| Puppet Masters |
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Sputnik
2015-08-07 20:46:00
In response to the growing threat of fighters traveling to Syria and Iraq to join terror groups such as the self-proclaimed Islamic State, the Department of Homeland Security has announced changes to its visa waiver program that will increase restrictions on residents of "friendly" countries entering the United States. It used to be that if you were a citizen of France, or Germany, or any of the 28 countries participating in the visa waiver program, all you had to do to enter the US was fill out a special form at the airport and hand it to Customs and Border Protection before boarding your flight. Now, however, with the looming threat of IS and the influx of fighters joining its ranks in Syria and Iraq, the Obama administration is concerned that Western citizens may receive training from terror groups while abroad and use it to attack the homeland. | |
Comment: Can't help but wonder if there is more to these new restrictions than the so called terrorist threat. Certainly there will be more tracking of everyone with biometric data.
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Danielle Ryan
Sputnik 2015-08-06 19:12:00
Russia has this week submitted a revised bid to the United Nations to expand its Arctic shelf borders — but if you'd been perusing some of the headlines in the Western press yesterday, you'd have been forgiven for believing that Vladimir Putin had launched an unprovoked attack on the North Pole. Putin has made his "most audacious land grab bid yet," screamed the Daily Express. Russia launches "Arctic land grab," shouted the Mail Online. "Move over Santa: Putin claims the North Pole" wrote the Fiscal Times, before suggesting that polar bears might soon see "little green men" moving in. Conservative blog, the Washington Free Beacon got it completely wrong, reporting that along with its bid, Russia had just planted its flag on the ocean floor — a purely symbolic move by Russia that actually happened in 2007. To be fair, most of the pieces did then grudgingly explain that a number of other countries have also made claims to parts of the Arctic. | |
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Sputnik
2015-08-06 18:39:00
On Wednesday, the Kremlin press service announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his French counterpart had terminated the contract. France's former Minister of Transport Thierry Mariani said that Paris had surrendered to the influence of the United States and Europe in deciding to terminate the Mistral contract with Moscow. "Hollande has conceded, France has obeyed the United States and Europe. This is a day of mourning for what is left of our national independence," Mariani wrote in his official Twitter account. The president of the National Front, the third-largest political party in France, Marine Le Pen, said that the country had seriously discredited itself when Hollande canceled the deal. | |
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Sputnik
2015-08-06 18:29:00
The US government is responsible for the spread of terrorism in the Middle East, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif said in a statement Thursday in response to US President Barack Obama's claims that Iran may fund terrorism. Obama said in a speech on Wednesday that Iran may use the funds it would obtain from sanctions relief to fund "terrorist organizations." "The developments of the past years showed that what has resulted in insecurity and the spread of extremism and terrorism in our region, have been the uncalculated policies and actions of the US governments and some of their allies in the region.... The US officials have on numerous occasions admitted this reality, but they are still trying to escape the realities by blaming others," Zarif said in a statement published on Foreign Ministry website. Zarif condemned US attempts to use force and threats "as foreign policy tools," adding that the civilized world had successfully abandoned the idea. | |
Comment: As each day passes, more and more foreign leaders are coming out and saying what is obvious to most of the world, that the U.S. is the world's biggest terrorist organization
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Ekaterina Blinova
Sputnik 2015-08-06 18:12:00
The US would love to see regime change in China, but Washington understands that the Chinese government remains firmly in control, political analyst Eric Draitser told Sputnik; therefore, the US is throwing its NGOs into the fray to do the "dirty work." Although Moscow and Beijing have in the past tolerated the activity of US-based NGOs in Russia and China, they have since come to view the organizations as provocative and destructive, and have at long last decided to bring them to the end, by passing legislation aimed at preserving the countries' sovereignty and independence. Unsurprisingly, their moves have met with harsh criticism from the West. "The main reason why the West is so upset about Russia and China's moves to curb the influence of foreign NGOs is because these NGOs represent a critical element of the West's projection of soft power in these countries, and around the world. The NGOs act as a de facto arm of western intelligence and governments, helping to further the objectives of Washington and its allies," US geopolitical analyst and Stopimperialism.com editor Eric Draitser told Sputnik. | |
