~o ~o ~o SeMeN SPeRmS BLArRrG! o~ o~ o~ » Graffiti

Nothing But Nuggets

o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:24:00 +0000

✦ Teen who butchered 9-year-old neighbor wrote that killing was amazing, enjoyable in her journal before she went to church: “I just f—— killed someone. I strangled them and slit their throat and stabbed them now they’re dead. I don’t know how to feel atm. It was ahmazing. As soon as you get over the “ohmygawd I can’t do this” feeling, it’s pretty enjoyable. I’m kinda nervous and shaky though right now. Kay, I gotta go to church now…lol.” Thanks Jasmine
✦ GREAT (?) MOMENTS IN COMICS HISTORY: “MAD’S PUNK ROCK GROUP OF THE YEAR” (1978): But when it had one of its surges of brilliance, MAD was indeed a force to be reckoned with and if you were of the right age at the right time it was both eye opening and fucking hilarious, a good case in point being the hit-or-miss observations and social commentary found in the long-running “(FILL IN THE BLANK) OF THE YEAR” series. Two of those stand out in my memory as being absolutely vital in the forging of my sense of humor were “Mad’s Karate Movie Producer of the Year” (MAD #167, June 1974), a piss-your-pants moment of brilliance illustrated by Jack Davis during the height of the 1970′s martial arts movie boom, and issue #199′s (June 1978) poke at the British punk rock movement when it reared its Mohawked head over here in the States.
✦ Know your Rights!- right!?: Recently as I was doing some research I came across a designers site that had a rug for sale that had the exact style of my friend Keen One, I thought to myself how unlikely that he would do such a commercial project so I passed the link for confirmation. As it turned out it wasn’t an agreed upon collaboration but an artistic infringement by the designer. Since the work was painted on a wall in public they must have assumed the artist had no rights to said work since it may or may not have been legal and decided to use for their own commercial and financial gain.
✦ Play the Rings of a Tree Trunk Like a Record: What would the trunk of a tree sound like if a cross section of it were played like an LP? With his creation Years, Bartholomäus Traubeck attempts to answer that question by using a turntable, PlayStation Eye Camera, a stepper motor to control the arm, and computer running Ableton Live. As you’ll hear in the video above, the rings of the tree trunk, as interpreted by this piece, create an eerie and ominous piano track that sounds like it was taken from psychological horror film. Who knew trees were so emo?
✦ THE FAB 5 FREDDY DEBATE CONTINUES: Revok recently pulled Fab 5 Freddy’s card calling him a biter and a fraud (check Revok’s blog post HERE). This accusation has drew a line in the sand with people opposing and supporting Fred’s work. Today I received this harshly retarded email from Holland’s Shoe aka Niels Shoe Meulman…
✦ Fungi Discovered In The Amazon Will Eat Your Plastic: The Amazon is home to more species than almost anywhere else on earth. One of them, carried home recently by a group from Yale University, appears to be quite happy eating plastic in airless landfills. The group of students, part of Yale’s annual Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory with molecular biochemistry professor Scott Strobel, ventured to the jungles of Ecuador. The mission was to allow “students to experience the scientific inquiry process in a comprehensive and creative way.” The group searched for plants, and then cultured the microorganisms within the plant tissue. As it turns out, they brought back a fungus new to science with a voracious appetite for a global waste problem: polyurethane.
✦ Stealing in virtual world is theft in real life, top Dutch court rules: The amulet and mask were a 13-year-old boy’s virtual possessions in an online fantasy game. In the real world, he was beaten and threaten with a knife to give them up. The Dutch Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the theft conviction of a youth who stole another boy’s possessions in the popular online fantasy game RuneScape. Judges ordered the offender to perform 144 hours of community service. Only a handful of such cases have been heard in the world, and they have reached varying conclusions about the legal status of “virtual goods” — and whether stealing them is real-world theft. The suspect’s lawyer had argued the amulet and mask “were neither tangible nor material and, unlike for example electricity, had no economic value.”
✦ New Theory of Life Claims to Unite Fields of Science: The Earth is alive, asserts a new scientific theory of life emerging from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. The trans-disciplinary theory demonstrates that purportedly inanimate, non-living objects — for example, planets, water, proteins, and DNA — are animate, that is, alive.
✦ First ‘Heartless’ Man: You Don’t Really Need A Heart, Or A Pulse: Two doctors Billy Cohn and Bud Frazier from the Texas Heart Institute successfully replaced a dying man’s heart with a device—proving that it is possible for your body to be kept alive without a heart, or a pulse.
✦ Twitter news: US bars friends over Twitter joke: TWO pals were barred from entering the US after innocent tweets joking about “destroying America” were picked up by the country’s anti-terror cops. US special agents monitoring Twitter spotted Leigh Van Bryan’s messages weeks before he left for a holiday in Los Angeles with pal Emily Bunting. Leigh, who also quipped about “digging up Marilyn Monroe” on Twitter, said they were treated like terrorists on arrival at a Los Angeles International Airport. The pair were held by armed guards and quizzed for five hours before being handcuffed, put in a van with illegal immigrants and locked up overnight.
✦ Key Internet operator VeriSign hit by hackers: VeriSign Inc, the company in charge of delivering people safely to more than half the world’s websites, has been hacked repeatedly by outsiders who stole undisclosed information from the leading Internet infrastructure company. The previously unreported breaches occurred in 2010 at the Reston, Virginia-based company, which is ultimately responsible for the integrity of Web addresses ending in .com, .net and .gov.
✦ A Swarm of Nano Quadrotors [Video]: Experiments performed with a team of nano quadrotors at the GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania. Vehicles developed by KMel Robotics. Special thanks to Professor Daniel Lee for his support.
✦ 2,100 pounds of marijuana seized from fake AT&T; work truck: Two men are behind bars after authorities found more than a ton of marijuana inside a fake AT&T; work truck. It all happened off FM 490 just west of the Hidalgo County community of McCook. A Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) state trooper pulled over what appeared to be an AT&T; truck over for speeding 72 mph in a 60 mph zone. Driver Aaron Arrellano-Salgado fled on foot but was caught. Authorities found 189 bundles with 2,168 pounds of marijuana inside the cloned work truck. State troopers pulled over a second car driven by Wilfredo Garza-Salgado for running a stop sign nearby.
✦ Oriental riff: The Oriental riff, also known as the Asian riff or the Chinese riff, is a musical riff or phrase that has often been used as a trope or stereotype of orientalism in Western culture to represent the idea of the Orient, China, Japan or a generic East Asian theme by Western culture. The riff is sometimes accompanied by the sound of a gong.
✦ Police Raid 5-Story Bronx Marijuana Farm, 593 Plants Seized: Police raided a five-story Bronx building that they believe was being used as a marijuana farm with hundreds of plants in an elaborate growing system. A search warrant was executed at about 1 p.m. Tuesday at 610 Morris Park Ave., according to police. Investigators seized 593 plants, some as tall as seven feet, as well as 75 pounds of marijuana that had been cut, dried and packaged in plastic. Sources told NBC New York that each floor of the building was used for a different stage of growth for the plants. It had been outfitted with an intricate ventilation and hydration system. The seized plants and packages totaled about 1,550 pounds, police said. Investigators said about 50 to 60 pounds of marijuana were being produced each month for a value of about $250,000.
✦ Joan Rivers, 78, gets stoned in a carpark and is unable to drive home… and its all filmed for her reality show: Joan Rivers is not known as a shrinking violet. But the 78-year-old has taken things a step further by smoking a marijuana pipe in a carpark with her friend – and had it all filmed for her reality show. The comedian, known for her red carpet interviews at award shows, became so stoned, she was unable to drive home and later ended up fully clothed in a hot tub and drinking the water out of her shoe.
✦ Your cell phone is a government issued tracking device: Mobile phones have become a major part of our modern civilization. These hand-held computers have reached a level of sophistication that allows us to instantly communicate through text, voice and video. This same technology is also being used to amass a situational awareness and sensory system that will track you and the world around you. You and your cell phone are nodes in a grid of sensors that paints a virtual picture of the world.
✦ US ‘no-fly’ list of suspected terrorists doubles in 12 months: The size of the US government’s secret list of suspected terrorists who are banned from flying to or within the country has more than doubled in the past year. The no-fly list jumped from about 10,000 known or suspected terrorists one year ago to about 21,000, according to government figures. About 500 are US nationals. The flood of new names began after the failed Christmas 2009 bombing of a Detroit-bound jetliner when the US government lowered the standard for putting people on the list and scoured its files for anyone who qualified. “We learned a lot about the watchlisting process and made strong improvements, which continue to this day,” said Timothy Healy, director of the Terrorist Screening Centre, which produces the no-fly list.
✦Stacey Irvine, 17, collapses after eating only McDonald’s chicken nuggets since age 2: Ever since she was a toddler, Stacey Irvine has eaten little else but chicken nuggets and the occasional portion of chips. Now, at the age of 17, she has been warned by doctors to change her appalling diet or die. The factory worker – who says she has never tasted fresh fruit or vegetables – had to be taken to hospital earlier this week when she collapsed after struggling to breathe.
✦ Addicts’ cravings have different roots in men and women: When it comes to addiction, sex matters. A new brain imaging study by Yale School of Medicine researchers suggests stress robustly activates areas of the brain associated with craving in cocaine-dependent women, while drug cues activate similar brain regions in cocaine-dependent men. The study, expected to be published online Jan. 31 in the American Journal of Psychiatry, suggests men and women with cocaine dependence might benefit more from different treatment options.
✦ Missing Iraq $100 Million: Pentagon Unable to Account for Missing Iraqi Millions: The Pentagon doesn’t know what happened to more than $100 million in cash held at Saddam Hussein’s palace in Baghdad during the Iraq war, according to a new report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. What’s more, the Pentagon can’t find documents to explain what it spent as much as $1.7 billion on from funds held on behalf of the Iraqi government by the New York Federal Reserve, the report says. The missing records raise new questions about how the US government handled billions of dollars in Iraqi funds during the war. The new report, the latest in a multi-year investigation by the inspector general into missing money in Iraq, paints a picture of Pentagon officials digging through boxes of hard copy records looking for missing paper copies of Excel spreadsheets, monthly reports and other paper documents that should have been kept detailing what the money was spent on and why those expenditures were necessary. Apparently, there are no electronic records
✦ Cocaine accidentally sent to UN headquarters: Bags containing 16 kilogram of cocaine that Mexican drug traffickers recently lost has turned up in an unlikely place – the United Nations in New York. Two fake UN bags containing the drugs – which experts said had a street value of about $US2 million ($1.9 million) – set off a security alert when they were delivered, apparently by accident, to the global body’s headquarters. The bags, which had the UN symbol printed on them, were shipped from Mexico through the DHL delivery company’s centre in Cincinnati, Ohio, deputy commissioner Paul Browne of the New York Police Department said. But the bags had no address on them, nor any return to sender details. “It is my understanding that because there was no addressee, the DHL just thought, well, that’s the UN symbol so we should ship it on to UN headquarters and let them figure out who it was supposed to go to,” deputy commissioner Browne said.
✦ The Mercenary Techie Who Troubleshoots for Drug Dealers and Jealous Lovers: With Martin’s system, each crewmember gets a cell phone that operates using a prepaid SIM card; they also get a two-week plastic pill organizer filled with 14 SIM cards where the pills should be. Each SIM card, loaded with $50 worth of airtime, is attached to a different phone number and stores all contacts, text messages and call histories associated with that number, like a removable hard drive. This makes a new SIM card effectively a new phone. Every morning, each crewmember swaps out his phone’s card for the card in next day’s compartment in the pill organizers. After all 14 cards are used, they start over at the first one.
✦ Student receives free cocaine with Amazon textbook order: A US university student discovered a package of cocaine in a pre-owned textbook she bought from online retailer Amazon.com. Sophia Stockton, a junior at Mid-America Nazarene University in Olathe, Kansas, ordered a textbook called Terrorism: Challenges, Perspectives and Issues through Amazon.com for a spring course on terrorism. After flipping through the pages of the just received textbook a bag of ‘white powder’ fell to the ground. Stockton initially thought that it was Anthrax and took the book and bag to the Gardner police station after classes and was surprised she had been shipped $400 worth of cocaine. She told WPTV: I told them white powder was in my terrorism textbook and so I put it on the table and they’re like, ‘oh, okay,’ And so he went back and tested it, He comes back and says, ‘you didn’t happen to order some cocaine with your textbook, did you?’ And I was like, no!
✦ New designer drug ‘Roflcoptr’ hits UK dance floors: The new ‘rave drug’ is called Roflcoptr, which is a street-speak acronym for “Roll On the Floor Laughing Crapping Our Pants Totally Ruined”. An alternative name is “mket” (which is a truncation of the full chemical name, as described below). Like other drugs linked to electronica and other forms of club / dance music, the physiological affect is to produce a state of euphoria and sometimes have hallucinogenic properties. The basis of the new substance is the chemical methoxetamine (and which has a very long chemical name: 2-(3-methoxyphenyl)-2-(ethylamino)cyclohexanone). The chemical takes the form of a white powder. The user snorts the powder.
✦ Drug war hypocrisy: drug trafficking’s big money benefits Big Brother and corrupt banksters: The hypocrisy of the war on drugs is outrageous when compared to the amount of drug trafficking that benefits the CIA and international banking system. The son of a convicted notorious mobster, John Gotti Jr, when asked in court if the family still dealt drugs cracked, “No, we can’t compete with the government.” Today in Afghanistan, American troops have been seen guarding poppy fields used to make heroin. Those fields were all but wiped out by 2001 when the Taliban destroyed them and forbade that agricultural pursuit. Now they’re flourishing again after the American occupation. This doesn’t make sense despite all the mainstream reports that American troops are protecting the poppy farmers from the bad guys. Internet sites such as Prison Planet, Info Wars, The Political Coffeehouse and others report otherwise. They connect the CIA and US military to restarting the poppy fields in Afghanistan in 2002, increasing poppy growth by over 650 percent. Who’s telling it like it is?
✦ Discipline recommended in Air Force whistle-blower case: The U.S. Office of Special Counsel said Tuesday it has recommended disciplinary action against three Air Force officials after concluding they retaliated against four civilian mortuary workers at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for disclosing that remains of fallen troops had been mishandled.
✦ Peacemaker: Lauderdale police put trouble spots under surveillance with Big Brother truck: Tania Ouaknine is convinced the police are watching her. She’s not paranoid — it says as much on the red sign painted along the side on the hulking armored truck that’s been parked in front of her eight-room Parisian Motel for several days. “Warning: You are under video surveillance,” reads the bold message on the side of the truck. From the front bumper of the menacing vehicle, another sign taunts: “Whatcha gonna do when we come for you?” The truck is a new weapon for the Fort Lauderdale Police Department in the fight against drugs and neighborhood nuisances, and it looks like a Winnebago on steroids. They call it “The Peacemaker,” and it may be a first in South Florida.
✦ Facebook IPO: What happens if Mark Zuckerberg were to die?: “In the event that Mr. Zuckerberg controls our company at the time of his death, control may be transferred to a person or entity that he designates as his successor. As a board member and officer, Mr. Zuckerberg owes a fiduciary duty to our stockholders and must act in good faith in a manner he reasonably believes to be in the best interests of our stockholders.”
✦ Teacher abused students during class, detective says: Investigators recovered photos from the film processing store and Mark Berndt’s home that allegedly showed the students bound and blindfolded and some with large Madagascar cockroaches crawling on them inside the school setting, Scott said. Scott said girls were allegedly photographed with a blue spoon holding a white substance near their mouths. Investigators said they believe that substance was Berndt’s semen and that he had the girls consume it. Thanks Jasmine
✦ 9-Eyes: Collection of strange Google Street View screenshots
✦ Early 70′s LA Gang Graffiti: Howard Gribble: When these photographs of Chicano “placas” (wall writing) were made in the early 1970s gangs and their graffiti were a mysterious presence that few understood — if they were aware of them at all. In the thirty plus years since the popular media and entertainment industry have repeatedly spotlighted the subject to the point that the gangsta culture has become a pervasive part of our society. The original gangster graffiti of this period was of a purer form than that seen today, with much emphasis on artistic flourishes. These pieces could last for years in the days before municipilaties instituted aggresive graffiti removal programs that quickly remove them from view — often overnight. This is, of course, still vandalism but from an earlier and more innocent time.
✦ ALIEN or HUMAN born with PIGS BODY….you decide. [Video]

