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Devil Worship: Exposing Satan’s Underground (1988) Geraldo Rivera 80′s TV Satanic Scare

o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 02:20:32 +0000

” Twenty-one years ago tonight, television standards plunged further when NBC aired “Devil Worship: Exposing Satan’s Underground,”a two-hour “documentary” from “journalist” Geraldo Rivera.

The network touted the special as an investigation into crimes and a correlation between heavy metal music and Satanism, but the Washington Post’s Tom Shales had a different description, calling it “dirty-minded teleporn,” filled with “talk about butchered babies, dismembered corpses, cannibal cults and sex orgies.”

He noted the networks had cut their departments of standards and practices, attributing the whittling to “hyped competitiveness fostered by the Reagan administration’s sweeping deregulation” of broadcasting.

NBC began “Devil Worship” at 8 p.m. – the slot it reserved for “ALF,” “The Cosby Show” and “Family Ties” on other nights – requiring frequent interruptions for disclaimers and parental advisories.

As Shales reported, Rivera himself addressed parents during the broadcast: “I am begging you. This subject is just too upsetting for your young children. Please, get them out of the room or change the station!”

NBC’s entertainment division produced “Devil Worship,” triggering much strife within the network.

The news division refused to allow Rivera on “Today” to promote “Devil Worship,” and “Nightly News” anchor Tom Brokaw told the Los Angeles Times “quasi-news programs cheapens the genuine news product.”

In the days before broadcast, with negative publicity mounting, NBC was forced to sell some commercials at half price.

The Los Angeles Times reported KNBC’s “Devil Worship” broadcast carried just 14 commercials, including two for the National Enquirer and three for new horror movies.

An NBC spokeswoman told the Times the network’s switchboards received 331 complaints in New York and Burbank. (A secretary at the NBC affiliate in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, said it received just one call – from a viewer whose home lost power as the broadcast began and wanted a rerun.)

“Devil Worship” finished fifth in the weekly ratings, with viewers in almost 20 million homes. Only NBC’s “Cosby,” “Cheers” and “A Different World” and CBS’s “60 Minutes” ranked higher.

In his 1992 memoir “The Last Great Ride,” NBC entertainment chief Brandon Tartikoff recalled hiring Rivera after he scored big ratings opening Al Capone’s vault in a live syndicated special in 1986.

Another concession: “Devil Worship” was conceived as a “blunting weapon” to counter the second episode of ABC’s “Roseanne,” which ended up ranking eighth.

Although Tartikoff was apologetic in the days after the “Devil Worship” broadcast, he struck a somewhat defensive tone in his book, noting affiliates received calls and letters from viewers thanking NBC for “exposing this very real problem … infecting their communities.”

Still, Tartikoff wrote, “If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t.”

