father a Nazi lover? This is like a pot calling a kettle black. He is nothing more than a want to be child king, like Joffrey from Game of Thrones. Him and his manlike wife should stick to what they are good at -spending their kingdoms money." |