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FBI vs ODB

o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:58:40 +0000



✰ I Got Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s FBI File: Some gems include: “The WTC is heavily involved in the sale of drugs, illegal guns, weapons possession, murder, carjacking and other types of violent crime.” [p5] Connections to the murder of Robert “Pooh” Johnson and Jerome “Boo Boo” Estrella. [p6] Connection to murder of Ishamael “Hoody” Kourma. [p13] A shoot-out with the NYPD. [p15] Arrest for felony possession of body armour. [p16] Connections to the Bloods Gang. [p17] Found in possession of large bags full of paper currency. [p40] Details of his being robbed and shot while staying in the Kingston projects. [p45]
✰ Heroin in a burrito allegedly smuggled by L.A. County deputy into courthouse jail: In a sign of how serious officials consider the smuggling problem to be, the Sheriff’s Department recently recorded a former deputy, now in state prison, as he explained what led him to help inmates sneak in heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine. In the video, Peter Felix tearfully recounts from behind bars how his fall from grace started with taking a burrito to an inmate. The video is meant to serve as a cautionary tale for other deputies. In Marin’s case, prosecutors allege that at least two other unnamed individuals conspired with him. According to the indictment, one of those individuals contacted the other to discuss using a deputy to get narcotics into the Airport Courthouse jail. Several days later, the two met at a sheriff’s jailhouse. One instructed the other to get the drugs and stuff them into a “food item,” the indictment states.
✰ Man surrenders 94 hamsters to MSPCA: More than 90 hamsters were found in one man’s apartment, well-cared for and kept in aquariums, buckets and Tupperware containers. The Boehm Street man had 94 hamsters in total and decided on his own it was just too many. He went to the MSPCA’s Small Animal Shelter at Nevins Farm in Methuen last week to let officials there know he had a large number of hamsters he wanted to surrender. “The situation was not dire, so we asked him to wait a week so we could prepare for them,” said Mike Keiley, director at the Methuen shelter.
✰ Cocaine: The New Front Lines: Since 2000, cultivation of coca leaves—cocaine’s raw material—plunged 65% in Colombia, to 141,000 acres in 2010, according to United Nations figures. In the same period, cultivation surged more than 40% in Peru, to 151,000 acres, and more than doubled in Bolivia, to 77,000 acres. More important, Bolivia and Peru are now making street-ready cocaine, whereas they once mostly supplied raw ingredients for processing in Colombia. In 2010, Peru may have passed Colombia as the world’s biggest producer, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Between 2009 and 2010, Peru’s potential to produce cocaine grew 44%, to 325 metric tons. In 2010, Colombia’s potential production was 270 metric tons.
✰ Mother jailed for raping daughter in bizarre sex education lessons: A MOTHER of four who subjected her 11-year-old daughter to a “bizarre sex education” was jailed for four years yesterday. The 37-year-old Sunshine Coast mother used her mobile phone to create three films showing her raping her youngest child and exposed her to other sexual activity “in response to repeated questions”. Judge John Robertson said the mother, through her “selfish criminal conduct”, had deprived her daughter of the right to “a wholesome and loving relationship with her mother”. He said while sexual offences against children by their own mothers were “rare”, the community acting through the courts should denounce “this shocking conduct” with a significant punishment.
✰ Breast Augmentation with Saline breast implants: This 23 year old patient from Menifee, California (Riverside County) had always been self conscience about her left breast. It seemed as if she had an additional breast and nipple on that left side. She had been thinking about breast augmentation surgery for quite a while but wanted to find a board certified plastic surgeon who would also address her 3rd breast on the left side. This condition is known as a supernumerary breast tissue which are a common minor congenital malformation that consists of nipples and/or related tissue in addition to the 2 nipples normally appearing on the chest.
✰ Accessory breast tissue: A 27-year-old woman presented with a soft, non-tender lump in the right groin, with cyclical pain during menstruation. After surgical excision, histopathology revealed normal breast tissue. Accessory breasts occur in 0·4-6% of women along the milk line which runs from axilla to groin.
✰ 5 more dirty tricks: Social engineers’ latest pick-up lines: You may now be savvy enough to know that when a friend reaches out on Facebook and says they’ve been mugged in London and are in desperate need of cash, that it’s a scam. But social engineers, the criminals that pull off these kinds of ploys by trying to trick you, are one step ahead. Social engineering attacks are getting more specific, according to Chris Hadnagy author of Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking. “Targeted attacks are earning social engineers better results,” he said. What that means is they may need to do more work to find out personal information, and it may take longer, but the payoff is often larger. “Attacks now are not just a broad spam effort, sending out a million emails with an offer for Viagra,” said Hadnagy. “These are now individual attacks where they are going after people one by one.”
✰ Top 20 arguments having a dog causes families: A new study shows ‘man’s best friend’ can also be his worst enemy as it triggers up to three rows every single day. That’s the equivalent of 156 quarrels every year – or 1,997 over the average pooch’s life expectancy of 12.8 years. And the spats range from disagreeing about who should take the dog for a walk, feeding them too many treats and what to do with them when going away.
✰ Grisly find reveals Indonesia’s fixation with black magic: In all, the graves of 24 children had been exhumed on the same night in a co-ordinated action. Police have yet to make an arrest and the investigation continues, but few are in doubt about the motivation of the grave robbers. ”It was for black magic,” Sapari says. ”Maybe for immunity, or strength … or maybe to make yourself disappear.” Ki Kusumo, anointed by several magazines as Indonesia’s most popular paranormal, says: ”There are plenty of cases like this. It’s just that they don’t always make the media.” He says deceased virgin teenage girls are particularly sought after and ”families have to guard the tomb for 40 days” after burial. In Indramayu in West Java, he says he knows of babies born on an auspicious day in the Javanese calendar being kidnapped and beheaded. ”The heads are buried in the front of the person’s house. They believe, this way, they will become wealthy.”
✰ Not Just the Wendrows: Sex Abuse Cases Dismissed After Facilitated Communication: In the early 1990s, the Wheatons were part of a disturbing trend: families whose autistic children accused them of sexual abuse — allegations leveled through a technique called facilitated communication. The technique involves a trained person called a facilitator, who holds a disabled person’s arm while they type on a keyboard. But in case after case, charges against accused parents were dropped or dismissed and questions were raised about whether facilitators were, in fact, guiding their young clients to type the unthinkable accusations. The cases caught the attention of the American Psychological Association. In 1994, the association deemed the technique an “unproved communicative procedure with no scientifically demonstrated support for its efficacy,” a position it continues to stand behind today.
✰ Woman says her fake penis got her fired: IS THAT a Fruit-A-Freeze in your pocket – or are you just happy to see me? A northeastern Pennsylvania woman is suing a South Jersey-based maker of frozen treats and other snack foods, claiming that she was wrongfully fired because she wore a prosthetic penis to work. Pauline Davis, 45, wore the device to the J&J; Snack Foods plant in Moosic, Lackawanna County, while she contemplated a gender change, according to a federal civil-rights complaint filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Scranton. She confided in several co-workers about the device, and someone told management, according to the complaint. She subsequently was fired from her job as a packer/line inspector. Her termination, she claims, was discriminatory because a male co-worker who wore female clothing and prostheses and took hormone treatments was not fired nor disciplined.
✰ Girls Licking Doorknobs: It seems like Japan is in the news, more often than not, for bizarre activities. The latest that’s making waves on the internet is a Tumblr blog with pictures of girls licking doorknobs. The work belongs to illustrator Ryuko Azuma, who says the idea started as many good ones do – with a drunken tweet. Famous for his sexy, edgy drawings, one night he tweeted that a collection of photos of a girl licking a doorknob would be a big hit. Azuma says he wouldn’t have done anything about it if the tweet had gone unnoticed. But as luck would have it, it didn’t. A 21-year-old photographer, Ai Ehara, replied to the tweet and that was how the ‘Doorknob Girl’ was launched. Ehara herself posed as the first Doorknob Girl, but when the site went viral, they began to hire several other models for the job. According to Ehara the idea was ‘extraordinarily unusual’.
✰ Man’s marimba iPhone ring stops Mahler symphony dead: “The symphony ends incredibly quietly so there was literally no way that we could go on, Gilbert told NBC News. “So I stopped the music and I asked the general vicinity where the sound was coming from ‘please turn off your cellphone.’ And I had to ask several times…” In the ensuing pause, some in the audience reportedly called for blood, shouting: ”Kick him out!” and “$1,000 fine!” the witness recounted. Gilbert quietly employed shame until the offender — described as an elderly man by another blogger — confirmed that the phone was off. Before continuing with the concert, Gilbert apologized and explained that normally it’s best to ignore such disturbances, but he said this was “so egregious that I could not allow it.” This was the first time Gilbert has stopped the orchestra for a violation of the “cell-phones off” rule, a media contact at the symphony said, but at least the second time that it has happened in the symphony’s history.
✰ Shithouse Restaurant serves dinners in mini-toilets: Co-owner Feng Lu said: ‘We had the idea when we were discussing one of the worst restaurants we’d ever eaten in and one of us said it had been a real toilet. So we decided to see if we could make a restaurant that was just one big toilet.
✰ Deal reached in case of accused phony doctor offering breast exams: At the time of Winikoff’s arrest, the Broward Sheriff’s Office said he carried a little black bag to lend credibility to his claim of being a doctor. The first victim, 36 at the time, told detectives he started the exam by fondling her breasts, and she knew something was wrong when his hands wandered elsewhere.
✰ Swastika Earrings Reportedly No Longer For Sale At Brooklyn Jewelry Store: New York City Councilman Steve Levin, D-Brooklyn, visited Bejeweled in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, on Wednesday and met with owner Young Sook Kim, who agreed to remove them from the shelves, the Daily News reports. A day earlier, politicians and advocates told FoxNews.com that the earrings were the latest example of anti-Semitism in New York and New Jersey. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer demanded that the store immediately stop selling them. “Let me be clear — a swastika is not a fashion statement,” Stringer said in a statement to FoxNews.com. “It is the most hateful symbol in our culture, and an insult to any civilized person.” But the store’s manager defended the $5.99 earrings, saying the swastika is a symbol of eternity in Tibetan Buddhism, not just a symbol popularized by Nazi Germany. “It’s not a Nazi symbol,” Kim told FoxNews.com on Wednesday. “I don’t know what’s the problem. My earrings are coming from India as a Buddhist symbol.”
✰ ‘Anti-semitic’ car bombs were motivated by insurance fraud NOT racial hatred, say police: When a number of cars were firebombed in a Jewish neighbourhood, with racist graffiti nearby, police assumed that they were dealing with a hate crime. Community leaders were so outraged by the apparent anti-semitism in Midwood, an area of Brooklyn, that they organised a march against hate attended by more than 100 residents. But now police say that the cars were in fact torched as part of an insurance scam, and the abhorrent graffiti – including swastikas scrawled in the street – was an attempt by the fraudsters to cover their tracks.
✰ In Which Eben Moglen Like, Legit Yells at Me for Having Facebook: That’s the consequence of social media structures which encourage people to share using centralized databases, and everything they share is held by someone who is no friend of theirs who also runs the servers and collects the logs which contain all the information about who accesses what, the consequences of which is that we are creating systems of comprehensive surveillance in which a billion people are involved and those people’s lives are being lived under a kind of scrutiny which no secret police service is the 20th century could ever have aspired to achieve. And all of that data is being collected and sold by people whose goal it is to make a profit selling the ability to control human beings by knowing more about themselves than they know. Okay? That’s true of all this information all the time everywhere. The thing you’re working on is simply one of 100,000 implications of that disaster.
✰ Salmon DNA used in data storage device: Salmon … they’re good to eat, provide a livelihood for fishermen, are an important part of their ecosystem, and now it seems that they can store data. More specifically, their DNA can. Scientists from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany have created a “write-once-read-many-times” (WORM) memory device, that combines electrodes, silver nanoparticles, and salmon DNA. While the current device is simply a proof-of-concept model, the researchers have stated that DNA could turn out to be a less expensive alternative to traditional inorganic materials such as silicon. The device is made up of a thin film of salmon DNA that has been impregnated with silver atoms, then sandwiched between two electrodes. When UV light is shone onto the system, the atoms cluster together into nanoparticles.
✰ Questions, perception prompt burger chains to ditch product ‘Pink Slime’: McDonald’s and two other fast-food chains have stopped using an ammonia-treated burger ingredient that meat industry critics deride as “pink slime.” The product remains widely used as low-fat beef filling in burger meat, including in school meals. But some consumer advocates worry that attacks on the product by food activist Jamie Oliver and others will discourage food manufacturers from developing new methods of keeping deadly pathogens out of their products.
✰ Bacon linked to higher risk of pancreatic cancer, says report: Eating 50g of processed meat every day – the equivalent to one sausage or two rashers of bacon – increases the risk by 19%, compared to people who do not eat processed meat at all. For people consuming double this amount of processed meat (100g), the increased risk jumps to 38%, and is 57% for those eating 150g a day. But experts cautioned that the overall risk of pancreatic cancer was relatively low – in the UK, the lifetime risk of developing the disease is one in 77 for men and one in 79 for women.
✰ Iran Sentences Alleged Video Game Developer ‘Spy’ to Death [UPDATE]: “After (working for DARPA), I went to Kuma (Games Company),” Hekmati was quoted as saying as part of his December “confession” according to Iran’s Tehran Times. “This computer company was receiving money from the CIA to (produce) and design and distribute for free special movies and games with the aim of manipulating public opinion in the Middle East. The goal of the company in question was to convince the people of Iran and the people of the entire world that whatever the U.S. does in other countries is a good measure.”