- TV Time Capsule

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL38515A61808ED302

Pizza Slutz

o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 01:43:05 +0000



✖ Pizza too healthy? Try it with hot dog-stuffed crust: Hot dogs and pizza. Bacon and ice cream — who says these tasty treats don’t go great together? Despite the fact that the prevalence of obesity in England has more than doubled in the last twenty five years, Pizza Hut UK has rolled out a pizza with a Hot Dog Stuffed Crust. Described as a “succulent hot dog sausage bursting from our famous stuffed crust,” the overstuffed pizza base is available across the pond for delivery with a “free mustard drizzle.”
✖ Brazil cult members arrested for cannibalism: Brazilian police announced Friday that they had arrested a man and two women on suspicion of having murdered and cannibalized at least two women in what was described as a purification ritual. The three defendants formed a sect called “Cartel” that seeks to purify the world and reduce the population, police spokesman Democrito Honorato from the northeastern Brazilian town of Guaranhuns told AFP.
✖ Watch this news anchor get pelted with yogurt on live TV: This chaotic video shows a reporter getting yogurt and eggs thrown at him by some angry protesters on live TV. You’re probably wondering how the protesters got in the studio to begin with. Well, being Greek and having been to Greece on several occasions, I can safely guess that the security guards were most likely on their eighth smoke break of the day while the protesters snuck in behind their backs.
✖ Strange Love – 4 Women in Love with Inanimate Objects: Thanks to Objectum Sexuality, the Statue of Liberty now has a lover, a three foot model the Greek God Adonis has a girlfriend and the Eiffel Tower has a wife, as does the Berlin Wall. What sounds completely bizarre to us is in fact normal to these four women who suffer from the psychological condition that makes them experience romantic feelings towards inanimate objects. Let’s delve a little deeper into their stories of love.
✖ Sophie Ray, 19, risks health by eating nothing but Margherita pizza for EIGHT YEARS: This is the 19-year-old girl who has eaten nothing but Margherita pizza for the past eight years. Sophie Ray, from Wrexham, Wales, has not had a proper meal since she was two, and from the age of 11 she has subsisted solely on cheese and tomato pizza. The teenager says she now gags if she touches anything but the takeaway meal, and even a slice of pepperoni is enough to turn her stomach.
✖ Pizza-only diet could kill me, says scared Claire: A WOMAN who has eaten only cheese and tomato pizza for 31 years has been told she could DIE unless she quits her bizarre dining habit. Mature student Claire Simmons, 33, gags if she puts anything but a plain pizza slice in her mouth. She also SHAKES the moment she is presented with any other type of food. Now doctors have warned that her bizarre condition — known as Selective Eating Disorder — is increasing her risk of a stroke or heart attack in later life.
✖ 6 Charged With Running Drug Ring From Bronx Day Care Center: “As alleged, these six defendants operated a veritable pill mill,” said Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York. “The charged conduct was especially dangerous, as the defendants potentially victimized young children whose unsuspecting parents sent them to a day care center that allegedly doubled as a warehouse for thousands of their illegal pills.”
✖ Fake Girlfriend Only $5 – GirlfriendHire™: If your a girl in college you’ve found a great place to offer some GF services. You can offer what we call ‘flings’ to boys. An example of a fling would be offer to do a boys homework for money, sending him a text message about how much fun you had last night and how great he was in bed for the boy to punk his friends, changing your Facebook relationship status for $5 a day, offer to leave a few ‘girlfriend like’ wall comments on his facebook wall for $5 to make him feel special. The possibilites are endless. Boys can suggest flings on our home page and girls can see these ideas when they create a fling. To make sure you get paid we take the money from the boy when he orders your fling, when your flings duration is over with we then allow you to send it to your PayPal account. You can get your ex-gf back from that asshole by making her jelous. We offer categories that make it simple for guys to choose their ideal fake facebook girlfriend.
✖ Fake ‘gang rape’ signs appearing on Metro buses: Offensive signs have been showing up some King County Metro buses. The signs, which look official and cite a state code, warn passengers, “Gang rape is strictly prohibited.” King County Metro’s Linda Thielke is aware of the signs and says the county has nothing to do with them. According to Thielke, the signs are likely the work of a prankster with a computer design program and too much time on their hands.
✖ Hacking Scarlett Johansson—and 50 other celebs—using Google and gumption: On November 13, 2010, 34-year old Jacksonville, Florida resident Christopher Chaney went hunting for unreleased nude photos of celebrities. According to court documents, he had the e-mail address for celebrity stylist and handbag designer Simone Harouche, but he didn’t have Harouche’s password. No matter; after connecting to Apple’s e-mail servers, Chaney used the password reset feature. He answered the required security questions by supplying publicly available information gleaned from the Internet—and he was in. What to do next?