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Andrew Korybko
Sputnik 2015-08-07 16:12:00
The magazine Foreign Policy's provocative article makes it seem like the nuclear bombings were a godsend, and that the US humanely intended to save Japan from communism. The month of August is somberly commemorated as the only time in the world when nuclear weapons were used in warfare, where the US dropped two bombs that killed over 200,000 people in two fatal moments: one on August 6 over Hiroshima, and yet again three days later over Nagasaki. For 70 years, this occasion has been marked by respect for the many victims who tragically lost their lives during these attacks, but now an influential American international affairs outlet, Foreign Policy, has decided to spin the event, blaming the Soviet Union for what happened. Comment: Another sign that the ant-Russian propaganda is getting out of hand. USA dropped atomic bombs on Japan to 'send a warning' to Russia In the article "Did Hiroshima Save Japan From Soviet Occupation?", Sergey Radchenkoquestions whether the nuclear bombings were actually good for the country, in that they may have saved it from Western bogeyman Joseph Stalin. This callous inference is contradicted by the article's own conclusion, but nonetheless, it's worthwhile to examine why the magazine would find it fitting to denigrate the victims' memory in the first place with such a misleading and politically self-serving angle. | |
Comment: Last year the Foreign Policy magazine praised the Neo-Nazi battalions in Ukraine, referring to them as "fascist defenders of freedom."
Preparing For War with Ukraine's Fascist Defenders of Freedom | |
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Kareem Shaheen
The Guardian 2015-08-06 15:08:00
A group of Syrian rebels that includes fighters trained by the United States have declared their refusal to fight al-Qaida's affiliate in the country, the Nusra Front, following a series of kidnappings by the militant group. A source in Division 30, which has endured a campaign of kidnappings by the Nusra Front, said they also oppose the American air strikes carried out in the last few days against the al-Qaida-linked fighters. The statements complicate the American strategy in Syria, which has suffered a string of setbacks and delays, deploying just over 50 fighters dedicated to fighting the terror group Islamic State in the year since its programme to train and equip rebels began. "With all the immense military power the US has at its disposal, the start to the mission is nothing short of an embarrassment and if it has any hope of succeeding, it needs to show results fast," said Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center and an expert on Syrian insurgent groups. | |
Comment: The US charade is becoming more transparent with each day. US trained 'moderates' are basically aligned with Al-Qaeda and some 50 of these geniuses are supposed to stop ISIS and overthrow the government in Syria.
Is ISIS a creation of the US government? Do large hairy mammals relieve themselves in the woods? There are No Moderate Syrian Rebels | |
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Jack Hanick
New York Observer 2015-08-06 15:25:00
The author, a native New Yorker, recently completed the development of a state of the art television network in Moscow, built without government funding. Its evening news program broadcasts to 65 million homes in Russia across eight time zones. Previously he was a TV director in New York, for many years with Fox News. He won the New York Emmy in 1994 for best director, and his biography of Desmond Tutu also won a New York Emmy. Currently he is Chairman of the Board of HellasNet, a group of TV stations in Greece. America is heading for war with Russia. Some call the current situation "an increase of hostility" or "Cold War II." There are two sides to this story. I believe that American journalists from all political persuasions are not offering critical analysis. Understanding the Russian side and taking their arguments seriously can help prevent serious consequences. Americans believe that Russians are fed propaganda by the state-controlled media. If Russians only could hear the truth, the thinking goes, they would welcome the US position. This is not so. There are more than 300 TV stations available in Moscow. Only 6 are state-controlled. The truth is that Russians prefer hearing the news from the state rather than the Internet or other sources. This is different from almost any other country. It is not North Korea where the news is censored. Each night during the Crimea crisis, anyone could watch CNN or the BBC bash Russia. | |
Comment: The Western elite have no intention of letting Russia claim a leading role in the world. They make unbelievable sums of money off of war and chaos, so don't expect the lies to stop anytime soon.