✰ Who Is Flying Unmanned Aircraft in the U.S.?: “Drones give the government and other unmanned aircraft operators a powerful new surveillance tool to gather extensive and intrusive data on Americans’ movements and activities,” said EFF Staff Attorney Jennifer Lynch. “As the government begins to make policy decisions about the use of these aircraft, the public needs to know more about how and why these drones are being used to surveil United States citizens.”
✰ IBM smashes Moore’s Law, cuts bit size to 12 atoms: IBM announced Thursday that after five years of work, its researchers have been able to reduce from about one million to 12 the number of atoms required to create a bit of data. The breakthrough may someday allow data storage hardware manufacturers to produce products with capacities that are orders of magnitude greater than today’s hard disk and flash drives. “Looking at this conservatively … instead of 1TB on a device you’d have 100TB to 150TB. Instead of being able to store all your songs on a drive, you’d be able to have all your videos on the device,” said Andreas Heinrich, IBM Research Staff Member and lead investigator on this project.
✰ Man hides 38 caliber pistol up him Rectum in jail [Video]: A man wanted for murder in the Atlanta area was found with a gun in his jail cell, and lawmen believe he had that weapon hidden in his rectum when he was booked into jail. Michael Ward remains in the Onslow County jail after his arrest Monday morning. Deputies say the gun measures 10 inches, including a 4-1/2 inch barrel. Deputies say that Ward was searched and strip searched before he was placed into a holding cell. Jailers also made Ward perform what they call a “squat and cough” procedure.
✰ Comprehensive Experimental Analyses of Automotive Attack Surfaces [PDF]: Modern automobiles are pervasively computerized, and hence potentially vulnerable to attack. However, while previous research has shown that the internal networks within some modern cars are insecure, the associated threat model —requiring prior physical access—has justiﬁably been viewed as unrealistic. Thus, it remains an open question if automobiles can also be susceptible to remote compromise. Our work seeks to put this question to rest by systematically analyzing the external attack surface of a modern automobile. We discover that remote exploitation is feasible via a broad range of attack vectors (including mechanics tools, CD players, Bluetooth and cellular radio), and further, that wireless communications channels allow long distance vehicle control, location tracking, in-cabin audio exﬁltration and theft. Finally, we discuss the structural characteristics of the automotive ecosystem that give rise to such problems and highlight the practical challenges in mitigating them
✰ The hidden danger of touchscreens: Ergonomic risks are not new to computer users. Laptops and netbooks, whose sales now outnumber desktop computers by more than two to one, pose their own health-related problems. But the rise of the touchscreen means both new kinds of health hazards and more usage in risky scenarios.
✰ Halle Berry plays a white woman in Cloud Atlas: White actors “blacking up” for a role has become taboo, but Halle Berry is happy to do the opposite. The black American actress agreed to “white up” for her performance in a forthcoming adaptation of David Mitchell’s acclaimed novel Cloud Atlas.
✰ Milky Way Crammed With 100 Billion Alien Worlds?: Last year, using the exoplanets discovered by the Kepler space telescope as a guide, astronomers took a statistical stab at estimating the number of exoplanets that exist in our galaxy. They came up with at least 50 billion alien worlds. Today, astronomers from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md., and the PLANET (Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork) collaboration have taken their own stab at the “galactic exoplanetary estimate” and think there are at least 100 billion worlds knocking around the Milky Way. Why has the estimate doubled? The key difference here are the methods used to detect alien worlds orbiting distant stars.
✰ The New York Times public editor’s very public utterance: Thursday, Arthur Brisbane, the public editor of the New York Times, went to his readers with a question: “I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge ‘facts’ that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.” Brisbane (who, as public editor, speaks only for himself, not the Times) referred to two recent stories: the claim that Clarence Thomas had “misunderstood” a financial reporting form when he left out key information, and Mitt Romney’s assertion that President Obama gives speeches “apologising” for America. Brisbane asked whether news reporters should have the freedom to investigate and respond to those comments. The reaction from readers was swift, voluminous, negative and incredulous. “Is this a joke? THIS IS YOUR JOB.” “If the purpose of the NYT is to be an inoffensive container for ad copy, then by all means continue to do nothing more than paraphrase those press releases.”
✰ Totally drug-resistant TB emerges in India: Physicians in India have identified a form of incurable tuberculosis there, raising further concerns over increasing drug resistance to the disease1. Although reports call this latest form a “new entity”, researchers suggest that it is instead another development in a long-standing problem. The discovery makes India the third country in which a completely drug-resistant form of the disease has emerged, following cases documented in Italy in 20072 and Iran in 20093. However, data on the disease, dubbed totally drug-resistant tuberculosis (TDR-TB), are sparse, and official accounts may not provide an adequate indication of its prevalence. Giovanni Migliori, director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases in Tradate, Italy, suggests that TDR-TB is a deadlier iteration of the highly resistant forms of TB that have been increasingly reported over the past decade. “Totally resistant TB is not new at all,” he says.
✰ Network [Video]: Information technology has become a ubiquitous presence. By visualizing the processes that underlie our interactions with this technology we can trace what happens to the information we feed into the network.
✰ Drake Confronts LA Face Tattoo Artist: My whole deal with people wanting completely outrageous and potentially life-ruining tattoos is this: I’ll ask them three times if they really think it’s a good idea, I tell them what the potential consequences of getting a tattoo on their face might be, and after that, the bad decision is on them. I believe that people get the tattoos that they deserve…I guess I feel bad that this dumbass got the name of the softest motherfucker in hip-hop tattooed on her forehead. But what makes that any less valid of a tattoo to her?… I lost a little sleep over it that first night, wondering if I wanted to be known as the asshole who tattooed “DRAKE” on some crackhead’s forehead.
✰ Sir Isaac Newton’s Occult Studies Online: it took me awhile to search online for Newton’s occult writings about the Philosopher’s Stone (the mythical element that would turn lead to gold and provide a means to immortality), the Tarot, astrology, alchemy, magic, and the end of the world. Newton also wrote of Atlantis in his Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms. He concealed these works to avoid criticism. When he died, these papers were considered ‘unfit to publish.’ When they finally surfaced in 1936 after being kept for centuries in the Earl of Portsmouth’s attic, they were auctioned. One of the people who eagerly bought and read Newton’s secret writings was John Maynard Keynes – there’s some food for thought as the world’s economic crisis deepens. After reading them, Keynes reportedly said, “Newton was not the first of the age of reason, he was the last of the magicians.”
✰ Hitler reacts to SOPA. [Video]: “Don’t cry, Disney owns the right to that emotion.”
✰ Juicing medical marijuana the latest trend in amazing cures: The current methods of taking in medical marijuana include: Smoking, vaporizing, ingesting edibles, and reducing THC hemp into a vial of concentrated hemp oil. They all have healing qualities, but the concentrated hemp oil that Rick Simpson discovered seems to have been the most efficacious form of medical marijuana, at least up to now (http://www.naturalnews.com/027756_cancer_cure_Big_Pharma.html). Now it appears that Dr. William Courtney, MD, has discovered the best way to take in CBDs and other beneficial cannabinoids without the THC becoming psychoactive even though it’s still in the plant: Eating or juicing the whole raw marijuana plant. Dr. Courtney explains that heating marijuana destroys enzymes and excites the THC’s psychoactive effects. But if ingested raw the CBD takes over, and dramatic healing activity occurs without the high.
✰ Is the Head of One Tyrant Worth the Lives of Millions?: Is the head of one tyrant worth the lives of millions and the pain of billions? Sadly, throughout the most of history people have been convinced that this is a fair trade, and that the ends somehow justify the means. Unfortunately, the only ends in any war are violence, murder and a total decline in civilization. Maybe some oil companies get some contracts, some arms manufacturers get some sales and some governments pick up some land, but nothing is ever really accomplished in war. A war with Iran is no different, it will do nothing but bring more pain to the innocent people of this world and ensure that the United States will repeat the same fate suffered by the ancient Roman Empire.
✰ Rick Santorum’s End Times Theory About a Nuclear Iran: While talking about Iran—whose nuclear facilities the former Pennsylvania senator recently said he would bomb if they weren’t opened to international arms inspectors—Santorum noted that one of the regime’s enrichment facilities is located near the city of Qom, home to the Jamkaran mosque, which houses an ancient well considered sacred to some Shia Muslims. According to local belief, Santorum said, the Mahdi—”he’s the equivalent in some respects to a Jesus figure—was going to come back at the end of times and lead Shia Islam to the ruin of the world and peace and justice. That’s what their end of times scenario is.” He continued: Well he comes back at a time of great chaos. So there are many who speculate that there are folks over in Iran who wouldn’t mind creating a time of great chaos for religious reasons. And the fact they built this nuclear program in the city next to where this man is supposed to return leads one to the think that there may be more to it…
✰ Tweeting the word ‘drill’ could mean your Twitter account is read by government spies: Simply using a word or phrase from the DHS’s ‘watch’ list could mean that spies from the government read your posts, investigate your account, and attempt to identify you from it, acccording to an online privacy group. The words which attract attention range from ones seemingly related to diseases or bioweapons such as ‘human to animal’ and ‘outbreak’ to other, more obscure words such as ‘drill’ and ‘strain’. The DHS also watches for words such as ‘illegal immigrant’. The DHS outlined plans to scans blogs, Twitter and Facebook for words such as ‘illegal immigrant’, ‘outbreak’, ‘drill’, ‘strain’, ‘virus’, ‘recovery’, ‘deaths’, ‘collapse’, ‘human to animal’ and ‘trojan’, according to an ‘impact asssessment’ document filed by the agency. When its search tools net an account using the phrases, they record personal information.
✰ The New York Times misleading public on Iran: The claim that there is “a recent assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran’s nuclear programme has a military objective” is misguided. As Washington Post’s Ombudsman Patrick Pexton noted on December 9: But the IAEA report does not say Iran has a bomb, nor does it say it is building one, only that its multiyear effort pursuing nuclear technology is sophisticated and broad enough that it could be consistent with building a bomb. Indeed, if you try now to find the offending paragraph on the New York Times website, you can’t. They took it down. But there is no note, like there is supposed to be, acknowledging that they changed the article, and that there was something wrong with it before. Sneaky, huh?
✰ World’s worst places: Top 10 places you do not want to visit in 2012: The places on this list are the bad places. Some have run out of hope. Others have fought war for so long it is the new normal. Most are exceptionally dangerous and heartbreaking. And while none of them are fighting for write-ups by travel bloggers or inspiring travel with the NetJet set, some of these locations may someday be on the travel map. After all, it was not long ago that current hot-spots like Cambodia and Croatia would have made such a list.
✰ ‘Doomsday Clock’ Ticks One Minute Toward Destruction: In a sign of pessimism about humanity’s future, scientists today set the hands of the infamous “Doomsday Clock” forward one minute from two years ago. “It is now five minutes to midnight,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) director Kennette Benedict announced today (Jan. 10) at a press conference in Washington, D.C. That represents a symbolic step closer to doomsday, a change from the clock’s previous mark of six minutes to midnight, set in January 2010. The clock is a symbol of the threat of humanity’s imminent destruction from nuclear or biological weapons, climate change and other human-caused disasters. In making their deliberations about how to update the clock’s time, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists focused on the current state of nuclear arsenals around the globe, disastrous events such as the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, and biosecurity issues such as the creation of an airborne H5N1 flu strain
✰ Mass Suicide Threats at Xbox 360 Plant: On Jan. 2, over 300 employees at a Foxconn plan in Wuhan, China threatened to throw themselves off a building in a mass suicide. Foxconn makes Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony products. These workers manufacture Xbox 360s. According to Chinese anti-government website China Jasmine Revolution (via Watch China Times), the workers were protesting denied compensation they were promised. On Jan. 2, the workers asked for a raise. Foxconn told them they could either keep their jobs with no pay increase or quit and get compensation. Most decided to quit with compensation. However, the agreement was supposedly terminated, and the workers never received their payments. Website Record China reported that the uproar the incident actually caused Xbox 360 production to be temporarily suspended. The mayor of Wuhan intervened to talk down the group down, and on Jan. 3 at 9pm, the group of 300 decided not to jump, ending what could have been a deadly game of chicken.
✰ My Guantánamo Nightmare: ON Wednesday, America’s detention camp at Guantánamo Bay will have been open for 10 years. For seven of them, I was held there without explanation or charge. During that time my daughters grew up without me. They were toddlers when I was imprisoned, and were never allowed to visit or speak to me by phone. Most of their letters were returned as “undeliverable,” and the few that I received were so thoroughly and thoughtlessly censored that their messages of love and support were lost. Some American politicians say that people at Guantánamo are terrorists, but I have never been a terrorist. Had I been brought before a court when I was seized, my children’s lives would not have been torn apart, and my family would not have been thrown into poverty. It was only after the United States Supreme Court ordered the government to defend its actions before a federal judge that I was finally able to clear my name and be with them again.
✰ Warren Jeffs bans sex in his fundamentalist Mormon congregation until he gets out of prison (He’s serving a life sentence plus 20 years): Warren Jeffs, the convicted rapist leader of a fundamentalist Mormon cult, has banned sex until he gets out of prison. Jeffs is serving a life sentence plus 20 years in Texas after he was convicted of raping a 12 and a 15-year-old girl. He has already kicked one member who dared to sleep with his own wife after Jeffs declared that all marriages are void until he can return and ‘seal’ them. ‘He has predicted that the walls in the prison where he’s at will fall and crumble,’ Joni Holm, who has many relatives in the polygamous sect, told the Desert News. Thanks Jasmine.