✖ Meet the new Boss in Town: ICE spawns… HSI Homeland Security Investigations, for great justice & cocaine cowboys: A relatively monstrous SWAT style truck leads us to a whole new blob of police state developments, busy hands with little to do and a lot of hardware to do it. It’s yet another plateau of mad new security bureaucracy, something in this case I was loosely aware of tectonic plates moving, but a little digging revealed quite a nasty new nucleus. Let’s plow in and see what was beta-tested through the willingness of politicians to throw money at repressing immigrants. The results begin with big, black scary trucks. And the biggest intelligence group inside the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and more. Surprise!
✖ Drug dealer had 89 bags of heroin tied to penis: Eiserman said a police officer was on routine patrol Friday when he pulled Woods over for a broken rear light and found marijuana in his car. When the officer searched Woods before placing him in the police cruiser, he discovered “a large bulge” in the front of his pants, Eiserman said. Story continues below. Police say Woods actually had the cojones to deny that he had any contraband down there. “He stopped him for the traffic violation, and one thing led to another,” Eiserman said. At the station, Eiserman said, police discovered that Woods had tied a large plastic bag around his penis that contained 89 small bags of suspected heroin and cocaine. Then things got messy. “I tried to remove it. Unfortunately, and I don’t know if it was nervousness or not, but he started urinating all over,” Eiserman said.
✖ Miss Universe rule change paves way for transgender women: A rule change that would allow transgender women to participate in the Miss Universe beauty pageant next year is a step forward for equality, advocates said Tuesday after pageant officials announced the policy shift. Pageant officials said they are working on the language of the official rule policy change but expected final word to come soon. The rules will have to be approved by Donald Trump, who runs the Miss Universe Organization, and NBC. Trump and NBC co-own the contest. The announcement of the policy change comes a week after the organization decided to allow Vancouver’s Jenna Talackova to compete for Canada’s spot in the Miss Universe pageant this year. Talackova, 23, underwent a sex change four years ago after being born a male.
✖ SOPA supporters await cash infusion from Netflix PAC: Those restrictions, represented most clearly in the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), were initially supported by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who reportedly sent a letter to the Chamber of Commerce expressing solidarity with that bill’s ultimate goals. But as the Internet backlash began and a growing number of major websites joined a mass work stoppage protest earlier this year, the company insisted to reporters it had been “neutral” on the matter all along. This year, however, the company would seem to have compelling reason to join the fray at the level of their advancing competitors at Time Warner and Comcast. Both cable network operators have been angling to compete with Netflix by launching their own on-demand video services, along with implementing some policies like bandwidth caps that impose a monthly data limit, which limits the amount of time some users can spend watching streaming video on sites like Netflix.
✖ Sagging pants gets man 3 days in jail: LaMarcus D. Ramsey, 20, was in Autauga County Circuit Court to enter a plea on a charge of receiving stolen property. Circuit Judge John Bush took exception to the fact that Ramsey’s blue jeans were sagging too low. The three-day stint will be served in the Autauga Metro jail. “You are in contempt of court because you showed your butt in court,” a visibly irate Bush told Ramsey. “You can spend three days in jail. When you get out you can buy pants that fit, or at least get a belt to hold up your pants so your underwear doesn’t show.”
✖ This Internet provider pledges to put your privacy first. Always.: Nicholas Merrill is planning to revolutionize online privacy with a concept as simple as it is ingenious: a telecommunications provider designed from its inception to shield its customers from surveillance. Merrill, 39, who previously ran a New York-based Internet provider, told CNET that he’s raising funds to launch a national “non-profit telecommunications provider dedicated to privacy, using ubiquitous encryption” that will sell mobile phone service and, for as little as $20 a month, Internet connectivity. The ISP would not merely employ every technological means at its disposal, including encryption and limited logging, to protect its customers. It would also — and in practice this is likely more important — challenge government surveillance demands of dubious legality or constitutionality.
✖ These Are The Prices AT&T;, Verizon and Sprint Charge For Cellphone Wiretaps: Wiretaps cost hundreds of dollars per target every month, generally paid at daily or monthly rates. To wiretap a customer’s phone, T-Mobile charges law enforcement a flat fee of $500 per target. Sprint’s wireless carrier Sprint Nextel requires police pay $400 per “market area” and per “technology” as well as a $10 per day fee, capped at $2,000. AT&T; charges a $325 activation fee, plus $5 per day for data and $10 for audio. Verizon charges a $50 administrative fee plus $700 per month, per target. Data requests for voicemail or text messages cost extra. AT&T; demands $150 for access to a target’s voicemail, while Verizon charges $50 for access to text messages. Sprint offers the most detailed breakdown of fees for various kinds of data on a phone, asking $120 for pictures or video, $60 for email, $60 for voice mail and $30 for text messages.
✖ Study debunks myth that urine is sterile: A new study by researchers at Loyola University suggests that the common notion that human urine is sterile is not always true. A post at the science blog Lab Spaces says that tests have shown that certain bacteria commonly inhabit the bladders of some women, and that new approaches to testing for and treating urinary tract infections (UTIs) are in order.