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Janet C. Phelan
New Eastern Outlook 2015-08-04 15:50:00
The US Congress took another step towards tyranny and away from legal and Constitutionally guaranteed protections this past week, when the House of Representatives approved HR 237. This bill allows the Secretary of State, at his own discretion, to make a determination that an American citizen has terrorist affiliations and therefore to deny or revoke said citizen's passport. According to HR 237, which is entitled the "FTO Passport Revocation Act of 2015," the Secretary of State may so revoke a citizen's travel rights without any invocation of due process. There will be no court hearing involved, and the individual will have no opportunity to object or to present evidence to the contrary. | |
Comment: For more on America's descent into the abyss, check out:
At least 4 million people dead due to America's global holocaust, "War on Terror" | |
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RT
2015-08-07 10:38:00
Criminal proceedings against Lord Janner began on Friday without the presence of the former Labour peer, who did not attend the initial hearing due to his medical condition. However, the magistrate noted that Janner, who suffers from dementia, could be forced to attend future court sessions, despite his illness affecting his understanding of proceedings. Janner, 87, faces 22 charges of child sex offences which are alleged to have taken place in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. He was initially declared unfit to stand trial, but the decision was reversed by a senior lawyer earlier in the year. His lawyer Andrew Smith QC told the court hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court:"Lord Janner is not in attendance. The reason for that submission on his part is that he is unfit to face the court." But the chief magistrate Howard Riddle said the court must hear evidence from medical experts before a decision allowing him to miss the hearing could be made. | |
Comment: Just how high up the Establishment hierarchy do these despicable allegations go? Recently, Ex-British PM Ted Heath was accused of raping 12 year old boy. He is the most high profile figure to be accused of historic child sex abuse to date - who is not alive! For more information on British peer, 'Lord' Janner:
UK 'Establishment': Unmasking psychopathic faces - Pedophilia and murder in VERY high place | |
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Aspen Times
2015-08-07 01:09:00
Taxpayers should not have to pay for private political events such as the one attended by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Tuesday outside Aspen, the sheriffs of Pitkin and Garfield counties said. "It's uncalled for," said Garfield County Sheriff Lou Vallario. "It's abuse. It's that political class attitude that thinks they're entitled to consume public resources. It's been a part of their life for so long." Pitkin County Sheriff Joe DiSalvo agreed, saying that he'd be happy to provide security to public events. But private fundraisers, such as the one Clinton attended Tuesday that cost $2,700 a head to attend, should be paid for by the campaigns, he said. "If she wants to go to the Red Onion and shake some hands, that's complimentary," DiSalvo said. "But that's not happening." DiSalvo said he supplied two deputies to escort Clinton and her entourage from Rifle, where her plane landed, to Aspen and back to Rifle. Three other deputies were on hand at Tuesday's fundraiser, held at the home of Soledad and Robert Hurst. Robert Hurst is the former vice chairman of Goldman Sachs and the current managing director of Crestview Advisors, a New York-based investment firm. DiSalvo said it cost taxpayers about $5,000 for Clinton's visit, which he admitted was not a lot of money. "I'm trying to set a precedent here to get paid," he said. "I have no mechanism to make them pay and I'll always help out the Secret Service. But I think the responsible thing to do is ask." And ask he did. | |
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Truthstream Media
2015-08-05 00:00:00
"When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy." Gilens & Page (2014) Remember the two guys that did the study which proved America is a oligarchy? (Not that those of us paying attention really needed a study to verify that.) Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders later even asked Fed Head Janet Yellen during a hearing on Capitol Hill if she thought America was an oligarchy; even she couldn't deny it. | |
Comment: Most politicians are owned by a handful of oligarchs, whose primary mission is the advancement of their interests regardless of the social consequences. Washington's elites also have a low opinion of the average American, believing that most are uninformed, misguided and that policy makers should ignore them. Democracy is just a word that politicians use freely to keep the wool pulled over the eyes of the unsuspecting sheeple, insuring that few realize the evil nature of those whose power and control keep them enslaved.