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20/20 Report Hip-Hop Special (1981)

o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 22:12:16 +0000

One in a Million

o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 02:57:14 +0000

➪ The Most Bizarre Use for Michael Jackson’s Old Hair Ever: Today the gambling website OnlineGamblingPal.com dropped $10,871 for a sample of entombed pop star Michael Jackson’s old hair. Why so much? Because that’s the going market rate for the amount of Michael Jackson hair you see in the photo. Also, they saw the hairball’s potential—as a roulette ball.
➪ Hey Kids! See the 10 Most Tasteless X-Rated Christmas Ornaments! (NSFW): Christmas season is a time of warmth and love, especially if it concerns two leathermen engaging in sweaty doggie-style buttsex. At least that’s the thinking among people who enjoy X-rated Christmas-tree ornaments, and we can only assume those people don’t have a lot of little nephews and nieces over for egg nog. Here are ten of the more, ummm, striking ornament possibilities out there. The first one is safe for work; after that you’re on your own.
➪ Google+ rolling out facial recognition feature: Google is rolling out a feature that lets members of its online social network automatically find themselves in photos posted by friends. The “Find My Face” feature being added to Google+ over the next several days is opt-in only, meaning people have to make a point to turn it on. By leaving it to Google+ members to activate the feature, the Internet giant was sidestepping privacy concerns raised when social networking rival Facebook added facial recognition in an opt-out style this year.
➪ Learning high-performance tasks with no conscious effort may soon be possible (w/ video): In the future, a person may be able to watch a computer screen and have his or her brain patterns modified to improve physical or mental performance. Researchers say an innovative learning method that uses decoded functional magnetic resonance imaging could modify brain activities to help people recuperate from an accident or disease, learn a new language or even fly a plane.
➪ Bedbugs Get Away with Incest: As if bedbugs weren’t gross enough already, entomologists have now found that they get ahead by mating with their own mothers, brothers, sisters and fathers. By inbreeding, a single pregnant female can start the infestation of an entire building on her own. Parent-sibling matings and sibling-sibling matings are rare in the animal kingdom. So this study reveals an exception to the anti-inbreeding rule. But I’m drawn to the report for a pettier reason. As far as I’m concerned, DNA evidence has trumped the words of my landlord and a New York City housing inspector.
➪ Obama GAVE Iran the Drone!: The immediate and obvious questions were these: 1) Why didn’t we try to recover the drone? 2) In lieu of a rescue effort why didn’t we bomb it into oblivion? Apparently there was third option and Onama struk that down also. THE ANSWERS WILL SHOCK YOU – or maybe not. Fox News National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin reported that apparently the Pentagon pleaded with Barrack Hussein Obama to give the order to do just that. The Pentagon initially wanted to send a special forces team to recover the drone. Obama shot down that suggestion. Then the Pentagon offered up plan B , blow it to kingdom come. Obama refused that too and now Iran and China have a brand spanking new fully functional top secret US RQ 170 Sentinel Drone. The Drone was not recovered or destroyed specifically per Obama’s orders
➪ World Domination From Denver Airport?: Almost no one likes being in airports these days, but some people believe that one airport in particular — the Denver International Airport — is not only a hassle but also tied to conspiracies about the collapse of Western civilization. Some say there’s a top-secret underground bunker for the world’s elite to survive a nuclear war (or the impending Mayan 2012 apocalypse). Others say the airport must have a connection to Nazis since the runways form a perfect swastika (actually they don’t). Even ex-Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura got into the act, interviewing a man claiming that massive tunnels under the airport were built not for luggage handling or mass transit (that’s what they want you to think!), but instead for much more sinister purposes.
➪ 7 Creepiest Abandoned Zoos on Earth: The wind swings the old cage door open as if to free a reluctant occupant. But there’s nothing there… Or are those paw prints in the sand? Besides, isn’t that the stale breath of some meat-eating beast hanging in the air? And what’s that rustling sound in the bushes? As we explore the following places, you’ll see that abandoned zoos can be more than a little creepy.
➪ Lightning Sprites, Elves Caught on Camera: Flying above the U.S. Midwest, scientists using high-speed video cameras have caught the first 3-D images of sprites, elves, blue jets, and crawlers—in the form of lightning, that is. First seen by scientists in 1989, sprites and their menagerie of exotically named kin are bursts of electrical energy that form about 50 miles (80 kilometers) above Earth, sometimes leaping all the way from the tops of thunderheads to outer space.
➪ Students ordered to school on a Saturday as Russia resorts to ‘devious tricks’ to limit numbers at anti-Putin rally: Russian authorities today resorted to ‘devious tricks’ to limit the numbers attending an anti-Vladimir Putin rally which is expected to be the largest ever against the prime minister. Pupils between 14 and 17 have been ordered to attend school tomorrow for hastily arranged tests during the hours of the protest. They were warned they risk flunking their courses if they fail to sit at their desks for unprecedented Saturday exams.
➪ This 28-Year-Old’s Startup Is Moving $350 Million And Wants To Completely Kill Credit Cards: There’s a tiny 12-person startup churning out of Des Moines, Iowa. Dwolla was founded by 28-year-old Ben Milne; it’s an innovative online payment system that sidesteps credit cards completely. Milne has no finance background, yet his little operation is moving between $30 and $50 million per month; it’s on track to move more than $350 million in the next year. Unlike PayPal, Dwolla doesn’t take a percentage of the transaction. It only asks for $0.25 whether it’s moving $1 or $1,000.
➪ Hundreds of NASA’s moon rocks reported missing: The space agency has lost or misplaced more than 500 pieces of the lunar rocks and other space samples, NASA’s inspector general reported Thursday, making the case for better inventory controls. Astronauts on the Apollo moon landings from 1969 to 1972 returned 842 pounds of lunar rock and soil to Earth. The space agency now loans samples, along with meteorite and comet dust, to about 377 researchers worldwide. The space agency now lists 517 moon rock samples as missing or stolen. However, the inspector general audit suggests much more is missing, based on inquiries to a sample of 59 scholars loaned moon rocks, comet dust or meteorites. The audit found 19% could not locate all of their samples.
➪ Smuggler tried to hide $140,000 drug stash in nacho cheese: Customs and Border officials nabbed a 21-year-old Mexican citizen this week on suspicion of smuggling $140,000 worth of methamphetamine in these three cans of liquid nacho cheese and jalapenos, the LA Times reports. Incredibly, this is not the first time nacho cheese has been used as a smuggling tool. In October, a customs officials found 7 pounds of meth hidden in nacho cheese cans, NPR reports.
➪ White House–Laughingly–Declines to Comment on Senate Vote to Repeal Military’s Ban on Sodomy and Bestiality: At the White House press briefing on Monday, reporter Lester Kinsolving of WorldnetDaily noted the 93 to 7 Senate vote for a defense authorization bill that repeals the military’s ban on sodomy and bestiality and asked White House Press Secretary Jay Carney whether President Obama, as commander-in-chief, approves or disapproves of bestiality in the armed forces. Carney declined to comment.
➪ Rats Feel Each Other’s Pain: Empathy lets us feel another person’s pain and drives us to help ease it. But is empathy a uniquely human trait? For decades researchers have debated whether nonhuman animals possess this attribute. Now a new study shows that rats will free a trapped cagemate in distress. The results mean that these rodents can be used to help determine the genetic and physiological underpinnings of empathy in people.
➪ Make no bones about it, this is Britain’s scariest cave! Photographer captures eerie skull in rock face of remote diving spot: Only the bravest would tackle a cave whose icy waters have already claimed the lives of several divers. But if there was any doubt about the peril that awaits at Hodge Close Quarry, one need only look at this picture The lake at the abandoned slate quarry is an eerie enough site – but as this image shows if you turn your head you are greeted with the terrifying sight of a giant skull.
➪ SWAT Raids, Stun Guns, And Pepper Spray: Why The Government Is Ramping Up The Use Of Force: But America’s police departments have been moving toward more aggressive, force-first, militaristic tactics and their accompanying mindset for 30 years. It’s just that, with the exception of protests at the occasional free trade or World Bank summit, the tactics haven’t generally been used on mostly white, mostly college-educated kids armed with cellphone cameras and a media platform. Police militarization is now an ingrained part of American culture. SWAT teams are featured in countless cop reality shows, and wrong-door raids are the subject of “The Simpsons” bits and search engine commercials. Tough-on-crime sheriffs now sport tanks and hardware more equipped for battle in a war zone than policing city streets. Seemingly benign agencies such as state alcohol control boards and the federal Department of Education can now enforce laws and regulations not with fines and clipboards, but with volatile raids by paramilitary police teams.
➪ Suit filed after NM teen cuffed for burp in class: A 13-year-old was handcuffed and hauled off to a juvenile detention for burping in class, according to a lawsuit filed against an Albuquerque school principal, a teacher and school police officer. The boy was transported without his parents being notified in May after he “burped audibly” in PE class and his teacher called a school resource officer to complain he was disrupting her class. The lawsuit also details a separate Nov. 8 incident when the same student was forced to strip down to his underwear while five adults watched as he was accused of selling pot to another student; the boy was never charged.
➪ Dead scuba diver had been missing 26 years: It had been 26 years since anyone last laid eyes on well-known wheelchair scuba diver Peter Devoe, who failed to resurface after a 1985 family dive at Cates Park in North Vancouver. Devoe, who was 29 when he disappeared, was finally recovered in the Burrard Inlet by a pair of commercial fishers in October. Coroners said Wednesday they identified his remains by the jewelry he wore and telltale marks on his bones from a car accident. His body was surprisingly well-preserved within his full-body scuba suit, despite floating in the inlet for almost three decades. His remains were found just west of where he vanished during a dive with his brother on March 13, 1985. His body never floated out of the bay, and was anchored down in the calm waters by his weighty equipment, Coroner Stephen Fonseca said.
➪ Supercharged mobility scooter seized by Doncaster council: A supercharged mobility scooter has been seized by Doncaster council officers after being driven at speeds of up to 60mph, scaring wild deer and annoying residents in the area. Converted to be driven by a supercharged 140cc petrol engine, the mobility scooter was described as a ‘feat of engineering’ by Cynthia Ransome, Doncaster council’s communities officer. As well as the engine, it had been ‘pimped’ with go-kart wheels and a large exhaust.
➪ The Worst Sounds In The World: 15. Death by electrocution, government sanctioned or otherwise. 14. Human or animal run over, hit, or maimed by a car. 13. Civil War surgeon amputating limbs. 12. Guillotine in use; subsequent lopping and dropping. 11. Monkey having its skull bashed open, brains eaten in the name of impotence-curing cuisine. 10. Cannibal chewing on his own penis. 9. Involuntary dual nipple piercing via meat hooks. 8. Bones breaking and/or cracking. 7. Disembowelment (not even Mel Gibson, Freedom!). 6. Human body ejected through the windshield of an automobile. 5. Drawing and quartering. 4. Reanimated corpse biting into your (or a loved one’s or a stranger’s) neck muscles, jugular vein or assorted sinewy tissues. 3. Hair torn from a scalp, human or otherwise. 2. Frenzied knife-stabbing-a-sandbag sound most often heard in cinematic prison shank scenes, except here. 1. Curb stomp.
➪ Pro Grade (3D Printer-Made?) ATM Skimmer: In July 2011, a customer at a Chase Bank branch in West Hills, Calif. noticed something odd about the ATM he was using and reported it to police. Authorities who responded to the incident discovered a sophisticated, professional-grade ATM skimmer that they believe was made with the help of a 3D printer. Below is a front view image of the device. It is an all-in-one skimmer designed to fit over the card acceptance slot and to record the data from the magnetic stripe of any card dipped into the reader. The fraud device is shown sideways in this picture; attached to an actual ATM, it would appear rotated 90 degrees to the right, so that the word “CHASE” is pointing down.
➪ Anti-graffiti campaign under way in Brooklyn: An anti-graffiti campaign is under way in Brooklyn to help business owners keep their buildings clean and keep customers spending money. Some consider the colorful spray-paint graffiti to be street art, but in the bustling business district of Bay Ridge along 3rd, 4th and 5th avenues, it is frowned upon. Dennis Monier has owned Tops Restaurant Supply for 43 years, and he also lives in Bay Ridge, so his neighborhood pride runs deep. He was dismayed on Sunday morning to see graffiti on his building. “It’s not good for the neighborhood, because it makes the neighborhood look dirty,” he said. “We’re trying to keep the neighborhood clean, the sidewalks, the walls, everything. And to have a graffiti-ed neighborhood, people won’t shop here. So you do want this removed.”
➪ Why Is Pesticide Used As An Ingredient In Infant Formula?: Why is cupric sulfate — a known herbicide, fungicide and pesticide — being used in infant formula? And why is it displayed proudly on product labels as a presumably nutritious ingredient? Used to kill fungus, aquatic plants and roots of plants, parasitic infections in aquarium fish and snails, as well as algae and bacteria such as Escherichia coli, cupric sulfate hardly sounds fit for human consumption, much less for infants.
➪ Prescription drug addiction skyrocketed 430% over past decade; Drug rehab for painkiller abuse soars: Federal statistics released Thursday revealed that treatment for prescription painkiller abuse has skyrocketed 430% over the last decade. The increase is even more pronounced given that over the same time period the overall rate of substance-abuse-related admissions to rehab facilities has flatlined, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration. The rise occurred in every region of the country, but was highest in Maine, Vermont, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Arkansas, Rhode Island, and West Virginia. Tylenol with codeine, Darvocet, Vicodin and Percocet ranked high on the SAMHSA’s list of most-abused prescription meds. Thanks King Solomon
➪ Man jailed for blasting co-worker’s rectum with air compressor: A CARPENTER’S assistant blasted pressurised air up his friend’s rectum, rupturing his large intestine, because he was seeking a pleasant change that would break the monotony of hard work, a Nicosia court has said. The foreign EU national who is a father of two, was jailed for 45 days last week after admitting that in October last year he had seriously injured his friend who required surgery and a lengthy stay in hospital to recover. “The defendant’s idea to administer pressurised air into his friend’s anus is indeed original and in reality the thought of it provokes laughter; but putting the idea into practice ended up in tragedy for the victim and the perpetrator,” the court said.
➪ Will the Kinect 2 read your lips? Open the pod bay door, HAL: The next generation of the Kinect (bundled with future Xbox consoles) may be “so accurate it can lip read,” the Technology Review Hello World headline breathlessly reads — evoking HAL 9000 in 2001. What’s more, says Eurogamer, citing a nameless source, “Kinect 2 will be so powerful it will enable games to detect when players are angry, and determine in which direction they are facing, and track the pitch and volume of player voices and facial characteristics to measure different emotional states.” Thanks Ava
➪ Anna Nicole Smith: Never-seen-before photoshoot… months before her death: Before her tragic passing in 2007, Anna Nicole Smith was well known her outrageous behaviour. But in a bizarre never-seen-before photo shoot, it appears that she took things to a whole other level. New snaps show the late actress and model completely naked and painted in gold. Taken while she was pregnant with her now five-year-old daughter Danielynn, Smith’s modesty is merely covered by her arm and a thick veil of the metallic paint.
➪ Facebook, Google, And YouTube In 1997 Format: Three important contemporary web sites, recreated with technology and spirit of late 1997, according to our memories. Best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.03 and a screen resolution of 1024×768 pixels, running under Windows 95. We recommend using a Virtual Machine or appropriate hardware, connected to a CRT monitor. If such an environment unachievable, it should be possible to experience the piece with any browser that still supports HTML Frames. The transfer speed of our server is limited to 8 kB/s («dial-up» speed).