✖ Mars Viking Robots ‘Found Life’: New analysis of 36-year-old data, resuscitated from printouts, shows NASA found life on Mars, an international team of mathematicians and scientists conclude in a paper published this week. Further, NASA doesn’t need a human expedition to Mars to nail down the claim, neuropharmacologist and biologist Joseph Miller, with the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, told Discovery News. “The ultimate proof is to take a video of a Martian bacteria. They should send a microscope — watch the bacteria move,” Miller said. “On the basis of what we’ve done so far, I’d say I’m 99 percent sure there’s life there,” he added.
✖ 13 Ways the Government Tracks You: Privacy is eroding fast as technology offers government increasing ways to track and spy on citizens. The Washington Post reported there are 3,984 federal, state and local organizations working on domestic counterterrorism. Most collect information on people in the US. Here are thirteen examples of how some of the biggest government agencies and programs track people.
✖ Where the Heavy Metal Bands Are – Map: I thought it might be fun to offer a little context for this map (below), which has been making the rounds at Reddit and FlowingData. It shows Sweden and Finland with a fairly massive lead in metal bands per capita. Northern Europe and Scandinavia do well across board with Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and tiny Estonia besting the U.S. and U.K. by a considerable margin, as our colleagues at The Atlantic Wire have noted.
✖ US Police Can Copy Your iPhone’s Contents In Under Two Minutes: It has emerged that Michigan State Police have been using a high-tech mobile forensics device that can extract information from over 3,000 models of mobile phone, potentially grabbing all media content from your iPhone in under two minutes. The CelleBrite UFED is a handheld device that Michigan officers have been using since August 2008 to copy information from mobile phones belonging to motorists stopped for minor traffic violations. The device can circumvent password restrictions and extract existing, hidden, and deleted phone data, including call history, text messages, contacts, images, and geotags. O2MOBILE SOFTWARE Cellebrite UFED 520×286 US Police Can Copy Your iPhones Contents In Under Two MinutesIn short, it can copy everything on your smartphone in a matter of minutes.
✖ Were Jews ever really slaves in Egypt, or is Passover a myth?: The reality is that there is no evidence whatsoever that the Jews were ever enslaved in Egypt. Yes, there’s the story contained within the bible itself, but that’s not a remotely historically admissible source. I’m talking about real proof; archeological evidence, state records and primary sources. Of these, nothing exists.
✖ When the cops subpoena your Facebook information, here’s what Facebook sends the cops: One of the most fascinating documents we came across was the BPD’s subpoena of Philip Markoff’s Facebook information. It’s interesting for a number of reasons — for one thing, Facebook has been pretty tight-lipped about the subpoena process, even refusing to acknowledge how many subpoenas they’ve served. Social-networking data is a contested part of a complicated legal ecosystem — in some cases, courts have found that such data is protected by the Stored Communications Act. In fact, we’d never seen an executed Facebook subpoena before — but here we have one, including the forms that Boston Police filed to obtain the information, and the printed (on paper!) response that Facebook sent back, which includes text printouts of Markoff’s wall posts, photos he uploaded as well as photos he was tagged in, a comprehensive list of friends with their Facebook IDs (which we’ve redacted), and a long table of login and IP data.
✖ Son of Sam Meets King From Queens: Eddie and I were in separate observation rooms, which were more like jail cells, as we awaited our respective criminal cases to be dealt with by the court. I was under a 24-hour per day suicide watch all the while I was confined there. A New York City correction officer was posted outside my room continually with each officer doing an eight hour shift. And Eddie was housed in a three man room almost directly across from me, and about ten feet away. Most of the time the guards allowed Ed and I to talk. Eddie’s case also graced the newspapers, at least for a few days. He was caught robbing from graves in a local cemetery. He told me he was a Satanist. And, if I remember correctly, he knew certain persons who were interested in purchasing his wares in order to use them for ritualistic purposes. But who these people were, I’ve no idea. And I think it was one of Ed’s friends who tipped off the police.
✖ Japan is Poisoning Other Countries By Burning Highly-Radioactive Debris: Burning radioactive debris does not destroy the radioactivity. It merely spreads it. Gundersen says that radioactivity from the burnt debris will end up not only in neighboring prefectures, but in Hawaii, British Columbia, Oregon, Washington and California. Gundersen said that burning radioactive debris is basically re-creating the Fukushima disaster all over again, as it is releasing a huge amount of radioactivity which had settled on the ground back into the air.
✖ 14-Year-Old Uploads Sex Vid to Facebook, Gets Off…Lightly: The latest such high-profile example of this comes from Cheltenham, England, where a 14-year-old boy has been arrested after posting to Facebook a brief clip of himself and a 14-year-old girl engaging in an unspecified sex act (it’s unclear if it was just a clip or whether the whole thing lasted just a few pumps). The sex was consensual, all parties agree. The boy got off … lightly. Rather than ruin the mini-pornographer’s life with the scarlet letter of the sex offender registry, police gave him a “final warning,” which means it’ll all be expunged from his record in six years, barring any additional indecent incident.