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| Society's Child |
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David Ferguson
Raw Story 2015-08-07 20:44:00
A lawyer for a former Utah State University fraternity member who is accused of multiple rapes said in the courtroom on Thursday that the accusers are just girls who got drunk and now regret having sex with his client. According to Salt Lake City's Fox 13 News, defense attorney Shannon Demler was responding to testimony by two women who said that Jason Brian Relopez sexually assaulted them in USU's Sigma Chi fraternity house. "Regret the next day of doing something stupid when you're drunk doesn't make rape, and it doesn't make aggravated sexual assault," Demler told the court, sparking outrage. One of the women, a 19-year-old who met Relopez at a barbecue said that she went back to his bedroom at the fraternity house to kiss, but once alone, Relopez slapped her, then punched her and choked her as he repeatedly raped her in spite of her protests. | |
Comment: One has to wonder how the attorney sleeps at night. What a sickening stance to take.
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Sputnik
2015-08-06 19:23:00
German farmers have been hit hard by the Russian food embargo. Their approximate losses range from 600 to 800 million euros, Der Tagesspiegel wrote. The Russian export market is "virtually lost" for Germany, the president of the German Farmers' Association Joachim Rukvid said, calling on the German authorities to make "every effort" to re-establish friendly relations with Russia. According to him, German farmers are suffering heavy losses due to the embargo. "After the introduction of sanctions, exports to Russia fell by half, reaching almost 900 million euros," Rukvid said, adding that the Russian export market had been one of Germany's largest only a couple of years ago. | |
Comment: Europe, in following the dictates of its master the U.S., is cutting off its nose to spite its face. If they had any independence and sovereignty, they would immediately end the foolish sanctions imposed on Russia and begin the process of healing both their economy and relationship with Russia.
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Stephen Lendman
Activist Post 2015-08-07 18:29:00
An earlier article discussed London Guardian revelations about Chicago police operating an "off-the-books (Homan Square) interrogation compound" - a "nondescript warehouse" using "CIA black site" practices. Police brutality victims are lawlessly arrested, detained, denied access to lawyers, and tortured during secret interrogations. From September 2004 to July 2015, only three arrestees were visited by attorneys. Unless all others waived their constitutional right, the facts show Chicago police lied saying "any individual who wishes to consult a lawyer will not be interrogated until they have an opportunity to do so." "An arrestee or person-in-custody will be notified as soon as practicable upon the arrival at the police facility of his or her legal representative." On August 5, the Guardian published a follow-up article titled "Chicago police detained thousands of black Americans at interrogation facility." A Guardian FOIA lawsuit revealed "overwhelming racial disparity" affecting Blacks unfairly, often for alleged offenses too minor to matter, never warranting detention and brutal interrogations. | |
Comment: See also:
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Jake Anderson
The Anti Media 2015-08-06 18:06:00
In a stunning example of how elected officials serve the interests of the corporatocracy,San Francisco Mayor Ed Hall suggested Wednesday that City Hall might soon feature digital advertisements. Hall's plan is to allow corporations to bid for advertising space on the east side of San Francisco's City Hall, where digital light displays could help attract revenue for the city. The technology for these displays would be privately funded by the company Osbcura Digital, which vows to spend $1.5 million on installation. The proposal stems from a July 27th letter from Real Estate Director of the city John Updike, who wrote to the city's Board of Directors: "We believe this display option can enhance special events held at City Hall, the Main Library and the Asian Art Museum, thus affording the city's General Fund a revenue opportunity from event sponsors." | |
Comment: Why not take it all the way with ads at the White House, the congresssional floor, the CDC, Pentagon and the rest? At least it would make it plain as to where their allegiances lie. Advertising fascism -- what a hoot!
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RT
2015-08-06 18:03:00
Newly revealed documents have shown that at least 3,500 Americans have been detained inside a Chicago police warehouse, 82 percent of whom were black. The site has been described by some as a secret interrogation facility. The Guardian reported in February that Chicago police were detaining people for days on end at a secret compound known as Homan Square - a facility which some lawyers have compared to the black sites operated by the CIA to interrogate terrorists. Now, five months after its initial report, the media outlet has obtained records which provide more insight into Homan Square. The information disclosed in the documents - obtained by the Guardian through the Freedom of Information Act - has raised concerns of civil rights violations. | |
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RT
2015-08-07 14:51:00
The Environmental Protection Agency is warning residents to keep away from a river in Colorado after accidentally spilling mine waste water into it. The EPA was investigating the abandoned Gold King Mine on Wednesday together with the state Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety, when they triggered the release of the waste into Cement Creek, a tributary of the Animas River in San Juan County. Ironically, the initial goal was to find a safe way to pump out the wastewater and treat it. | |
Comment: Health and environmental officials have said the wastewater contained zinc, iron, copper and other heavy metals.