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Proper!

o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 14:31:47 +0000

★ Graffiti artists caught out by their handiwork

Being hand-drawn, each piece is different, even when the same design is drawn by the same person, so Jain’s system identifies key points in the design that remain more-or-less consistent. And since a gang’s graffiti often incorporates its name or other identifying words, he uses crowdsourcing to identify those words, asking the human workers of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service to decipher any text in the images.

When using both text and image features to assess a piece of graffiti, the system correctly names the gang or individual about 65 per cent of the time. Michael O’Grady, who researches graffiti detection at the University of Huddersfield, UK, says this means it is only really good enough for filtering images down to a manageable level for a human to examine. “I’d want it up around 85 per cent,” he says.

★ The Poppers Story

In the gay ghettos of the Seventies and early Eighties, poppers were always at the center of the action. On any given night at, say, the Anvil in Manhattan, a large percentage of the men on the dance floor would have poppers in hand, and many of the rest would be helping to pass the bottles around. Some disco clubs would even add to the general euphoria by occasionally spraying the dance floor with poppers fumes.

Michael Rumaker, in his classic book A day and a Night at the Baths, describes the tubs as “permeated with that particularly inert, greasy odor of poppers. Wherever you went, the musky chemical smell of it was constantly in your nostrils.” He found himself heading to the single, small window, in order to gasp a few breaths of “something other than the cold, kerosene smell of amyl.”

★ Warsaw protester launches drone to spy on police

During protests in Warsaw last weekend, one crafty activist deployed a flying drone to spy on riot police.

YouTube user latajacakamera — or “flying camera” in Polish — uploaded the amazing video that the drone effortlessly captured as it hovered over teargas-filled streets.

In another video, the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) floats in front of a formation of police in riot gear as they rush towards demonstrators. None of them appear to notice.

★ 101 Year Old Inventor Of LSD Asked Steve Jobs How Dropping Acid Helped Him Create The Mac

Steve Jobs had a life-long fixation on LSD, and often ended up asking potential Apple employees during interviews how many times they had dropped acid to throw them off guard. Steve Jobs personally considered doing LSD to be one of the formative experiences in his life, and was insistent that others should do it, too.

With such a famous advocate working for free, it’s not a surprise that the man who invented LSD eventually contacted Steve Jobs. What is surprising, though, is how long he waited to get in touch… until he was 101 years old!

★ All About Poppers

WIDELY RECOGNIZED AS THE MOST CREDIBLE SOURCE OF INFORMATION ABOUT POPPERS. REGULARLY REFERENCED BY RESEARCHERS FROM AROUND THE GLOBE. SERVING THE RESEARCH COMMUNITY FOR OVER A DECADE.

★ Vandal renames Avenue J station ‘Avenue Jew’

A vandal altered a sign at a subway station in a heavily Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn to make it read “Avenue Jew,” according to Assemblyman Dov Hikind. A subway rider saw the graffiti, photographed it, and contacted Hikind’s office.

The photo shows the letters “e” and “w” in blue spray paintin at the end of the “J” in the Avenue J sign. The station is located at the intersection of Avenue J and East 16th Street.

Police removed the sign and are investigating it as a possible bias incident, according to a news release from Hikind’s office. But the NYPD has not confirmed that information.

★ Paul A. Laduke, Schaumburg Christian School Teacher, Charged With Masturbating During Class

A teacher at Schaumburg Christian School has been charged with sexual exploitation of a child after allegedly masturbating while students were in his classroom.

Paul A. Laduke, 75, allegedly told police he had been “masturbating while fantasizing about various students for the past 10 years,” according to the Chicago Tribune.

Schaumburg police told Fox Chicago that a student spotted Laduke “engaged in what appeared to be inappropriate lewd conduct while seated at his podium” on Nov. 11. That student informed a teacher and Laduke, described by his family as a “strict Christian,” was fired the same day.

★ Facebook users hit by hardcore porn, violence and animal abuse images

Explicit and violent images have flooded the newsfeeds of many Facebook users in the last 24 hours or so.

The content, which includes explicit hardcore porn images, photoshopped photos of celebrities such as Justin Bieber in sexual situations, pictures of extreme violence and even a photograph of an abused dog, have been distributed via the site – seemingly without the knowledge of users.

★ Divorcing couple ordered to hand over Facebook and dating site passwords

Do you, Facebook user, take your privacy, as stated in Terms of Service, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, through scams and through flirtations with high school sweethearts, in viral malware and in health, to love and to shield your adulterous licentiousness, till death do you
part?

Forget about it. The courts have no compunction about parting us from our supposed privacy, regardless of what social media privacy terms of service seem to promise us vis-a-vis confidentiality.

That was made evident in the case of Stephen and Courtney Gallion, a Connecticut couple who’ve been ordered to turn over their social networking passwords in their impending divorce.

★ John Lennon’s Tooth Sells for More Than $31,000 at Auction

The tooth fairy’s rates have dramatically increased in the last 40+ years, especially when the bounty is a Beatle’s molar. John Lennon’s tooth fetched £19,000 (about $31,200) at auction in England Saturday.

The tooth had been in the family of Lennon’s former housekeeper. Lennon gave it to Dot Jarlett to dispose of sometime between 1964 and 1968, but then he suggested she keep the tooth to give to her daughter, who was a big Beatles fan.

★ ‘Family Circus’ creator Bil Keane dies at 89

Bil Keane’s “Family Circus” comics entertained readers with a simple but sublime mix of humor and traditional family values for more than a half century. The appeal endured, the author thought, because the American public needed the consistency.

Keane, who started drawing the one-panel cartoon featuring Billy, Jeffy, Dolly, P.J. and their parents in February 1960, died Tuesday at age 89 at his longtime home in Paradise Valley, near Phoenix. His comic strip is featured in nearly 1,500 newspapers across the country.

★ Jerry Sandusky Ice Cream Out Soon at Penn State?

The Penn State Creamery is renowned for its ice cream. It makes about 100 different flavors, some of which are named after famous Penn Staters.

One of those flavors – the Sandusky Blitz – was named in honor of disgraced former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, who is facing felony charges for allegedly sexually abusing young boys. While it reportedly has not been served for several years, it was still listed on the creamery’s website on Sunday and described as a banana flavored ice cream with chocolate covered peanuts and a caramel swirl.

It has since been pulled down from the site.

While it sounds delicious, who would take their kids out for ice cream and buy a flavor named after an alleged child molester?

Too creepy.

★ Met police using surveillance system to monitor mobile phones

Britain’s largest police force is operating covert surveillance technology that can masquerade as a mobile phone network, transmitting a signal that allows authorities to shut off phones remotely, intercept communications and gather data about thousands of users in a targeted area.

★ A Different Kind of Secret Code

Researchers have invented a new form of secret messaging using bacteria that make glowing proteins only under certain conditions. In addition to being useful to spies, the new technique could also allow companies to encode secret identifiers into crops, seeds, or other living commodities.

★ The Rise of Crime-Sourcing

Crowdsourcing began as a legitimate tool to leverage the wisdom of the crowds to solve complex business and scientific challenges. Unfortunately, these very same techniques are increasingly being adopted by the criminal underground for nefarious purposes.

★ Police arrest man for child pornography after tipoff from burglars

But the young people who stole the CDs were in for a surprise. When they began putting the discs into their computer, they discovered that some of them contained pornographic images of children, the statement said.

Despite having obtained the CDs under decidedly shady circumstances, the pair decided to report Stockard to the police.

A search warrant was served and three more computers and three laptops were taken from Stockard’s home, along with several external hard drives. Police said there were thousands of pictures and movies on the CDs — more than 30 of the 50 discs had child pornography on them.

Investigators said Stockard has been downloading indecent images of children since 2004. He has admitted possessing the pornography on the CDs but has refused to say whether there is pornography on the computers, they said. Stockard was booked for possession of child pornography and posted $25,000 bail.

The two burglar suspects who reported Stockard have not been arrested.

★ Texas county police buys drone that can carry weapons

The ShadowHawk from Vanguard Defense Industries is a pilot-less helicopter remotely controlled by an operator using a game console-like, laptop size device. The drone was purchased with a $300,000 grant from DHS.

The Montgomery police says it will be used in chases of escaping criminals and tracking drug shipments.

Michael Buscher, chief executive officer of manufacturer Vanguard Defense Industries, told the Examiner that Montgomery County is the first local law enforcement agency to buy one of his units.

He said they are designed to carry weapons for local law enforcement. “The aircraft has the capability to have a number of different systems on board. Mostly, for law enforcement, we focus on what we call less lethal systems,” he said, including Tazers that can send a jolt to a criminal on the ground or a gun that fires bean bags known as a “stun baton.”

★ 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

Max is a 24 year old law student from Vienna with a flair for the interview and plenty of smarts about both technology and legal issues. In Europe there is a requirement that entities with data about individuals make it available to them if they request it. That’s how Max ended up with a personalized CD from Facebook that he printed out on a stack of paper more than a thousand pages thick (see image below). Analysing it, he came to the conclusion that Facebook is engineered to break many of the requirements of European data protection. He argues that the record Facebook provided him finds them to be in flagrante delicto.

★ Rave kills dolphin

A DOLPHIN died after marine park bosses allowed a deafening rave yards from its pool.

Wildlife experts warned the banging techno at the two-day dance event would lead to stress among the ten dolphins. Animal activists even turned up to protest at Connyland marine park in Lipperswil, Switzerland.

Shadow, an eight-year-old dolphin, appeared very distressed and disoriented after the event, and was later found dead.

An activist said: “The sound levels dolphins heard were comparable to a pneumatic drill.” Connyland bosses denied any wrongdoing.

★ Lush Workers Cut Wallets From the Pockets of Drunk Train Riders

In the world of crime statistics, there is a certain subsection of victim on the city subways: a reveler who, overserved during a night on the town, nods off on a train. He wakes with a flapping, precision-cut hole in his trousers and cool, thin air where his wallet used to be.