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Cannibal Corpse – Hammer Smashed Face Wacken – Impressions From The Pit

o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 00:58:49 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1G936lJJQo

Slade “It’s Slade” BBC Documentary (1999) Glam Rock

o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 16:59:37 +0000

Slade are a rock band from Wolverhampton, who rose to prominence during the glam rock era of the early 1970s. With 17 consecutive Top 20 hits and six number ones, the British Hit Singles & Albums names them as the most successful British group of the 1970s based on sales of singles. They were the first act to have three singles enter at number one, and all six of the band’s chart-toppers were penned by Noddy Holder and Jim Lea. Total UK sales stand at 6,520,171, and their best selling single, “Merry Xmas Everybody“, has sold in excess of one million copies.

A number of artists have cited Slade as an influence, including: Kiss, Mötley Crüe, Quiet Riot, Poison, Def Leppard, Oasis, Cheap Trick, Twisted Sister, The Runaways and Girlschool. The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Music tells of Holder’s powerful vocals, guitarist Dave Hill‘s equally arresting dress sense and the deliberate misspelling of their song titles for which they became well known.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA7D008FB8880F6C4

Nuclear Powered Lies

o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 15:25:27 +0000



✖ The myth of the eight-hour sleep: In 2001, historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech published a seminal paper, drawn from 16 years of research, revealing a wealth of historical evidence that humans used to sleep in two distinct chunks. His book At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past, published four years later, unearths more than 500 references to a segmented sleeping pattern – in diaries, court records, medical books and literature, from Homer’s Odyssey to an anthropological account of modern tribes in Nigeria. A woman tending to her husband in the middle of the night by Jan Saenredam, 1595 Roger Ekirch says this 1595 engraving by Jan Saenredam is evidence of activity at night Much like the experience of Wehr’s subjects, these references describe a first sleep which began about two hours after dusk, followed by waking period of one or two hours and then a second sleep.
✖ The Internet Blames Obama for the Death of Andrew Breitbart: Before 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, The New York Times’ assistant managing editor, Jim Roberts, tweeted what was perhaps the first accusation that hinted at Barack Obama’s involvement. “Only a few weeks ago, #Breitbart spoke to CPAC, claiming to have videos of Obama from ‘college days,’” wrote Roberts. Sure enough, only weeks earlier Breibart, never one to hold back against the president, told an audience at the Washington, DC Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that he was close to leaking videos that would end the political career of the commander-in-chief. “I have videos, this election we’re going to vet him,” Breitbart told an audience of attendees last month. “We are going to vet him from his college days to show you why racial division and class warfare are central to what hope and change was sold in 2008.”
✖ Your brain on ‘shrooms: fMRI elucidates neural correlates of psilocybin psychedelic state: Psychedelic substances have long been used for healing, ceremonial, or mind-altering subjective experiences due to compounds that, when ingested or inhaled, generate hallucinations, perceptual distortions, or altered states of awareness. Of these, the psychedelic substance psilocybin, the prodrug (a precursor of a drug that must in vivo chemical conversion by metabolic processes before becoming an active pharmacological agent) of psilocin (4-hydroxy-dimethyltryptamine) and the key hallucinogen found in so-called magic mushrooms, is widely used not only in healing ceremonies, but, more recently, in psychotherapy as well – but little has been known about its specific activity in the brain.
✖ Wyoming House advances doomsday bill: State representatives on Friday advanced legislation to launch a study into what Wyoming should do in the event of a complete economic or political collapse in the United States. House Bill 85 passed on first reading by a voice vote. It would create a state-run government continuity task force, which would study and prepare Wyoming for potential catastrophes, from disruptions in food and energy supplies to a complete meltdown of the federal government. The task force would look at the feasibility of Wyoming issuing its own alternative currency, if needed. And House members approved an amendment Friday by state Rep. Kermit Brown, R-Laramie, to have the task force also examine conditions under which Wyoming would need to implement its own military draft, raise a standing army, and acquire strike aircraft and an aircraft carrier.
✖ ‘Plume-Gate’ Shocker: Media Silence Raises Troubling Questions: The executive branch and multiple federal agencies, agencies tasked with keeping the American public safe, did their best to hide and to cover-up information about a deadly radioactive plume and ensuing fallout that was headed for the West Coast of the United States from Japan. The fact it was real and did arrive is proven by samplings from milk, vegetables and rainwater. Even though EPA testing methodology and actual capability were questioned, independent sources verified the fallout. To those who say radiation does not travel in a plume or that fallout is a local phenomenon, there is an excellent distillation of the book ‘Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment’ at GlobalResearch.ca that proves otherwise. The evidence obtained in the FOIA request indicates that right from the start, the NRC had a clear idea of the significance of the disaster that was unfolding, but concealed the truth from the American public.
✖ Underground ghost station explorers spook the security services: Last month TfL applied to issue anti-social behaviour orders which would not only stop them undertaking further expeditions and blogging about urban exploration but also prohibit them from carrying equipment that could be used for exploring after dark. Extraordinarily, it also stipulates they should not be allowed to speak to each other for the duration of the order – 10 years. “To me, telling people they can’t associate with their closest friends is an incredible invasion of human rights,” says Garrett. “It’s a complete overreaction and an amazing tack to take after the group already agreed to a caution.” He thinks TfL’s legal action is fuelled by a wider misunderstanding of what urban exploration is about. “What we do is very benign,” he says. “The motivation for it comes from a love for the city – we want to interact with its hidden histories and forgotten stories and places.”