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Tyler Durden
While the Fed is digesting what the X-13 Arima seasonally adjusted payrolls number means for the future of US interest rates, the devastation of the US labor force continues.Zerohedge 2015-08-07 14:16:00 In what was an "modestly" unpleasant July payrolls report, yet somewhat better than June's flagrant disappointment, the fact is that the number of Americans not in the labor force rose once again, this time by 144,000 to a record 93,770,000 million, with the result a participation rate of 62.6% which remains at a level more indicative of the September 1977 economy.
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Comment: This is not what an economic recovery looks like. This is one of many clear signs that a deflationary depression is headed our way soon.
Attempting to stave off the inevitable - nurturing a financial black hole | |
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Rob Sheffield
Rolling Stone 2015-08-03 01:37:00
America will miss Jon Stewart. But it's fair to say we miss him already, because his America is gone. The political climate — angrier, more bitter, more violently divided — is radically different from the one he signed up to make fun of. Political satire, as Stewart defined it on The Daily Show, requires him to appear equally tough on the left and the right. But that means he has to pretend there's such a thing as a moderate center. If his show got more predictable in the past few years — making the same jokes every night about the same Fox News/Tea Party bullshit — that's because America did too. And it clearly took a toll on him. "Watching these channels all day is incredibly depressing," he said recently. "I live in a constant state of depression." Stewart was a strange fit for The Daily Show, an already thriving franchise when he took over in 1999. His specialty was a sort of good-natured bro humor. He didn't do topical material. He looked uncomfortable in a suit and tie. If he'd ever had a political opinion, he kept it to himself. The transition was clumsier than anyone wants to remember. But there was a moment, early on in those first few months, when you could see things change — in retrospect, this was one of the pivot points of 21st-century TV culture. Stewart was doing a bit about the NYPD — then wracked by a scandal in which at least one cop sexually assaulted and tortured a black man with a toilet plunger — and its "CPR" motto: "Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect." Stewart said, "Although many officers tragically mistake it for 'Cram Plunger in Rectum.' " Then he winced — not a comedian's wince, not a jokey "sorry, folks" wince, just a reflexive flinch that said, "Wow, that was not fun at all." You could see he hated himself for that line, hated the handful of people in the audience who laughed — and was already telling himself, "Yeah, this is exactly what I'm not doing from now on." | |
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Indiana University Bloomington
2015-08-05 00:30:00
For generations, passionate kisses immortalized in movies, songs and the arts have served as a thermometer of romantic affection. But current research has found that not only is romantic kissing not the norm in most cultures, some find it uncomfortable and even flat-out repulsive. Justin Garcia, research scientist at Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, is the co-author of a new study published in the journal American Anthropologist -- "Is the Romantic-Sexual Kiss a Near Human Universal?" -- that looked at 168 cultures throughout the world to better understand where kissing does and doesn't occur. Using standard cross-cultural methods, the study found that fewer than half of all cultures surveyed -- 46 percent -- engage in romantic/sexual kissing. Romantic kissing was defined as lip-to-lip contact that may or may not be prolonged. "We hypothesized that some cultures would either not engage in romantic/sexual kissing, or find it to be a strange display of intimacy, but we were surprised to find that it was a majority of cultures that fell into this category," said Garcia, assistant professor of gender studies in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences. "This is a real reminder of how Western ethnocentrism can bias the way we think about human behavior." | |
Comment: Reference: W. R. Jankowiak, S. L. Volsche and J. R. Garcia, "Is the Romantic - Sexual Kiss a Near Human Universal?", American Anthropologist, 2015
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Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge 2015-08-04 23:40:00