This victim shakes his head in self-disgust, joining the besotted ranks to fall prey to a brand of criminal as old and established below the streets as a twisted root.

The police, long ago, coined a name for this criminal. The lush worker.

★ ‘Urine power’ tests at UWE in Bristol are successful

‘Regulating the flow’

The bacteria anaerobically (without oxygen) respire just like any other living organism, and this process gives off electrons.

Those electrons are then passed through an electrode and a measure of electricity is generated.

Bacteria feed on the urine, which they effectively use as a fuel to continue to breathe and give off electrons.

“Urine is chemically rich in substances favourable to the MFCs,” said Dr Ieropoulos.

“Through this study… we were able to show that by miniaturisation and multiplication of the number of MFCs into a stack and regulating the flow of urine, it may be possible to look at scales of use that have the potential to produce useful levels of power, for example in a domestic or small village setting.”

★ Josie From Josie And The Pussycats Is Possessed By The Devil

In the last Occult post, I showed you a story in Archie comics that seemed a bit heavy handed with the occult. Well, that was nothing, folks. In this one, Josie becomes possessed by an evil spirit… and it is disturbing as shit.

I know Archie comics became “born again” at some point in their history, but this ain’t it – the rest of the issue is completely “normal”. The Josie issues before and after this issue were free from overt religious messages…. so, I don’t know what the f–k is going on here.

I’m no expert in Archie comics (I have, however, been reading them for four decades), so I’m hoping someone more knowledgeable than I can fill me in.

Perhaps Archie comics were slipping in “born again Christian” story lines as early as ’73, but I seem to remember this happening much later (like the early eighties). Or, perhaps, the authors had just seen The Exorcist and let their enthusiasm run away with them.

★ Is an abortion based sexual fetish immoral?

One of my friends is sexually submissive and recently she encountered a man online who is to be her sexual dominant. The two of them have come to the conclusion that they are soulmates and one of the ideas that they particularly agree on is that he should be able to impregnate her and then abort the baby. He is a doctor so he would do it himself. My question is, she says that because abortion is legal… this isnt immoral. But I feel that it is premeditated murder. I mean, I am pro-choice: accidents, rape – there are lots of reasons to abort. But she is PLANNING to get pregnant for the sole reason to kill the child. And not just once… they want to do this thing over and over again. He says, “I will let you keep the baby just long enough to let you get attached to it and then I will take it from you.” UGH. Am I the only one that thinks this is INSANE?! I mean, sure abortion is legal.. but premeditated PLANNED abortion?!? How in the world can I express to her how wrong this is? Help!!

★ Ultrasound of patient’s testicles reveals startling image of a man in agony

Doctors at a Canadian hospital found a shocking image staring right back at them as they were scanning the testicles of a 45-year-old paraplegic man. The image of one of the testicles, shown above, looks like a man’s face grimaced in agony.

“It was very ghoulish, like a man screaming in pain,” Dr. Naji Touma of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario told The Toronto Star. “His mouth was open and it looked like one eye was gouged out.”

★ Apple Vice President of Global Security John Theriault departs company following lost iPhone 4S investigation

In July, an Apple employee was reported to have lost a prototype version of the later to be announced iPhone 4S with Siri, an improved camera, and the dual-core A5 processor. Following the loss of the prototype device, Apple apparently also visited the home of the device’s purported finder and offered him cash for the return of the phone. Apple security officials reportedly posed as police officers in their search of this prototype iPhone, and the San Francisco Police Department have been said to be investigating the situation.

★ Embarrassing Bodies – Large Labia (Video)

★ Labiaplasty (Video) NSFW

Yikes! The Donner Cut

★ Judge William Adams beats daughter for using the internet [Video]

2004: Aransas County Court-At-Law Judge William Adams took a belt to his own teenage daughter as punishment for using the internet to acquire music and games that were unavailable for legal purchase at the time. She has had ataxic cerebral palsy from birth that led her to a passion for technology, which was strictly forbidden by her father’s backwards views. The judge’s wife was emotionally abused herself and was severely manipulated into assisting the beating and should not be blamed for any content in this video. The judge’s wife has since left the marriage due to the abuse, which continues to this day, and has sincerely apologized and repented for her part and for allowing such a thing, long before this video was even revealed to exist.

★ In dangerous new development, TEPCO detects nuclear fission occurring in destroyed reactors at Fukushima Daiichi – Bellona

Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) detected signs of a nuclear chain reaction at its crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant, raising the risk of increased radiation emissions as trace amounts of radioactive Xenon gas isotopes were discovered at the wrecked plant’s reactor No 2, officials said.

★ DMX — Mopping Up Messes at Waffle House

The rapper adds, “The minute you get too big to mop a floor or wipe a counter, that’s the exact minute you have life f**ked up.”

STOP. MOP.

★ Steven Tyler Says He Wasn’t Drunk Or High When He Fell In Shower

Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler said that the Paraguay shower fall that knocked his teeth out and cut his face was caused by food poisoning not a drug relapse, in a TV interview Thursday.

The veteran rocker, who has spoken openly about his drug and alcohol problems in the past, told NBC’s “Today” show that he blacked out in an Asuncion hotel shower because he was suffering “Montezuma’s revenge” not because he had fallen off the wagon.

“Quite frankly I just passed out,” he said during a phone interview from Buenos Aires. “I was on the shower and I got nauseous and I started to get sick and I fell on my face, passed out, and woke up with the water running over me wondering where the hell I was.”

★ Man claims prostitute turned into a donkey

A MAN caught having sex with a donkey told a court the beast was actually a prostitute who turned into an animal overnight.
Thanks Cat

★ Cheat Sheet: What’s Happened to the Big Players in the Financial Crisis

Widespread demonstrations in support of Occupy Wall Street have put the financial crisis back into the national spotlight lately.

So here’s a quick refresher on what’s happened to some of the main players, whose behavior, whether merely reckless or downright deliberate, helped cause or worsen the meltdown. This list isn’t exhaustive — feel welcome to add to it.

★ Wiki – 1993

★ Copper Traded For Crack

Some enterprising drug dealers are helping copper thieves cut out the middleman. They’re accepting copper pipe as legal tender in exchange for crack cocaine.

“Whether it’s a copper aluminum coil or insulation, it can be sold at night to bootleggers who are open from 9 o’clock at night to 3 in the morning,” scrapyard owner Van Kono told Local 10 in Miami, Florida.

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NeckFace ‘n Fuck This Life – 2 Of Amerikas Most Wanted – September 18 New Image Art

o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 03:29:51 +0000

New Image Art is proud to announce the coming together of artist Neck Face and New York based “FUCK THIS LIFE”. This union is a recipe for disaster of the most curiously illuminating kind, collaboratively commentating on the harsh and the veiled, the outlawed and the unthinkable.

Neck Face recently exhibited alongside those considered most influential in American street art culture in MOCA’s Art in the Streets exhibition. The event reintroduced the performer in Neck Face, whose portrayal of a down and out alley dweller brought him the first mention in the New York Times review of the graffiti and street art retrospective. His Halloween show openings have become notable charades celebrating the lurid and the ghastly complete with a haunted house entrance staged along with his family. Neck Face’s aptitude for multi-media has also been seen in the production of metal masks, paper-maché sculptures and film. For this unique character and international figure of street culture, the true triumph lies in the pure harmony between his examination of the villain, the rogue and the nightmare and his unfaltering wit and fresh approach. This time in Amerika’s 2 Most Wanted, Neck Face’s unmistakable illustrative style is maintained in the expansion of his medium to charcoal drawings. Also exhibiting his brilliantly colored guache and ink paintings, these works begin their development with scrawls on napkins with a bar maid’s breast-pocket pen – parody’s of his own tailoring, drawn from cartoons to current events of all denominations.

FUCK THIS LIFE has participated in The New York Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1 with his well-known street culture ‘zine.
Several published anthologies deep – FUCK THIS LIFE also has a haphazard initiation of his own process – collecting discarded remains of newspapers (and other less savory publications) off the ground and scouring them for applicable images. The ensuing collages reveal themes of fate, tragedy, brutality and the human condition. In spite of the staggering trauma, main-stream hypocrisy and sensationalism represented in FUCK THIS LIFE’s socially analytical work, there is a stillness and commanding refinement to its assembly. New Image Art is honored to exhibit these full color original images for the first time.

A coalescence of eerie irony and macabre humor underpin this duo’s social interpretation.

Go Ask Alice (1973) Diary Of A 70′s Teenage Girl Runaway Drug Addict

o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 15:13:31 +0000

Go Ask Alice is a controversial 1971 book about the life of a troubled teenage girl. The book purports to be the actual diary of an anonymous teenage girl who became addicted to drugs, and is presented as a testimony against drug use. The diarist’s name is never given in the book.

The story caused a sensation when published and remains in print as of 2011. Revelations about the book’s origin have caused much doubt as to its authenticity and factual accounts, and the publishers have listed it as a work of fiction since at least the mid-late 1980s. Although it is still published under the byline “Anonymous”, press interviews and copyright records suggest that it is largely or wholly the work of its purported editor, Beatrice Sparks. Some of the days and dates referenced in the book put the timeline from 1968 until 1970.

The title is from the lyrics to the Jefferson Airplane song “White Rabbit“. Grace Slick wrote the song based on perceived drug references in the classic novel Alice In Wonderland. (On July 14 [page 36 of the 2006 edition], the writer says she “feel[s] like Alice in Wonderland” and “maybe Lewis G. Caroll [sic] was on drugs too.”)

The book was made into an ABC Movie of the Week in 1973.

Look for brief appearances from future AMERICAN GRAFFITI stars MacKenzie Phillips (as a 14-year-old doper) and Charlie Martin Smith (playing a student in search of drugs), plus Robert Carradine as a long-haired stoner.

☛✸Electrik Slide Show✸☚

U$$A

o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 13:01:32 +0000

✰ Rejected movie script prompts Beverly Hills evacs

A movie script that had been rejected provoked a bomb scare in Beverly Hills Thursday afternoon.Authorities responded after a briefcase was found in an alley at Rodeo Drive and Little Santa Monica Boulevard just before 10:30 a.m.

Parts of Beverly Hills were shut down for two hours and some businesses were evacuated as the bomb squad pulled a suspicious device from a literary agent’s office.

Turns out it wasn’t a real bomb, but a briefcase with a computer inside and a screenplay a man wanted the agent to read.

Beverly Hills police say the screenwriter won’t be charged with a crime. They wouldn’t reveal his name, but they say he’s been asking this agent for some time to read his work and left the briefcase when the agent refused to read it.
✰ Experts: Fukushima ‘off-scale’ lethal radiation level infers millions dying

Fukushima nuclear power plant radiation recordings of external gamma radiation have been so high this week, they went off scale said veteran nuclear expert Arnie Gunderson on Thursday after the famous physicist, Dr. Chris Busby told the Japanese people this week that radioactive air contamination there is now 300 times that of Chernobyl and 1000 times the atomic bomb peak in 1963, inferring that hundreds of millions of people are now dying from Fukushima radiation, including people in the United States.
✰ Egypt authorities find another case of radiation in Japanese shipment

Egypt’s General Authority for Export and Import Control recently discovered radioactive cargo in two containers shipped from Japan to Ain Sokhna port, the Red Sea Ports Authority said.This is the third radioactive shipment Egypt has discovered over the past month.

The radioactive material was found aboard ships carrying electric and mechanical instruments. A letter from Egypt’s atomic energy authorities confirmed the cargo had above-regulation radiation levels.

An official at the seaport said the Ministry of Environment and DP Worlds, which runs the Ain Sokhna port, transferred the ships to a sandy area in order to prevent the radiation from spreading to other shipments and vessels.

The authority said it would review communications between Japan and the companies that imported the shipments. It had said in late July it would immediately withdraw the shipping licenses of any companies responsible for importing radioactive cargo.
✰ Ex-Inmate Arrested for Sneaking Back onto Prison Grounds

Inmates typically do not choose to return to prison once they are released, but Thursday morning officers at Folsom Prison were dealing with a former prisoner who snuck back on campus.Correctional officers arrested 48-year-old Marvin Lane Ussery for being on prison grounds. Ussery was paroled in 2009 after serving time for a robbery charge, he was held at California State Prison, Sacramento, also called New Folsom Prison.

Officers say Ussery snuck onto the prison grounds overnight, and was spotted on thermal imaging equipment around 1:30 a.m.
✰ Longboard Fails Compilation [Video]

If you’re on a longboard, you failed already. Thanks Baller
✰ Face transplants becoming more common, accepted

More face transplant recipients and donor families are going public. They are boosting acceptance of an operation that six years ago was just daredevil theory.On Thursday, a Boston hospital released a photo of Charla Nash, the Connecticut woman mauled by a chimpanzee. She had a face transplant in May. Other people who have had face transplants are now able to walk the streets without people knowing they have someone else’s face.

Eighteen such transplants have been done worldwide. The first was in November 2005 on a French woman mauled by her dog. The first in the U.S. was in December 2008 in Cleveland. A Pittsburgh hospital hopes to offer them soon. The U.S. Department of Defense is funding more in hopes of helping disfigured soldiers.
✰ 911 Will Soon Accept Texts, Videos, Photos

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced a five-step plan on Wednesday to update the technology that powers the 911 emergency response system.The plan will enable the transmission of text messages, voice calls, videos and photos, as well as automatic location information. The FCC hopes that such a plan will enable emergency responders to respond faster while also giving individuals more options for contacting 911, depending on the emergency situation.
✰ Prolific 71-Year-Old Graffiti Tagger Arrested in Dunedin – Miami News

You’d think graffiti would be a young man’s game. Especially the kind of down-and-dirty, illegal type that requires taggers to covertly leave their mark while being prepared to run like hell if anyone catches them. Well, there’s always an exception to the rule.Meet 71-year-old Charles Ignatius Wesley. He was finally arrested after leaving his tag on hundreds of telephone poles in Pinellas County over the past five years.