✖ Giant fleas plagued feathered dinosaurs: At 20.6 millimetres long, the 165-million-year old fossils dwarf the largest living flea – a 12 mm species which plagues the mountain beaver of North America. The fossil beasts are so large they may have lived on feathered dinosaurs rather than the small mammals that scuttled across the Mesozoic landscape, according to André Nel at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, France, a member of the team that made the find
✖ Medical Journal: Legalize ‘After-Birth Abortions’, ‘Infants Are Not People’ :: Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus’ health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.
✖ Cops nab Philly woman who gave illegal butt injections: A Philadelphia woman was arrested Wednesday at a so-called “pumping party,” where police say she was planning to administer buttock-enhancing injections. Police say they received a tip that Padge Windslowe, also known as “Black Madam,” would be performing the procedure at a Germantown home. This wasn’t the first time the “Black Madam” was connected to illegal buttock enhancements. Windslowe is under investigation for a botched butt-enhancement procedure on 20-year-old British student Claudia Aderotimi at the Hampton Inn near Philadelphia International Airport in February 2011, according to police. Aderotimi died after the procedure was performed.
✖ Inflation Is A Tax And The Federal Reserve Is Taxing The Living Daylights Out Of Us: Ronald Reagan once famously declared that inflation is a tax, but sadly most Americans did not really grasp what he was talking about. If the American people truly understood what inflation was doing to them, they would be screaming bloody murder about monetary policy. Inflation is an especially insidious tax because it is not just a tax on your income for one year. It is a continual tax on every single dollar that you own. As your money sits in the bank, it is constantly losing value. Over time, the effects of inflation can be absolutely devastating. For example, if you put 100 dollars in the bank in 1970, those same dollars today would only have about 17 percent of the purchasing power that they did back then. In essence, you were hit by an 83 percent “inflation tax” and all you did was leave your money in the bank. So who is responsible for this? Well, the Federal Reserve controls monetary policy in the United States…
✖ Chinese Drones Will Use Genetic Algorithms to Learn to Hunt For Submarines: China usually holds its military hand very close to the vest–that, or things “mysteriously” leak that it doesn’t (does) want the world to know about–so we’re left to wonder why the People’s Republic has decided to publish this in the journal Advanced Materials Research. Nonetheless, it’s pretty interesting. Chinese navy researchers have plans for a new submarine hunting scheme that uses ship-launched UAVs running genetic algorithms. Genetic algorithms narrow down a range of possibilities to an optimal solution much the way evolution does (at least in a simplified sense)–by weeding out the weaker offspring and mating the best with the best to create stronger candidates. These algorithms would take into account things like fuel economy, potential air and sea threats, and oceanographic geography to zero in on the most likely places for submarines to be moving at a given time.
✖ Wanna File a Police Complaint (Arrested for Trying) [Video]: Either intimidated into leaving or arrested… Either way he couldn’t File a Police Complaint
✖ DHS tracked Occupy Wall Street to ‘control protesters’: In addition to monitoring Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Meetup and Occupy live video feeds, the feds also relied on the left-leaning activist website Daily Kos for tracking protest locations. “The growing support for the OWS movement has expanded the protests’ impact and increased the potential for violence,” the report notes in its final paragraph. “While the peaceful nature of the protests has served so far to mitigate their impact, larger numbers and support from groups such as Anonymous substantially increase the risk for potential incidents and enhance the potential security risk to critical infrastructure (CI). The continued expansion of these protests also places an increasingly heavy burden on law enforcement and movement organizers to control protesters.” Hastings warned that there were “ominous” implications to this kind of information gathering.
✖ Anatomy of the Great Adderall Drought: The results of the shortage or lack of insurance coverage for generic Adderall XR forced many people to seek out name-brand Adderall XR, which, in turn, ran out. Then people, desperate for any ADHD medication, sought out the generic instant release amphetamine salts (formally Adderall). The increased demand on instant release dried up the supplies pretty quickly, and soon ADHD sufferers everywhere were unable to find any form of their medication. Luckily, Shire had magically possessed enough amphetamines from their DEA quota to produce plenty of their new ADHD medication, Vyvanse. In fact, Shire doubled its third quarter profits from 2010 to 2011, with most of that increase resulting from Vyvanse sales. During this time, coinciding nicely with the Adderall shortage, Shire hiked the price of Vyvanse.
✖ Stratfor Is a Joke and So Is Wikileaks for Taking It Seriously: The group’s reputation among foreign policy writers, analysts, and practitioners is poor; they are considered a punchline more often than a source of valuable information or insight. As a former recipient of their “INTEL REPORTS” (I assume someone at Stratfor signed me up for a trial subscription, which appeared in my inbox unsolicited), what I found was typically some combination of publicly available information and bland “analysis” that had already appeared in the previous day’s New York Times. A friend who works in intelligence once joked that Stratfor is just The Economist a week later and several hundred times more expensive. As of 2001, a Stratfor subscription could cost up to $40,000 per year.
✖ 9/11 Terrorist Featured in Ad on Facebook: As Facebook gets ready to go public, the eyes of the world will become even more focused on the Menlo Park-based social network. That’s just partly why Friday’s report of an insurance advertisement on Facebook featuring the face of 9/11 terrorist Mohamed Atta is not the type of publicity the site wants ahead of its initial public offering.