Comment: A quite disturbing diatribe from a supposed leader in the black community. From Joe Quinn's recent article on the agenda behind America's 'color revolution': There appear to be two lines of force at work here; righteous anger by US citizens - particularly blacks - against overweening, intrusive and abusive police (state) authority and racism will not be tolerated, and may well get you murdered. But it will also be exploited on a broad scale by the same authorities to divide and control allAmericans. The increase in racist attacks over the past year, from New York (Eric Garner) to Ferguson (Mike Brown) to Baltimore (Freddie Gray) and Charleston (Dylann Roof's shooting spree), suggest that a particularly American brand of 'color revolution' may be in the works in the USA. After all, what better 'fault line' in the human psyche to exploit than the age-old and depressingly human tendency to allow themselves to be divided based on the color of their skin? While the US has had its share of deadly social violence over the past year, much of split along along racial lines, it has mercifully avoided a full-blown racial war. However, in recent weeks there has been a troubling increase in invocations toward even more violence, and even more deaths, which seek to achieve just that: a United States gripped in racial warfare. The latest such call for violence was caught on tape just a few days ago, when on July 30 during a speech delivered at Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Miami, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan called for black Americans to "rise up" and "kill those who kill us" if the federal government fails to "intercede in our affairs." Follows an excerpt from his troubling sermon: Recording below:
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| Secret History |
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Sarah Everts
Chemical & Engineering News 2015-08-03 00:00:00
Deep in the national library of France sits a 400-year-old recipe book, its pages jam-packed with handwritten instructions for producing ancient pigments, varnishes, colored metals, and fake gems; for casting coins, cannons, and jewelry; and for doing creative—if disturbing—taxidermy that merges cats with bats. The manuscript is a rarity: Although printed recipe books were relatively common in the 16thcentury, this text was the equivalent of a lab notebook for an ambitious, anonymous French craftsman, someone who didn't just collect useful recipes but actively tinkered with them, obsessively noting observations and protocol improvements in the margins. "The text is so unruly that you can't really read the manuscript—you have to decipher it," says Pamela H. Smith, a historian of science at Columbia University. Smith launched a project last September to transcribe, translate, and re-create recipes from a digitized version of this chaotic manual, whose banal name, "Ms. Fr. 640," belies its enticing contents. Funded by the National Science Foundation and dubbed the Making & KnowingProject, this venture has Columbia students systematically re-creating the book's recipes as part of their coursework. Over the next few years, the plan is to compile the results of these modern re-creations in an online portal. | |
Comment: We ignore ancient knowledge at our peril as recent discoveries of recipes from old manuscripts show that they are sometimes more efficacious than our modern medicine: Ancient Anglo-Saxon herbal potion found to kill MRSA
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| Science & Technology |
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Asian Scientist
2015-08-07 13:54:00
Researchers have proposed a model to predict financial crises using a multiplex network model in which debts with different priorities are mutually held by banks. Their results have been published in Physics. Although much research has been conducted on the risk of financial markets since the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008, most studies have adopted the information-cascade model, a simple model of information transmission through a network. However, a risk transmission model via more complicated structures is necessary because a real financial market has a multitude of overlapping transactions. When a financial institution goes bankrupt, creditors with high-priority bonds (called senior bonds) can be fully repaid from the institution's remaining assets, while lower-priority creditors (those with junior bonds) cannot. In the traditional financial crisis model, it has been unclear how the difference in non-repayment risk due to debt priorities affects systemic risk. | |
Comment: Also see "The Network of Global Corporate Control":
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RT
2015-08-06 14:58:00
A powerful lightning strike can create the kind of massive pressure needed to create shocked lamellae, atomic structures that were previously thought to result from a meteor impact, or a nuclear explosion. Such structures, which form under an estimated pressure of at least 10 gigapascals and lack of hot temperature, were first discovered when scientists studied blast sites of underground nuclear tests. Then it turned out that they are encountered worldwide in craters left by meteor impacts. Volcanoes cannot produce such pressure, so geologists long considered the presence of shocked quartz or other minerals as good evidence pointing to the impact origin of a crater. But according to a new study published in the journal American Mineralogist, bolts of lightning can induce the type of changes in atomic structure that create shocked minerals. "I think the most exciting thing about this study is just to see what lightning can do," co-author Reto Gieré of the University of Pennsylvania told PhysOrg. "To see that lightning literally melts the surface of a rock and changes crystal structures is fascinating." Gieré and his fellow mineralogists from the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, the GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization went to Les Pradals in southern France to study fulgurites. They are glass tubes that are left behind after lightning strikes sediment or rocks. | |