The initials SLA had been popping up on phone poles in the area since at least 2006. According to the St. Petersburg Times, sheriff’s deputies originally thought the tag could be connected to the Symbionese Liberation Army, the left-wing radical group that made waves in the ’70s by kidnapping heiress Patty Hearst.
✰ Artificial anal sphincter could limit bowel incontinence

Another milestone for custom-crafted transplants: the world’s first lab-built sphincters. The breakthrough offers hope to countless people who have become incontinent through damage to their own anal sphincters.The spare-part sphincters were made with some human cells, but have been implanted only in mice so far. Researchers made them by growing donated smooth muscle cells from human sphincters alongside gut nerve cells from mice in circular moulds.
✰ New 911 police tapes from Wisconsin State Fair released

“Yeah, there’s a group of African Americans that are walking down 75th Street, going north, that thought it was okay to have a law abiding citizen walking by… and they just jump me, what?”"Do you need an ambulance, sir?”

“No I don’t need an ambulance. I’m bleeding but I don’t give a shit.”

“Do you want an ambulance?”

“No I don’t want a fucking ambulance. Send some squads, arrest these people.”

“We have squads all over the area you’re going to have to walk up to an officer and find one.”

“Walk up to an officer? I don’t see an officer anywhere what are you talking about?”

“We have about 20 squads all around the general area.”

“I mean this is what I gotta go through, I pay taxes and I’m walking down the fucking street — really? — and this is what the fuck happens, some stupid fucking black motherfuckers, they think they can just punch people, really?”

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Surrender Dorothy

o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 16:01:02 +0000

✪ How to Buy a Child in 10 Hours

“If I would like to get a child to live with me and take care of me,” I ask. “Could you do that?”

“Yes,” he says. “I can.”

He’s speaking in Creole, the most prevalent Haitian language. The man doing the translation, who has set up the meeting, works for us (unbeknownst to the slave trafficker).

The trafficker assures me he’s done this sort of transaction many times before.

“A girl or a boy?” he asks.

“A girl probably,” I say.

“How old?”

“Maybe 10 or 11.”

“Not a problem.”

He says he can get me an 11-year-old girl, although he suggests that a 15-year-old might be better, because she’d be more “developed.”

I’m thinking: I can’t believe I’m having this conversation.

“And this is OK?” I ask. “I won’t have any trouble from their parents or anything like that?”

“No, you won’t have any problems with their parents.”

“Why not?”

“When I give you the child, I will train it for you.”

I’m not exactly sure what that means.
✪ Mainstream Reporters: Too Close to the Field and Teams to Get the Debt Story

The big items that added trillions to the debt are not even on the field of debate. Because the two teams are not contesting them.

WARS: When Obama expanded the Afghan war and asked for the largest military budget in world history, the GOP largely applauded. It was bipartisan.

BUSH TAX CUTS FOR THE WEALTHY: Obama extended them in December

BANK BAILOUTS: Bipartisan.

DECLINING TAX REVENUE: Resulted from recession and financial meltdown caused by years of bipartisan (Reagan/Clinton) deregulation of Wall Street. And by big companies like General Electric (whose CEO is Obama’s jobs chairman) dodging their taxes.

That’s the broad view – a perspective that sees our country over the edge in debt because the leaders of the two teams collaborated in putting it there.
✪ Poachers, prostitutes and profit

A statement to police that led to the arrest of the leader of an alleged Thai rhino poaching syndicate exposes the sleaze in the officially sanctioned shooting of this endangered species, with prostitutes used in “canned hunts”.
✪ Inside the Lives of Somali Pirates [Video]
✪ World sea attacks rise as pirates become bolder

A global maritime watchdog says sea piracy worldwide surged 36 percent to 266 attacks in the first half this year as Somali pirates took higher risks and raided more vessels.

The International Maritime Bureau says 61 percent, or 163 of the global attacks, were by Somali pirates largely in the Arabian Sea area. It says pirates fired on ships in rough seas in the Indian Ocean last month, attacking for the first time during the monsoon season.
✪ 21 Google Plus Circles You Can Actually Use
✪ Miniature Hong Kong Exhibition July 2011

Super cool mini models of old Hong Kong.
✪ The economics of penis size

A paper authored by Tatu Westling of Helsinki University explores the relationship between the GDP growth of countries and the penile length of their residents.

The size of male organ is found to have an inverse U-shaped relationship with the level of GDP in 1985. It can alone explain over 15% of the variation in GDP. The GDP maximizing size is around 13.5 centimetres, and a collapse in economic development is identified as the size of male organ exceeds 16 centimetres.

That “U-shaped” curve…it looks like something flaccid-ish, innit?
✪ Check Out The Skinniest House In The World

There are skinny houses. And then there is Jakub Szczęsny’s Keret House, which could make Calista Flockhart look like a fatty. At its most generous, the proposed place, in Warsaw, Poland, will clock in at 4 feet wide. At its narrowest, it’ll be just 28 inches wide — thinner than the average doorway. And we complain about our sardine can in New York…
✪ Breast ironing tradition targeted in Cameroon

Every morning before school, nine-year-old Terisia Techu would undergo a painful procedure. Her mother would take a burning hot pestle straight out of a fire and use it to press her breasts.

With tears in her eyes as she recalls what it was like, Terisia tells CNN that one day the pestle was so hot, it burned her, leaving a mark. Now 18, she is still traumatized.

Her mother, Grace, denies the incident. But she proudly demonstrates the method she used on her daughter for several weeks, saying the goal was to make her less desirable to boys — and stave off pregnancy.
✪ Secrets of Somali pirates revealed in new book

In a trip to the pirate stronghold of Eyl, Bahadur discovers pirates who are afraid of phantom U.S. navy divers and believe in psychic powers. He even describes an incident of panty-thieving on the high seas.

He also finds that many widely held beliefs about pirates are wrong, including allegations that they are controlled by international criminal cartels, have alliances with Islamist rebels or use sophisticated intelligence networks. Such assumptions help shape the multibillion dollar fight against piracy.

“You have a lot of people with agendas making claims that aren’t backed up by anything,” said Bahadur. “I don’t really have an agenda. I just tried to use common sense. … I actually met these people and spoke to them. Most of them had no idea of the outside world.”
‪✪ Crazy Dude In SF Bites Head Off Pigeon! [Video]
✪ All Leather Harley-Davidson Motorcycle

Why stop at the seat?

That’s what a Japanese company thought when it began making an all-leather Harley-Davidson motorcycle (above and below), now on display in Milwaukee’s Harley-Davidson Museum.

“The chopper… took 20 craftspeople from a Japanese company specializing in leather products more than two years to complete.”

Wrote Mary-Liz Shaw in a June 9, 2011 Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article, “The bike is a ¾-scale replica made entirely of leather, including wheels, frame, headlight, spark plug boots, chain, fuel valve, even the tools in the tool bag.”
✪ ‘Surrender Dorothy’ painted on a Beltway overpass — what’s the story?

As I traveled on the Beltway in the early ’70s near the Mormon Temple in Kensington, I was always amused by one re-occurring sight. On an overpass just as the temple comes into view, someone would always spray paints in big letters “Surrender Dorothy.” The line was from “The Wizard of Oz,” and I’m fairly sure it reflected the graffiti artist’s impression that the temple was reminiscent of the spires that Dorothy and company saw as they approached the Emerald City and their subsequent fear when the witch wrote the phrase in the sky. While I recognize that it was illegal to do that, I marveled at the writer’s ability to write it so boldly as to be seen from the highway. I’ve often wondered if anyone knew the story behind it or knew who the person was.
✪ Newborn baby falls through train toilet onto tracks

She went into the lavatory hoping to relieve the pain, but instead suddenly gave birth. The baby fell into the lavatory bowl and through the flap onto the tracks under the speeding train, and her mother quickly ran out of the lavatory and jumped from the carriage to find the child.

Her husband, who pulled the emergency cord, and other passengers who saw her jump, said she injured herself in her leap, but managed to get up and start running back to where the child tumbled onto the track.
✪ Men lock selves in paddy wagon

Two pranksters from Evesham were arrested after accidentally locking themselves in a Pennsylvania constable’s van in Delaware County early Saturday, police in Radnor, Pa., said.

Ryan Letchford, 21, and Jeffrey Olson, 22, left a party at a condominium complex with a friend and somehow got into a constable’s vehicle on East Lancaster Avenue to take phony “arrest” photographs of themselves, police said.

The joke was over when the men could not undo the childproof locks that had snapped into place, forcing the friend to call 911 at 3:57 a.m., police said.

The interior of the van was damaged as the men frantically attempted to free themselves, according to Michael Connor, constable for the township.
✪ Swaziland: HIV patients ‘eat dung to make drugs work’

Some HIV-positive patients in Swaziland are so poor they have resorted to eating cow dung before taking anti-retroviral drugs, Aids activists say.
✪ Sloan-Kettering Employee Pleads Guilty to $1.5M Ink Toner Scam

A former employee of Memorial Sloan-Kettering pleaded guilty Tuesday to ripping off $1.5 million worth of toner cartridges from the cancer center to buy diamond jewelry and an expensive car, among other high-priced amenities.

Marque Gumbs, 33, who earned $37,800 a year as a receiving clerk at the Upper East Side center, used the ill-gotten funds from his supply scam to buy a diamond Rolex, Louis Vuitton bags and watches, and a $50,500 BMW X6, which he paid for in cash. He also took lavish trips to Las Vegas, Cancun and Florida, prosecutors said.

Gumbs scammed the hospital by ordering $1.5 million in toner shipments from Office Max between September 2007 and August 2010 for printer models that were not even in use at the hospital. The hospital was charged for the toner cartridges, but Gumbs intercepted them at the hospital’s loading dock and sold them for profit.
✪ $50,000 Prop Money

A bundle of cash is a powerful emotional trigger. In fact, human brain scans have shown that the idea of money stimulates the same primal pleasure centers as food, sex and cocaine. So what does this tell you? That if you’re going to use prop money in your film or photograph, you must make it look as real as possible for maximum impact. Here is an abridged how-to guide to making a top-notch bundle of prop money
✪ Man unmasked as fake military hero in Springs reappears as “lawyer” in the Highlands

Last October, a man named Rick Gold, a 30-something lawyer who said he lived in Denver’s trendy Highlands neighborhood, appeared on the social scene and slipped comfortably into a welcoming circle of young Jewish professionals.

He attended Passover meals and Sabbath dinners, knew enough Hebrew to participate in the prayers and joined several faith-based organizations as he told friends of his Israeli heritage and sought to reconnect with his religious roots.

Through parallel social networks, online and in person, a lot of people got to know Rick Gold.

Except that they didn’t.
✪ Flying Drone Can Crack Wi-Fi Networks, Snoop On Cell Phones

At the Black Hat and Defcon security conferences in Las Vegas next week, Mike Tassey and Richard Perkins plan to show the crowd of hackers a year’s worth of progress on their Wireless Aerial Surveillace Platform, or WASP, the second year Tassey and Perkins have displayed the 14-pound, six-foot long, six-foot wingspan unmanned aerial vehicle. The WASP, built from a retired Army target drone converted from a gasoline engine to electric batteries, is equipped with an HD camera, a cigarette-pack sized on-board Linux computer packed with network-hacking tools including the BackTrack testing toolset and a custom-built 340 million word dictionary for brute-force guessing of passwords, and eleven antennae.
✪ House panel approves broadened ISP snooping bill

Internet providers would be forced to keep logs of their customers’ activities for one year–in case police want to review them in the future–under legislation that a U.S. House of Representatives committee approved today.

The 19 to 10 vote represents a victory for conservative Republicans, who made data retention their first major technology initiative after last fall’s elections, and the Justice Department officials who have quietly lobbied for the sweeping new requirements, a development first reported by CNET.

A last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers’ names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses, some committee members suggested. By a 7-16 vote, the panel rejected an amendment that would have clarified that only IP addresses must be stored.
‪✪ Gangs Of Black Thugs Attack French people at a festival [Video]
✪ How long can you live after your head is chopped off?

Imagine yourself with your head in the business end of a guillotine. I know, it’s not the most pleasant of thoughts, but the guillotine was once considered a humane way to kill someone: Just a quick slice and you’re flat-out dead.

But researchers are finding that neurons, the cells that make up the brain, are active even after their blood supply is suddenly cut off. And they may show activity for longer than a minute, according to a Science News report.

So, imagine yourself in the guillotine again. Once that big blade comes swooshing down and your head rolls away, are you still aware? Could you see the world around you? Might you actually experience the horrific reality that is your head removed from your body – for a minute or more?
✪ Ex-DEA investigator gets 25 years for child porn

Whitcomb confessed that between the years of 2007 and 2010, he produced videos containing three boys, all which were under the age of 16. According to prosecutors, Whitcomb first gained the trust of his victims and their families by inviting them over to play video games. Ultimately the video games turned into video recordings of sexual activities. According to the victims, Whitcomb would resort to violence if they would not comply with his wishes.
✪ Stuff on my cock

(PAUSE!)
✪ stuff in my vagina: Archive
✪ Hitler cat ‘overlooked for adoption because of markings’

The six-week-old cat – which was abandoned at the roadside – earned the moniker because of her distinctive black moustache.

Staff at Wood Green animal shelter in Godmanchester, Cambs., say they are struggling to find her a loving home because of her unusual markings.

Spokeswoman Tara Dundon said: ”Kitler is an adorable little girl who will make a wonderful addition to the right family. She is really playful and a typical sweet kitten.
Thanks PrinceTerrence
✪ Korean Otaku Marries Anime Body Pillow

A Korean anime fan has proudly tied the knot with a pillowcase featuring the image of his favorite magical girl heroine.

Heavy Rain asked the player, “how far would you go for love?” Would you go so far as to travel to another country? Would you kill a man? Or would you just decide that your soulmate was a fictional character and marry her image printed on a cotton pillowcase?