✖ Pantokrator, the Heavy Metal Church of Bogota: They meet every Saturday night on the second floor of a house, above a paint store. The services are a mix of traditional mass and metal that has biblical themes. The rosaries are made from chains and the bibles lined with denim. As the music reaches a crescendo, praises of the Lord are sung. Cristian asserts, “If Jesus were alive today, he would be neither a guerilla nor a metalhead. He would accept everyone without distinction and without reproach to anyone.” Can’t really argue with that!
✖ Man stricken eating ‘Triple Bypass’ burger: Laughing tourists were either cynical or confused about whether a man was really suffering a medical episode amid the “doctor,” “nurses” and health warnings at the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas, a restaurant owner said Wednesday. “It was no joke,” said Jon Basso, who promotes himself “Doctor Jon,” his scantily-clad waitresses as nurses and customers as patients. Basso said he could tell right away the man in his 40s eating a Triple Bypass burger was having trouble. He was sweating, shaking and could barely talk.
✖ Deepest terrestrial animal found in Krubera-Voronja cave: Scientists have discovered four new species of primitive eyeless insects, one of which they described as the deepest land animal ever found. These animals are springtails (Arthropoda, Insecta, Collembola), a minute primitive wingless insect with six-legs and without eyes that commonly live in total darkness in caves, where they feed on fungi and decomposing organic matter. Described by Rafael Jordana and Enrique Baquero from University of Navarra (Spain), they are known for science as: Anurida stereoodorata, Deuteraphorura kruberaensis, Schaefferia profundissima and Plutomurus ortobalaganensis. The last one is the deepest arthropod ever found, at the remarkable depth of 1.980 meters (2,165 yards) below ground surface. The insects were collected during the Ibero-Russian CaveX team expedition to the world’s deepest known cave during the summer of 2010.
✖ Low-wage Facebook contractor leaks secret censorship list: Namely, female nipples or even the impressions of nipples under clothing are unacceptable to Facebook censors, whereas male nipples are fine. Images of breast feeding, too, are forbidden if they show an exposed nipple. “Crushed heads” and mutilated limbs are also fine, so long as the person posting such images does not express delight and no internal organs are visible. The list specifically says that on this point, no exceptions would be made for news media. Also verboten: images of bodily fluids, including ear wax and pus; dead animals; advocacy of violence; advocacy of eating disorders; racial jokes where “the humor is not evident”; and “any photoshopped images of people, whether negative, positive or neutral”; “pixelated or black-barred content showing nudity or sexual activity”; “digital/cartoon nudity”; and images of drunk or sleeping people with “things drawn on their faces.”
✖ Goodbye, First Amendment: ‘Trespass Bill’ will make protest illegal: In the text of the act, the law is allowed to be used against anyone who knowingly enters or remains in a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority to do so, but those grounds are considered any area where someone — rather it’s President Obama, Senator Santorum or Governor Romney — will be temporarily visiting, whether or not the public is even made aware. Entering such a facility is thus outlawed, as is disrupting the orderly conduct of “official functions,” engaging in disorderly conduct “within such proximity to” the event or acting violent to anyone, anywhere near the premises. Under that verbiage, that means a peaceful protest outside a candidate’s concession speech would be a federal offense, but those occurrences covered as special event of national significance don’t just stop there, either. And neither does the list of covered persons that receive protection.
✖ Cyberattack Could Be Directed at Facebook, Hijacking HAARP: But the line between mockery and hysteria may prove very thin, indeed, with one report at Consternation Security positing that, in the wake events such as the Iranian army overriding and capturing an RQ-170 drone, Anonymous might be able to hijack the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP. It is with HAARP, Consternation claims to report seriously under a shimmering photo of an aurora, that hackers could, after inciting bouts of “headaches, dizziness, confusion, and even insanity,” “quite literally cook the President while he sleeps.”
✖ Caught in the crossfire: Should musicians boycott Israel?: Last summer, punk rock icon Jello Biafra and his band decided to cancel a show they had planned on playing at the Barby Club in Tel Aviv. At the time, Biafra wrote that ‘the toll and stress on the band members and myself has been huge, both logistically and as a matter of conscience’. In August, Biafra decided to travel to Israel and Palestine himself to explore his thoughts on the cultural boycott of Israel.
✖ Starting March 1st, A Red License Plate in Nevada Means the Driver is a Robot!: An extended campaign in Nevada by Google has led to a new host of provisions which will allow automated cars to legally drive in the state. Starting March 1st, 2012 innovators like Google can officially apply for a new kind of robot driver’s license that will give them permission to openly test their cars on the road. Automated vehicles will be able to travel the same streets and highways as human drivers, with only a red license plate marking them as robots. Once research on those automated cars is complete (which may take years), the Nevada Department of Motorized Vehicles will issue them a neon green license plate – an indication that the robot drivers are good to go.
✖ Shocking photos of teacher accused in California molestation horror surface: Shocking photos of accused pedophile Mark Berndt offer a glimpse into his disturbing behavior at scandal-rocked Miramonte Elementary School in South Los Angeles. In the newly-surfaced pictures, the 61-year-old is seen wearing a bizarre costume clearly geared to the Disney set. He sports Mickey Mouse ears, a form-fitting black shirt and tiny baby-blue satin running shorts over black tights, with an arm draped around a little girl dressed as a fairytale princess. Berndt completes his over-the-top child-like appearance with a half-eaten cupcake in his hand and green frosting smeared on his mustache. The 61-year-old teacher faces multiple life sentences. He currently has been charged with 23 counts of lewd acts on children. Police say Berndt blindfolded students, taped their mouths and photographed them with a cockroach crawling on their faces. He is also accused of conducting “tasting games” in which he fed students semen from a spoon and cookies laced with the same bodily fluid.