Comment: The book Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection shows how our atmosphere is filling up with cometary dust causing electric discharges, e.g. more lightning. See also:
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Emily DeMarco
Science Magazine / AAAS 2015-08-05 23:55:00
For some unlucky spiders, the zombie apocalypse is now. Some parasitic wasp larvae can take over their minds, forcing them to weave special webs the wasps use to support and protect their cocoons. A new study shows that the webs these particular zombie spiders weave are reinforced versions of the ones they normally use while molting, suggesting the wasps may be hijacking this pathway in the spiders' brains. The horror begins when a parasitic wasp dive-bombs a spider and stings it, causing temporary paralysis. The wasp then injects the spider with an egg or glues it to the spider's abdomen and flies off. After a few weeks, the egg hatches into a larva and starts to grow by making small holes in the spider's abdomen and sucking its blood. When it reaches the last stage of its development, the larva somehow induces the spider to spin a web on which it builds its cocoon—but not until it has killed the spider and sucked it dry. Comment: Any Resemblance to Actual Pathological Systems in our Societies, is Purely Coincidental... of course. | |
Comment: Reference: K. Takasuka et al. "Host manipulation by an ichneumonid spider ectoparasitoid that takes advantage of preprogrammed web-building behaviour for its cocoon protection", J Exp Biol 218, 2326-2332, 2015 (behind paywall)
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Laine Bergeson
D News 2015-08-05 21:18:00
In many parts of the world, the annual seasons come with their own colors - more green in the summer, more white and gray in the winter. Interestingly, the change of seasons may also affect how we perceive certain colors, according to new research published in Current Biology. The specific color in this case is yellow, and our eyes tend to interpret what 'real' yellow looks like as being different in the winter compared to summer. Yellow is one of four "unique hues" perceived by the human eye, along with blue, green, and red. This distinction means that these colors are read by the eye as 'pure' - or notmixed with any other colors. | |
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| Earth Changes |
Etienne Leinyuy, a second year student, was struck on August 4, 2015, while playing football. Etienne Leinyuy, a University of Buea student was struck dead on August 4, 2015 by a lightning bolt on the football field of Catholic School, Bajing, Tobin-Kumbo, in Bui Division of North West Region. At the time of the incident about 3:30 pm, the deceased, Cliford Leinyuy, the junior brother, and others were playing a game of football. According to Cliford Leinyuy, the strike tore Etienne's clothes and also burnt parts of his shoes. Other players who were lightly hit by the lightning bolt recovered from the shock soon after and did not have go to hospital. Cliford, a Form Four student, said after the lightning struck, he was the first person who rushed to his brother's assistance. He said the deceased murmured a few words to him which were not quite clear before he died while being rushed to hospital on a motorbike. The residence of Mrs. Florence Leinyuy, a widow, was filled with mourners and sympathisers soon after news of the son's death broke out. | |
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A heat wave that has already killed dozens and sickened thousands in Japan reached another torrid milestone Thursday as the nation's capital, Tokyo, suffered an unprecedented eighth consecutive day of extreme heat. Tokyo reached 36.7 degrees Celsius (98.1 degrees Fahrenheit) shortly before noon local time Friday, marking its eighth straight day of highs at or above Japan's "extreme heat" threshold of 35 C (95 F). An analysis of Japan Meteorological Agency data, conducted by The Weather Channel, confirmed that the previous record was just four consecutive days sent on five different occasions between 1978 and 2013. Records began in central Tokyo in June 1875. The torrid late-morning reading also marked central Tokyo's highest reported temperature since Aug. 30, 2013. The city's all-time record high remains 39.5 C (103.1 F) set July 20, 2004. The toll from Japan's ongoing heat wave accelerated last week, boosting the year's official tally to 55 heat-related deaths and sending more than 11,000 to the hospital according to new government figures released Tuesday. | |
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