A Korean otaku opted to go with the last option, wedding a dakimakura body pillow featuring the image of Fate Testarossa, one of the popular heroines of magical girl show Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha. Not only has this particularly dedicated fan married his favorite pillowcase, he also takes her out on dates to restaurants and to amusement parts, as chronicled on media sites.
✪ History of the Guillotine

Primitive ancestors of the guillotine were used in Ireland, England and Italy in the 14th and 15th Centuries. Several known decapitation devices such as the Italian Mannaia, the Scottish Maiden, and the Halifax Gibbet are well documented and may pre-date the use of the French guillotine by as much as 500 years. The following deals mostly with the modern guillotine from the late 18th Century until today. It is not meant to be a complete history or even a complete overview of the history as this would take hundreds of pages. Instead consider it a brief introduction to the subject highlighted by a few good pictures.
✪ CIA and FBI Tried to Get U.S. Lawyer to Betray Arab Clients

Federal agents from the FBI and CIA/FBI Joint Terrorist Task Force tried to get a distinguished international lawyer to inform on his Arab and Muslim clients in violation of their Constitutional rights to attorney-client privilege, this reporter has learned. When the lawyer refused, he said the FBI placed him on a “terrorist watch list.”

Law professor Francis Boyle gave a chilling account of how, in the summer of 2004, two agents showed up at his office (at the University of Illinois, Champaign,) “unannounced, misrepresented who they were and what they were about to my secretary, gained access to my office, interrogated me for about one hour, and repeatedly tried to get me to become their informant on my Arab and Muslim clients.”
✪ Improving Mexican economy draws undocumented immigrants home from California

There are fewer undocumented immigrants in California – and the Sacramento region – because many are now finding the American dream south of the border.

“It’s now easier to buy homes on credit, find a job and access higher education in Mexico,” Sacramento’s Mexican consul general, Carlos González Gutiérrez, said Wednesday. “We have become a middle-class country.”

Mexico’s unemployment rate is now 4.9 percent, compared with 9.4 percent joblessness in the United States.
✪ Tylenol, Extra Strength, Is the Number One Cause of Liver Failure

Besides Tylenol, acetaminophen is the active ingredient in the prescription painkillers Percocet and Vicodin and in some nonprescription pain relievers, including NyQuil and some Sudafed products. It’s found in thousands of medicines taken for headaches, fever, sore throats and chronic pain.

But people taking multiple medicines at once don’t always realize how much acetaminophen they are ingesting, partly because prescription drug labels often list it under the abbreviation “APAP.”
✪ Here’s How U.S. Spies Will Find You Through Your Pics

Iarpa, the intelligence community’s way-out research shop, wants to know where you took that vacation picture over the Fourth of July. It wants to know where you took that snapshot with your friends when you were at that New Year’s Eve party. Oh yeah, and if you happen to be a terrorist and you took a photo with some of your buddies while prepping for a raid, the agency definitely wants to know where you took that picture — and it’s looking for ideas to help figure it out.

In an announcement for its new “Finder” program, the agency says that it is looking for ways to geolocate (a fancy word for “locate” that implies having coordinates for a place) images by extracting data from the images themselves and using this to make guesses about where they were taken.
✪ Ron de Jeremy – THE adult RUM

Wash down yer Extenze with some Ron Jeremy rum
✪ Hot-Dog Infused Vodka – Weeniecello

Over the years, I’ve tried various sorts of infusions, with vodka and other liquors. Fruit and herb-infused are the best known, and are often wonderful. But what I like is meat. Where’s the infusion for people like me? I felt disenfranchised, and alone, especially after some research on the interwebs revealed a real lack of meat-based liqueurs. It would be up to me to blaze the trail.

I decided that a hot dog based infusion would work best. Not as assertive as chorizo, but bolder than pork chops or steak; in addition, the preservatives in the dogs would lend themselves to prolonged infusion. With that in mind, I began with fine all-beef franks:

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PR0N In The U$A

o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 13:01:12 +0000

✦ Obama’s Terrifying Unchanging Smile

Eric Spiegelman put together this amazing stream of 130 photos of Obama posing with dignitaries during this week’s U.N. meetings (long video after the jump). And Obama’s smile never changes. Of course you may suspect some Photoshopping, but Spiegelman defends himself by directing us to the State Department’s flickr site.
✦ Over 80 slaughtered at Labor Party youth gathering in Norway

New information from Norwegian police has made clear the real scale of a shooting at a youth gathering on Utoya Island in Norway: more than 80 dead and dozens wounded.

A gunman disguised as a police officer started shooting on Utoya Island just outside Oslo, where youth were attending a Labor Party conference. Many ran for their lives, some jumping into the water in an attempt to reach the mainland. Law enforcement officials say the consequences of the attack are catastrophic: at least 80 lives lost, and dozens more wounded. The police did not rule out that there might be more victims.

Locals who tried to rescue some of the injured claimed they saw dozens of bodies in the water.

Undetonated explosives were also found on the island, where some 700 teenagers had gathered for a political rally.
✦ Modern Mythology: Elves of the Apocalypse: “Machine Elves” and the Self-Sabotage of Psychedelic Research

“ASC [Altered States of Consciousness] are only possible because of a normal waking state of consciousness. I propose that it is the role which [endogenous tryptamines including DMT] play in our waking awareness which allows them to play a role in the ASC as well.” (“Endogenous hallucinogens as ligands of the trace amine receptors: A possible role in sensory perception,” J.V. Wallach, Medical Hypotheses 72 (2009) 91–94. doi:10.1016/j.mehy.2008.07.052. 94). In this case, if endogenous DMT is in part responsible for how we experience waking life (visually), it follows that altered and normal states of consciousness might not be so radically divergent as we might be led to believe. It also stands to reason that if conscious experience has no intrinsic meaning, altered states of consciousness are no more intrinsically meaningful than waking life.
✦ Can a Playground Be Too Safe?

“Children need to encounter risks and overcome fears on the playground,” said Ellen Sandseter, a professor of psychology at Queen Maud University in Norway. “I think monkey bars and tall slides are great. As playgrounds become more and more boring, these are some of the few features that still can give children thrilling experiences with heights and high speed.”
✦ Attorney: Ship prank wasn’t federal crime

What Rick Ehlert did aboard a cruise ship in November was stupid, his attorney says.

Ehlert admits he got drunk aboard the MS Ryndam, broke into a control room and deployed the ship’s anchor early in the morning, Daniel L. Castillo said. “I guess he thought it was a big joke.”

Castillo added, “He’s got a lot of money. It was a silly thing to do. It’s silly. He’s not denying he did it.”
✦ Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User’s Digital Life, Shrugs

Something happened to Dylan’s Google account, and it’s been disabled. He doesn’t know what happened to the account, and no one at Google with the power to help him is interested in acknowledging the problem or letting him back in to the cloud-based services where all of his correspondence and much of the digital trail from the last few years of his life is stored. Google doesn’t own Twitter, though (yet), and he has taken to Twitter to try to draw attention to his problem and urge anyone who will listen not to trust Google with their digital lives.
‪✦ Raw Video: Shoplifter Uses Skirt to Hide Booze

Forget a five finger discount — a group of women caught on surveillance video robbing a Florida liquor store used their thighs to carry away the booze they lifted.
✦ New court filing reveals how the 2004 Ohio presidential election was hacked

A new filing in the King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell case includes a copy of the Ohio Secretary of State election production system configuration that was in use in Ohio’s 2004 presidential election when there was a sudden and unexpected shift in votes for George W. Bush.

The filing also includes the revealing deposition of the late Michael Connell. Connell served as the IT guru for the Bush family and Karl Rove. Connell ran the private IT firm GovTech that created the controversial system that transferred Ohio’s vote count late on election night 2004 to a partisan Republican server site in Chattanooga, Tennessee owned by SmarTech. That is when the vote shift happened, not predicted by the exit polls, that led to Bush’s unexpected victory. Connell died a month and a half after giving this deposition in a suspicious small plane crash.
✦ Benny Hill behind bars?

To the madcap music of “Yakety Sax,” the video shows correction officers chasing a jumpsuit-clad inmate through Albany County jail corridors and stairways. The action is speeded up, lending the attempted escape the feel of a Keystone Kops comedy.

Sheriff’s officials were not amused.
✦ Embryos involving the genes of animals mixed with humans have been produced secretively for the past three years

Scientists have created more than 150 human-animal hybrid embryos in British laboratories.

The hybrids have been produced secretively over the past three years by researchers looking into possible cures for a wide range of diseases.

The revelation comes just a day after a committee of scientists warned of a nightmare ‘Planet of the Apes’ scenario in which work on human-animal creations goes too far.
✦ Paleoecologists suggest mass extinction due to huge methane release

Prior to this research, most scientists have believed that the sudden extinction of nearly half of all life forms on the planet was due solely to the emissions from volcanic eruptions that were occurring in what was to become the Atlantic Ocean. Ruhl et al contend that instead, what happened, was that the small amount of atmospheric heating that occurred due to the exhaust from the volcanoes, caused the oceans to warm as well, leading to the melting of ice crystals at the bottom of the sea that were holding on to methane created by the millions of years of decomposing sea life. When the ice crystals melted, methane was released, which in turn caused the planet to warm even more, which led to more methane release in a chain reaction, that Ruhl says, was the real reason for the mass extinction that led to the next phase in world history, the rise of dinosaurs.
✦ Ronald Tackman, New York ‘Celebrity’ Escape Artist, Racks Up 28 More Years In Court

Ronald Tackman, a convicted New York robber and notorious prison-breaker famously told police he held up stores like Dunkin’ Donuts just blocks from home because he was “lazy,” The New York Post reported. But the Upper East Side stick-up artist was no slouch when it came to his elaborate escapes.

Tackman last gave law enforcement the slip in 2009, when he was transported to court from Riker’s Island wearing a three-piece suit but no metal bracelets. The uncuffed criminal strolled out after noticing the door to the 12th floor holding cell was open. He found his way to the lobby and was shown the door by an officer who mistook him for a lawyer, The Post notes.
Thanks Nico Dios
✦ DUCK AND COVER – The Citizen Kane of Civil Defense

Just how did the term “Duck and Cover” become universal shorthand for the paranoid excesses of the Cold War and for every geo-political panic attack since? How did the image of a pith-helmet-wearing cartoon turtle named Bert become as lasting a symbol of this dark era as the yellow and black fallout shelter signs that still adorn many buildings around the United States?
✦ 8 arrested in crackdown on L.A. County tagging crew

Members of a tagging crew allegedly responsible for more than 1,600 pieces of graffiti vandalism were arrested Wednesday by authorities serving search warrants at houses in cities across southwest Los Angeles County.

Eight people, including one juvenile, were charged with causing more than $100,000 in vandalism to schools and Metro bus and rail systems, according to a report from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. All are alleged members of the ASC — Art Sex Crime — tagging crew.
Thanks Brendan Donnelly
✦ Science and religion: God didn’t make man; man made gods

Scientists have so far identified about 20 hard-wired, evolved “adaptations” as the building blocks of religion. Like attachment, they are mechanisms that underlie human interactions: Brain-imaging studies at the National Institutes of Health showed that when test subjects were read statements about religion and asked to agree or disagree, the same brain networks that process human social behavior — our ability to negotiate relationships with others — were engaged.

Among the psychological adaptations related to religion are our need for reciprocity, our tendency to attribute unknown events to human agency, our capacity for romantic love, our fierce “out-group” hatreds and just as fierce loyalties to the in groups of kin and allies. Religion hijacks these traits. The rivalry between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, for example, or the doctrinal battles between Protestant and Catholic reflect our “groupish” tendencies.
✦ Cops: Mom gave her children beer and cocaine

Police said they spotted Dunn and Jefferson sitting at the playground, the young children on the ground next to them. As officers approached them, police said they spotted an empty 40-ounce bottle of Steel Reserve beer on the ground beside the boy. They said a baby bottle next to the baby contained a dark liquid that smelled strongly of an alcohol beverage. Dunn was identified as the children’s mother.

Police said witnesses told them that Jefferson had handed the bottle of beer to the boy and ordered him to chug it. When he had finished it police said Jefferson called the boy an alcoholic.

Both children were taken to Bridgeport Hospital where police said both the boy and girl tested positive for alcohol and the 10-month-old also had cocaine in her system. While being examined, police said the 4-year-old told a social worker he likes, “Natural Ice beer, Budweiser beer, but didn’t like the taste of Dog-Bite beer.”
✦ Norway Oil Fund divests from Israeli companies

Norway’s Ministry of Finance announced that the Norway Oil Fund divested from Africa-Israel Investments and Danya Cebus Ltd. on Monday.

The reason given is the companies’ construction in the West Bank.

The Norwegian Finance Ministry said, “The ethics council stresses that construction of settlements in the occupied territories violates the decision of the Geneva convention regarding defense of civilians during war time. Several decisions of the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice have reached the conclusion that construction of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories is prohibited.”
✦ Pedo-Style

What if you were chatting with someone on OKCupid and they’re all like “I love kids too!” and then they showed up on your first face-to-face date wearing one of these shirts? Would you smooch them anyway? I’d at least think about it… Hey, it’s hard out there for a single lady!
Thanks Carlen Altman.
✦ Lawyer: Cop scanner ‘crosses line’

Civil libertarians are raising the alarm over the state’s plans to create a Big Brother database that could map drivers’ whereabouts with police cruiser-mounted scanners that capture thousands of license plates per hour — storing that information indefinitely where local cops, staties, feds and prosecutors could access it as they choose.

“What kind of a society are we creating here?” asked civil rights lawyer Harvey Silverglate, who along with the ACLU fears police abuse. “There comes a point where the surveillance is so pervasive and total that it’s a misnomer to call a society free any longer.”

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