✖ U.S. Tells South America to Shut Up About Legalizing Drugs: Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has a message for everyone who thinks the drug war is bad: you’re wrong, it’s awesome. (Reuters) – Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano defended Washington’s drug war strategy on Monday despite calls by some Latin American leaders to consider decriminalizing narcotics. … “I would not agree with the premise that the drug war is a failure,” Napolitano said. “It is a continuing effort to keep our peoples from becoming addicted to dangerous drugs.”
✖ China’s State Police Seize iPhone Branded Gas Stoves with Apple Logo: Now here’s something you don’t often hear about. Two warehouses containing iPhone branded gas stoves got seized by the state police at Wuhan, after discovering they are not real Apple products
✖ Shrines safeguarded from Pussy Riot: Russian Cossacks are to stand guard over Moscow’s Orthodox churches after a feminist punk band broke into a Cathedral and sang blasphemous songs at the altar. Earlier this month, four members of the all-girl band Pussy Riot rushed the church dressed in mini-dresses and wearing masks. Without losing time, they sang a song entitled Holy S**t before being escorted out by security. The girls are notorious for their publicity stunts. They’ve performed a song on Red Square addressed to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Now the Cossack say, “Let’s protect the holy shrines!”, promising to create vigilante groups to protect a number of churches in the Russian capital.
✖ Pussy Riot Band Members In Russian Orthodox Church (Punk Invasion) [Video]
✖ Report: Gov’t “collapsed” during Japan nuke crisis: “As we listened to our top nuclear experts, we politicians had no idea what they were talking about. Was anyone going to suffer radiation contamination? Would this be another Chernobyl or Three Mile Island? No one could give us a straight answer,” Fukuyama recalled in the report. After 300 interviews with officials and nuclear experts, the report said government was partially at fault for not having an emergency plan if a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck the country. However, investigators concluded the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric, was to blame for the majority of the problems. “They were astonishingly unprepared for this nuclear accident,” lead investigator Youichi Funabash told CBS News. It seems that Tokyo Electric was unprepared for a power failure. Without electricity, the cores of the reactor couldn’t stay cool, and it triggered explosions and meltdowns.
✖ Homeland Security Dept. Pays General Dynamics to Scour Internet for Criticism of its Policies: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been paying a defense contractor $11.4 million to monitor social media websites and other Internet communications to find criticisms of the department’s policies and actions. A government watchdog organization, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), obtained hundreds of documents from DHS through the Freedom of Information Act and found details of the arrangement with General Dynamics. The company was contracted to monitor the Web for “reports that reflect adversely on DHS,” including sub-agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Citizenship and Immigration Services, Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
✖ Illegal Everything [Video]: This Stossel special will blow your mind! The government, especially the EPA is out of control as well as local prosecutors trying to make a name for themselves.
✖ Interpol arrests 25 suspected members of ‘Anonymous’ hackers group: “This operation shows that crime in the virtual world does have real consequences for those involved, and that the Internet cannot be seen as a safe haven for criminal activity,” said Interpol’s acting director of police services. However, it was not clear what evidence there was to prove those arrested were part of Anonymous, an extremely loose-knit international movement of online activists, or “hacktivists.” Spanish police said earlier they had arrested four suspected hackers accused of sabotaging websites and publishing confidential data on the Internet. They were accused of hacking political parties’ and companies’ websites and adding fangs to the faces of leaders in photographs online, and publishing data identifying top officials’ security guards, Spanish police said.
✖ Big Food Must Go: Why We Need to Radically Change the Way We Eat: It is time — now, not next year — to de-occupy Walmart. And Archer Daniels Midland. And Tyson Foods. And Monsanto. And Cargill. And Kraft Foods. And the other large corporations that decide what ends up on our plates. Take all our money out, public and personal, from our shopping dollars to school district lunch contracts to the corporate subsidies that uphold these firms’ grip on our food supply, and invest it in a new system that’s economically diverse and ecologically sustainable. These corporations’ stranglehold over food has wreaked havoc on the environment, our health, farmers, workers, and our very future. It is time for an end to Big Food, and a societal shift to something radically different. We all deserve a future where what we eat feeds community and land, instead of eroding soils, polluting water and air, and tossing away small farmers and immigrant workers as if they were balance sheet losers.
✖ A Bicycle That Plays Records: While we’ve seen plenty of crazy boombox bikes in our day, this bicycle by Dutch designers Merel Sloother, Liat Azulay and Pieter Frank de Jong, takes that idea one step further into the past. A prototype of their Feats per Minute project, this retro-inspired ride allows riders to play records as they travel throughout the city. We’re assuming that pedaling faster will speed up the music — which could prove problematic unless you’re going for a leisurely ride or enjoy listening to chipmunks squeak — but we’re in love the concept, as long as no one comes riding down our street too early on the weekend.
✖ YouTube Identifies Bird Song as Copyrighted Music: Is this a freak occurrence? NO! It is a very common occurrence. It is a well-known error. One person has had to file over 100 disputes for mistaken bird sounds. For some reason Google is reluctant to fix this so companies like rumblefish take advantage of it to gain fraudulent income (google makes something also).